From Shutter to Submission: Digital Outdoor Photography The future is here, and it is digital. The debate on whether or not to switch to digital is over. www.michaelfurtman.com Battling Confusion – the Digital Learning Curve The analog world was simple – you just chose film brand and ISO speed, and let the lab do the rest! The digital world is full of new terms, most of which are poorly defined or understood. There’s still the misunderstanding that a digital image isn’t a “real” photo, or that somehow digital photography is easier, or that it is “cheating.” Just as many editors as photographers are confused! 1 Digital Photography – A Smart Business Decision! Digital photography will allow you to “burn” up hundreds of frames to capture moving subjects, and experiment on difficult lighting, such as backlit subjects. The end results are more and better photos, and hopefully, more sales! Film vs. Digital Cost Comparison • 400 Frames; • Fujichrome pro film purchased in bulk, and Fuji processing, equals 27.5 cents per frame; • 400 frames = $110.00. • Digital? Nothing but your time. Compact flash cards are infinitely reusable. 2 Camera Requirements • At least 5 megapixels; • 6 – plus megapixels will do nearly anything 35 mm film will do; • 8 or more is even better; • SLR with interchangeable lenses; • For action, more FPS the better; bigger “write” buffer the better; • Why not point-and-shoot digital? • slow “start-up” time; • limited to built-in lens; • slow focusing; • fewer FPS; • often apply in-camera manipulation (sharpening, etc.) Upside to Digital • vastly reduced costs; • the ability to review your photos during the shoot to make sure you’ve gotten the subjects you need; to see if you’ve gotten the exposure, focus, etc., correct; • the ability to easily transfer them to a computer for enhancement; • no more lost, damaged negatives or slides. • more rapid sales -- no more overnight shipping; editors can quickly review low rez samples via email or web. 3 Other Advantages No chemical waste; no canisters or other packaging waste. Digital images are “ready to use” – multiple applications. Incredible learning tool; you will become a better photographer! No more file cabinets full of slides! Downside to Digital? A need to be computer savvy, and have decent computer skills and equipment. If you are afraid of computers, by all means, stick with film. 4 What Makes Digital Different? • White balance; Theoretically, if white balance is correct, all other colors in the scene are correct too. •Histogram;Gives a visual “graph” of your photo’s exposure. • Variable ISO; Your “film” speed. Unless shooting under artificial lighting, I’ve found that the “auto” white balance setting works just fine. ISO Settings – Yippee! • Being able to change ISO settings is perhaps one of the greatest differences between shooting film and shooting digitally. • With film, you were stuck with one film speed, unless willing to change film in the middle of the role. • WARNING – shooting in the “idiot proof” (full auto) mode in most digital cameras lets the camera select the ISO. • Learn to shoot in the Creative Modes (Program, Av, Tv, etc.) so that you have control of your camera! 5 Advantages to ISO shift Use “slower” lenses. Adapt quickly to changing light. Tripod not as necessary because you can bump up the ISO to achieve “hand-holdable” shutter speeds. Superb tool for action photography because you can achieve fast shutter speeds in just about all light conditions. But just like higher speed film having more grain, high digital ISO introduces noise – but less so than does film, and it is somewhat removable in Photoshop. Reviewing Your Photo One of the biggest advantages of digital photography is the ability to instantly review your photo for sharpness, exposure, etc. Use it! Learn from it! 6 Histograms Virtually every digital camera, from the simplest point-and-shoot to the most sophisticated digital SLR has the ability to display a histogram directly, or superimposed upon the image just taken. On most cameras the histogram display takes place on the rear LCD screen. It is your MOST important photographic tool, and one of digital photography’s biggest advantages! Image File Types • Digital cameras usually store the image as a JPEG file, or a RAW file, or both simultaneously. • Both JPEG and camera RAW files are means of compressing the data to take less space on your flash card. • A six megapixel camera produces an uncompressed file of about 18 megabytes in size. • A RAW file will be compressed to about 6 Mb, while a JPEG file will be about 2 Mb. 7 RAW Files – Pro and Con RAW files are proprietary; can’t be viewed by common image software, including Windows. Advantages to RAW: RAW files are unprocessed files; RAW files are “lossless;” Considered a digital “negative” that allows a large range of manipulation. Disadvantages to RAW: Fewer shots per compact flash card (file size is larger) and fewer shots per burst (camera must pause longer to write to the flash card); “Clunky” to work with on the computer; Take up larger amounts of storage space on computer hard drives or on removable storage (CD, DVD). JPEG Pro and Con Pro: • many more images (up to 4x) per flash card while shooting; • much faster write time to flash card during action photography; • universally viewable in just about any image viewer, and in Windows. Con: • some image data lost in initial compression; • not as much latitude for manipulation in the computer; • data supposedly continues to be lost each time you open and close the image on the computer. 8 JPEG Myths While the first “disadvantage” (JPEG compression is “lossy”) is true, I’ve printed many images from both the JPEG and from the RAW file, and can tell no difference. The data lost is apparently irrelevant to the final product. And if the human eye can’t see it (which is what we’re ultimately shooting for), then do we really need it? Second, many of us have been shooting slide (transparency) film for years; Slide film has very little exposure latitude so most of us have gotten pretty doggone good at getting it right; Plenty of Photoshop “fiddling” latitude in a JPEG image as long as the exposure is within 2 stops of correct. Biggest JPEG Myth of ALL That JPEGs degrade (lose information) each time you open them. Simply opening or displaying a JPEG image does not harm the image in any way. Saving a JPEG repeatedly during the same editing session (without ever closing the image) will not accumulate a loss in quality. If you manipulate the image, and save it as a new JPEG file (new name), some, but very little, data is lost. In fact, if you save a JPEG file that is only 2Mb in size as a TIFF, which is a lossless, uncompressed file, the thing actually decompresses to 18 M again! 9 Why Not RAW? If you shoot very few images, RAW may be the perfect solution. The disadvantages of RAW are considerably less if you are working with just a few files. Also, as camera buffers get larger and faster, RAW becomes more practical for action photography. The biggest downside to RAW is that initial editing (evaluating the day’s shoot) is much slower. Shoot fifty or a hundred frames, and your time on the computer is two to four times longer than editing the same number of JPEG images. Some Recent Advancements Adobe has introduced a new, universal RAW file format -- .DNG, and is pushing camera manufacturers to adopt it. Microsoft is incorporating RAW support into its next generation Windows operating system, due out mid- 2006 Photoshop CS2 now has exposure correction for JPEG images, something previously limited to RAW. JPEG2000, a lossless JPEG compression, is gaining some support. 10 Understanding Pixels Digital images are made up square Pixels don’t get further apart from each dots called pixels. Each pixel other when you enlarge the image – they represents the color of a small part of just get bigger, and the image gets an image. jagged. Pixels form an image sort of like pieces of a mosaic. Too few, spread over too large a physical print size, and you end up seeing the pixels. They are in effect the equivalent of the grain found in silver-based films. The more pixels you have in an image the smoother the image will appear AT A PARTICULAR SIZE. For instance, the same scene shot with a 3 megapixel camera, and with an 8 megapixel camera, printed at a small size (say 3 x 5 inches) will look equally sharp. But that image won’t reproduce well at 11 x 14 from the 3 mp camera, but will look great from the 8 mp camera. PPI and DPI PPI (Pixels per Inch) and DPI (Dots per Inch) are frequently used interchangeably by pros and amateurs alike. • scanners, digital cameras and computer monitors are all measured in PPI; • printers are measured in DPI. Which resolution setting should I choose when I take a picture? It depends on what you’re going to do with it, but I recommend always shooting at the camera’s highest resolution setting. You can always downsize the image for uses other than print. 11 Understanding Resolution Resolution refers to the density of pixels in an image. It is a measurement of height x width at a certain pixel density (also known as pixels per inch/ppi). But digital images have no real absolute size or resolution – only a certain number of pixels in each dimension. Change the PHYSICAL size of the outputted print, and the resolution changes.