Cameras and cell phones are a natural pairing and consumers the world over have eagerly embraced the combination. However, the images produced by these miniature marvels have lacked the quality necessary for serious photography. It’s a shame that committed photographers have missed out on the advantages of cell phone photography. Imagine always having your camera… [Read More]
Unique File Names
When I was growing up, our family took vacations involving lots of driving. As a nine- or ten-year-old, I was fascinated by the way the odometer rolled over all but the leftmost digit every ten thousand miles. I’d sit in the back seat, calculating when it would happen, and when the great event was nigh,… [Read More]
Qualtity vs Resolution in Printing
Last time I wrote about how opinions on quality in digital image capture changed over the last fifteen years. Now I’d like to do the same for inkjet printing. If you asked the gurus at the imaging engineering conferences of the early nineties what it would take to get photographic output from a drop-on-demand inkjet… [Read More]
Resolution vs Quality in Images
Back in the late 80s and early 90s, when I was doing digital photography research, there was a popular topic in the bar at technical conferences: what would it take for digital capture to equal 35mm quality? It was clear that we needed a whole lot more dynamic range; in those days the highly-portable sensors… [Read More]
Can You Believe a Photograph?
Serious practitioners of conventional photography know of the many ways that they can stage-manage the truth. It starts in the field. Where do you point the camera? What do you ask of your subjects? Do you move things? What do you leave out? When do you trip the shutter? How do you exploit lens distortions?… [Read More]