Size Matters (Digitally speaking of course)

Digital image size makes a big difference in image quality. Why? Digital camera images are made of individual dots called pixels and a million of these pixels make one megapixel (MP). How many megapixels depends on the camera and and how it is set. How many pixels are enough? To make a true photo quality print a lab needs roughly 300 pixels for every inch of size of the final print. For example an 8x10 would require around a 2400x3000 pixel file for true photo quality. Since 8x10 is the most popular enlargement size and often images are cropped before printing or uploading we recommend setting your camera at 2400x3600 (about 8 megapixels)at the MINIMUM. Once we get past 15 MP we are nearing overkill for photojournalists. Even a photo half a page in size wouldn't benefit noticeably from shooting at anything higher than 15 MP and all that file size just takes up space on your card and hard drive and slows uploading.

Twist and Shout

Shoot vertical subjects vertically. It's a simple rule for great pictures but in the digital age it is even more important for two reasons. First if we keep the camera horizontal for a subject that is actually up and down we are wasting a lot of space in our image. To make a good print that space will need to be cropped and cropping is a waste of pixels. Those wasted pixels reduces image quality and limit the largest (most expensive) print that can be printed from that image.
Once we've shot the subject vertically we need to upload it rotated to the correct position. In a study of over 1000 online news photos. Not a single unrotated vertical image was purchased, but the likelihood of a rotated vertical image being purchased was more than double that of a horizontal image.

Why is my aunt orange?

Automated Printing Versus Manual Print Making
Even the best automatic image correction softwares are not all that great at accurately color and density correcting photos. Good color correction takes a trained human being to manually look at the image and adjust it for the best possible print. Thats why at our lab we individually correct every single image we print for color, density, contrast, saturation and sharpness. Its also why you can often upload an image where the exposure or color is marginal and know that print will be something that your reader will be happy to hang on the wall.

Britney Spears and Washed Out Photos

What do they have in common? They are both overexposed. Just like too much press is not good for Britney, too much light is not good for digital images. Overexposure (too much light) makes photos too light and lose highlight detail. This is a real problem for digital photos because it can't be fully corrected even with the magic of Photoshop. How do we prevent overexposure? Unlike Britney we take control of our lives...er cameras and stop the madness of too much. How? If our results are consistently too light we need to check the EV setting (the +/- button) and make sure it is not set on anything other than zero. If it is already on zero then we should set it one click to the negative. On most all cameras this will darken all expsoures by 1/3 of a stop.