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1,028,000 Digital Photographs
cdneng2 writes "Rob Galbraith has an in-depth article on the digital
photo process of Sports Illustrated. The article walks through SI's digital workflow of Super Bowl XXXVIII as it sorts through the 16,183 digital pictures shot by eleven of
the magazine's staff photographers and the process all the way to the cover of the magazine. Sorry, no Janet Jackson or swimsuit pics in this article."
From what I understand, cameras that use a RAW mode are saving all the output from the CCD, without any processing at all. You can then load it into a program and apply exposure compensation, lighting adjustments and whatnot, rather than having the camera do the image processing.
Saving as a PNG would require turning the raw CCD data into an image, which is defeating the point.
Can you say RTFA?
...and to two HP Proliant DL380 servers with dual-Xeon 2.4GHz processors, 1.5GB of RAM, and twin Ultra-III SCSI hard drives. (One of these servers, attached to a Sony CPD-G520 21" monitor, is Steve Fine's editing machine.)
... it's significantly longer.
1) Get to the game and burn film by the end of the 1st quarter
2) Give a 'doggy bag' of the film, your paper id, to a gopher who runs the film to an onsite processing facility (if you are lucky) or takes it to a local newspaper place that has an 'agreement' with your paper to use the facilities.
3) 15 minutes, film, dry to dry (C41)
4) Proofsheet or eyeball the film
5) Scan and upload.
6) Repeat for each quarter.
Takes alot more time, alot more resources, and sadly introduces alot more errors.
I am completely floored by the workflow SI has in place. That has been obviously honed to razor sharpness- only small gains available to be had now.
Oh, and yes, I'm a photographer and (was) an editor, until I decided everyone else's photos weren't as good as mine *wink*
I own the 70-200 2.8L. It is a gorgeous work of art. Is balanced perfectly, is tack sharp, and covers nearly all portrait ranges I need, as well as bringing in the ladies...
In 1995 I think it cost me ~1200$.
Figure a typical shooter is going to want the following
16-35mm 2.8L, $1400
70-210 2.8L IS, $1700
24-70 2.8L, $1300
And if you are really lucky
400mm f2.8L IS, $6500
The 300 2.8L is cheaper by far, but you usually need that extra reach outdoors....
Maybe it was an odd post after all, but you didn't get what I was saying. I'm not dissapointed that they use standard off the shelf hardware / software, I'm just surprised. In the recesses of my crazy infantile mind I imagined a large organization like SI using stuff so advanced, so expensive, so grear that I'd never even heare of it. Now I know different. I actually *like* the fact that they use relatively inexpensive equipment. It means all I need is a ten thousand dollar digital camera!
Understand what you're talking about, at the very least. RAW images ARE compressed- they're 10-12bit per channel files. My 10D's raw files are anywhere from 5 to 6.5MB depending upon how much detail is in the image(higher ISO settings will generate bigger files due to noise in the image), and uncompress to well over 30MB in Photoshop(part of that bloat is because photoshop does 8 or 16 bit per channel, not anything inbetween). I can do extensive color and exposure correction, as well as tweak noise reduction and sharpening functions(all cameras sharpen the image to compensate for the antialiasing filter that sits over the CCD and spreads the light across the 3 color sensors).
Further, the true pro cameras(1D, 1Ds, 1D Mark II, etc) can save both a JPEG and a RAW file and even allow you to control exactly how the JPEG is saved- resolution and such. My 10D saves a preview thumbnail in the RAW file, and you get a little control over what resolution it is, so it's similar, but not quite the same. The 1D mark II can save the images onto two different media cards at the same time.
JPEGs are ideal because decompression is very, very fast- and the camera has already saved a lower-resolution preview JPEG for you so there's less data to push around. RAW files require a large amount of processing, since it's raw CCD information. That includes interpolation(the R,G,B pixels are in different places!), color balance determination, etc...all the stuff the camera has a dedicated chip to handle.
Honestly, if you read the article, the guy's problem is that he has shit for photographers- "11 guys, 11 shots of the same touchdown out of focus!" who are sloppy and too loose with their shutters simply because they can be. Digital has shifted the work from the photographer(who had to be careful since he only had so much film) to the editor, who's now swamped with the most unbelievable crap because these guys are shutter happy.
Please help metamoderate.