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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."
"...has an in-depth article on the digital photo process of Sports Illustrated."
I have found the next good excuse when the IT vice squad comes around again!
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
[note: this could be construed as a plug. Perhaps it even is, re-reading. You have been warned]
:-)
:-) You could do things like drag an image out of IE/Moz and drop into 'Shake', with Shake being instructed to load the real footage not the proxy version you were looking at in the browser - this image-based-project-load alone saved enormous time when you're dealing with millions of images.
My company (7 of us in total) wrote an asset management system used on a major film in a previous life (we were called 'unique-id' then). We were given the option of being paid and not disclosing the film, or not being paid and letting everyone know which one. It was a *big* film - we took the getting paid option, so you'll have to guess which
The rushes coming in totalled 40 DTF tapes per working day over several months, several hundred million images in all. The same system was used on the 'The world was not enough' trailer, where the large quantities of mostly-naked women
gyrating around with oil being poured on them suddenly made the visualisation tools *far* better than they used to be...
Every image (every frame) was accessible and searchable, notes could be made and a proxy version played back over the net. It was completely automated - logging was done by simply untarring the data-tape or playing the rfid-labelled video tape, with metadata being inferred from path names or rfid tag, all very simple and very effective. Everything was written using OSS tools, mainly PHP and MySQL (and yes, we paid for our MySQL licences
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
GO!
The poster to this story is pretty funny... I think most of us nerds here cared more about that dangling tit than anything else in the game. Then again... I think most everyone cares about the dangling tit more than the actual game.
History has a funny way of remembering things. If you don't believe me, think about how many people sum up the Clinton presidency into one word: blowjob.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I'm surprised Sports Illustrated uses relatively cheap hardware and software to edit their photos. ACDSee (Fire!) is $50, and they use some pretty standard (and not all that impressive) IBM laptops for most of the field action. Even at the studios in New York they're using dual 450 G4's. No dual G5's yet. Anyone know how much that camera costs?
All around the world
So that's are what other people look like...
What's that bright round thing in the sky in some of the pictures? It doesn't look like any fluorescent light I've ever seen!
How can I IM those cheerleaders "A/S/L?"
Is there a torrent for those million-plus pictures?
www.john316.com isnt a geek site! Who is that guy?
Trolling is a art,
I hadn't thought of that angle of it. One of the problems with old fashioned cameras was the fact that you only had so much film...You could only CARRY so much.
But with a high end digital camera it practically unlimited, as long as you can offload your chips. So you don't have to pick your shots so carefully; I've never met a photographer who wouldn't rather take 10 pictures of the same thing than just one, because it's impossible to tell which picture will end up being the best. Now they can do that and it doesn't cost them a damn dime. I bet SI is getting swamped with digital photos.
At the root of it though, it's just another facet of the same problem indemic to tech...How do you deal with the massive amount of info that you can now obtain.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I was hoping from the article name that this was going to be about a great Open Content digital photo archive, like PDPhoto, OpenPhoto, or all the great stuff at the Internet Archive or Common Content.
Instead it's about somebody else's photos I can't use. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
Evan Prodromou | evan@prodromou.name | http://evan.prodromou.name/
Forget the ???
1. Make software that does both
2. Sell to SI
3. Profit!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I'd be interested to see how pro pics taken at the Super Bowl with Nikon's D2H camera (high-frame-rate, 4MP) compare with the digital EOS, especially since the photo editor claims that most of what he's getting from the EOS users is 'shit'.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
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.
Come on now do you really need anothe picture of Janet Jackson's breast? As if you don't see it enough of the news.
Not to mention there is already 100 centazillion websites dedicated to her breast already.
These guys should be using dedicated image processors, like SGI boxes. They're just using souped up PCs & Macs. Sure you can have dual Xeons with gigabytes of RAM, but I still think an SGI can beat the pants off the harware these guys are using.
Itis the property of NFL and its owners.
I suggest we user UberBowl to refer to the final playoff game of the nationwide professional football leage.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
...on Galbraith's site is about National Geographic's first ever all digital shoot here. My favorite part was about how the photographer exposed "only" 200 rolls worth of pictures by using digital!
RAW 12-bit (which the 1Ds captures) is a lossless representation of a bitmap with 24 or 32 bit color. RAW is the raw data from the CCDs of the camera itself, with a much higher color range. They capture 12bit Bayer patern, IIRC.
The RAW files are saved, to be converted into CMYK for printing, not RGB colorspace that PNG, JPEG and other monitor-centric display technologies use. The JPEGs are merely for previewing on a monitor.
RAW and JPEG are captured because that's the two formats the cameras they use spit out.
More details here.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.)
"Warning: Camera geeks make computer geeks look tame" I'm a sys admin for a photo lab, and therefore both a computer geek and camera geek. How big of a warning sign should I get?
... 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*
This sounds like a lot, but for those too lazy for the math....16,183/11 photographers/6 hours of shooting.... it *only* comes out to 4 pictures per minute. When you consider A lot of them are pictures in random succession like 10 in a row, searching for the ultimate still-frame it isn't really as mind boggling as the initial large number seems.
Sorry, no Janet Jackson or swimsuit pics in this article.
Now as far as that. How many other geeks out there are for Sports Illustrated starting a SETI-like distributed network program for their photos? Imagine the SI photographers taking thousands of swimsuit shots and sending them off to your computer for you to "process". Count me in.
Sorry, facts and well-reasoned opinions have absolutely no place in a Canon/Nikon debate.
The Canon EOS 1D is the fastest camera in its class, and the default choice of just about every reporter. The 1D has a frame rate of 8 fps (@4MP, with buffer of 21JPEG/16RAW pictures), it's follow up, the 1D Mark 2 has a frame rate of 8.5 fps (@8MP, with a buffer of 40JPEG/20RAW pictures). The D2H has 8fps, (@4MP, 40JPEG pictures).
Of course, the EOS 1D series is environmentally sealed, unlike Nikon cameras. You could almost use it under water (if one uses L lenses).
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
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....
I assume that you are a more conservative person than I. While I respect your right to feel whatever you like:
1) Kids see nudity. Whether it's walking in on mommy and daddy in bed, a parent changing, whatever.... unless an adult freaks out about it, it's generally not a big deal. Worst case, they might ask some questions about anatomy that they'll need to know the answers to anyway.
2) "being offended" is really your decision. Another person can't offend you. (for example, A friend might jokingly say "Hey, asshole" and I'd laugh. A stranger does it and I might get mad. The reaction is MINE, not the speakers.
3) Honestly, it's a complicated and rough world. Perhaps if kids weren't shielded from it as much they would be more well adjusted. As it is, people lose their minds over a breast. God forbid we have 6 billion of them on the planet...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
You're going to be in for a rude awakening if you ever visit some European beaches..
No. :-)
--Sam
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.
Unfortunately, take a look at that file name. The Canon files repeat every 10,000 images. If we don't rename the files, we eventually end up with multiple images for the same filename. This is unfortunate. However, it is a heck of a lot better than the Nikon scheme.
A single image taken on any Nikon pro camera has the file name of DSC_0001.JPG and DSC_0001.NEF. This means that when you put the files in the same folder, they end up overwriting each other. This is unfortunate. On the newest camera (D2H), they added support for setting an EXIF field to identify the photographer. This means I can figure out who shot those photos as well. You cannot do this with the D1X or D1H.
So in all cases, we really want to rename the files.
We do keep the date information. Unfortunately, it is not always set correctly. But even if the date were set correctly, we still get the files out of order; we just get bags of digital cards as the game progresses. We would have to delay the edit of the files if we wanted to rename the files based on time.
But let's pretend ACDSee did sort the images by time. This is actually not really what the editor wants. Keep in mind we have 11 photographers shooting at once. The editor wants to be able to see the same sequence from the same photographer before seeing the other photos. In other words, if we have photographers A, B, C, and D, we want the order of photos for a specific play to be AAAAABBBBBCCCCCDDDDD, not ABCDABCDABCDABCD.
--Sam
But it's not an image. There has been no processing done on the signals to make it an image.
a w/:
From http://blanik.colorado.edu/~rtezaur/photo/other/r
"There is a number of steps involved in converting the RAW data into an image. In no particular order, the data must be color-interpolated since most digital sensors employ color masks thereby measuring at each pixel only some of the color and light intensity information. Based on the characteristics of the color mask and the spectral sensitivity of the sensor, some mapping between the measured numbers and actual colors must be used and results must be converted into one of the commonly used color spaces, with the appropriate gamma."
You're right that you can convert from one lossless file to another, as long as you're not losing precision (GIF uses lossless compression but only handles 8 bit images, for instance) but the RAW data is just not an image yet.
It saves the thumbnails as JPEGs in either an Access compatible, or can use an SQL database, so its wicked fast. The format is open, so you can tweak it with Python, or whatever.
I've only got about 80,000 of my own photos (it's a hobby for me, not a career), but it does everything I need it to do.
--Mike--
Also, for Canon, RAW != TIFF so maybe the files aren't as big as you're thinking. My 6 megapixel Canon 10-D generates 5-6MB RAW images (they vary in size because they have a jpeg embedded in them).
.RAW files (which ARE compressed) are smaller than uncompressed TIFF files.
They vary in size because they're compressed, mostly.
Further, for an interesting scene (i.e. not with the lens cap on), this is relatively uncompressible data, so even if you could in some way encode the raw CCD data in PNG format, you wouldn't see much of a gain.
That's not true. Even in an interesting scene, you will have large fields of similar colors which can still be compressed losslessly with good results. ZIP won't get you the best results because it doesn't understand how the data is structured. It's just like how FLAC gets much better compression than ZIP for audio, even though both are lossless. If you understand the structure of the data and where the common patterns emerge, you can tune your compression algorithm to those andcan get decent results.
That's why
PNG and JPEG use 24 bit color(plus 8 bits of alpha for PNG), while the cameras can produce 36 bit color.
Actually, PNG supports up to 48 bits of color.
I don't know about JPEG.