Slashdot Mirror
Chicago Sun Times Swaps iPhone Training For Staff Photographers
frdmfghtr notes (via Cult of Mac) that "the reporters of the Chicago Sun-Times are being given training in iPhone photography, to make up for the firing of the photography staff. From the CoM story: 'The move is part of a growing trend towards publications using the iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs. It's a also a sign of how traditional journalism is being changed by technology like the iPhone and the advent of digital publishing.'"
Maybe they should train them to use spell and grammer checkers since many articles and even headlines have errors that seem to be due to cut n' paste operations which result in incorrect tenses.
It takes horrible pictures.
At least use the Samsung Galaxy Camera GC100 or something similar.
Aparently you can only use an iPhone for photography....Apple invented it....but seriously, an iPhone for professional photography? At least use something with a good lens, sensor and software....Nokia PureView for example, or for that matter anything but an iPhone....geeez
clues:
- training in iPhone photography
- firing of the photography staff
- iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs
Who cares what equipment they're using... A piece of crap camera in a skilled photog's hands can still get a great photo.
The real story (and tragedy) is they think that non-pro photographers (writers and amateurs) can do the job. Watch the results - photo quality (content wise, maybe not just technical wise) will plummet. Maybe they think that doesn't matter, who knows. And for things like sports, they'll have to use wire service photos now for sure. You can get great photos from AP/Reuters, but they'll be the same photos as other news outlets.
Sad sad, and short-sighted decision IMHO
Madcow
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
That's like teaching a jockey to ride a broom stick instead of a real horse because the staff needed to feed the horse has been too costly.
Now, where is the difference between a normal human being taking a pic of currrent happenings or the reporter?
There is none, anymore. Anyone can ride a broom stick, except the jockey might do it with a bit more skip-walking, but not really gaining an advantage.
Spelling errors were made for your amusement only...
I propose that the editor be replaced by my second-grade grand-daughter - I mean, she can edit just as well, right? - and the "fancy, expensive" computer that the editor currently uses be replaced by an Etch-A-Sketch. Or Crayons.
I mean what is the resolution of a black and white picture printed in a grease smudged newspaper. It is surely less than the resolution / pic quality of an Iphone.
I would also suggest the following cost saving measures to Chicago sun times. Fire all your writers / editorial staff. The news can be handled just a competantly by crowdsourced bloggers, and with a lot more objectivity. Finally fire all your managerial staff. With bloggers prividing content and photography, there really is no need to keep these expensive managers on staff. With these cost saving measures, I predict that your stock prices will rise expoentially. This is a win win scenario.
WoW! I have just done the job of an expensive Harvard educated business analysists/ consultants, and I never even finished community college. Maybe we could fire those guys too. Then we could get back to making the USA a profitable entity.
that 3.85 mm f/2.8 lens totally can replace anything the lens collection of my SLR, I'm flinging it into the trash.
(for angle of view and "fastness" it's basically like a 30mm (wide angle) f/22 lens on a 35mm camera)
Americunts are getting stupider every day!
clues:
- training in iPhone photography
- firing of the photography staff
- iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs
It's real, there was quite a bit of time dedicated to this story on Chicago Tonight a few days ago. The big joke is the Chicago Sun Times itself...once a respectable newspaper, now transforming itself into little more than an amateur blog. And using iPhones with their subpar optics...in the hands of people who know nothing about photography...the paper will be carrying Facebook quality pictures, or as another mentioned, the same pic as every other outlet via AP/UPI.
Whatever bozo made this decision should be fired...his/her 6-figure salary will probably pay for 2 or 3 decent photographers, and they'll get a whole lot more value out of those photographers than they will the moron who made this decision. But then, I don't think the Chicago Sun Times is long for this world anyway (an end hastened by such collasal mismanagement).
What we're watching is the final deathrows of a dying paper, in an industry on life support.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Peek into the private collection of historic Sun-Times news photos. http://j.mp/sun-times-photos
Now, where is the difference between a normal human being taking a pic of currrent happenings or the reporter?
Just so long as the reporters getting this training realise that they are next for the chop - just as soon as reader-submitted "news" becomes more plentiful.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The move is part of a growing trend towards publications using the iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs.
No, the move is a trend towards replacing trained skilled professionals (in this case, photojournalists) with cheap, unskilled labor (reporters who might be fine reporters, but don't know shit about photography and photojournalism; or even "user submissions" from Joe Random's cellphone). The cost of a DSLR is nothing compared to wages for a professional. Unfortunately, the *results* from dumping the photojournalists are also nothing compared to using the professional --- and it's not a matter of camera quality. A professional photojournalist with an iPhone would produce better photojournalism than non-experts with a DSLR. The Chicago Sun Times isn't throwing away "pixel quality" so much as "journalism quality" --- no wonder newspapers are dying.
"The food tastes terrible. The chef should've used Mauviel pots instead of KitchenAid."
It doesn't matter what tool is used, but *who* is using it.
I predict the photos will look terrible. But then again, I bet most people won't notice. Most people are happy to eat at McDonald's.
Having a taste for art is an expensive hobby. But for a newspaper, having an artistic flair is an added bonus; a window dressing around facts.
I think firing the photographers is a mistake, but it won't negatively impact their business financially - only their reputation. Unfortunately, it's hard to quantify reputation and translate it to dollars.
Thom Hogan (Nikon expert) has a very critical take on this here , one which I happen to agree with fully, to quote Thom:
" If you're in the content business, there's one simple rule you have to remember: create the best content for your chosen media. First, you can sell great content to customers (circulation revenue). Second, you can sell your access to a great set of customers to others (advertising revenue). Corollary: if you don't invest in the content, you'll die. First, because you don't attract a large enough audience and can't hold them. Second, because the declining audience will scare advertisers away. Finally, if you just run from your chosen medium to try to dominate another one, you're playing moose to someone else's elephant. Prepare to get stepped on."
Then we'll see "self pix" like remote TV reporting. No need for a camera person to tag along and no need for a remote van with that tall transmitter tower that can get mixed up with the electrical wires overhead.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Ignoring the fact that this is an Apple advertisement, and awesomely stupid; If the idea is to get good photos...then choose the phone with the best camera. Personally I love the fact that suddenly journalists who I never liked, over reporters who I do, can no longer spew whatever propaganda they have been paid for that I am forced to digest...they are suddenly no more relevant than a blogger(or whatever term is popular today), who are on mass decidedly more honest. Now if only TV news was as easy to end.
Personally though I love the idea of spiderman on the dole queue and superman taking iPhone lessons because holy mother of mary I could not sit though another reboot of lets face it a raped caricature of their former self, and maybe....just maybe I can have a squeal to Dredd 3D.
What we're watching is the final deathrows of a dying paper ...
Since you are only sem-literate, it shouldn't bother you.
The correct word is "throes".
As in : "death throes".
No, it takes fantastic pictures...for a phone you always have with you anyway. It was one of the absolute standout features of the iPhone 4, and (with the purple flare issue fixed on the iPhone 5) is still top notch for a phone. It's no substitute for a professional level DSLR (or even an amateur, for that matter), but it can be operated to a very basic level of competence by a minimally trained person. You'll get much better shots from an iPhone than you will if you hand over a D4 or a MkIII to a non-photographer. I suspect everything they are teaching would apply to any phone camera.
One question worth asking is whether a large in-house photo staff is necessary for a publication which will never publish anything larger than 8x10 in 75-100dpi quality print, or will only be seen on a web page with 1000 pixel or less resolution in God-knows-what colorspace. I'm not saying that pros with pro gear can't get better pictures, with better composition, lighting, detail, and artistic style - I'm saying that the paper may have made a financial decision that $3M/yr is not the level of photo they need. Do you need a $20,000 photo shoot for a wedding? For some people the answer is yes, for most it's no - good enough is what they seek for their budget. Can you imagine how many typesetters and press operators lost their jobs when newspapers went to modern press printing? The quality is poorer, the resolution is poorer, and layout is less refined.
Yes, it totally sucks rocks for the people losing their jobs. Yes, we are less likely to have stunning photography of breaking news. Yes, there will still be a market for freelancers to cover the high profile events. Yes, there will ultimately be fewer jobs for professional photographers. That sucks if you're a photographer.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
> And, yes, there's "tech" angle in that the iPhone takes good enough pictures to be used for photojournalism
Yes there's certainly a tech angle in the CLAIM that you can replace a real camera with a phone. That is a claim that is very likely to be in dispute as there are quite a lot of people that have done photography with these devices.
A useless grey blur is unlikely to be useful for photojournalism and that's a likely result you're going to get from an inferior device in a lot of situations.
It does not take a lot of photography experience to realize this but it does take some.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
well, this should eliminate any remaining subscribers who thing that it makes sense to pay the Chicago Sun Time for their content. If they get all their news (and now photos) from the web, why pay them? so sad.
A picture can be worth a thousand words. A picture can tell an entire story. A picture can evoke real emotion.
Or a picture can be too dim, taken too late, or just not framed in the right context and do none of those things.
I don't see removing content being a winning strategy in the news business. The net effect is the same as arbitrarily reducing the number of words in the articles.
This is a similar decision to firing all the reporters and assigning the stories to interns. After all, they can write stories too.
This is a dark day in the recording of human history. The people now responsible for capturing the most important events of the human age are neither masters of their craft nor using the best available tools. I almost couldn't think of a more ridiculous scenario.
[Rent This Space]
Get ready for news reports shot in vertical.
Do you have a subscription for the Sun or a similar newspaper? If you do, good for you. But, there are millions who stopped paying for their news. Without this revenue, how exactly are the news outlets supposed to have all these professionals on staff? Magic money tree? The more people get their news from the "internet", the less money will be spent on gathering the news. This is just a natural outcome of the digital age. If it reduces the quality, well.. That's just part of the game.
I would much rather see a story written by a photographer with their quality photos than a piece written by a reporter and their crappy shots.
When you're getting rid of A and bringing in B, isn't it better to say you're swapping A for B, rather than B for A?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm a tech writer who started off as a journalist. I can see what they are trying. The idea is that they want video rather than pictures and even better, they want videos uploaded by the public -- for free! -- or reporters.
Newspapers need a new business model and this will be a part of it, definitely. This is someone who has a $3000 DLSR saying this. However, photographers need to be aware that 'You'll miss us when we're gone' is not a business model for them. New equipment has allowed amateurs to use AF and AE to get acceptable shots and even good shots. They can't tell you how they did it, do it a second time, or make minute adjustments but if you've got 1,000 users posting pictures to Instagram or Flickr, and you just need something good enough that's free, well, there you are. Even if 98 per cent of these are crap, the two per cent of them that are acceptable (assuming you can find them) are basically free.
From a bean counting perspective, this makes sense.
Operationally, it's idiotic.
The idea that since the reporter is holding up a phone as a recorder anyway, he might as well capture video may sound great on paper but operationally, this only works in great light, short distances and you need a plug in microphone. If you've ever been at a press conference, the cameramen are standing back, with the cameras up high and using zooms dedicated mics at the podium. In free for alls, the reporter is using a dedicated mic and the camera operator is angling for a functional shot.
Video as news rather than the single image is a technological advance.
We used to use engravings in newspapers, then photos and videos are next. Why? You cannot show video on paper but now that we have tablets, this is not longer an issue. However, it's hard enough to get a great single frame image, never mind a great moving image. Of course, editing video is actually a skill and is often a slow process because you can only proceed linearly. Which is easier? Final Cut Pro or SnagIt? The people approving this have never tried using video.
Getting back to the capture, great images can come down to down to light shaping and lens choice. You need to learn these things and it's a skill and, yep, a $1,500 lens that you can shoot camera raw in, often in near darkness will wipe the street with your camera phone. Last week an apparently simple shot of the Queen was published. You wouldn't know that she was standing next to a two meter tall reflector and underneath an off camera light source out in the middle of the Scottish moors, but that's rather the point.
Because taking and making photos is no longer 'special' we have seen the collapse of the wedding photography industry and now photo journalism. Most people have no taste and wouldn't know a good image from a bad one until the 'I'll photograph your wedding for $200 bozo' you got off Craigslist turns in his garbage. Lens and lighting choices matter, and the ability to generate great shots consistently is also a skill. You need an apprenticeship, practice and there's no substitute for gear.
when they use such low res images in print or online, what's the point of having fancy camera? granted that goes for the entire industry. in the era of hd, there is no acceptable reason to not have links to the high res photos on any news site.
...
Readers will get pissed that the photos are so bad and go elsewhere. RIP Chicago Sun Times.
Now, any s**t flinging baboon with a phone is a photographer. Can an iPhone focus? Can it take close-ups? Most phone I have used have a fixed focus lens that only work for distant shots.
How ya like dat?
AP (Chicago transcript by Siri): President Obama's state of the unit address was... I'd rather not say. But the corndog mafia sentopolis and will in the Mideast. I don't know. Maybe the genius bar guys could answer that. But North Korean leader... I'm not allowed to delete reminders. Look... a puppy!
When you talk about swapping X for Y, X is the "former", and "Y" is the "replacement"
The powers that be at Slashdot probably said "Swap our idiots editors for people who actually know english", so they fired the people who know english and hired idiots.
Unless set for spot or center, modern AE algorithms are little more sophisticated than "Expose the whole scene for 18% grey." "Matrix" metering has been around for something like 25 years now. Matrix metering tries to recognize what you are trying to accomplish and adjust exposure accordingly. You are correct that it doesn't always get it right, but give them a little credit... I find that when I'm using my modern DSLR, AE gets it perfect most of the time, and produces a usable shot (as in, one salvageable for a website or newsprint) almost all the time.
Or, y'know, just get the best camera. Even a mediocre camera would probably be better than any phone camera...
Ignoring the cost cutting exercise, or the this particular advertisement. I would argue the quality of a decent smartphone is on par or better with a mid range camera, with the advantage of a whole software environment(and always on you). In the hands of all but a decent photographer, and this had been the case for some time.
I have 4 different "compact" camera (no-name,Olympus, Fujifilm and Samsung), I've taken pictures from several phones (dumb nokia, HTC and Galaxy S2 (with a 8MP sensor)... but I will never return to these now that I've my DSLR... And if I had bought one from the start, I'd never had to buy the other one.
- less noise on low light conditions
- much better lenses which allow real zoom (not digital zoom) and such
- Much faster to take pictures (no delay which means that you take the precise image that you want)
- good continuous mode (several pictures in a row, at less than 1 sec interval which allow to pick up the best one)
- faster exposures (needed when you take picture of things which are moving, no more motion blur)
- much better battery capacity
- better sensivity on low light condition (due to larger lens opening)
and so on...
When I compage Galaxy S2 and Samsung camera (both having 8MP sensor), there is already a big difference thanks to the lens of the camera... and they both come from same manufacturer (camera is older than S2 and gives better pictures)
My guess is that they'll revert quickly to DSLR... journalism photographers have to take picture of things that are moving most of the time... that's definitively NOT the best use case for phone's cameras.
is good enough. I think it was the Netscape guy who said software would eat the world. There's little or no tech left in photography. Sure, you can do a whole bunch of stuff to make the photos look nicer to a pro, but to a guy like me? I can't tell the difference. It's like your 4k displays. My eyes aren't good enough to tell.
Basically, scratch one more profession off the list of what little Johnny can grow up to do some day.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
...The price of wedding photography has declined to appropriate levels. Analysts cite increased competition.
...Chicago Sun Times fires printing press staff; trains reporters in the use of Canon Bubblejet BJ-2000.
[Rent This Space]
Neither the Chicago Tribune nor the Chicago Sun-Times has any significant local pictures on their web site today. There's a mug shot (both papers have the same one) and a picture of some stolen merchandise (from the cops). Both are just feeds from police agencies.
Here's a local story in its entirety: "Three people have been charged in the wake of a fatal shooting at a party in the South Side Avalon Park neighborhood. Three uninvited guests were asked to leave a family party in the 8400 block of South Constance Avenue about 10:45 p.m., Chicago Police said." That's just an entry from the police blotter. They probably have a feed for that and don't even have to send a reporter.
There's some video of a speech, and it might have been taken with an iPhone. There's a picture of a parking meter, taken earlier this month before they fired the photographers. Nowhere are there any pictures taken of news events.
Death throws?
Never heard of them?
http://www.comicvine.com/death-throws/4060-41808/
This is nothing. Next week, the Sun-Times will be announcing that instead of Journalism Training, they will be offering in house training on how to use the popular Microsoft Notepad.
print is dead
Chicago Sun Times' new classified ad
When you have a shoulder ENG camera like the news guys, then people think you are media so you can access (depending on situation) areas not normally available to typical camcorder person. But trend is towards smaller cameras and pretty soon if you have a shoulder cam even if it is a Panasonic P2 HD, everyone will think "old technology." I also see trend of TV set going the wayside as more people watch video on their phones or computers (in a small youtube window), which you can't blame them as television programming has become really bad these days (i.e. Syfy is now a wrestling channel, History is now WWII channel, Discovery is ?, etc.). So for video the iPhone may be just fine, but you still need to have skill (using your brain) to compose a good video.
So how will someone of journalistic differentiate themselves from the commoners with iPhones? I say you need a team of three: A cameraman with a midsize cam all tricked out with a mic on a cylindrical shock absorber, rectangle LED lamp, and a dual antenna diversity wireless mic receiver. Talent can be a pretty girl. But should have a soundman with mic in a big fussy sock on a long boom and packs a extensive sound set on his belly with several slider potentiometers and many diversity receiver antennas. Oh, and the soundman should be a 20-something with piercings and tatoos.
mfwright@batnet.com
The majority of newspaper content is just reprinted AP bullshit. Don't need your own photographs for that.
The big joke is the Chicago Sun Times itself...once a respectable newspaper, now transforming itself into little more than an amateur blog.
- Emphasis mine
The thing about a blog is that it's done for love, and not money. (Amatuer comes from Amare - latin for love)
Money is orthogonal to quality. The democratization of blogging has certainly allowed many half-assed attempts by the masses, but it also allowed some truly stellar efforts to bloom.
The reason a professional photographer gets good results is that they are primarily focused on the photography. They've paid to do it, and have been for a long time, it's the one thing they optimize on. Remove that focus, you get crap.
The only substitute is for amateurs to do it, but they won't do it for money, when or where you want, and their goals will be different than those of the publications.
But even I can tell a world of difference between professional photographer with good equipment and random guy with a cell phone.
Embedded camera in cell phone is necessarily restricted in terms of optics. You can play with the sensor all you want, but the optics simply cannot do the sorts of things a good camera can do.
There is still a lot of things that require some knowledge in operating a camera in order to get a good photo.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I don't get it, are we talking about Playboy or a NEWSpaper? Who cares about photo quality in a newspaper, I truly do read them for the articles and for every photo in the paper there are 10 videos and 100 photos on the web that tell the story as well and from multiple angles.
In the past, news photos were taken by pro cameras because that was the only viable option. Not any more, you have to be a traditionalist, photography snob, or really shallow to judge the quality of a newspaper by the equipment used to shoot the photos.
It's been my experience that quality photos can enhance almost any story. If a picture is worth a thousand words it matters who's composing it. Using pro equipment with more features improves the chance of a obtaining a quality photo.
If you're following the news about Google Glass, you'll have heard that some people hate having their picture taken. This is a fact that nearly every photojournalist has to deal with. Only those who've been in the industry a very long time will be able to blend into the background and capture the scene without becoming themselves a reality-distorting distraction. The best will do this without disturbing the relationship and trust the reporter must build with the people being interviewed. They might even become "the bad cop" (does anyone remember The Animal from Lou Grant? That jerk photographer that both the interviewee and reporter can share a laugh and a beer with while the reporter builds her story.
Give the reporter an iPhone or DSLR or Google Glass and the reporter becomes that jerk photographer. The relationship between reporter and interviewee disappears as quickly as you can say, "So-long Chicago Sun-Times."
It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that the same CEO that canned the Sun-Times photo staff did the same thing at Newsday in 2008. See for instance, Vincent Laforet's blog on the layoffs. But these aren't isolated instances.
The new millenium has not been kind to newspapers. Certainly the newspapers are under great pressure from blogs, social media, and other Internet sources. There may also be an element of union busting in these actions. But from what I've seen over the years, there is a much larger element of simple greed following the familiar script of buy out the companies, dump half the staff, make the survivors do the jobs of the laid off as well as their own, count the dough. The continued existence of quality newspaper journalism in this country is quite remarkable considering the owners' continued efforts to get rid of the people who produce it.
Can we get along without traditional newspapers? Absolutely. Are we still losing something of tremendous value? Without a doubt. Will blogs pick up the slack? I hope so, but I just don't see it. There are a lot of truly great blogs out there. I follow a number of them. But to think they will make up for the depth and breadth of professional journalism that's disappearing before our eyes is naively optimistic.
Has any camera maker yet made a camera that is designed to interoperate with your phone?
I'd love a compact pocket camera that would zap photos over to my phone via Bluetooth or NFC or heck, even WiFi. I much prefer the low-light performance of a larger camera lens, and even a pocket camera has better zoom features.
And of course I want a camera I can charge with micro USB so I don't have one more charger to deal with.
Does anyone make such a camera yet?
P.S. Obligatory: "...the companion camera will never threaten to stab you, and in fact cannot speak."
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The iPhone has one of the WORST cameras of any of the mobile platforms. If they are serious about switching from DSLRs to a mobile device they should really be using Nokia Lumias with their PureView cameras. It's just as easy to use as an iPhone and the picture quality is far superior. In fact, they should wait until July when the 41-megapixel sensor comes out on the Lumia EOS (codename "Elvis").
Which just shows that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Photographers are actually highly skilled professionals, unlike what seems to pass for journalists now, and the shitty phone cameras aren't nearly as capable as the DSLRs is, especially a full frame camera like a D4. And all the phone cameras are shit, no exceptions.
And now they're expecting the half assed journalists to be both photographers ad journalists? They can't even do one job well, much less 2. So good by Chicago Sun Times.
It would make much more financial sense for them to fire everyone with an MBA, starting with the dumbass who came up with this plan to begin with.
I shot freelance for a newspaper in Toronto during the 80s and 90s. And although the work was a lot of fun, I think its time is long over. Consider the adage from dead tree papers: If it bleeds it leads. How many different, artistic ways can you shoot the following, that hasn't been done a zillion times in the past: .org.
1) Large or medium-sized structure fire--this was my specialty.
2) Personal injury accident.
3) Victim(s) being transported.
4) Reminder to set clocks ahead/back.
5) Look how Hot/Cold/Snowy/Icy the weather was yesterday!
6) Perp walk or subject under arrest.
7) Politician making a speech on in a media scrum.
8) Drug/weapons seizure evidence on the table.
9) Presentation of a giant cheque to a lottery winner or charitable
10) Devastation after a large natural disaster, governor/official doing official tour
11) Sad kid/parent after a bully stole their lunch money, bicycle or all the toys for Christmas presents at the poor house.
Now. Go fetch today's paper (good doggie!). How many of the above items do you see in the hard news section? Now factor this: If it's a major disaster, fire, accident, etc, the news editor will be fielding calls from hundreds of people with photos of the event. Probably some with pro-sumer levels of kit. If that isn't available they'll buy a wireservice image and run it. Everything else mentioned is shootable with a phonecam or a shirt-pocket cam, and the level of knowledge needed to shoot it is somewhere between "f/8-and-be-there," and "push-here-stupid."
Sports is an entirely different kettle of fish, and I don't know how they're going to handle Bulls/Black Hawks/Bears/Cubs/Sox games. Again, probably just buy freelancers' materials or stuff off the wires.
Gone are the days when a newspaper NEEDS actual photographs. Unless you're living under a rock the audience already knows what the governor looks like, what a perp-walk looks like, a building fire, a traffic accident or the President making a speech. We can get that anywhere. The hard news reporting is what I care about (not that there's all that much of it these days). Pretty pictures I can find online. They made the right call.
Cheers, Peter, W2IRT
Technical limitations: The iphone has a fixed focal length and aperture as well as a tiny sensor. The situations where this will suffice for composition and exposure are much smaller than even a $300 consumer camera.
Human: Getting the camera into the situation where it is capable of capturing the desired shot and then actually doing it with everything in the frame in focus and as intended is a skilled endeavor. Amateurs attempting this with technically limited devices are likely to fail at an unacceptably high rate (in the context of professional journalism).
I don't see why the iPhone wouldn't use matrix metering. It's trivial to implement, the algorithms should be available for low cost from just about any camera company if they don't care to write their own.
I shot for my college paper with an F4s and publicity shots for a travelling performing group with that and a Pentax 67. I currently own a D3 (second hand from a pro moving up to a D3s, fwiw) and lenses with f/2.8 apertures from 14mm all the way up to 300mm, plus some sub f/2.0 lenses in the middle. I carried a Yashika T4 super for many years in my pocket. I sigh every time I think of how I much I want TechPan back - I used to buy it in 100' rolls and re-spool it myself.
I handed my D3 to my wife this weekend as I took the dance floor with my daughter, in full automatic mode. Not a single photo was focused perfectly; many were pretty far off. Though there were subjects in every frame which were tack sharp, she didn't know how to use the camera to make sure HER subject was the focus subject. She didn't know how to increase the aperture to increase the depth of focus, or even that she needed to. She would have gotten better shots with her iPhone.
Here's my point - you CAN get better shots with a trained pro and top gear. The question is (1) do you NEED them and (2) are you willing to PAY for them. What some people have realized is that if you miss the perfect shot, nobody will ever know. The expectation/quality that the general public has been trained to is at such a low level they'll be happy with a decent security cam shot run through several filters. It's awful, but true.
So I ask - how much more is it worth to have one perfect shot? What if you got the perfect shot every single day of the year - front page, in color, capturing the perfect moment? Is it worth $10,000 a day? What if they only get that "perfect" shot once a week? Is that worth $60,000? Because that's what it's costing them. I think it's a sucky move, too, but in a time when reporters are getting laid off and 3/4+ of my local paper is AP stories I read yesterday on the internet, it's an expensive item to keep.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The person behind the camera. My main duty before I retired was as a professional photographer and videographer. And without a doubt, a pro will get decent photos no matter the technology, and most non-pros photos will be not so good. The converse is not true however.
I've seen this a number of times. People who believed that the key to getting a good photo was the equipment you used to take it. The professional equipment, with all it's different adjustments, tends to get in the way of the non-photographer, and they add the issue of the wrong thing being in focus, or underexposed. So they might borrow some of my equipment because I was "too expensive" Then I would try to resurrect bad negatives, and later on do a lot of photoshopping. So they paid me anyhow, and for marginal images when this happened
This will probably happen to the Sun Times people a few times, as they find out the limitations of both the iPhone and the people using it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yes there's certainly a tech angle in the CLAIM that you can replace a real camera with a phone. That is a claim that is very likely to be in dispute as there are quite a lot of people that have done photography with these devices.
A good artist can take decent photos with an old Diana Camera - for those not familiar, it was a plastic camera with a plastic lens, and simple shutter and F-stop adjustments. They often leaked a little light, and the lenses had weird spatial and color distortions. And in the right hands, they could produce dreamlike photos that were awesome. Not photojournalism material though.
They will very soon find the limitations of the iPhone or any other smartphone camera. My equipment can light up an entire room when I need to use it, the different lenses give completely different looks. I can freeze motion or allow a bit of blur. Smartphone cameras take "lensey looking photos because their short focal length tiny lenses tend to have either all be in focus, or all out of focus. MOst I see look like slightly better quality 110 camera photos.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
We're not allowed to toss midgets anymore, so it's on to cadavers.
I dunno how much an iphone goes for nowadays but wouldn't it be much better to just give them all a 650d or equivalent, a quick course on actual photography and then send them loose. Green square by default. It's much quicker and more professional looking to lift a proper looking camera and snap something than to mess around unlocking the iscreen, pressing the iicon for the icamera then taking your iphoto which will probably end up looking like complete arse unless it's a close up on something, a portrait of a willing subject or scenery shot.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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lololol oh Chicago, you silly. But no seriously, iphone training....for a bad point and click, low res camera. Nice.
More evidence on how consumers are willing to accept lower standards in their media. "News" programs invite views to submit their video and pictures for broadcast. This means cell quality images and even worse sound. Yet we accept it. Yes iPhones take decent pictures for personal use and Facebook, but do we really want history recorded with a cheap lens and someone who has no natural talent for composing a shot. I can't wait to see pictures of the president, Prime Minister of England and the PM of Canada posing huddled close together with their heads leaning into each other like a sorority reunion in a bar.
Its not to do a professional news daily. May be its the end of professional pictures in that media ....
Most professionals uses too many pixels.
It's a joke. Don't flame folks.