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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.
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
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.
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."
Except the camera isn't just a tool. It's more like one of the ingredients. Suddenly your haute chef is using canned ingredients and rotten produce.
Some shots just aren't going to be possible with a phone period.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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
> 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.
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]
"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."
No, actually, you won't. DSLRs still have "green square mode" which puts the things in automatic. You won't get the results you'd get from the same camera with a decent photographer behind it, but you'll get better results than a camera phone provides.
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.
Dslr's take photos in raw mode which you can photochop easily
iPhone is in jpeg which you can do some basic editing but the original photo needs to be under optimal conditions
If the idea is to get good photos...then choose the phone with the best camera.
Or, y'know, just get the best camera. Even a mediocre camera would probably be better than any phone camera. It won't be long until one their iJournos is cursing the lack of optical zoom.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
The green square helps but it can't make artistic decisions. The photograph will be properly exposed by certain measures but it can't fix composition or subject matter.
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?
either way, they're serving it in a thimble instead of on a platter.
...
The problem (for the photographers, anyway) is that newspaper photojournalism is, the majority of time, pretty staid and trite. A picture of a bunch of fire trucks and a smoky building. A picture of some dignitary doing some dignatorial function. An iPhone and someone minimally versed in photographic basics would do fine.
Yes, you're going to miss the Pulitzer Prize picture most of the time. That's what the stringers are for. The underlying issue is that the Pulitzer Prize and similar awards don't affect the bottom line all that much. Lots of salaries do. Hell, most news organizations don't even bother with a picture of the actual incident. If you are covering a plane crash, you wander over to a stock photo site, look for a picture of a plane crash, buy it for $25.00 and off you go.
Really annoys me, but then again so does a lot of other things.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you're printing at 3 x 5 inches (at best) in grey scale at 170 lpi, or showing 500 x 300 pixels on the web, you don't need to do much 'editing'. There is hardly any information to edit.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Actually, it'll only be properly exposed if it's pointing a subject that's 18% gray (within its metering area, ie spot, center, or center weighted).
The meters inside cameras are reflective meters (as opposed to an incident meter you hold in front of the subject and click). So they measure the light reflected off the subject. But different subjects reflect different amounts of light. A white object is more reflective than a black object. So how does the camera know what color the object is that it's pointed at? It doesn't. So it assumes it's medium gray and sets the exposure accordingly. That's fine for an average (by definition) scene, but fails everywhere else. This is why if you've ever pulled out a point and shoot camera, or phone or pro DSLR in green square mode in the snow and taken a picture, you'll notice all your white snow is gray. That's why professionals use manual exposure, or at least exposure compensation in auto modes.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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!
A Nikon D4 and a Canon 5D MK III referenced in the original comment do not have a "green square" mode. The modes available are S (shutter priority), A (aperture priority), P (program) and M (manual). They're aimed at competent users who the manufacturers expect to know how to operate the camera.
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.
And I imagine press shots often fall under that category. You only get one chance to get it right, subjects are often moving, and bosses are much less sympathetic to 'sorry things are blurry' then someone's facebook friends.
This is no longer the case with modern cameras. A lot of cameras these days include face recognition and will bias the exposure to any faces detected. While this is only possible in live view, Even with older cameras like the D700 and D3 the camera was clever enough to attempt to recognise the scene it was photographing and bias the exposure accordingly (see the 1005 pixel metering sensor). I know this is what matrix metering on Nikon cameras have done for at least the last 6 years and I assume that the same thing holds for Canon.
This is not to say that the camera gets it right all the time. Manual intervention is necessary when the camera gets things wrong.
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.
The usefulness of a DSLR or EVIL camera in this case is less about the resolution of the final picture, and more about how quickly the camera can grab it. Larger sensor, faster autofocus, more lens ranges, and with a high enough resolution that you can pan out and crop down, so you have more choice for how to frame things in post processing.
The big problem is, though, that often in photojournalism you often only get one shot, so you want a tool that has the best chance of getting that shot and has the most flexible output.
Press photographers rarely shoot RAW. I'd say never, but then that's just begging to be proved wrong by some random photographer who is an outlier ;)
The trend in newspaper photography has always been to minimise turnaround time and the RAW workflow just slows things down too much. It's ironic that it is this mindset that has made the Chicago Sun move from DSLRs to iPhones.
Not in this case. You need a camera that's weather sealed, in case the weather is bad, and that has enough pixels to crop away, the sensor has to be as sensitive as possible, because you don't have studio strobes, and there needs to be enough manual control that you can override the settings the camera wants if the situation demands it.
Cameras phones can deliver excellent results in easy conditions, but they're just not good enough to handle the demands of photojournalists in most cases. Sometimes they are the correct tool, but they lack the flexibility to be the camera that is being carried around for work. They have neither the quality nor the reach for that.
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/
...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.
Matrix metering has been around much longer than 6 years - my 1992 Nikon F90X had 5 segment matrix metering.
The D3/D700 metering is actually pretty complex - the camera has an onboard database of thousands of images metering results - and it determines the correct exposure by comparing the pixel arrays metering result with that database.
Death throws?
Never heard of them?
http://www.comicvine.com/death-throws/4060-41808/
One could use this as an argument to bolster the opinion that America is a society of poor cheap bastards. When are we going to do something about that? Is the press going to say anything anytime soon? Nope.
The wealth of our lives, society, culture, nation, corporations, schools, friends, newspapers, blogs, cakes all depends on the enrichment of our society.
But we are being treated like slaves and even our overlords can't afford the caviar now it seems.
Chicago Sun Times' new classified ad
It's press photography; they are supposed to be reporting the news, not "framing" it, literally or figuratively.
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.
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.
Back in 1998, when the internet was still pretty new to most people, I overheard a conversation about how someone's website was loading extremely slowly (even for dial-up) on certian pages, and he couldn't figure out why. When I asked him about it, it turned out to be the owner and chief-editor of the (very long running) local newspaper, and I offered my help since I had just finished a computer support degree. (Which included classes in HTML, back when people still hand-coded HTML).
Turned out he was sizing the on-page images using HTML code (with a wysiwyg editor), which was hiding the fact that he had uploaded the images as un-resized, un-compressed, 2MB-each, .BMPs
Raw files allow you to adjust the exposure easily by two stops either direction and sometimes more. Additionally, it is easier to adjust the white balance with RAW files. Both of these can be necessary for rescuing an improperly exposed photo of a once in a lifetime event.
My 5D mk III does. I never use it but it is there. OK it's more a rectangle with the top right corner missing and replaced with a '+' than a square but it is most certainly green and represents full auto mode.
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."
That's interesting. As a Nikon shooter and having briefly looked at the Canon 5D, I'd assumed that was the case. I stand corrected.
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").
As others have replied, the 5D does certainly have a full auto mode. The D4 doesn't seem to (I shoot Canon, so I've never carefully examined the $5000 Nikon. It DOES have a P mode though, which is pretty close to full auto except that it lets you change things if you want. So long as you don't screw with it too much, you're essentially shooting on automatic. Even a writer should be able to handle that.
You won't get as good pictures as from someone who knows how to use the camera, but pointing and shooting an SLR in auto or P mode will get you better pictures than a camera phone.
Neither can a camera phone.
I'm curious, what exactly did I say that you were replying to? I specifically said that green square wouldn't get the same results as a camera with a competent photographer, but it would be better than a camera phone.
Nikon has had Matrix Metering since 1983.
The iPhone makes artistic decisions?
Press photography was once summed up as "f/8 and be there". Wider apertures are for artistes.
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
Isn't "P mode" more or less equivalent to "Auto"?
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).
Dslr's take photos in raw mode which you can photochop easily
iPhone is in jpeg which you can do some basic editing but the original photo needs to be under optimal conditions
Yawn. First of all: you can easily print unedited iPhone photos directly on 4"x6" and most people couldn't tell a difference to one made with a (D)SLR, let alone when printed in a news paper.
As for the image format: just buy a different camera app, there are several who produce uncompressed files.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
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.
Isn't "P mode" more or less equivalent to "Auto"?
I think the "P" stands for "professional".
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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?
Actually, it does. It uses no sequitur focusing to change the subject of the photo. You can try to take a picture of something but it will focus on the foreground or the background rather than your intended subject. It will then promptly jump out of your hand in an attempt to crack the glass.
Have you ever handed an 85 f/1.4 or 300 f/2.8 lens to an amateur and had them take pictures of a busy scene on full auto mode? AF is good, but FF camera's depth of field is fucking treacherous if you don't know what you're doing. You'll get 100 out of 100 images with the focus in just the wrong spot. I've probably shot 200,000 frames in my life between my F4s and my D3, and I'm not embarrassed to say that I still get half of them with the focus not quite where I wanted it when shooting wide open.
The advantage of little sensors in the hands of amateurs is that they don't have to worry nearly as much about depth of field. No, they won't get that subject isolating bocah, but today a $20/hr photoshop operator can stick in some gaussian blur to simulate the effect for a newsprint-quality image.
For a daily, throw-away image you can get away with too much grain/noise, lower resolution due to cropping, poor colors, aberrations, etc. But if your photo subject is blurry it's going in the trash. Again - you can train amateurs who will be there anyway to shoot "just in case" pictures with a simple tool and know you have something. In return, you have $3,000,000 a year to pay for "that shot" from a freelancer when such work pops up. $5,000 a photo will buy a killer front page shot once or twice every week for 1/10 of the cost of the staff. Again - yes, it sucks. Computers and electronics offered to let us work less and do more. Everybody seems to have forgotten that every job a computer takes over is a job which is no longer done by a human. And we're not shrinking the population. The math is not in our favor.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
In the D3 manual, Nikon has it as Programmed Auto
Camera automatically adjusts shutter speed and aperture for optimal exposure in most situations.
On my camera, which is not a D3, the only difference between P and Auto is that "Auto" prevents you from changing the shutter speed/aperture. I shoot using "M" mode. The lenses are cheaper.
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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The 5D mk 2 has a 'green box' mode, and it seriously constrains your options in nearly all the menus.
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
P (Program Mode) would be more accurately called Automatic with manual override.
And considering that some point and shoots like my old Konica Minolta Z10 have such modes.. there are plenty of "average joes) who know enough that they could be taught how to make basic use of such modes in a short time. I'm no photographer but even I know that you can use Aperture to change depth-of-field.
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.
I think P mode lets you adjust the ISO and white balance manually, where full auto doesn't.
It's like they are designed specifically to create diffraction blur.
If you spin the dial on a Nikon D3100,P mode lets you trade speed for aperture.
For instance suppose Auto recommends f/5.6 at 1/500s. P would allow you to the dial to f/4,1/1000s, or f/8,1/250s. It's a good learning tool. But since it readjusts aperture and shutter speed each time you meter, sometimes it defaults to undesirable values. A landscape at f/1.4 and 1/8000 s? A bird flapping its wings at f/11, 1/60s? But baby steps, baby steps...
Maybe Canon doesn't even allow the user that flexibility. I haven't shot a Canon, so who knows?
My lenses are a 18-55mm kit, a 200mmf4 manual, and a 50mmf1.4 manual. The two manual lenses are more fun to use--but are rubbish for action shots.
I just looked at my D3200. Full auto only allows you to adjust flash mode, af area mode, focus mode, release mode and raw/jpg modes. Programmed auto mode lets you additionally adjust flash compensation, ev compensation, metering, ISO and white balance.
So it can be viewed either as "full Automatic with a few more choices available" or "A+S mode".
Check out the 35mm 1.8f AFS-G lens- it's a great prime lens for most situations.
Check out the 35mm 1.8f AFS-G lens- it's a great prime lens for most situations.
Will do. Thanks.