Digital photo quality

I received a call the other day from a woman interested in my baby portraiture, and the first question she had was whether I shoot digital or film. Her friends wedding was photographed digitally and the image quality was poor, so she thought she better have her baby portraits photographed with film.

I explained that a professional who knows what they are doing should be able to produce wonderful images whether photographed with film or digital media. Professional level cameras provide a higher resolution image, and if the files are handled correctly, there should be no problem. The newest digital SLR's equal that of scanned 35 mm film in image quality.

There are many factors needed to produce quality digital images and I'm actually amazed that the average person can get a decent image with their little point and shoot camera and their home printer. I have spent many hours learning about proper file management, color managed workflows - meaning calibrating the computer monitor with the printer or lab, and Photoshop image manipulation software.

She mentioned that her friends photos looked distorted, which sounds like they were resized incorrectly. Do you know that every time you open and adjust a jpeg file you degrade the quality? That is why a pro always saves the original file as is, in essence that is the "negative". Then any adjustments are made on a duplicate file, sized and re-saved. Also, when images are re-sized they get fuzzy and need to be sharpened. Then if you open that image, re-size it and sharpen it again, it can start to look ugly really fast.

Digital images do have less shadow to highlight tonal latitude than film, which requires capturing the image properly so as to avoid overexposed highlights as well as "noise" in underexposed shadow areas. But the benefits of digital capture are many. My "darkroom" is now the computer on my desk. I can retouch, darken and lighten, adjust tone and saturation with much more precision. There are wonderful creative image adjustments I can make such as tones like sepia or blue, hand colored effects, ultra saturated, high contrast and much more. Then there is the ability to create collages of multiple images for wall decor and albums.

If you are still not convinced, stop by to view my work and see for yourself. There is no charge for a consultation and we encourage a planning appointment so that we can discuss ideas and design a session to achieve the results you desire.