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Digital Photography
by Judy Herrmann
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Better, faster, cheaper — can you really have all three? With digital photography, you just might. In recent years, direct digital capture has been rapidly gaining popularity. Improved technologies, reduced equipment costs and an ever-more-competitive global economy have resulted in increasingly widespread acceptance of this burgeoning technology.
In 1994, when my still life and product photography studio first started delivering digital files, many of our clients expressed concern about the quality of the files, color accuracy and re-purposing of files for multiple applications. They forced us to become experts on pre-press and printing as well as lighting and photography and, by the end of 1998, they allowed us to stop shooting film entirely. Experiencing the speed, efficiency, quality and cost effectiveness of digital direct capture firsthand resulted in an almost instantaneous acceptance of this revolutionary new way of creating imagery.
So, how fast is fast?
Can using digital capture increase your productivity? For John Harold, designer and founder of Ellicott City, MD-based Ground Zero Creative, digital photography has become a cornerstone of the philosophy that has landed his three year old company a rapidly growing base of national manufacturing clients. "Using digital capture, we can literally have a product show up the day before we go to press and still include it in the printed piece," says Harold.
He quickly adds that digital photography's not the only element in a high speed digital work flow. "Working that fast limits our choice of printers," explains Harold. "We have to use printers who ... can go direct to plate." Using a totally digital work flow, Ground Zero has pulled off such feats as shooting, designing, printing and delivering a 12-page catalog for one client within one week. That kind of turnaround makes both Ground Zero and the person who hired them look very, very good.
A completely digital work flow is not for the faint-hearted, though. Harold and his staff of 10 had to educate themselves on every aspect of the digital process so that every step goes smoothly. With stringent color-matching requirements, tight budgets and even tighter deadlines, there's little room for error, and every member of the team has to pull together to meet the high level of quality that their clients demand. Luckily, as Harold points out, his clients still appreciate the creative process. "They know that good creative does take time," he explains, "but we lose time on the production side ... [and] ... everyone has to rise to that."
Despite the pressure, Harold remains excited about the future of the technology. "You know," he says, "our clients look at us like 'you guys are so amazing, what are you going to come up with next?' and that's the fun part. We're already down the digital road — that's old territory now. We're not scared that our clients are going to expect something different ... that's what keeps us growing!"
But how good is good?
Detractors of digital capture often question the quality of the files created. Five or six years ago, they had some valid points, but in the hands of experienced and well trained digital photographers, today's capture technology can produce cleaner, sharper, and more color-accurate files than those provided by many film scanners. In fact, many of today's drum scanners share the same CCD technology used in digital cameras. Digital capture simply gives you the equivalent of drum scanning without the added problems caused by the grain, the dust, scratches and emulsion flaws, or the color bias inherent in every type of film.
In most cases, digital capture also means that the photographer controls the reproduction values of the file. As the creator of the capture and, often, as the only member of the production team who attended the shoot, the photographer knows better than any pre-press technician or printer how the final printed photograph should look. With digital, the client gets the full benefit of the photographer's creative talent and vision through a larger part of the process.
Production issues aside, for many digital photographers, myself included, shooting digitally makes it much easier to deliver a better image for less money. With film, everything has to perfect in a single moment in time. With digital, we can blend multiple captures with different lighting, optimizing the light for every element in the shot, and giving us and our client total control over the final printed piece. To achieve the same controlled results on a single piece of film would take hours of balancing lights and carefully positioning gobos and reflectors — hours that no client's budget could ever absorb.
Andrew Child, photographer and founding principal of G2G Productions, a Cambridge MA firm which creates interactive multimedia for web sites and cd-roms, agrees. "As I shoot, I'm thinking I'll fix this, I'll change that," says Child. "I come up with better pictures in the end by blending Photoshop® with my photography." Shooting film is a thing of the past for Child, who exposed his last frame in April, 1998. Since then, he has been capturing everything from people to products, in studio and on location, using a Fujix/Nikon system. He explains that digital capture is "a lot less expensive, a lot faster in terms of turnaround time and I know it allows me to be a lot more creative." His colleague, interactive designer Jeremy Perkins adds, "Digital makes me think of the photography element of my design as being an easier component to deal with. It's less stressful than working conventionally. With film, even if you go to the shoot, you still don't know what you're going to get until the film's delivered."
Both Child and Perkins agree that shooting digitally completely eliminates the need for any reshoots. There's no chance of incorrect exposure, incorrectly loaded film or processing problems, and as Perkins explains, "It's really fast and you can look at the shots right then and there and actually see if the composition is going to work with the design...we always get the photos that we want now."
Will digital capture really cost less?
Unfortunately, as with conventional photography, there are about as many answers to that question as there are photographers. For G2G Productions' Andrew Child, who could "burn through an entire roll of film to get a single Quicktime VR object rotation," the savings he gets from eliminating the film and processing expenses translate into cost savings for his client and the freedom to do all the necessary takes without worrying about running over budget. Of course, with multi-media as his end product, Child's equipment investment has not been quite as high as for those who specialize in capture for print.
Like many print-oriented digital studios, our firm does not charge appreciably less for shooting digitally than conventional studios charge for shooting film. The ever-growing equipment investment that we've made in order to provide our clients with top quality files and quick turnaround times (over $100,000 so far) would cover a lot of film and processing, so we apply any cost savings created by the technology towards recouping that investment. Every digital studio, though, has different costs and different pricing policies, and the key advantages to digital capture remain its ability to provide clients with better images and a shorter production cycle.
John Harold of Ground Zero Creative works with a number of digital photography studios and finds that "pricing isn't just about the photography part of it — it's the whole production process that saves money." He points out that while you might be able to get a very straightforward digital shot for a little less than you would pay for film, the higher-end images are going to cost about the same. "For the amount that we spend on photography though," he adds, "I think we're getting a higher quality result."
Still having reservations? You're not alone...
When it comes to aesthetics, Steve Liska of Liska and Associates, a 19-person design firm with offices in New York and Chicago, agrees that ultimately, the end result is the only thing that matters. "If the image is well composed and well lit and you figure out all the technology for whatever medium you use," says Liska, "it shouldn't matter to me if it's digital photography or film." Still, his award winning firm has yet to shoot a single project digitally. His concerns center over what he calls "the responsibility factor."
"We go through slides and we choose the right one" explains Liska, "and we know we can hold the printer to that slide. With digital, I don't have anything to stand on." Liska raises a valid point, especially when it comes to more subjective photographs than those of products. For my studio and many others, the product itself acts as that reference point. We compare the CMYK builds to the product inside of our daylight-balanced computer room, ensuring that the contract proof will match the product as closely as possible.
Despite his concerns, Liska remains enthusiastic about the possibilities the technology offers. "Everything about digital photography appeals to me other than the responsibility factor," says Liska. "We're right at a point where it would be boon to our industry, be part of the wired way we all work now."
Working Wired and other value added services....
The ability to re-purpose files for multiple uses becomes another major selling point in our highly wired times. Unlike transparencies, which need to be originals for optimum reproduction quality, digital files can be copied and sent anywhere, quickly, easily and with no loss in quality. While film scans suffer from grain issues when enlarged, digital captures can be upsized to a remarkable degree with significantly less quality loss. John Harold tells of a recent trade show booth for which he "blew up 3 or 4 [digital] shots...from 7x10 inches to 4 x 7 feet and they looked great!"
With digital direct capture, you can work easily with anyone, anywhere. For a recent annual report project, Joan Hausman, founder and 13 year veteran of Palo Alto, CA's Hausman Design, tried digital capture for the very first time. Hausman Design, which focuses specifically on corporate design, was reviewing portfolios for a new client, Inprise, formerly known as Borland. "One of the issues that came up," Hausman says, "was that we were taking elements of the client's logo and they were very interested in not only matching the colors but also using the images later on the web." Our studio explained that by capturing digitally and delivering CMYK ready for press files, we could guarantee an accurate color match and that no one would have to travel anywhere to art-direct the shoot.
Despite the complexity of the shots, which involved numerous captures and blending of elements, our studio simply posted works in progress on a protected section of our web site, allowing Hausman, her staff and her client to art-direct the project without leaving their offices. "It's incredibly fast, it really saves time and it's very efficient for both sides." says Hausman, adding, "We don't have to fly anywhere or wait for packages to come. I think the big advantage is the ease with which one can make refinements that are executed very quickly and that saves money and time."
When asked if she would work digital direct again, Hausman stresses the importance of finding the right style for the project over any technological process. "When we look at imagery, we usually just look at images," explains Hausman. "We don't usually think of them as digital or not." Achieving the right image for the project remains the ultimate goal regardless of the medium. In the right hands and for the right project, digital capture can help achieve that goal more easily, faster, and more cost effectively.
Production Tips:
Want your digital project to go smoothly? Try these tips!
Make sure the studio you hire uses appropriate technology for your project and knows how to prepare files for press. Ask them to describe how their camera works and find out the size of the files that their camera captures. While it’s true that captures can be blown up larger than scans from film, the acceptability of those enlargements depends a lot on viewing distance. Unless the viewing distance can be measured in feet, you really want the capture to be as large as your final reproduction size.
Ask that all your files get reviewed at 100% or 1:1 (where each screen pixel represents a single capture pixel) and that each channel gets examined separately for moiré, banding, artifacts, scan lines or color misalignments before they’re handed off for output. These are steps that pre-press houses routinely take and you want to make sure your digital photography studio does, too.
When possible, provide the digital photographer with the name and number of the pre-press or print shop that will be outputting the separations so they can discuss the ideal CMYK-conversion set up. If you don’t have that information, at a minimum, make sure you tell them whether the paper stock will be coated, uncoated or newsprint and if it’s a clean- or off-white so they can set appropriate dot gain and color for the files.
If you’re planning to incorporate the files into a multi-image montage, consider requesting RGB files that have not been unsharp-masked. The process of converting to CMYK throws away a lot of color information and files that get manipulated in the CMYK color space are prone to exhibit a lot of banding and noise. After you’ve assembled your montage, the digital studio should be willing to help you convert to CMYK and prep the file for press.
Never try to print raw captures! All digital files, whether from scanners or digital cameras, require preparation for reproduction. Those steps include setting appropriate highlight and shadow points for the paper stock, converting to CMYK with appropriate dot gain and settings for the paper stock and press, color correcting, setting appropriate contrast and unsharp masking.
If you want to do your own color work or file preparation, you’ll need to get some serious training. In addition, you’ll need to invest in a really good monitor that’s intended for pre-press work. Place your computer in a controlled, daylight balanced environment with neutral furnishings, carpet and walls, and cover any windows so your light source remains constant. Calibrate your monitor at least once every month and always go by the numbers — not by what your monitor looks like.
Elaine Wilcomb, production manager for Ground Zero Creative, offers these additional tips to help you once the captures are done:
Adopting a digital work flow can lead to a lot of finger-pointing when things go wrong. It’s important for the client, design firm, photographer and printer to remember that we’re all on the same team and all have the same goals. Keeping communication lines open throughout the project can make the difference between a smooth or rocky production cycle.
To ease your computer requirements, ask the digital photographer to give you high- and low-resolution files of each shot. If you make sure they have the same name, you can use the low-res file during the design phase and the printer can easily substitute the high-res files before going to film or plate.
You’ll most likely want to get oversized files from your digital photographer so that you can repurpose them down the road. Be sure to use Photoshop® to resize them before dropping them into your layout. Not only can layout programs cause jaggies when reducing files, but using them for that purpose increases the RIP time dramatically.
As you start to work digitally, you’ll need to develop a good image database and archiving system. The more file repurposing you do, the more often you’ll need to find files from old projects. If the printer makes any adjustments to the files, make sure you get copies of the final files that went to press. Also, be sure to give your files names that will help you find them quickly and easily whenever your client calls.
Please note: the above article is © Judy Herrmann, 1999. It may be printed for easier reading, but may not be distributed or sold without permission.