Musings about the direction of commercial photography

[lisa_r]

You might think the quality has gone down until you pick up a magazine from 10 or 15 years ago. Have you done that recently? Quality looks like it's gone up to me. (much of the older stuff looks grainy, flat, and not so good, IMO.) Almost everything printed today looks at least as good in terms of color, smoothness, sharpness, etc. I'm serious, go dig through your bookshelf and report back.

And as to the statement that you 'need' 50mp or 60mp or else you are compromising in quality is just plain silly to me. How many publications have ever used the equivalent of 4x5 film (as in a 50mp digital back) for their layouts?

Just saying, if people could get the technology worries out of their heads and just look at the images...

(just my 2 cents, of course.)

[TMARK]

You might think the quality has gone down until you pick up a magazine from 10 or 15 years ago. Have you done that recently? Quality looks like it's gone up to me. (much of the older stuff looks grainy, flat, and not so good, IMO.) Almost everything printed today looks at least as good in terms of color, smoothness, sharpness, etc. I'm serious, go dig through your bookshelf and report back.

And as to the statement that you 'need' 50mp or 60mp or else you are compromising in quality is just plain silly to me. How many publications have ever used the equivalent of 4x5 film (as in a 50mp digital back) for their layouts?

Just saying, if people could get the technology worries out of their heads and just look at the images...

(just my 2 cents, of course.)

I think that comments regarding quality address crappy content.  There is a glut of technically good imagery out there that is emotionally flat, and a glut of clients that want safe and boring.

[Kirk Gittings]

As per pixel quantity, I shot 4x5 exclusively for almost 30 years. Nearing the digital transition I realized that 4x5 was overkill as most architect and magazine clients rarely need anything over an 8x10 so I switched to shooting 120 roll film in my view camera and scanning it in house. To emphasize the point of my late format  realization, primarily shooting a 5DII now........more than one of my top tier national clients have asked why I supply files so large.........

[ziocan]

I think this has already happened... but there are markets like A1 posters for hairdressers where hi-res makes a difference.

But I would hardly, but very, very hardly call "posters for hairdresser", high end photography.

[ziocan]

You might think the quality has gone down until you pick up a magazine from 10 or 15 years ago. Have you done that recently? Quality looks like it's gone up to me. (much of the older stuff looks grainy, flat, and not so good, IMO.) Almost everything printed today looks at least as good in terms of color, smoothness, sharpness, etc. I'm serious, go dig through your bookshelf and report back.

And as to the statement that you 'need' 50mp or 60mp or else you are compromising in quality is just plain silly to me. How many publications have ever used the equivalent of 4x5 film (as in a 50mp digital back) for their layouts?

Just saying, if people could get the technology worries out of their heads and just look at the images...

(just my 2 cents, of course.)

When I started reading this thread and saw some of the "rants", I was thinking where is this people living, what are they looking at, who are they working for, to be so "imaging depressed".

I totally agree with you, they should just flip through the pages of magazines and books from 10 years ago and see how the "old film days" were better.
Imagery on the last few years got just much better. there are so many good photographers compare to the past, that is not even funny anymore.
And yes! Good digital images are way way better in texture, feel and colors than the older "film" images.
The old film days.... or the Polaroid days..... Once they all were using Polaroid, they were all complaining about it: it was blurry that you could not check detail even with a loupe, the colors were not right, it did never developed properly on cold temperatures, it stank, it leaked and was yucky.... Now that Polaroid it is not there anymore many of those are crying.
The only ones that should be crying at the extinction of Polaroid, are the guys working with large format polaroid. I can feel for them....: a little of blur and tilt shift here and there, and most mediocre pictures could look as "master pieces" and "artistic".....

I just do not agree about the grainy images of the past being bad. grain on the right image, IMO is good and it has its charm. yet it can be reproduced on digital images and can still look very good and charming.

[Dick Roadnight]

I think this has already happened... but there are markets like A1 posters for hairdressers where hi-res makes a difference.

But I would hardly, but very, very hardly call "posters for hairdresser", high end photography.

High-end photography IMHO normally requires movements... I said that, for "posters for hairdressers", High-res makes a difference. High-res is not necessarily High-end ...would you like to give some examples of what you think is high-end photography?

[TMARK]

But I would hardly, but very, very hardly call "posters for hairdresser", high end photography.

I think he's talking about beauty shots that are printed large for instore display, from Dior, L'Oreal, Aveda.  I've shot these as part of larger campaigns, they ask for it in the usage.

[lisa_r]

"High-end photography IMHO normally requires movements..."

Nonsense.

[Dick Roadnight]

High-end photography IMHO normally requires movements

This is truly one of the oddest comments about photography. Seems myopic, outdated or uninformed. Yes, certainly camera movements aid in some high-end photos (whatever your definition is of that) and will exist for the foreseeable future, but not a requirement by any means of high-end shooting. After reading your posts for weeks now, I think you have the idea of high-end photography confused with the requirement of the most expensive cameras/high pixel count, just like there are plenty of great cars, but not all have to be or are Bentleys.

There was a time when high-end professional commercial photographers used professional 10 * 8 cameras with movements - the depth of field of these cameras was such that movements were needed for a high proportion of pictures.

Many picture buyers today are not aware of what is possible with camera movements ... and professional photographers without cameras with movements are happy not to tell them.

Everywhere I see 3rd rate DSLR pictures that would have looked better taken with a view camera.

I think that high-end picture buyers should be able to expect high-end professional photographers to have versatile kit available if required.

Perhaps I am biased (or "traditional") ...there are tens of thousands of professional photographers with DSLRs, and so I chose to specialise in the type of work that you cannot do with DSLRs. If the commercial world is not prepared to pay me real money for my type of quality, I will stick to landscapes etc.

[Dansk]

Its never been a great camera system that makes a great commercial photographer. What makes one a great commercial guy IMO is hard work, consistency, strong relations, excellent communication skills, top shelf lighting ability, and above all uber strong composition skills. As for camera? Any old hunk that has enough juice to get that done and out the door without client complaint is plenty good enough period. In fact this ( again IMO ) is nothing new and in my early film days when i worked for a studio we used lots of less than perfect gear, bent and damaged lenses, jiggy bodies, lights that had color temp issues etc etc etc. Then digital came along and we entered a geek boy stage of "I have digital therefore I get big job" and all of a sudden pixel peepers "thought" they were the end all and be all of all answers that ever pertained to photography. Thats when the real upheaval in this business happened the game of digital decimated the photography business as it had been for close to a hundred years. Now? Heck I couldnt agree more with Cooter this is just down times and the market is adjusting. As long as they are eyeballs there will be a need for commercial still photos. Now whether or not that pays worth a damn, or whether or not motion work all but obliterates the demand for stills, or whatever trends become the new norm only time will tell but anyone with brains, talent and financial skill will survive one way or another. It'll be a long time coming before still photographers go the way of typesetters and completely disappear.

To touch on a few comments made above I too agree that overall image quality has risen substantially in the past few years. With anyone and everyone into taking pictures for their favorite social networking sites and whatnot the game of photography has probably been practiced more by more people in the past few years than all the previous years combined if you were to only count actual shots taken as opposed to rating the overall quality etc. The old saying goes practice makes perfect and with so many practitioners out there happily clicking away at work many of us would scoff at, its still practice. This enables them and our customers a better eye to gauge whats actually a really good image or not so demand for quality rose and you either stepped up, or stepped out.

Heck I look back now at work i sold ten years ago and thought was stellar and I'd be damn embarrassed if any of my customers today saw it and knew I did it.

So it is. The demands grow and so must we in one form or another.

[cyberean]

I think that comments regarding quality address crappy content.  There is a glut of technically good imagery out there that is emotionally flat, and a glut of clients that want safe and boring.

right on ...

[ziocan]

I think this has already happened... but there are markets like A1 posters for hairdressers where hi-res makes a difference.


High-end photography IMHO normally requires movements...

Movement of the belly or the shoulders?

[TMARK]

Movement of the belly or the shoulders?

 

[Rob C]

I guess some of you guys were buying the wrong magazines ten or twenty years ago. I have a collection of great oldies that I am slowly rereading for the last time prior to turning the space to current purposes; my opinion from this experience is that the old school of photographers, the good ones even from the 50s, have nothing to be ashamed about. Where things are different, if you want to chat about fashion magazines, is that now all the models are made of plastic. There is no skin anywhere, no character and certainly no charm.

How fortunate for Jean Shrimpton that she had the grace of a Bardot and got out in time; both now live in memory as being the perfect women, not the perfect shop dummies.

Maybe too many influential people have a pet inflatable girlfriend...

Rob C

[Dick Roadnight]

Movement of the belly or the shoulders?

Bellies do not need to be moving to require camera movements... I hear that pre-dig all the reclining ladies in  PLayboy were shot with 5*4 view cameras, so that they did not have to arrange the ladies so that all parts were in a plane parallel to the film.

[jing q]

Bellies do not need to be moving to require camera movements... I hear that pre-dig all the reclining ladies in  PLayboy were shot with 5*4 view cameras, so that they did not have to arrange the ladies so that all parts were in a plane parallel to the film.

I thought they were shot on 8x10"?

[Rob C]

I think the centrefolds were on 8x10 but the rest as luck would have them. I think luck had them a lot on 'slow' Kodachrome.

Rob C