Chicago Sun Times Swaps iPhone Training For Staff Photographers 316
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.'"
Why the iPhone of all thing? (Score:2, Informative)
It takes horrible pictures.
At least use the Samsung Galaxy Camera GC100 or something similar.
Re: Why the iPhone of all thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why an iPhone? Why any phone? Why you remove progressional photographers from the equation you'll get amateur quality photography. Next they'll be teaching them how to use photoshop to fix their crap pictures (or even assemble them from stock photos so they don't need to be bothered going out at all).
Re: Why the iPhone of all thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
When you remove professional photographers from the equation you'll get amateur quality photography.
When you remove subscription paying readers from the equation, you get less money to pay professional photographers.
Re: Why the iPhone of all thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
And then you lose one more reason for people to subscribe. I think that is the definition of a death spiral.
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And then you lose one more reason for people to subscribe. I think that is the definition of a death spiral.
What would suggest they do instead? Go bankrupt? Fire the reporters and have the photographers write the stories? Most subscribers left before they made this change, so going back isn't going to reverse the readership decline. Sometime I take photos with my phone, other times I use a real camera. Is the difference noticeable? Sure. But not different enough to matter in a news story, and certainly not enough to make me buy a subscription. If sending only a reporter rather than reporter+photographer a
Re: Why the iPhone of all thing? (Score:2)
Print journalism is turning into a b
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When you remove subscription paying readers from the equation
When you remove actual investigative reporting of real news from the equation...
Re: Why the iPhone of all thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason to get a real camera is that you can get photos in conditions where a phone won't. Also, they last for years and are far less likely to be damaged in the field. I've got a Canon 7D and even with something like an F2.8 28-75, that cost me $400 a decade ago, it still whips the crap out of what you'd get with a phone. In total that would be a $1500 or so set up. Which would likely last many, many years.
As for professional photographers, you get what you paid for. Ultimately, you need somebody else to do the photography, because you can't interview and take photos of whatever happens at the same time. And a professional is much more likely to get the photos that are needed quickly, rather than futzing around trying to figure out how to best capture the scene.
All this BS about how expensive photographers are, is generally by people who have no idea how much it costs to find that you've been at the scene and don't have any usable shots. Might as well outsource the journalists as well and just collate tweets while we're at it..
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Just wait till people stop reading the news and it becomes tumblr.com/~fox
Than they can just reblog official state endorsed photos of everything! Maybe our tax money can go to even paying for the right to view them!
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"Why an iPhone? Why any phone? Why you remove progressional photographers from the equation you'll get amate"
The remaining Chicago Sun Time readers are all over 70, they won't notice the lack of any progressive photographs.
Good enough (Score:2)
Basically, scratch one more profession off the list of what little Johnny can grow up to do some day.
Re: Why the iPhone of all thing? (Score:5, Funny)
They should have let the reporters go and kept the photographers. The quality of the reporting would probably have stayed about the same.
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That's an elitist view. There is no need for any sort of special professional to press a button on a handled camera device, DSLR or not.
The photographs involved needn't be art, it's for a disposable newspaper.
You win the "complete jackass" comment award. Press photographers don't make "art". They record history. Do some research. Fucking idiot.
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You don't need a $10k camera to "record history".
History is often wet and muddy. Generally, more expensive DSLRs are more durable.
Re: Why the iPhone of all thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an elitist view.
There is no need for any sort of special professional to press a button on a handled camera device, DSLR or not.
It doesn't take any special skill to pull a trigger either. The skill is in identifying what to shoot and in aiming.
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Photojournalism generally requires a degree for a reason. You can't just take photos from every Tom, Dick and Harry that has them, you don't know that they're an accurate portrayal of the situation. Sure, they might be, but whether they're edited or not, it's easy to get photos that are unintentionally biased, or fail to capture the event as it's happening.
These are not fine art photos, these are documentary photos, and just because they don't need to be art, doesn't mean that there isn't any need for techn
Why a Phone of all things (Score:3)
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 w
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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.
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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.
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Re:The best camera is the one you have with you (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
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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.
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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 affec
Re:The best camera is the one you have with you (Score:5, Informative)
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.
It's a little more sophisticated than that... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 sam
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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.
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Re: The best camera is the one you have with you (Score:2)
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
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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.
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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.
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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 mos
must be a joke (Score:5, Funny)
- training in iPhone photography
- firing of the photography staff
- iPhone as a replacement for fancy, expensive DSLRs
Re:must be a joke (Score:5, Informative)
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The paper is a joke now, but alas the story is not (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Death throws?
Never heard of them?
http://www.comicvine.com/death-throws/4060-41808/ [comicvine.com]
The equipment isn't the story (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:The equipment isn't the story (Score:4, Insightful)
The real story (and tragedy) is they think that non-pro photographers (writers and amateurs) can do the job.
I don't think they think this. I think they can't justify the cost of creating "real" photos shot by on-staff pro photographers (which come with health care, benefits, taxes, etc.) using DSLRs when "crappy" pics shot by non-pros will do 95% of the time. They can always hire pros as contractors for the 5% of the time they actually need "real" shots -- or license the shots they need from some syndicated source.
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And yet they wonder why people don't find their publications notable and are unsubscribing at increasing rates. Using stories and photos from wire services that are recycled all over the place don't make your Newspaper a unique, compelling product.
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It's the same thing everywhere. Austerity is fashionable, so everyone is trying to compete by cutting costs, which means they're cutting quality, which means there's less and less reason why anyone would want their shit for any price.
It's hit newspaper industry especially hard, since they're directly competing with the Internet, but the entire world economy seems to be in a similar death spiral of austerity over investment.
Re:The equipment isn't the story (Score:4, Informative)
Magic money tree? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:The equipment isn't the story (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're giving too much credit to the internet. Journalistic integrity was already in a sad decline before the web took off.
Re:The equipment isn't the story (Score:5, Interesting)
The real story is that they want their P/L to look better Right Now because:
"Some 40 parties have expressed interest in acquiring some or all of Tribune Co.’s newspapers, according to sources close to the situation. The Chicago-based media company hired investment bankers in February to manage inquiries for its eight daily newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-tribune-company-20130515,0,1793743.story [chicagotribune.com]
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It doesn't matter if your a pro or an amatuer. There are just some shots you're not going to be able to get with a phone or a cheap consumer camera. When you are out in the world, you often don't get to dictate the circumstances of a shot.
It's "art photography" where you can control conditions.
Journalism requires something capable of handling the world as you encounter it.
Seriously? (Score:2)
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.
Spot the trend (Score:3)
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.
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It doesn't matter who takes a picture of the event, what matters is that you have a picture to attach to your article.
I don't really understand what's your point.
There is no difference whether it's the reporter or anyone else, and I don't see why there should be.
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Accordingly (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
The camera isn't the issue (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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> A professional photojournalist with an iPhone would produce better photojournalism than non-experts with a DSLR.
Nope. The iPhone simply isn't up to the task. It doesn't matter how much expertise you throw at it.
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Depends a lot on the task. An iPhone won't be much good for the sports page, but not all news stories are about dim, fast-moving, and distant subjects. For daylight and decently-lit interior shots, an iPhone is perfectly sufficient for web-sized and terrible-quality-print (newspaper) images. Double-page glossy color magazine spreads won't look so great. When not working at the margins of technical capability, a professional who knows how to frame an image to "tell a story" will consistently produce *far* be
Re:The camera isn't the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The camera isn't the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
This makes sense - if the point of journalism is to deliver high-quality photography of the kind that other photographers will appreciate. So much of old-fashioned journalism is a gigantic circle-jerk. It has been repeatedly proven that nobody needs this sort of hugely expensive photography in order to tell a story. A couple of snapshots are enough. "But how will anyone win the Pulitzer Prize?!?!" Yeah, the local newspaper won't win that anyway. It's more of a political award than an acknowledgement of talent.
Frankly, the people who will be providing said snapshots are ordinary folk posting on social media. Who cares what the f-stop was, or if someone took a shot facing into the sun? It's a freaking photo, it will be gone in 24 hours, why spend any money on it?
Professional photographers are, predictably, butthurt about the whole thing as it directly attacks their livelihood. When I became an adult I was just shocked at how horridly expensive photography is. And how stupidly overpowered this photography was for my needs. Nobody wants to pay $1500 for a photo of some ducks at a lake. I'm just illustrating an article, thanks. And yet until now this sort of market has existed. Insane, and it is quite gratifying to see this sort of elitist nonsense finally obsoleted.
Oh, don't believe me? One need only spend time on pro photographer forums to find out just how prevalent the snobbery is. Let's not even get into Nikon vs. Canon.
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One need only spend time on pro photographer forums to find out just how prevalent the snobbery is. Let's not even get into Nikon vs. Canon.
Been there, do that. The general dynamic that I've observed is that the amateur noobs can be insufferable gear snobs --- immensely arrogant that their new prosumer DSLR is the pinnacle of photographic awesomeness. The working professionals, who carry around $30k of camera gear in their bags, disdain gear/brand-snobbery with a passion, and contribute spectacular photos to the cellphone picture threads.
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When I became an adult I was just shocked at how horridly expensive photography is. And how stupidly overpowered this photography was for my needs. Nobody wants to pay $1500 for a photo of some ducks at a lake.
The key thing here is that it's overpowered for your needs.
You get enthusiasts in all sorts of fields who purchase stuff that are far more advanced/expensive than is easily justifiable by a lay person.
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I'm pretty sure you've got the cause and effect backwards. Newspapers are dying because ad-revenue is down. Why is is down? Because people are buying fewer papers and getting their news online and because (even though they move their paper online to follow their customers) internet ads pay less than newspaper ads. Cutting their staff is a symptom of declining revenue. Now I guess we watch all the people with ad-blockers complain about the decline of the quality of the n
Thom Hogan has a very critical write up on this (Score:5, Insightful)
Thom Hogan (Nikon expert) has a very critical take on this here [bythom.com], 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."
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That's not taking advantage of the web. Some of these guys are dinosaurs and don't know what to make of online media. I'm not speaking of Chicago Sun Times specifically, but other newspapers suck when it comes to images on their online presence.
TV will do this next (Score:2)
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.
Cave Paintings (Score:2)
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.
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The people now responsible for capturing the most important events...
...aren't working for the Chicago Sun-Times anyway.
Swapping (Score:2)
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?
makes sense (Score:2)
Image quality will tank (Score:2)
In other news.... (Score:2)
They don't have any pictures anyway (Score:2)
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 Con
What is an aperture? Who gives a shit? (Score:3)
Written word Journalism will also suffer (Score:3)
If you're following the news about Google Glass, you'll have heard that some people hate having their picture taken. [slashdot.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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."
Former freelancer here... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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auto-correct will take care of that
This will not end well: Siri as a reporter (Score:5, Funny)
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woosh!
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[edit]whooooooosh[/edit]
Re:Grammer perhaps? (Score:4, Funny)
No woooosh in space.
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Re:Grammer perhaps? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Grammer perhaps? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Grammer". You're one to complain.
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"Have", not "of".
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Perhaps that's how you pronounce it. It's spelled "you'd've", however.
(And it isn't confined to Texas... I've heard it used quite frequently in the UK.)
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Yep, that's wide spread enough that it's effectively correct. And since it's a contraction of you would have, the correct spelling is you'd've. guess that makes it a compound contraction.
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"I can has cheezburger?"
We know you're a dog.
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you don't but a fast autofocus with low-light sensitivity will be necessary. Also, when photographing sports, cropping from a 12mp camera phone still isn't good enough quality. A 70-200/ 2.8 will provide a decent quality (dependent on the photog's skill) but it's still hard. But on the other hand, you force the reporter to record video of the sporting event (usually high school)., he/she will still spend a considerable amount of time scrubbing the video to find a good still frame; or worse, edit the video f
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The last two iterations of the iPhone have had fairly good cameras. For smartphones, that is. The only one that's much better is the Nokia 808 (not the WP8 phones with the PureView moniker).
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> 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 no
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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.
camera vs smartphone (Score:2)
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.
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To which I would re-iterate: optical zoom. I was watching hovering birds of prey yesterday, and having only my phone to hand (a Samsung S3 Mini with a 5mp camera), I took a few snaps. Looking at the resultant JPEGs the bird in question is indistinguishable from a duck flying in the opposite direction. If you've got some guy threatening to jump off the Sears Tower, you're going to look awfully dumb if all you can get is a wide angle shot with a tiny speck on top.
For less than $100 you can get a compact cam