We're trying to come to terms with digital photos, since more and more people are replacing their film cameras with digitals. The problem is that most affordable consumer-grade digital cameras still can't manage the resolution we need for the magazine. Here are some provisional minimum requirements for digital photos that we've worked out (subject to change, depending on how they fare in the real world):
- The camera should have a 4 megapixel resolution; 3 megapixels is the minimum.
- Take the photos with your camera's highest resolution setting; higher is always better (most have 3 settings--low, standard, and high).
- The final image should measure about the size of a 3x5 print
Right now, these are tough requirements because most affordable consumer digital cameras are still in the 1.5 to 2 meg range (let's see, my Olympus point-n-shoot is 1.2.....). Resolution is going up and prices are going down on consumer cameras. The good news is that the standards for magazine-quality photos will stay the same, so the cameras will catch up one of these days.
![Smile [:)]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile.gif)
We've been rethinking the OnlineEXTRA gallery. Rather than plunder good material from the print Reader Gallery (which appears online as well), we've decided to use the Extra gallery for photos we take at model shows but don't have room for in the magazine or GSM. Seems a much better alternative (and less painful) than leaving photos of good models to languish in the file drawer. [:0]
We also realized that since the Forum allows users to post their own photos by attaching them to Forum messages, the OE gallery was kind of superfluous.