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John Onongaya
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The second question in this edition is
from 43-year-old John Onongaya, a photojournalist with the News Agency of Nigeria
(NAN) for the last two years.
John, who participated in the four-month proficiency course in photojournalism
at the Nigerian Institute of Journalism at the end of 2006, says:
"I have a digital camera. My question is - how do I make sure my pictures are
considered for publication.
In what format should I shoot and what size should they be?"
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Heriberto
Rodriguez
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The answer is provided by Mexican freelance photographer Heriberto Rodriguez,
who worked for a decade for Reuters News Pictures in Mexico, Central America
and the Caribbean and has contributed to many newspapers and magazines in his
native country and internationally.
Says Heriberto: “Most professional photographers now take photographs in RAW
format, which is uncompressed, unlike JPEG images.
A RAW file is 16 bits per channel and, as such, produces better color balance,
brightness and contrast.
Photos in JPEG format are only 8 bits per channel and are compressed in the
camera where adjustments are also made to maximize color, brightness and sharpness.
This can reduce your options later in post-production.
So it is better, if possible, to take uncompressed RAW images and process later
after which copies can be saved in any format you wish, including JPEG. Then
you can transmit the finished images via the Internet to a publisher.
One way to understand the differences is that a RAW file provides 4096 graduations
between pure black and pure white. JPEG files have only 256 levels across the
same spectrum.
This means that RAW files are better quality but much bigger. If you open a
RAW file from a Canon 5D for instance, it will be 4368 by 2912 pixels at 300
DPI, equal to 14.56 by 9.0707 inches (37 x 23 cm). That’s a huge 72.8 Mb.
No publisher wants your RAW files though. You should work to perfect your photograph
in an image editor such as Photoshop and then save it in another format such
as TIFF or JPEG, the most-used by publications. JPEG will compress most and
produce smaller file sizes.
Saving as a JPG will reduce your image to 8 bits per channel and its size to
36.4 Mb. Now, choose a greater level of compression and re-save the JPEG, reducing
the file size further, to 3.4 Mb for instance. A file of that size can safely
and easily be transmitted to your publisher.
Remember always to keep the original RAW file so you can work on it again later
if you wish.
When it comes to what size a photograph can be published that, of course, is
up to the publisher but generally, an image of 10 inches long by 6 or 7 inches
wide (25 cm by 18 cm) at a resolution of 300 DPI – the minimum for a high-quality
print - will measure around 3000 by 2000 pixels. Saved
as a Tiff file it will be about 18 Mb and as the highest quality JPEG, just
under 2 Mb.
Different digital cameras produce photo files of different sizes. The cheapest
now offer around 5 Mb and the best Digital SLRs can currently produce files
of 16.7 Mb.
When taking pictures for publication, it is a good idea to work at the maximum
picture quality offered by the camera as long as your memory card is big enough
to record the files – especially if you are in continuous shooting mode, taking
a series of pictures in a quick burst, or bracketing, which is automatically
taking three shots of the same subject with slightly different exposure for
each.
Depending on the demands of the publisher, you may also have to resize your
image at a later stage and this is dealt with in more detail in Cool Kit in
this issue.
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