He is always nice and forthcoming with helpful information, which inthe news business is like having a fairy godmother looking out for you. It is always a good thing to know that a fellow news professional photographer is willing to share.
Paul has been kind enough to share his knowledge of digital cameras from the professional news photographer’s perspective.
Can you give us some bio information on your career in the news business?
I graduated from San Jose state in photojournalism in 1977. I was a stringer for the Associated Press and the San Francisco Examiner and several magazines like Time and Newsweek (I have had covers on both magazines). Then in 1979 I was hired at the Associated Press full time as a professional photographer.
Can you tell us a bit about the integration of digital cameras into the news photography arena as a professional photographer?
It's been a long haul since I started in photojournalism where it started in the beginning with black and white. In those days we were developing the film and making prints and scanning the prints on a fax-like drum scanner at the rate of about an inch a minute. Then we started color doing slides, which we made black and white color separations, and shooting black and white film at the same time. Then we shot color negatives to make color prints and back on a drum fax-like scanner at triple the slowness of about 30 minutes for a color transmission.
Then from there we scanned color negatives into an Associated Press color scanner. This process still took at least 30 minutes to transmit the photo. Finally in 1995, I shot my first digital images with a camera designed by AP. We were using a bulky Nikon camera they built from a Nikon n80 film camera. It was probably twice the size and weight of a film camera. We were using digital media that is 10 times the weight and the size of a deck of cards of about 30 cards. Then we would put the card into an Apple computer. Using a browser to look at the digital images with a browser made by AP. Then we exchanged the photo into Photoshop. The images still took 30 minutes to transit. But then faster and better transmission and compression of images over phone lines was made possible a few years later. Cameras slowly changed into a faster camera and finally you were able to see the image you shot on the back of your camera.
Later both Nikon and Canon developed digital cameras for the professional market. Instead of the one frame a second they were able to move it up to thee frames a second and finally today we can get eight frames per second. It's come a long way for color images to look better too. The cameras were able to interpretate the scene more accurately in the years to come. Finally today the images are almost perfect where not much work is done in Photoshop. In the past there were dozens of steps used in Photoshop to get the photo looking better.
Did the transition to digital go smoothly at first?
It was slow process in the past nine years for me. I remember my first digital image in Aug 1995. AP isn't the best at training, so I had a slow learning curve. I'm still learning new steps in Photoshop. But the transition I think was a fun one.
How does digital imaging make your job easier now?
I must be colorblind because I still have problems figuring out the perfect colors, but with the new technology it's much closer to reality so I don't have to work as hard in Photoshop. It’s still a challenge to get it just right. There must be dozens of different ways photographers work in Photoshop to get it right. Oops back to your answer, on out of town assignments I used to carry a full color darkroom developing kit. Color enlarger and scanner the weight of a golf bag. Now it's the same camera bag size with similar lens but a backpack with a laptop. So the weight is much easier now on travel assignments. Also with WIFI, cell phone and a hard phone line everywhere transmitting without electricity is easier. No more rushing back to the darkroom, which was 3/4 of the battle on deadline on most spot news assignments. Now we can concentrate on the image instead of the technical aspects of the job.
What digital cameras do you use on the job at AP?
I use a Nikon d1, d1h that is about one to two generations removed. Both aren't even sold now. But our company is going Canon, which I have yet to see years down the road. Lenses have gotten more complex. I used to use all the fixed lenses from a 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 135mm, 180mm, and 300mm. But with zoom lenses, I carry a 17-35mm, 28-70mm (rarely use except for portraits), 80-200mm and a 300mm. So two lenses is all I carry most of the time.
What kind of storage media do you use in your digital cameras?
I use compact flash. The storage of images on older cameras only needed 1.3 Megs of space. So I was only given 160meg cards thus having 111 images per disc. But now I carry a dozen discs. But with the new cameras and larger Meg size, a 512 or a one-gig card is in my near future. The down side is that the more the file size and the more the images, the longer it takes to view the image.
What Image software do you use?
As a professional photographer I use Photostation to see my images then I use Photoshop to work on my images. Like I mentioned it takes more time to view the image, so a computer with more RAM is more important.
How does AP transfer images from the field?
Compression is the big issue here. I compress images to about 500k from a file of about 8 Megs uncompressed in Photoshop. 500k is based on what magazines like to see for quality. I then use an FTP program to upload on the Internet to our office back east. It all depends on the bandwidth of the phone line, WIFI, DSL or cell phone on how long it takes. Could be as slow at 10 minutes on a cell phone or 10 seconds on a T1 line in our office.
http://www.great-digital-cameras.com/professional-photographer.html
