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> That's pretty demeaning. Wartime photographers need quality as much as others. I'm not sure why you find this to be demeaning. The cameras used by journalis

> That's pretty demeaning. Wartime photographers need quality as much as others. I'm not sure why you find this to be demeaning. The cameras used by journalists (canon 1dx ii/nikon d5) have dramatically lower resolution than cameras used by, for example, landscape photographers. This is for a number of very good reasons, but one of these is because there's no demand for anything else. 20Mp is more than enough - indeed many don't even shoot at this, but opt for smaller images for faster processing and upload. You don't need huge images for news (print or online) - in both cases the final image is small, and the DPI/resolution is low. The idea that huge image sizes somehow equate to image quality is much of the time a marketing idea - all you need is enough resolution for your output format. If that's a newspaper (online or offline), small JPEGs are fine. If your output format is a gallery image, or a building-sized advert, then yes, you want 50MP+ RAW images - but guess what? They aren't shooting for that.

Joeboy 10y ago
You're talking about stills. The data requirements for video are massive. For me, in London, the most practical solution is still usually to hand the editor a USB drive in person. Yes, maybe heavily compressed 720p would be acceptable for some war journalism, but that's still going to be impossible to live stream reliably from almost anywhere in the world. And unless you're getting something spectacular, no mainstream TV station will want to use your crappy footage. Also remember that what you're replacing here is the transfer of pre-edited footage, of which there is likely to be a huge amount. You refer to files of "a few MB or less" elsewhere, which suggests you haven't really thought about what's required here. Edit: I don't mean to suggest this could never work, I mean satellite have been a thing for years. But at this point local storage is still vastly more practical for almost everybody. Edit2: Also I agree with brudgers that you came across as gratuitously uncivil.
- jfindley 10y ago
  > You're talking about stills. The data requirements for video are massive. The vast, vast, VAST majority of war photo journalism is stills. This may change in the future, but in general video journalism in war is handled very differently, has different operating parameters (for example tends to be conducted further back from the front lines, involves way more people, etc), and doesn't typically use SLRs at all. > Also remember that what you're replacing here is the transfer of pre-edited footage, of which there is likely to be a huge amount. You refer to files of "a few MB or less" elsewhere, which suggests you haven't really thought about what's required here. For some reason you appear to be shifting from photo journalism in warzones and other hostile and hazardous situations to videos taken in London... I'm not sure how this is related to the previous posts in the thread, and trying to completely shift the discussion then claiming that I haven't thought about what's required seems somewhat disingenuous at best.
  - Joeboy 10y ago
    I accept that your argument is more reasonable if you're talking about stills, but the article is about video, and presumably that's what everybody else here is talking about. > For some reason you appear to be shifting from photo journalism in warzones and other hostile and hazardous situations to videos taken in London My point was that the measures you suggest for worst case scenarios do not even make sense in best case scenarios (London being a highly developed first world capital city).
    - jfindley 10y ago
      > I accept that your argument is more reasonable if you're talking about stills, but the article is about video, and presumably that's what everybody else here is talking about. The article is not "about video". The article mentions both, and if you read the original letter[0], you'll find it does too. > My point was that the measures you suggest for worst case scenarios do not even make sense in best case scenarios (London being a highly developed first world capital city). Making sense for London is irrelevant. Read the actual letter[0] - it talks about, and only about "...the most dangerous parts of the world", and protecting against "authoritarian governments or criminals". Obviously, if that's not what you're doing, then different solutions might be better. 0: https://freedom.press/news/over-150-filmmakers-and-photojournalists-call-major-camera-manufacturers-build-encryption-their-cameras/ https://freedom.press/news/over-150-filmmakers-and-photojour...
      - Joeboy 10y ago
        You're right, it does mention photojournalism, I should have read it more carefully. Apparently we've been at least somewhat at cross-purposes. My point about was that video journalism is likely to generate huge quantities of data, which is inconvenient to transfer even in relatively favourable circumstances, let alone adverse ones. Perhaps we can agree that comms infrastructure is going to be no better in most war zones than in London.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  > maybe heavily compressed 720p would be acceptable News networks often run cell phone videos sent in by eye witnesses/viewers/etc (or even video via sat phone), so the bar for quality probably isn't that high.
  - Joeboy 10y ago
    But they do not, in general, use professional journalists who record footage using cell phones. If you get a good angle of the Trump assassination you can record it on whatever device you want and people will want it. If you're recording interviews with civilians while nobody's being bombed or shot at, they'll want reasonably professional looking footage.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      It's probably not a good idea to hypothesize about attacks on individuals; you might want to rewrite your post. Of course TV stations want incoming footage to meet broadcast quality standards - having worked in narrative film for a while I fully agree that better is better because while you can go down in quality for lower bandwidth it's basically impossible to go back up again. On the other hand if the footage is coming from an actual war zone such as Aleppo or the future smoking ruins of Atlanta then news organizations will take whatever they can get. Absent a perfect reliable solution for moving such data around in dreadful conditions everyone is just gonna have to compromise - half a loaf is better than no bread.
- mattkrause 10y ago
  > maybe heavily compressed 720p would be acceptable News networks often run cell phone videos sent in by eye witnesses/viewers/etc (or even video via sat phone), so the bar for quality probably isn't that high.
gaius 10y ago
I am a former employee of a news agency you have all heard of. 2.7MP is plenty for a news image, tho' more is better - this is what our people were shooting with Nikon D1/D1h. A satellite phone at even modem-speed will blow your budget faster than you can blink if you use it to send full resolution photos...

Joeboy 10y ago

You're talking about stills. The data requirements for video are massive. For me, in London, the most practical solution is still usually to hand the editor a USB drive in person. Yes, maybe heavily compressed 720p would be acceptable for some war journalism, but that's still going to be impossible to live stream reliably from almost anywhere in the world. And unless you're getting something spectacular, no mainstream TV station will want to use your crappy footage. Also remember that what you're replacing here is the transfer of pre-edited footage, of which there is likely to be a huge amount. You refer to files of "a few MB or less" elsewhere, which suggests you haven't really thought about what's required here. Edit: I don't mean to suggest this could never work, I mean satellite have been a thing for years. But at this point local storage is still vastly more practical for almost everybody. Edit2: Also I agree with brudgers that you came across as gratuitously uncivil.

jfindley 10y ago
> You're talking about stills. The data requirements for video are massive. The vast, vast, VAST majority of war photo journalism is stills. This may change in the future, but in general video journalism in war is handled very differently, has different operating parameters (for example tends to be conducted further back from the front lines, involves way more people, etc), and doesn't typically use SLRs at all. > Also remember that what you're replacing here is the transfer of pre-edited footage, of which there is likely to be a huge amount. You refer to files of "a few MB or less" elsewhere, which suggests you haven't really thought about what's required here. For some reason you appear to be shifting from photo journalism in warzones and other hostile and hazardous situations to videos taken in London... I'm not sure how this is related to the previous posts in the thread, and trying to completely shift the discussion then claiming that I haven't thought about what's required seems somewhat disingenuous at best.
- Joeboy 10y ago
  I accept that your argument is more reasonable if you're talking about stills, but the article is about video, and presumably that's what everybody else here is talking about. > For some reason you appear to be shifting from photo journalism in warzones and other hostile and hazardous situations to videos taken in London My point was that the measures you suggest for worst case scenarios do not even make sense in best case scenarios (London being a highly developed first world capital city).
  - jfindley 10y ago
    > I accept that your argument is more reasonable if you're talking about stills, but the article is about video, and presumably that's what everybody else here is talking about. The article is not "about video". The article mentions both, and if you read the original letter[0], you'll find it does too. > My point was that the measures you suggest for worst case scenarios do not even make sense in best case scenarios (London being a highly developed first world capital city). Making sense for London is irrelevant. Read the actual letter[0] - it talks about, and only about "...the most dangerous parts of the world", and protecting against "authoritarian governments or criminals". Obviously, if that's not what you're doing, then different solutions might be better. 0: https://freedom.press/news/over-150-filmmakers-and-photojournalists-call-major-camera-manufacturers-build-encryption-their-cameras/ https://freedom.press/news/over-150-filmmakers-and-photojour...
    - Joeboy 10y ago
      You're right, it does mention photojournalism, I should have read it more carefully. Apparently we've been at least somewhat at cross-purposes. My point about was that video journalism is likely to generate huge quantities of data, which is inconvenient to transfer even in relatively favourable circumstances, let alone adverse ones. Perhaps we can agree that comms infrastructure is going to be no better in most war zones than in London.
mattkrause 10y ago
> maybe heavily compressed 720p would be acceptable News networks often run cell phone videos sent in by eye witnesses/viewers/etc (or even video via sat phone), so the bar for quality probably isn't that high.
- Joeboy 10y ago
  But they do not, in general, use professional journalists who record footage using cell phones. If you get a good angle of the Trump assassination you can record it on whatever device you want and people will want it. If you're recording interviews with civilians while nobody's being bombed or shot at, they'll want reasonably professional looking footage.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    It's probably not a good idea to hypothesize about attacks on individuals; you might want to rewrite your post. Of course TV stations want incoming footage to meet broadcast quality standards - having worked in narrative film for a while I fully agree that better is better because while you can go down in quality for lower bandwidth it's basically impossible to go back up again. On the other hand if the footage is coming from an actual war zone such as Aleppo or the future smoking ruins of Atlanta then news organizations will take whatever they can get. Absent a perfect reliable solution for moving such data around in dreadful conditions everyone is just gonna have to compromise - half a loaf is better than no bread.
mattkrause 10y ago
> maybe heavily compressed 720p would be acceptable News networks often run cell phone videos sent in by eye witnesses/viewers/etc (or even video via sat phone), so the bar for quality probably isn't that high.

gaius 10y ago

I am a former employee of a news agency you have all heard of. 2.7MP is plenty for a news image, tho' more is better - this is what our people were shooting with Nikon D1/D1h. A satellite phone at even modem-speed will blow your budget faster than you can blink if you use it to send full resolution photos...