Giving Away the Farm

If you don't like moaners, don't read today's post, because I am going to have a whinge!


Many wedding photographers provide their clients DVDs with the image files from their wedding day - many do not, and some will supply them for a fee.


Photographers who never offer files on a disk, or who charge for the files, tend to be highly respected professionals. Men and women with really impressive reputations, amazing talent and great skill. They know something that you may not have realised - they know that you do not really care much about their skill, talent or experience  - you just want some photos!  But still, their Names - and ultimately, your satisfaction - depends on you receiving photographs prepared, printed and presented with the individual care that their reputation is built on.


They also know that it doesn't matter how hard they worked for you or good their photography is,  the photos people see on Facebook or in a packet of prints that you hand around to your friends is their best advertisement.  They don't want  a stack of 20cent prints in a department store photo album to be the measure of their skill and efforts!


A photographer whose only commitment is to provide a set of files on a disk has a different mind set. How the pictures turn out is not their concern. It is your responsibility and and they don't much care where you get them done. They work cheap, and count on low price and ignorance to keep them in business.


Of course, they will do their best to ensure you have good pictures... the trouble is, good pictures are pictures taken with an understanding of how the photos will eventually be used. The file burnt to a disk may print well for a small book, but be useless as an enlargement - good for Internet viewing but poor in a flushmount album, acceptable in a digital album, but not work in a traditional album and so on. 


Specifying "high Resolution" files doesn't actually mean anything - or rather, it means different things to different people, and I'll talk about that a bit later.


When I know that I will be managing prints, albums and so on, I have a vested interest in ensuring that the files are not only of the highest quality, but that they are in an appropriate format for the various uses to which they are going to be put. 


What is more, knowing in advance how they will be used, I can photograph each wedding with those uses in mind; I need to be sure that,  in addition to the "standard" photos that make up most wedding collections,  there will be images in the portfolio that will be ideal for each planned use.


Why isn't it enough to just be sure that all the images are high resolution (HiRes)?  Can't HIRes files be enlarged for any anticipated use... unfortunately not:  HiRes is not a meaningful term. When you ask most  burn-and-shoot photographers what they mean by HiRes, they tend to talk about how many megapixels their camera captures- but the little toy cameras in cell phones have more megapixels than some professional SLR cameras. You would never think of them as HiRes! These photographers are mixing up pixel counts with resolution and digital capture with output. It is the output resolution that counts! Without going into technical detail, it is all about the final image, not the file it came from. 


Printing presses (used for digital photo books)  and inkjet printers used for most quality prints and albums, have different requirement, but basically you need a file that can provide 300 dots of ink(dpi) for every linear inch (25mm). of your print. If your photographer has supplied you with typical jpeg files direct from the camera to the disk, they will not manage this. If he shot in RAW, and then used default settings from most conversion software, it will still not be set up for enlargements  - but pictures up to A4 will be fine - usually - and other uses will be "good enough, but a long way short of what they should be. 

I was interested to read an ad from a "professional photographer" which offered hi-resolution files for purchased on disk: up to 250 files, edited and able to be printed as large as 5"x7". To me, that does not suggest a high resolution;  a 300 dpi file could be produced easily from a 2 megapixel camera; I suspect those files have been intentionally reduced to prevent enlarging, but they are still High Resolution.

The standard printer used for pro quality albums prints at 600 dpi. I work with a company that has a one-of-a-kind 3600 dpi printer; try uploading your typical shoot-and-burn files to that and then tell me about hi-res files.


You get what you pay for - so if you pay for a disk, that is what you get; the photos on it are often just an excuse to collect a fee for the disk. . So you say "I want hi-res images on a disk and the right to print them later"  and that's what you will get, too. But since you have taken on the responsibility of preparing the files for  printing you really have no comeback when the results are second class.


I'm sorry this has turned into such a diatribe, but I was just shown a set of files on a CD and asked if I could print an album from them. Of the 350 or so files, about 150 are suitable. Isn't 150 enough for an album? A small one, anyway?  Maybe, but all the "good" slides are from the garden part of the wedding ceremony, and most of these are so similar that you couldn't use more than half of them - 19 shots of the first kiss is all very well, but it doesn't tell very much of the story of the wedding day. Add 10 quite acceptable photos of the family groups, one of the bride walking up the aisle and that's about the sum of it. Very few of the indoor shots are any better than the guests took.  I could make some nice Canvas prints and some reasonable enlargements... and they will look good on Facebook, but for an album...


I will try to restore enough of the preparation  photos and the reception shots to make an album, but it won't be quick and it won't be easy. I can't help thinking that, if the photographer had known she was going to make the album, she would have made a very different set of pictures!