SnapperTalk

Often one receives images from occasional-use stringers that are of poor technical quality and/or resolution. It’s easy to assume that this is due to to using a bad-quality camera, but in many cases it appears it is down to the photographer not having the camera set up properly. Too many people with good quality cameras capable of shooting e.g. 4MP images have them set to shoot at lower resolution and/or too high compression, often in order to get more images on the card. When dealing with images from a camera you haven’t personally used before, here are some tips:

1. The key step is to preview the image in Photo Mechanic – because in the right-hand column it shows a lot of information about the image including which make and model of camera it was shot on (unless the image has undergone processing that has stripped out the EXIF info)

2. Go to the extremely useful digital camera specifications page at Digital Photography Review and look up that camera model.

3. Armed with all the details such as possible resolution sizes (e.g. 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 1024 x 768, 640 x 480 etc) and available compression levels (e.g. Super-Fine, Fine, Normal etc) go back to the photographer and explain how they need to set the camera to obtain best results.