Digital cameras suitable for magazine work

[mountainsallaround]

Last year I bought a digital; a Pentax Optio 43WR point and shoot. It’s been a truckload of fun. It has survived repeated dunkings, I can take it with me on rainy days, and I’m only rarely tempted to throw it in the river after wrestling with the point-and-shoot digital camera “user interface from hell.”

It’s part of the fishing kit, and it’s accounted for all the pictures on my http://www.troutunderground.com fly fishing site.

Now I’m looking for a digital with a bit more quality — something that could even handle illustration work for a magazine article.

What’s the difference between a high-quality point and shoot and pro camera with similar pixel counts? Is there a real difference in image quality, or is a pixel simply a pixel?

And finally, how does a 7 MP point-and-shoot compare with a 6 MP DSLR?

I understand the concept of interchangeable lenses, but I still have my old set of Canon manual focus lenses for my still-working Canon F1 bodies should I need an ultra-wide or a 300.

Love to hear what everyone has to say.
TC

[Zach Matthews]

TC-

Your camera is suitable for some magazine work.

[mountainsallaround]

Thanks Zach.

At this point, I’d be hard-pressed to buy a low-end DSLR when my 20 year-old Canon film gear still works, and offers better quality too (if less convenience).

I was mostly interested in the image difference between your average 7MP point-and-shoot and a DSLR of similar resoution. Didn’t know if there was more to the story beyond the resolution, like a better signal processor or even a larger CCD area producing better results.

Interestingly, my 43WR produces JPEG files in excess of 2MB at the highest resolution.

I also looked at a few digitals that produced images in excess of 3000 pixels. Dividing that by 300 (for the 300 dpi image requirement of many magazines) means that the maximum imaged width is 10″ by (whatever the vertical resolution is)?

Am I figuring that right?

TC

[Matt Tucker]

Megapixels are often over-rated.

[mountainsallaround]

Thanks guys!

As someone with a few years experience as a newspaper photographer, I’m on board with the whole idea of manual camera controls.

What passes for a user interface on a lot of these things is beyond belief. Give me my old Canon F1 pro bodies, which — despite their Humvee-esque weight — actually take pictures when you push the button, and can be adjusted to shoot almost anything by twisting two dials.

Last week I was contacted by two editors looking specifically for Upper Sacramento pictures. They found me via my uppersac.com fishing report, and while I had a few pictures to send, I could have done a little better if the images had been capable of some size.

I get the impression that the low-end DSLRs don’t offer a lot of benefit over my old Canons. Think I’ll wait for another generation or two before sinking the big dollars into something.

In the meantime, the wife wants a point-and-shoot, so maybe I just goose up that purchase to something nice in the 6-8 MP level and leave it at that.

Thanks again! I understand pictures just fine, but have some real voids when it comes to digital technology…

TC

[Matt Tucker]

You could always pick up a film scanner and scan the negatives from your film 35mm?

[mountainsallaround]

Tucker:

Thanks for the suggestion, but I’ll probably just shoot chromes; I have a flatbed scanner with the transparency lid so I can scan anything I need for online use.

Zach — are magazine covers routinely being shot on digital cameras nowadays? Do the 6MP DSLRs cut it for applications like that?

Tight lines,
TC

[G.A.]

The key word is “suitable”, and what it means.

[Zach Matthews]

Hey G.A.-

I can’t speak for truly high end work but I do know that flyfishing magazines are on a really limited budget compared to women’s fashion work, etc.

[G.A.]

Zach

I did not know that you shot the Norfork image, I had no idea.

[Zach Matthews]

Oh G.A., I didn’t, I just saw it before publication.

[mountainsallaround]

G.A.

The quality of magazine photography might have suffered due to the rise of “not quite all there” digital cameras, but I have some faith that might prove to be a temporary problem.

As the technology improves (everyone remember where it was fouryears ago), hopefully the images run by magazines will too.

Certainly, it would be nice to use images from photographers skilled enough to actually control focus, but in that vein, I must sadly agree with Zach. Fly fishing magazines aren’t exactly overfunded, to the point that I’ve developed a fairly ho-hum attitude about doing any editorial writing work for them — and I’ve been an advertising copywriter for 20 years.

Slow pays, low payment rates, editorial coverage tainted with product placement —

[anonymous]

I sat with Larry Largay for several hours at the fly tying show, Somerset in November 2002.

[Zach Matthews]

Hey Fred –

Cover shots aren’t at all a problem for a modern digital camera, because they are vertically oriented, as you point out.

[grybear]

🙂
Hi, Harvey here, new to this list but an lifetime outdoorsman and an amiture photographer – I use a faily good 3 mpx digital – Lumix FZ3 and a couple canon film cameras I recently inharited from a close freind. I hope to be doing quite a bit of stream & lake fly fishing this year – I have recently moved back to the Sierra Nevada range about 70 mi. south west of Lake Tahoe.
Any one in the group interested in shareing trips & photos?

Harvey

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