by Rolando Gomez
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The sharpness of your subject’s “eyes” are critical in an image. Many beginning photographers with autofocus cameras tend to have the nose, chin or shoulder in focus, forgetting to place their focusing spot on the subject’s eyes when shooting. This is a prominent problem with photographers spoiled by autofocus cameras. Photographers who tend to rely on the camera, which by default focus at the center of the image.
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Out of focus eyes, or soft-eyes, are a common reason for a photo editor to toss your images in a trash can, or send them back to you unpublished. Once you’re labeled as a “soft-shooter” by a photo editor, you stand a chance of your images never being looked at again by that same editor. Clients who wind up with prints, such as models, don’t like soft images.
| There are photographers who point the focus mark of the camera on the eyes, compose then shoot, but when shooting film, they don’t understand why the eyes in their images still look soft, or parts of the image appear soft after the images are scanned. This holds true especially for photographers who don’t have scanners that allow the user to set the focus point on the image. This scanning problem is inherent because of the natural film curvature, no matter how flat film looks in a holder, some part of the final scan normally is not as sharp as other parts of the image because of the curvature. This can be even worse when scanning slides (transparencies) still in their plastic or cardboard mounts—it’s better to scan slides out of their mounts. |
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Taking scanner deficiencies into account, along with the snapshots technique, there is now a sure-fire way of getting images done quickly and with quality. First, make an original scan at the highest optical resolution your scanner can manage, and save it in an archive file as the original scan. Now store your negatives or slides safely without worry, as with a high resolution scan in the can, you won't be looking for that slide or negative and rescanning it for another client. Then make a copy of that image file, and use it as you working file. I start my working files usually at 300 dpi resolution, full-frame, 8 x 12 inches (for 35mm) so I have a file large enough for publication. Should I need one for the web, after I’ve made all my corrections, I save a reduced resolution file in TIFF format. |
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A TIFF (tagged image file format) doesn’t compress my images with mathematical algorithms—JPG’s do. Every time you open a jpeg file, you rely on mathematical formula to recreate pixels that were “thrown away” when it was saved as a jpeg. Every time a jpeg is made, the image degrades to some extent, and this can lead to images with jpeg artifacts that show up on the web or in prints. If you have to jpeg an image, do this as the last step in the process.
As an example, after I’ve made my 72 dpi resolution tiff, with the longest side of the image at 450 pixels, I then run it through a droplet on my desktop created in Adobe ImageReady or I use Photoshop and "save for web." This reduces your file size considerably, as no image preview is saved in the little jpg icon as well as other file size, reducting features.
If you learn to focus on the eyes, compose the image, shoot and then save the final image as a jpeg when needed, your subject’s eyes will be sharp and you will not be labeled as a soft-shooter.
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©2004 Rolando Gomez