PCPhoto Features Featured Articles Beyond Megapixels
Beyond MegapixelsToday's camera manufacturers are thinking about more than pixels. |
Page 5 of 5 Creating Distinctions Understanding color and exposure always has been critical, but its now even more crucial for digital image creation. Todays cameras can produce great results automatically, but theyre not foolproof. To create quality digital files, photographers have to understand whats possible with their cameras. The current generation of EOS digital SLRs offers a great range of in-camera color adjustments for photographers, says Westfall. The cameras include custom tone curves, multiple white-balance settings, dual-axis white-balance compensation, white-balance bracketing and multiple color spaces. As we move forward, well continue to improve our products based on customer feedback and advancements in technology. One must consider color space, believes Knaur, who explains that the complete digital workflow from camera to printer to final print involves photographers having a greater understanding of computers and, specifically, a color-managed workflow. As a result, camera manufacturers have had to become software engineers, too. Says Knaur, It creates more of a challenge because we have to build more into the camera. Adobe Photoshop provides us the control that was once only available at your corner film lab. Now we have the ability to help photographers not only take their pictures, but edit, enhance and output their photographs. While requiring new skills, this development has given photographers greater control over their creativity. One of the most important aspects of digital photography is that it completes the entire creative circle, offers Heiner. Before, if you imagined an image in your mind, you had to hand that film to somebody else. With digital photography and understanding all the steps in the process, you now can imagine an image in your mind and carry it all the way through to matting it, framing it and hanging it on your wall. The fierce competition of the megapixel war has inspired innovation. Along with that progress, much of what consumers have wantedlarger LCD screens, reduced shutter lag, easier-to-use softwarehas found its way into each new generation of cameras. |