A Little Higher Fidelity in Those Product Shots

I just uploaded a fairly long addendum to the PrimaLuna post. I was just about to add a picture of the Music Hall MMF 2.1, but I got put off by the low quality of the photograph. So, just for fun, I downloaded the shot from the importer's website and did a couple of quick corrections.


Here's the importer's JPEG (above)...



...And here's my quick fix. Better? There is a lot more that could be done, and the shot itself could have been lit better. But at least you can see the product more clearly.

It does bring up an interesting point. When I used to teach darkroom printing, one of the primary points I would always try to make is that skill is not so much knowing how to effect changes, but knowing what changes to make. The controls available in the darkroom are really fairly rudimentary; it's knowing when you need what that counts.

If anything, this aphorism is more important now by a hundredfold. Granted, we all know how to apply a myriad corrections to our pictures, and the range of interpretation is far greater than it used to be. But even so, the most important thing to know is what the picture needs, pictorially or visually—not just how to apply the changes, but knowing what the changes should be.

(If you want to try your own hand at improving the top JPEG, I'll be happy post your version too.)

Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON

Tony Rowlett [see comments] might like this version better (click on the images to see them larger):