The following photos show just one of the many reasons why you would want to hire a professional photographer with the proper equipment to do photos you might otherwise try yourself. Along with giving you great portraits, a professional can free your images from digital prison and product quality prints to enjoy for ever. As you look at these images, pay attention to the differences in detail and quality. You will be looking at 3 sets of images as 5x7 format. Each set contains the full image and the cropped image so you can see the effect when the image is enlarged. The same lighting and setup was used. The first set is iPhone hand held. Second set is iPhone on a tripod and the final image is a professional quality Canon 5D Mark II Digital SLR. While it's obvious the iPhone is no match for a pro quality camera for many reasons, many people believe they are getting great images on their camera because they look good on the screen. However, once you try to zoom in or print an enlargement from the iPhone or other point and shoot camera, the results can be less than acceptable.


Notice how all of the full images look sharp and nice but pay close attention to the detail of each cropped image. Also notice the color of the iPhone Photos compared to the Canon 5D Mark II DSLR.

Notice how this image is blurry because it was hand held. This is a common problem with camera phone problems because it's very difficult to hold the camera still. Also notice that the image is starting to pixelate with rough edges.

To give the iPhone a fair chance at competing, it was put on a tripod with a special iPhone Tripod Mount. Again, the full image looks sharp.

On this cropped in image, it is sharper due to the tripod, but you can still see pixelation creeping in and the color still is not that great.

Now with a professional high quality camera, the color is what it should be, the image is very sharp.

Even when cropped in heavily as was done in the iPhone Photos, you can see that the image is still very sharp, the colors look good and there is no apparent pixelation going on.

A final note. While equipment is important, how that equipment is used is also very important as well. Proper use of equipment by a trained photographer is going to yield the best possible images and prints. And to answer a very common questions, "No, you can't always fix problems with an image in Photoshop". In fact, you can actually make and image look worse when enlarged or printed if you don't start with a good image and over do processing in photoshop.

The best images and prints are produced by using the proper equipment and get as much right on the camera as possible! Have fun with your camera or camera phone, but if you aren't trained as a photographer, hire someone that is for the important photo events!

Photography in the Digital Age

In this day in age of digital cameras that seem to be everywhere, many people feel that they don't need professional photography. They will pull out their phone, take some photos with it and then figure it's good enough. While new smart phone and other small digital camera do an amazing job over the point and shoot cameras of just a few years ago. There are however, a number of things to consider when you decide whether or not to hire a professional.  

• Most point and shoot cameras and smart phone cameras do not allow for much creative control which can limit the ability to get the proper exposure and desired effect in the camera.
• The lens on these cameras and all of the smart phone and compact cameras are very small and can't match the quality of a dedicated lens of an DSLR camera. Even if the megapixel rating is the same, the quality of the images from the small lens built into these phones and point shoot cameras will not hold up compared to a DSLR or other professional camera. They may look good in the preview or even on the computer, but as you start to look closer, the difference is apparent.
• It's very difficult to hold a camera steady when holding away from your body which is what you must do with most Point and Shoot Cameras and all camera phones I've ever seen. If there is even the slightest movement of the camera, an image will look blurry or fuzzy if you zoom in enough. This can make final prints look less than desirable especially on larger images.
• The sensors that capture the images in these cameras are very small and do not have the ability to capture the detail of the larger cameras.

It's very easy to look at the preview of an image on the display and think it's good. Sometimes the problems do not become noticeable until the image is previewed in larger sizes or zoomed in on.