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1,028,000 Digital Photographs 205

Posted by michael from the quantity-beats-quality dept.
cdneng2 writes "Rob Galbraith has an in-depth article on the digital photo process of Sports Illustrated. The article walks through SI's digital workflow of Super Bowl XXXVIII as it sorts through the 16,183 digital pictures shot by eleven of the magazine's staff photographers and the process all the way to the cover of the magazine. Sorry, no Janet Jackson or swimsuit pics in this article."
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1,028,000 Digital Photographs More

1,028,000 Digital Photographs

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  • Oh that's good (Score:3, Funny)

    by HungWeiLo ( 250320 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @02:43PM (#8613380)
    "...has an in-depth article on the digital photo process of Sports Illustrated."

    I have found the next good excuse when the IT vice squad comes around again!

  • Kids stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) * on Friday March 19, 2004 @02:43PM (#8613381) Journal
    [note: this could be construed as a plug. Perhaps it even is, re-reading. You have been warned]

    My company [s-a-l-t.co.uk] (7 of us in total) wrote an asset management system used on a major film in a previous life (we were called 'unique-id' then). We were given the option of being paid and not disclosing the film, or not being paid and letting everyone know which one. It was a *big* film - we took the getting paid option, so you'll have to guess which :-)

    The rushes coming in totalled 40 DTF tapes per working day over several months, several hundred million images in all. The same system was used on the 'The world was not enough' trailer, where the large quantities of mostly-naked women
    gyrating around with oil being poured on them suddenly made the visualisation tools *far* better than they used to be...

    Every image (every frame) was accessible and searchable, notes could be made and a proxy version played back over the net. It was completely automated - logging was done by simply untarring the data-tape or playing the rfid-labelled video tape, with metadata being inferred from path names or rfid tag, all very simple and very effective. Everything was written using OSS tools, mainly PHP and MySQL (and yes, we paid for our MySQL licences :-) You could do things like drag an image out of IE/Moz and drop into 'Shake', with Shake being instructed to load the real footage not the proxy version you were looking at in the browser - this image-based-project-load alone saved enormous time when you're dealing with millions of images.

    Simon.

    • Re:Kids stuff (Score:5, Funny)

      by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:14PM (#8613693) Journal
      It was a *big* film - we took the getting paid option, so you'll have to guess which :-)
      Well, it's pretty obvious:

      a) You aren't too keen on telling anyone what movie you were associated with.

      b) After paying you, they had no money left over in the budget for decent actors.

      Gigli , right?

    • The same system was used on the 'The world was not enough' trailer, where the large quantities of mostly-naked women gyrating around with oil being poured on them suddenly made the visualisation tools *far* better than they used to be...

      Just the thought of mostly-named women gyrating round with oil being poured on them makes my, er, visualization tool much better too, if you believe size matters.

  • Que "I have at least that many pron pics' posts (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    GO!

  • Hah. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) * <.mark. .at. .seventhcycle.net.> on Friday March 19, 2004 @02:45PM (#8613407) Homepage
    Sorry, no Janet Jackson or swimsuit pics in this article.

    The poster to this story is pretty funny... I think most of us nerds here cared more about that dangling tit than anything else in the game. Then again... I think most everyone cares about the dangling tit more than the actual game.

    History has a funny way of remembering things. If you don't believe me, think about how many people sum up the Clinton presidency into one word: blowjob.

    • Re:Hah. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TwistedSquare ( 650445 )
      I'm still puzzled as to why that was such a massive deal, I mean everyone has seen female breasts at some point during their lifetime, so why the big fuss? Just because it was prime-time?

      • Re:Hah. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by el-spectre ( 668104 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:12PM (#8613664) Journal
        Mostly because the country is in the process of a very conservative swing right now, and some folks just live to be offended.
        • I was offended because I watched a little kid turn to his mother and say "Mommy what was that".

          That was prime time television. Our country charged a woman with child endangerment for driving a car that had an airbrushed image of a stripper around a poll- all 'bathing suit' skin shown, yet we allow a celebrity to get away with popping her tit out, in front of MILLIONS of children.

          Therefore let us apply the standards of decency across the board- jail'em both.

          (or, of course, get over it... watching a littl

          • Re:Actually- (Score:5, Insightful)

            by el-spectre ( 668104 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:21PM (#8614730) Journal
            I assume that you are a more conservative person than I. While I respect your right to feel whatever you like:

            1) Kids see nudity. Whether it's walking in on mommy and daddy in bed, a parent changing, whatever.... unless an adult freaks out about it, it's generally not a big deal. Worst case, they might ask some questions about anatomy that they'll need to know the answers to anyway.

            2) "being offended" is really your decision. Another person can't offend you. (for example, A friend might jokingly say "Hey, asshole" and I'd laugh. A stranger does it and I might get mad. The reaction is MINE, not the speakers.

            3) Honestly, it's a complicated and rough world. Perhaps if kids weren't shielded from it as much they would be more well adjusted. As it is, people lose their minds over a breast. God forbid we have 6 billion of them on the planet...
            • ... conservative. I'm the guy shooting nudes for artwork (well, not up here in Chilly Rochester atm).

              I've thought long and hard about how that looked and It was just so blatant to show "Hey, look, here's a TIT AND I'M DOING IT!" that it just pissed me off. It wasn't an accident like initially claimed (more anger).

              And as for European beaches, been there, enjoyed that :)
              • Ah, I see. Yeah, the stunt itself was pretty blatant and lame. I don't have a problem with the folks who say that it was inappropriate. I'm just tired of the "the children will be ruined" crap we've been hearing for so long now.

                I'm just mad she didn't do it 10 years ago. She was prettier before she had all that work done trying to look young...

          • Re:Actually- (Score:4, Insightful)

            by iantri ( 687643 ) <iantri@gmxSTRAW.net minus berry> on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:21PM (#8614737) Homepage
            You're going to be in for a rude awakening if you ever visit some European beaches..
          • "get away with popping her tit out, in front of MILLIONS of children."

            Ok, then try to stop all the breastfeeding in the US. That is 2 breasts in front of millions of children. Twice as bad. Just because you are uncomfortable because you have something better to do then explain to you child what a breast is (like drink beer and watch fat guys bump into each-other) doesn't mean that the child was uncomfortable.
        • No it is really more about expected content of a media event that parents used to control what they want their kids to see. They have that right. They usually expect a certain level of cleanliness from prime time shows and sports events, this violated that without warning. This is what pissed folks off.

          Anyway I personally think her breast was about the only good thing in the whole of the half time show...

      • Answer (Score:2)

        by bonch ( 38532 )
        I'm still puzzled as to why that was such a massive deal, I mean everyone has seen female breasts at some point during their lifetime, so why the big fuss? Just because it was prime-time?

        You don't think it's a big deal that, to the access of all on public airwaves including little children, a major teen idol ripped the top off of another woman in front of millions of people as a form of entertainment?

        We already have enough 12-year-old sluts who think they have to suck dick for attention and 12-year-old b
        • You don't think it's a big deal that, to the access of all on public airwaves including little children, a major teen idol ripped the top off of another woman in front of millions of people as a form of entertainment?

          Surely treating this as a sexual act is part of the problem? By making it shocking you are contributing the obsessing about sex. If you just said, "hey its a breast, everyone has them", then it would not be a big deal, and it would not be sexing up young children.

          I'm guessing from your po

        • Look at the success of Passion of the Christ, despite all the liberal media bashing.

          Oh, please. It was only because the "liberal media" gave TPotC a zillion dollars worth of free publicity that the anyone went to see the movie at all. Cry me a river about the liberal media while Mel Gibson lines his pockets.

    • Re:Hah. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by AKnightCowboy ( 608632 )
      The poster to this story is pretty funny... I think most of us nerds here cared more about that dangling tit than anything else in the game. Then again... I think most everyone cares about the dangling tit more than the actual game.

      In all honesty I don't even remember who played in the Super Bowl this year, but I remember Janet Jackson had a nipple shield on. I feel sorry for Boston or Dallas or whoever won the Super Bowl this year.. it'll go down in history as the event where Janet Jackson showed her ol

      • Real fans will remember who won Super Bowl 38 (New England). Moreover, by the end of the year, the nipple incident will have long faded from memory. But New England will be listed as the Super Bowl winners for a long time.
    • Watch this week's southpark - it's *incredibly* appropriate to current events.

      And people thought it was just potty humor...

  • Umm (Score:3, Redundant)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) * on Friday March 19, 2004 @02:47PM (#8613421) Homepage
    I'm surprised Sports Illustrated uses relatively cheap hardware and software to edit their photos. ACDSee (Fire!) is $50, and they use some pretty standard (and not all that impressive) IBM laptops for most of the field action. Even at the studios in New York they're using dual 450 G4's. No dual G5's yet. Anyone know how much that camera costs?

    • Re:Umm (Score:2, Informative)

      by mrondello ( 261386 )
      6k - 10k for the canon 1d or 1ds.

      • Re:Umm (Score:3, Informative)

        by Lizard_King ( 149713 )
        You can purchase the EOS-1D [zones.com] (8 MegaPixels) for $4,499.99.

        The EOS-1DS [zones.com] (11 MegaPixels) is $7,999.99.

        • Re:Umm (Score:3, Informative)

          by angle_slam ( 623817 )
          You need lenses too. L series telephotos are far from cheap. At least 1000 each. And each photographer probably had multiple lenses and/or multiple bodies.
          • Damn! Should have read the article first:

            Staff photographer Bob Rosato's collection of gear is fairly typical. To a football game he takes four or five EOS-1D bodies and 600mm f/4, 400mm f/2.8, 300mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8, and 50mm f/1.4 lenses. For basketball, he adds five or six EOS-1Ds cameras and dispenses with the 400 and 600mm lenses. Of the ten or so camera bodies that he takes to a basketball game, many are of course mounted overhead or around the basket for remote operation.

            Camera equipment ain't

          • Re:Umm (Score:4, Insightful)

            by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:33PM (#8613927)
            Yeah, but they may have had lenses from their film cameras... that seems to be one of the major big selling points for a professional/near professional grade digital SLR.

          • most L lenses are about 1500+ (Score:4, Informative)

            by purduephotog ( 218304 ) <`moc.tibroni' `ta' `hcsrih'> on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:10PM (#8614552) Homepage Journal
            I own the 70-200 2.8L. It is a gorgeous work of art. Is balanced perfectly, is tack sharp, and covers nearly all portrait ranges I need, as well as bringing in the ladies...

            In 1995 I think it cost me ~1200$.

            Figure a typical shooter is going to want the following

            16-35mm 2.8L, $1400
            70-210 2.8L IS, $1700
            24-70 2.8L, $1300
            And if you are really lucky
            400mm f2.8L IS, $6500

            The 300 2.8L is cheaper by far, but you usually need that extra reach outdoors....

          • Re:Umm (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Civil_Disobedient ( 261825 )
            Not true. You can get Canon L glass on some of the middle-range lenses for half that. The problem is that middle-range will not get the kinds of shots SI needs. They need big-honkin' glass to get shots from any distance at a good speed. Just look at all the pretty white lens bodies on the sidelines. The 2.8L 400mm IS USM goes for about $5500.

            The funny thing is, they use the same glass for their swimsuit issue to flatten the depth, (though the 300mm is usually enough). Walkie talkies are standard issu

    • Re:Umm (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tdemark ( 512406 )
      No dual G5's yet.

      Thanks to the Quark Publishing System [quark.com], which is not Mac OS X compatible. (from Page 3 of the article)

      - Tony

    • ... is the "custom application written by Sam Greenfield" Open Source?

    • Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)

      by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:23PM (#8613805)
      I'm surprised Sports Illustrated uses relatively cheap hardware and software to edit their photos. ACDSee (Fire!) is $50, and they use some pretty standard (and not all that impressive) IBM laptops for most of the field action. Even at the studios in New York they're using dual 450 G4's. No dual G5's yet. Anyone know how much that camera costs?

      What an odd post.

      First of all, what "studios in New York"? I work in New York for a creative company, and we mostly use PC's. If someone prefers to work on Mac we issue them a Mac. Same as SI. Most people, in all honesty, prefer to work on PC's at my company, so that's what we give them. And those people work no more slowly than those using Macs (dual 450 CPU's is hardly impressive these days either, so it's a little weird that you'd put that up against the IBM T40's and dual Xeons SI is using. The last Mac we issued was a dual 1.8 G5).

      Secondly, what the hell does cost have to do with anything in qualitative terms? It's any company's responsibility to be efficient in budgeting, and part of that means choosing the cheapest tools you can that will reliably get the job done (key word being "reliably" - it's no use spending the least money you can if what you buy is going to be broken half the time). IBM Thinkpads seem a perfectly sensible idea to me for what SI is doing with them - they're reliable, they're not expensive, they're small and easily transportable, and with Pentium-M chips and 768MB of RAM they're more than adequate for what SI is using them for, which is downloading and tranferring image files. This is efficient use of tools.

      Similarly, did you even read why they're using ACDSee? We use it at my company as well. It's simply a very fast image viewer; there's nothing I know of that's faster either, or more suitable to the task of sifting through large quantities of images in as quick a time as possible. We use it for the exact same purpose.

      I'm honestly impressed at how efficient and organized it seems SI is running their image processing program. They seem to know what they're doing and they've selected the right tools for the job. Who cares if they use "cheap" cameras and PC's? You got a problem with the technical image quality on any of their recent covers?
      • First of all, what "studios in New York"?

        Argh, seems I hadn't read all the way to the end of the article.

        Still, my basic point still stands. There's no law that says you have to use one brand of products all the time, or that you have to use the fastest thing available for every mundane task (not that those T40's are slow).

      • Re:Umm (Score:4, Informative)

        by blackmonday ( 607916 ) * on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:17PM (#8614649) Homepage
        Maybe it was an odd post after all, but you didn't get what I was saying. I'm not dissapointed that they use standard off the shelf hardware / software, I'm just surprised. In the recesses of my crazy infantile mind I imagined a large organization like SI using stuff so advanced, so expensive, so grear that I'd never even heare of it. Now I know different. I actually *like* the fact that they use relatively inexpensive equipment. It means all I need is a ten thousand dollar digital camera!

    • Re:Umm (Score:3, Interesting)

      by suwain_2 ( 260792 )
      Anyone know how much that camera costs?

      The cameras are (1D)s (parenthesis because the 1Ds is a different camera costing twice as much). They've come down a bit in price now that there's a couple successors to it out, but I think you're still looking at between $3500 and $4500 for the body. The camera's pretty crazy [dpreview.com] -- up to eight frames a second means it rocks for sports and stuff.

      Don't forget, though, that this is the camera body. And in sports, you need a really fast lens if you don't want a big blur -

  • /. geeks are confused (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday March 19, 2004 @02:47PM (#8613425) Homepage Journal

    All around the world /.'ers are looking at sports pictures and saying:

    So that's are what other people look like...

    What's that bright round thing in the sky in some of the pictures? It doesn't look like any fluorescent light I've ever seen!

    How can I IM those cheerleaders "A/S/L?"

    Is there a torrent for those million-plus pictures?

    www.john316.com isnt a geek site! Who is that guy?

    • No, they're probably reflexively panicking, before realizing that they're only pictures of football players and that Jake Delhomme isn't about to stuff them in a locker.

      (By the way, does anyone still read SI outside of three year old copies in dentists' offices? Haven't seen anyone read a new one in ages. The ESPN TV/web/magazine empire seems to have buried them.?

    • Looking at the cheerleaders, if you have to ask what their sex is, you're definitly confused.

  • Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy@nosPAm.gmail.com> on Friday March 19, 2004 @02:48PM (#8613429) Journal
    I hadn't thought of that angle of it. One of the problems with old fashioned cameras was the fact that you only had so much film...You could only CARRY so much.

    But with a high end digital camera it practically unlimited, as long as you can offload your chips. So you don't have to pick your shots so carefully; I've never met a photographer who wouldn't rather take 10 pictures of the same thing than just one, because it's impossible to tell which picture will end up being the best. Now they can do that and it doesn't cost them a damn dime. I bet SI is getting swamped with digital photos.

    At the root of it though, it's just another facet of the same problem indemic to tech...How do you deal with the massive amount of info that you can now obtain.
    • RAW? What about PNG? Use some compression at the very least, guys...
      • I meant more in terms of viewing the pictures, not storing them. Can you imagine trying to go through 1,000,000 photos? I about committed suicide rather than going through my wedding photos.

        Image recognition software might help a little, just for sorting, but in the end, some poor bastards are going to have to go through those damn things by hand.

      • Re:Well, they could do one thing to help (Score:4, Informative)

        by gordyf ( 23004 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:00PM (#8613556)
        From what I understand, cameras that use a RAW mode are saving all the output from the CCD, without any processing at all. You can then load it into a program and apply exposure compensation, lighting adjustments and whatnot, rather than having the camera do the image processing.

        Saving as a PNG would require turning the raw CCD data into an image, which is defeating the point.
        • Lossless is lossless is lossless. That's why they call it lossless, there's no loss. it's an equivalence relation, it's transitive. am i getting through to you here? :)
          • But it's not an image. There has been no processing done on the signals to make it an image.

            From http://blanik.colorado.edu/~rtezaur/photo/other/r a w/:

            "There is a number of steps involved in converting the RAW data into an image. In no particular order, the data must be color-interpolated since most digital sensors employ color masks thereby measuring at each pixel only some of the color and light intensity information. Based on the characteristics of the color mask and the spectral sensitivity of the s
      • RAW means it's the image data taken directly from the CCD. Canon's RAW format does, in fact, have lossless compression.

      • As another poster points out, most manufacturers' RAW formats do use lossless compression, so the data is being squeezed at least a bit. More importantly, though, PNG won't do the job. Good quality digital cameras- basically anything in the digital SLR class- have more color depth than the common image formats can handle. PNG and JPEG use 24 bit color(plus 8 bits of alpha for PNG), while the cameras can produce 36 bit color. You can't display all that color depth on a monitor, which is why PNG and JPEG

      • Re:Well, they could do one thing to help (Score:4, Informative)

        by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:47PM (#8615151)
        RAW? What about PNG? Use some compression at the very least, guys...

        Understand what you're talking about, at the very least. RAW images ARE compressed- they're 10-12bit per channel files. My 10D's raw files are anywhere from 5 to 6.5MB depending upon how much detail is in the image(higher ISO settings will generate bigger files due to noise in the image), and uncompress to well over 30MB in Photoshop(part of that bloat is because photoshop does 8 or 16 bit per channel, not anything inbetween). I can do extensive color and exposure correction, as well as tweak noise reduction and sharpening functions(all cameras sharpen the image to compensate for the antialiasing filter that sits over the CCD and spreads the light across the 3 color sensors).

        Further, the true pro cameras(1D, 1Ds, 1D Mark II, etc) can save both a JPEG and a RAW file and even allow you to control exactly how the JPEG is saved- resolution and such. My 10D saves a preview thumbnail in the RAW file, and you get a little control over what resolution it is, so it's similar, but not quite the same. The 1D mark II can save the images onto two different media cards at the same time.

        JPEGs are ideal because decompression is very, very fast- and the camera has already saved a lower-resolution preview JPEG for you so there's less data to push around. RAW files require a large amount of processing, since it's raw CCD information. That includes interpolation(the R,G,B pixels are in different places!), color balance determination, etc...all the stuff the camera has a dedicated chip to handle.

        Honestly, if you read the article, the guy's problem is that he has shit for photographers- "11 guys, 11 shots of the same touchdown out of focus!" who are sloppy and too loose with their shutters simply because they can be. Digital has shifted the work from the photographer(who had to be careful since he only had so much film) to the editor, who's now swamped with the most unbelievable crap because these guys are shutter happy.

    • Re:Heh. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dan g ( 30777 )
      I've never met a photographer who wouldn't rather take 10 pictures of the same thing than just one, because it's impossible to tell which picture will end up being the best.

      Getting a good photo isn't pure luck, so just firing off a bunch of shots doesn't necessarily increase your chances of getting one. Lots of photographers (myself amongst them) would prefer to spend the time to carefully and thoughtfully set up a single shot than squeeze off ten because that one will probably be far superior to any of

  • 1,028,000 photographs I can't use (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MisterBad ( 40316 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @02:49PM (#8613445) Homepage
    I was hoping from the article name that this was going to be about a great Open Content digital photo archive, like PDPhoto [pdphoto.org], OpenPhoto [openphoto.net], or all the great stuff at the Internet Archive [archive.org] or Common Content [commoncontent.org].

    Instead it's about somebody else's photos I can't use. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.
    • Don't forget GIMP-Savvy [gimp-savvy.com]. They have over 4GB of free as in [beer|speech] pics; plus, even if you don't have any images to donate, you can contribute to the site by categorizing existing photos.
    • that has about 3600 'film' images for people to look at that want to see how different people approach a photo subject. Several I talked with found it very interesting and usefull... others told me I ought to edit more (which would, haha, defeat the purpose of posting EVERY image).

      By showing the good with the bad it teaches very quickly what worked and what didn't work. You can 'watch' as I would have walked thru the area, observing and shooting.

      Fairly fun, but that was 100 rolls of film that had to get

  • Attn: entrepeneurs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by indros13 ( 531405 ) * on Friday March 19, 2004 @02:50PM (#8613452) Homepage Journal
    "Do I like having to use two tools? No," says Jache of this two-application approach to browsing and captioning, but he can't find a single application that combines ACDSee's display speed with good captioning features.

    Forget the ???
    1. Make software that does both
    2. Sell to SI
    3. Profit!

    • Re:Attn: entrepeneurs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by greenfield ( 226319 ) <samg+slashdot@unhinged.org> on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:27PM (#8614844) Homepage
      Phil wasn't kidding here. We would definitely like an application that had the speed of ACDSee and the captioning features of MediaGrid. Throw in some good editing features and raw support and you have yourself a great product.

      If anyone is serious in terms of skills and desire to do this kind of work, drop me a note and we can talk about specifications.

    • Or you can just rename the file. I believe the shortcut on Windows is F2. Works pretty well as long as your captions don't require \ / : * ? or |.

    • ThumbsPlus 6 (Score:3, Informative)

      by ka9dgx ( 72702 ) *
      ThumbsPlus 6 [cerious.com] might be worth a look. I use its Slideshow mode to screen through the photos I shoot (sometimes 1000/day) and tag the keepers. (Alt-comma saves it to the Gallery) You can then put keywords on the files, as a start towards metadata.

      It saves the thumbnails as JPEGs in either an Access compatible, or can use an SQL database, so its wicked fast. The format is open, so you can tweak it with Python, or whatever.

      I've only got about 80,000 of my own photos (it's a hobby for me, not a career), but it


  • Sorry, no Janet Jackson or swimsuit pics in this article.


    Read it [robgalbraith.com] anyway, neat tech, plenty of details ! (ACDSee [acdsystems.com] is an old favorite of mine)
  • Hey I'd love to be able to drink beer at work!

  • Janet Jackson (Score:3, Informative)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:04PM (#8613601)
    Come on now do you really need anothe picture of Janet Jackson's breast? As if you don't see it enough of the news.

    Not to mention there is already 100 centazillion websites dedicated to her breast already.

  • Still using PCs (Score:2, Insightful)

    by agslashdot ( 574098 )
    These guys should be using dedicated image processors, like SGI boxes. They're just using souped up PCs & Macs. Sure you can have dual Xeons with gigabytes of RAM, but I still think an SGI can beat the pants off the harware these guys are using.
    • Why would it matter? The bottleneck isn't the time it take the computer to display the image, it's the time it takes the human brain to register and think about what they're seeing.

      Regardless, if for some reason the split second delay is a problem the next image can be pre-loaded while the human is looking at the current image. Faster and more specialized hardware is not the answer.
      • Good point. The next picture image could be
        displayed in a small window and perhaps the
        human editor could subconsciously get an impression
        of it before it was "officially checked" further
        speeding things up.

  • "SuperBowl" Cannot be used without permission (Score:5, Funny)

    by scorp1us ( 235526 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:18PM (#8613740) Journal
    Itis the property of NFL and its owners.

    I suggest we user UberBowl to refer to the final playoff game of the nationwide professional football leage.

  • Sorry, no Janet Jackson or swimsuit pics in this article.

    Yeah, God knows we haven't heard enough verbal wankage about that already ...

  • The editor reminds me of Simon on American Idol...

    Crap ... Crap ... Double Crap ... Out of Focus ... Janet's Boob ... Overpaid Hack ... Crap ... Crap ... William Hung ...

    And so on
    • They use their personality as birth control.

      Seriously, when you edit you have to forget that those shots are probably taken by your friends- you put aside all of it and look at the photos.

      And when you look at image after image and see crap, either due to the idiot (in this case photographer) not focusing, not composing, or just plain missing the timing, you get irritated fast. Because seeing 200 shots with the ball too far back, or faces blocked, or a big fuzzy wuzzy can really piss you off, fast.

      The ha
  • ...on Galbraith's site is about National Geographic's first ever all digital shoot here [robgalbraith.com]. My favorite part was about how the photographer exposed "only" 200 rolls worth of pictures by using digital!

    • Re:Another interesting story... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mph ( 7675 ) <mph@freebsd.org> on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:46PM (#8614182)
      My favorite part was about how the photographer exposed "only" 200 rolls worth of pictures by using digital!
      Yeah, I think the average person has no concept of how much film the pros shoot. In one of Galen Rowell's books, he talks about an assignment he did for National Geographic. He came back with, I think, 70 rolls of Kodachrome exposed. He said the editor was incredulous, because nobody had ever shot so little film for an assignment before.

      In workshops for bird or wildlife photography, I think 20 rolls/day is a typical estimate, and a lot of your time is spent finding subjects, or waiting for them to do something interesting, or waiting for the light to be right.

      For the Super Bowl, the numbers come out to 40 rolls per photographer. That sounds about right to me. Figure they're getting every bit of every play that they can see from their position, and are shooting 5 frames per second or so.

  • ... it's significantly longer.

    1) Get to the game and burn film by the end of the 1st quarter
    2) Give a 'doggy bag' of the film, your paper id, to a gopher who runs the film to an onsite processing facility (if you are lucky) or takes it to a local newspaper place that has an 'agreement' with your paper to use the facilities.
    3) 15 minutes, film, dry to dry (C41)
    4) Proofsheet or eyeball the film
    5) Scan and upload.
    6) Repeat for each quarter.

    Takes alot more time, alot more resources, and sadly introduces alot more errors.

    I am completely floored by the workflow SI has in place. That has been obviously honed to razor sharpness- only small gains available to be had now.

    Oh, and yes, I'm a photographer and (was) an editor, until I decided everyone else's photos weren't as good as mine *wink*
    • We used to have an entire barcode system to track every roll of film as it was processed. After the film dried, it was mounted in slide mounts (even if it was color neg.) and then edited. It used to take 10-15 people to handle the film and four editors to do the edit. Then, we had to have two people to scan the images. Finally, at the end of the game, we only ended up with several hundred images rather than every photo that was shot.

  • The Details (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Hypharse ( 633766 )
    This sounds like a lot, but for those too lazy for the math....16,183/11 photographers/6 hours of shooting.... it *only* comes out to 4 pictures per minute. When you consider A lot of them are pictures in random succession like 10 in a row, searching for the ultimate still-frame it isn't really as mind boggling as the initial large number seems.

    Sorry, no Janet Jackson or swimsuit pics in this article.

    Now as far as that. How many other geeks out there are for Sports Illustrated starting a SETI-like d

  • Impossible! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rick.C ( 626083 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:02PM (#8614448)
    It is mathematically impossible to amass 1,028,000 pictures and not have at least 312 SI swimsuit shots.

    The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

  • Sorry, no Janet Jackson or swimsuit pics in this article.

    Your Regularly Scheduled Slashdotting has just been cancelled.

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