Move along, lady we're kinda busy.

[Trixie]

Quick background: My pharmacy just started accepting a huge insurance company again along with the hours being cut in our pharmacy. I guess we all know where this is leading. Short staffed in the front of the store to take care of the prescriptions. Throw in that the last two nights were weekend busy and it's been a clusterfuck.

Last night I was jumping between photo and the front because it was just the cashier and me. Manager and another worker were in pharmacy dealing with that mess. All the day shift was gone by this time. Even photo was busy.

I help a lady get a picture off her phone, it prints out and she's not happy. Okay, it is a little yellow. She still wasn't happy. Okay. I did what I could. I don't have any photo retouch training and we have bare bones stuff on our equipment.

While she's bitching the line is building up behind her and at the front register. Then she has the nerve to ask if there's anyone who knows the machine better. I say no because there isn't. It's a crappy picture off your phone. She ended up taking the original but she still wasn't happy.

Yesterday it started right from the time I walked in the door. They lost power earlier in the day and had trouble getting the photo lab up and running. The last thing down was the scanners on our kiosks. What really pissed me off was I was trying to get a passport done while two employees are asking me what to do to fix it. I'm expected to know how to fix everything anyway but ya know I still have to help customers. Give me a minute to get done with what I'm doing.

Then there were just people who needed their hand held or had lots of questions so I could barely get other stuff done. Thank God I was working with people helped the night go by quick. Working with the same crew tonight so hopefully, it's just as good.

[prjkt]

I feel you on phone "photos" - I don't know why people think they're acceptable for anything more than posting on Facebook, or maybe a 4x6...

"I want to get a big canvas done of this photos"
"What was the photo taken with?"
"My phone"
"Don't"

[mjr]

"What do you mean you can't make this black & white photo color!?!? You can make a color photo black & white! You just don't know what you're doing!"

[Pixelated]

"What do you mean you can't make this black & white photo color!?!? You can make a color photo black & white! You just don't know what you're doing!"

"The customer is always right!"

*hands back an emerald-green photo*

[Dreamstalker]

I blame a lot of phone manufacturers/providers advertising their wares with the focus on the camera. Yes, they're getting better (my phone is--for some things--better than my dedicated digital camera), but print quality they are not unless you do some extensive fiddling/editing that's probably beyond the comprehension of the average user.

[Nunavut Pants]

My wife and I have had very good results with some of our vacation photos from our phones. (Various iPhones, I believe the 5S was the one my wife was using at the time.) She sent a couple of pics to "art.com" and had them enlarged onto canvas as if they were fine art prints, and the results came out very well indeed!

[Dreamstalker]

Some of mine have turned out well under enlargement, some haven't--it will look perfectly fine on the phone screen, but as soon as you try to zoom/enlarge...

A lot depends on the phone, but also the photographer/circumstances (I found out that an image that looks perfectly clear turns out not so much if the phone moves even a millimeter when actually taking the shot).

[wordgirl]

Hah! We just had a seminar on this yesterday. Most current mobile phones are well capable of producing print-quality photos, scaleable up to pretty decent sizes.

So here's my little TIL (really a YIL, but whatev.) There are three big factors working against image quality: Light,motion and the limitations of the zoom.

Phone flashes don't work very well, so to get good-quality mobile pics, you have to know how to take advantage of available light. It's not hard, but most people have no idea of the general principles.

Phone cameras are more susceptible to shake. Even if you think you're holding your phone perfectly still, you're probably not: You're breathing, your heart is beating. (Unless you're a vampire. Vampires take great pictures.) The fix for this one is simple: Steady it against something - a wall, a railing, a monopod, anything.

As for using the zoom: Don't, unless you have absolutely no other option. Get as close to your subject as you can, take the picture and then crop it. You'll almost always get a better image that way.

We've had editions of our publication where every picture outside of sports was taken with an iPhone or Android. They looked great.

[Trixie]

I've seen really good pictures come off of phones as long as they were taken with the phone. Lots of people have pictures that were sent to them and those usually aren't as good. And don't even get me started about how our kiosks may or may not read the pictures from a phone. I'm not a phone expert and again no training on how to save the pictures to your phone. I do what I can.

Anyway, back on topic. The picture looked fine on the phone but it looked like there was no flash on once it was printed. And since they "upgraded" our equipment the new software has no options to fix stuff like our old software. The paint program from Windows 3.1 has more options than we do. Yes, that long ago. Ahh, that's probably a rant for another time.

[EricKei]

Taking 15 minutes to learn the basics of ISO and lighting settings works wonders, too ^__^ Assuming that your phone allows you to fiddle with those. Even on real cameras, the "Auto" setting leaves much to be desired.

As for using the zoom: Don't, unless you have absolutely no other option.

This -- absolutely, yes. By definition, nearly all cell phone cameras use digital zoom rather than optical (lens-based). For all intents and purposes, this is like enlarging a JPEG on your computer and using THAT as your baseline image. If you have a camera that does digital zoom (many do both), disable that "feature" and just use optical.

[Lovecats]

(Unless you're a vampire. Vampires take great pictures.)

I've heard they don't take good selfies though.

[flyonthewall]

This is kinda off topic but speaking of vampires.. When I was a freshman in highschool I told people I was a vampire because I was missing my canine teeth(Adult teeth weren't positioned right to push the baby teeth out, so dentist just pulled them to give the adult teeth a chance to move in) and I said that the vampire mafia made me get the pulled if I was going to human school because people would find out about us.



I said it so seriously and whenever I was teased about my teeth that people actually believed that I believed I was a vampire.

[EricKei]

It seems Harvard U is now offering free online photograhy basics class

http://www.konbini.com/us/inspiratio...line-for-free/