Chapter 93

11/14/2005

High Resolution

High Definition Photos

Saratoga Auto Museum gave me the honor of assisting Tom Watson and his assistant, wife Sue, in photographing our yellow Enzo and a few other display cars this week. Tom is from Skaneateles, is a career photographer after having graduated with a psychology degree from Georgia State and among a select group of professionals in the world shooting in super high resolution digital format. For the shoot he brought about $50,000 worth of equipment including the Better Light scanner attachment mounted to the back of his S.K. Grimes 4X5 view camera. Yes, he sometimes sticks his head under a fabric hood just as they did in the Civil War where this technology originated. Judge for yourself his fine results of the Ferrari shoot at my Better Light link.

Whereas my point and shoot digicam has 4 Megapixels, his is around 144 Mp. One would use his larger formats for printing mural posters such as the 20 foot high red Porsche on the museum walls shown here or for high quality calendars. His shots take about 8 minutes to complete the shoot, actually a scan that is previewed and setup directly on the portable laptop then captured to the hard drive. It took us all day to shoot 4 cars due to lengthy setup time but it was a very enjoyable time. He graciously took the time to explain parts of the process to me.

Tom and Sue had a memorable visit with world famous photographer Ansel Adams some 30 years ago while shooting in California. They simply called him up on a whim and were invited over.

The above images are all from my low resolution point and click methodology while trying to stay out of the way.