Passport Size
Photos with digital camera
July 2001 (All
figures(if any) are in perspective to
the market prices in India during
that period). All tradenames
acknowledged.
There is a huge
requirement of Passport size photos
in the photography market. This
requirement is fulfilled by large and
established as well as very small
roadside studios. With conventional
analog technology, the delivery times
for these passport size photos go
beyond 24 hours. This is primarily
because today's chemical technology
used for the processing of negatives
and prints is fully automatic. This
requires very costly machinery and
training and expertise to use it.
These machines are actually capable
of processing a film roll in a few
minutes and printing of hundreds of
photos per hour. But the actual work
load and the speed of humans who work
on these machines decide the output
quantity. Adding to this the
transportation time taken from a
studio to the processing lab and back
again, the delivery of final photos
happens after 24 hours.
A studio photographer
does not have any control over
processing time and quality. He has
to depend completely on the
processing lab for his customer's
photos. For the photographer who has
a studio in a small town or village
where there is no processing lab, he
has to send his rolls of film to a
nearby place where there is such a
facility available. He has to put a
chunk of his profits and time in
travelling for this.
Many photographers today
do not have any knowledge of the
actual technology and chemistry of
processing of negatives and photos.
This is because, with the advent of
high quality automatic cameras one
never goes wrong in exposing a photo.
The people in the processing lab are
also expertly trained. So, the
photographer does not have to learn
or bother about the processing
technology. But for this he has to
part with a certain amount in his
profits with the processing lab.
Almost every photographer dreams of
owning a processing lab. But this is
not possible as the actual investment
done for a processing lab is really
huge and then again there has to be
that much of work load to feed to the
capacity of the processing machinery.
Many photographers who
are in the field for many years and
who know the darkroom techniques of
black & white photos, have used
it to take the advantage of
delivering photos quickly by doing
the processing themselves. But this
is all tedious. Working in a darkroom
is not easy for everyone. There is an
example of a photographer who
developed an allergy to the smell of
acetic acid used in processing and he
had to stop working.
Now with the digital
technology all these limitations can
be overcome. One can work at his own
pace and produce the quality desired
by him. Anyone with a little study
can start shooting passport photos
using a digital setup. You need to
have a computer, color photo printer,
digital camera and a standard studio
lighting setup. The ideal computer
configuration can be as follows:
Pentium III
700 MHz
128 MB RAM
14" or 15" color
monitor displaying 16.7 million
colors(24 bit)
Mouse
48X or higher speed CD ROM drive
Photo quality inkjet / deskjet
printer (any one of following)
HP Deskjet 930c Photo
HP Deskjet 970cxi
HP Deskjet 990cxi
Epson Stylus color 880
Digital
camera (minimum 2.1 megapixel)
any one of following:
Kodak
Fujifilm
Olympus
Nikon
Canon
HP
Epson
Casio
Windows 95
or 98
The above configuration
will give a good working speed.
Now let us see how to
take good passport size photos with a
digital camera. To start with we will
first know the difference between a
negative and a digital picture. A
negative has a very fine grain
emulsion layer to capture the photo.
So even if you compose your subject
like the one in the picture1, you can
always enlarge a little and get a
photo like the one in picture2.
 |
 |
| Picture1 |
Picture2 |
Information
in a a digital picture is stored as
pixels. You must have minimum 180
pixels per inch for a photo to look
grainless. Lower pixels per inch will
make the picture look pixelated. For
this while taking the snap basically
you must compose your subject as far
as possible exactly as you want it in
the final print as seen in picture2.
(You can either take the snap going
nearer to the subject or by using the
optical zoom of the camera if your
camera has one. Never use the digital
zoom function for this. Because,
digital zoom is only a software
feature which enlarges only the
available pixel information.) So
that, there should be minimum
cropping / enlargement while
printing. For this even a less costly
digital camera having a resolution of
640 X 480 pixels can give good
passport size photos. If you have
customers for other bigger sizes of
photos as well, then it will be good
idea to invest in a costlier higher
resolution digital camera (2.1
megapixels or more)
Now after taking the
snap, here you do not have to wait
for the whole roll to finish, because
there is no roll involved. You can
coolly connect the camera to the
computer, download the photo just
taken, start Fotoreplica Software,
just select the size from the ready
list, select file and just click the
print button. Passport size photos
are ready!!! You can do all this in
just a few minutes.
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