Last weekend I was descending from Mission Peak – in the eastern hills of the San Francisco Bay Area – when I passed a hiker who noticed my photography gear. I think the tripod on the back of the pack tends to give me away… ;-)

He asked, “Did you get any good pictures.” I answered, “I hope so.” To which he replied, “I assume you don’t use digital.”

Now I sort of wish I had pursued that thread. I wonder what he meant? Did he assume that “real photographers” (if that’s what I looked like to him) wouldn’t fall for that new fangled digital stuff? Was he a photographer himself?

He didn’t say much when I replied, “Yes, I do. I switched to digital and I can’t imagine going back.”

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

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Last week I was contacted by a representative of a cosmetics firm in the UK about using an old image of some dry grasses that I had shot several years ago. It appears that she had found this image on one of my sites and recognized that a narrow vertical crop of a portion of the shot would work for a poster they were designing.

Their plan was for the image to fill the left edge of a poster that would be 1.5 meters high. Graphically, it made a lot of sense – the mock-up they sent to me looked quite nice. However, there was a problem.

The original photo was made on one of my first digital cameras. Unfortunately, not only was it limited to 4 megapixel resolution but it stored images in .jpeg format rather than RAW. The .jpeg format does not retain all original image information and it introduces (in most cases) compression distortions which, while not an issue for viewing small on-screen images, are quite ugly when enlarged.

Suspecting that the image quality would not be sufficient for what they had in mind but hoping that use on a poster might not require an absolutely sharp image, I sent them a full size copy to consider.

They were disappointed. I was disappointed. There was no way it was going to work.

To be honest, obtaining an extremely sharp image that will be cropped and then enlarged to 1.5 meters high would take fairly special gear. Medium format might work; a view camera would be better.

It so happened that last weekend I was back at the same place where I took the original 4 megapixel image a few years back. This time I set up the tripod and took a few similar images in RAW mode on my 8 megapixel camera. A few sample crops are shown at right.

Image information: Three Grass Photos. August 28, 2005. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.
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To my surprise, I’m back early from my Sierra backpack trip. It was supposed to last 14 days but I exited on day 5. The good news is that I had a chance to visit the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in the White Mountains of eastern California and then to travel through Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite on an evening of stunningly beautiful light.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.