Steve Kalalian: Digital Imaging on Steroids
Imagine: high-fashion photographer Don Flood, Hasselblad 503 in hand, perched on the edge of a speedboat, which rocks gently on the Caribbean Sea near Belize. A leggy blonde model wearing a skimpy bikini poses in the water nearby.
Portable Studio. Using 17-inch PowerBooks on a digital shoot in Belize.
Also knee-deep in the water: Industrial Color technician Todd Schweikert. He’s using his 17-inch PowerBook that’s tethered by FireWire cable to Flood’s camera back — in this case, a 22-megapixel PhaseOne. A specially-designed case strapped to Schweikert protects the customized PowerBook system and an Eclipse shade lets him see the screen clearly in bright sunlight.
Each time Flood clicks the shutter — about once a second — the shot is transferred directly to the PowerBook. “Every shot” says Kalalian, “is effectively drum scanned and uploaded to the computer. Traditional film and processing and printing and scanning — gone. That translates to a big savings in time and money.”
Let the Editing Begin
“There are so many benefits to digital photography,” Kalalian enthuses, “but the number one benefit for art directors and clients is that they can see the shot on the screen as it happens and begin editing right away. If there are any changes or variations, we can move the light, the product or styling and immediately see the results.”
Such collaboration between photographer and client is unknown in film. “If you shoot film,” Kalalian says, “you never know what you’ve captured until it gets processed. Using computers to create and process media during a session lets photographers and their clients make sure that they’ve got everything. It’s security.
“Not only does the computer allow creative people to take a more active role in the process, it also protects you from expensive reshoots.”
Multitasking
Throughout the shoot, the client — in this case, an art director from the New York advertising agency AR Media — makes selects for processing on a second PowerBook. “We bring two computers,” says Kalalian, “so one can be shooting and the other processing and editing.
“Every shot is effectively drum scanned and uploaded to the computer. Traditional film and processing and printing and scanning — gone. That translates to a big savings in time and money.”
“We’re skilled at knowing all the values of colors, and a visual histogram of each shot also shows if you’re clipping, if your highlights are blown out or your shadows are blocked up. We also always check files in Photoshop and the camera’s capture program to make sure everything looks right.
“Now we can shoot anywhere, burn the CD with high-res images and, at the end of the shoot, have reproducible files ready to go. Other companies that don’t bring as much computer power and print production experience can’t multitask like this. They wind up spending a lot more time in back-end processing and risk downtime.”
Into the Gigabyte Zone
Another consideration for digital shooting: providing enough storage capacity for the huge high-resolution digital files.
“The average file size of an RGB capture is 125 megabytes,” Kalalian says, “and you’re shooting once a second or every second-and-a-half. Five or six different shots use nearly 800 megabytes — more than half a gigabyte.”
At the end of each shooting day an Industrial Color technician burns selects to CD or DVD for the client. He also uploads the entire shoot from a FireWire drive to Industrial Color’s central servers in New York — a bank of Xserves and Xserve RAIDs that provides dozens of terabytes of live space — “and that keeps growing,” Kalalian says. Each night, data is backed up onto tape, which is stored offsite.
“I have to say the Xserve and Xserve RAID are amazing products. They work. They’re completely dependable. They’re really affordable. And the hot-swappable drives are very easy to install.”
