RE: [Leica] Photos on the Web

[Alan Ball <AlanBall@csi.com>]

On Wednesday, June 17, 1998 4:26 PM, Five Senses Productions 
[SMTP:fls@5senses.com] wrote:
> Why do you guys keep saying that the only way
> to compare images on the web is to "cut a very
> small piece from a high res image?"

no, that is not the discussion. The discussion is/was the useability of Web 
publishing to showcase the optical performance of various lenses. I find 
that exercise quite vain. And if one must indulge in it, then it can only 
be done by "cutting a small piece of a high res scan". The "small piece" 
part is related to available bandwidth and acceptable download speeds. The 
(very) high res part seems obvious to me.

OTOH, the Web is not a bad media when it serves the purpose of showing 
other people relevant, interesting, moving and/or informative, etc images. 
These can survive mediocre scanning, destructive JPEG compression and 
inadequate viewing hardware/software. Their purpose will still be 
detectable. A Salgado picture is great when it is a carefuly printed image 
on an exhibition wall. It remains great in a shitty low end magazine. And 
still is great on a web site.

Idem for the happy snapper personal album: there is nothing wrong in 
"publishing" the family album, or the holiday pics, or the back garden 
flowers or whatever else. But there is something that can get on the verge 
of pathetic when this type of publication is advertised as a showcase 
either for high end optical performances or for mastered artistic 
production, or worse yet, for both. There is too much self-indulgence out 
there IMHO.

All this said (or repeated), it seems that black and white might be the 
most efficient web image format: you can get quite a lot of data in the 
grayscale image while keeping the file at a manageable size. And getting 
rid of most of the problems induced by colour management. George's  50mm 
f1.4 case reinforces this impression.

Friendly regards
Alan
Brussels-belgium