We are using 50" plasma for our presentations. Connected directly from PC through DVI -->HDMI 1920x1080. Couples are blown away with clarity and quality of images they see, I've had several e-mails stating that. One neat trick: I have "ATI remote wonder" wireless remote for PC, I give it to bride so she can view and advance to next image or go back as she pleases (before I was advancing my self on a second 24" LCD monitor). They do like having more control (turning pages in an album so to say).
Ohh, one more thing, I have PS3 hooked through HDMI too. PS3 (80G) has card readers and I tried viewing right out of the card images. From 5D images directly on screen looked just as much incredible, smooth and clear even with no PP.
It's another option, it's just PS3 game controllers are not that "easy" to use as regular remote, I think. PS3 has very nice slide show software built in too.
Mike Mahoney wrote:
Like a Christmas card, or a handwritten letter from a distant family member, or reading a child's bedtime story there is something about actually holding the medium that transcends the mere visual information being presented.
I couldn't agree more. However, how many of those who will be walking down the aisle over the next decade, really take the time to send a hand written note or even greeting cards. The younger generation is all about texting, IM's, etc., etc.
While I hope that traditional albums and prints will remain in demand for quite some time, I think we may have to offer other products to stay competitive and meet customer expectations.
coreypolis, Sounds great, but $24,000 for a camera and one 18-55mm lens? I'll be a lot more interested when the prices are more in dragonfly's $2,000 range. Maybe $2,000 and we can use our Nikon, Canon, other brand dslr lenses.
My Hitachi plasma screen won't work with the DVI-HDMI from my computer. I call tech support and the Hitachi tech told me that my particular model won't accept a signal from a computer. If I plug my D300 in, HD-HD, the images are great, as long as I captured them in the camera. I'd like to be able to show clients the images after they've been edited on my computer, though. Any ideas on how I can transfer them to the tv in a form it will show well? I really don't want to buy another tv or a digital projector at this point.
butchM wrote:
However, how many of those who will be walking down the aisle over the next decade, really take the time to send a hand written note or even greeting cards. The younger generation is all about texting, IM's, etc., etc.
For sure ... I've teenagers and know firsthand their adversion to picking up a pen or book, yet they happily spend hours texting friends. And judging by the number of Christmas cards my son voluntarily sends every year I'll not be buying any Hallmark shares.
But I just don't see extending this behavior to wedding albums .. a wedding book and it's content are just about perfect together for viewing and that may not a generational thing. We'll see.
Brian Lingle wrote:
coreypolis, Sounds great, but $24,000 for a camera and one 18-55mm lens? I'll be a lot more interested when the prices are more in dragonfly's $2,000 range. Maybe $2,000 and we can use our Nikon, Canon, other brand dslr lenses.
there will be a more consumer friendly version soon, but think of it this way, you can provide HD video and stills at the same time. 30fps at 12mp is unprecedented.
and there are already adapters for various lens mounts available.
High Definition is basically any display that is capable of showing >720 lines of vertical resolution. This is what they mean when you hear a tv being described as 720p or 1080p, etc. The number is the vertical resolution. So, if you're running your computer monitor at 1024x768, its in HD. We've been working in HD for quite a while now actually. Its the ability to transfer that resolution to other mediums that has taken some time to develop (i.e. televisions). To display an HD signal, you need a display that can handle high pixel counts and a pathway to deliver that information, whether its a digital disk, or a direct digital connection.
CRT Monitors have been able to show high definition content for years, because they could accept the digital pathway from your computer that is needed to pass the information. With LCDs and Plasmas getting larger and larger, it became more feasible to translate our TV viewing to high definition. We just needed the pathway for the information, thus the advent of digital cable.
Us, as photographers are shooting digital photos well beyond HD quality. You would have to drop the resolution of your photograph below 720 on the vertical side to drop below the HD threshold. To put that into perspective, a 1 megapixel image is considered high definition. If you look at a 1 megapixel photo on a 1024x 768 digital display, it will look perfect. You wont be able to zoom in, but as is it will fill the display nicely at 100%. A handheld tablet computer could get by with files that in our eyes are "low res", but when displayed on the device will look great. That eliminates the issue of print piracy because, as we all know, a 1 MP file wont print very large at all. If it's still a hot button, a little hard drive encryption would eliminate the problem completely.
As for slideshows, the DVD medium was designed with standard definition television sets in mind. The resolution is 480 in the vertical plane. This was fine for older CRT televisions, but on the newer LCD and Plasma sets, the quality will look inadequate because the tv set has a better resolution than that of the DVD. Not the other way around. The solution is a digital disk with a higher resolution output to match today's TV's. These are Blu Ray and HD DVD. But as with all new tech, we have to wait for the players to come down in price as well as the burners. This happened when the DVD format was originally released, now you can get a DVD player for 30 bucks.
Sorry for the rambling post, but hopefully it clears some stuff up.
venkman wrote:
You wont be able to zoom in, but as is it will fill the display nicely at 100%. A handheld tablet computer could get by with files that in our eyes are "low res", but when displayed on the device will look great. That eliminates the issue of print piracy because, as we all know, a 1 MP file wont print very large at all. If it's still a hot button, a little hard drive encryption would eliminate the problem completely.
How do you expect encrypting data on the hard drive to help? Whatever you do, it decryption happens before display (when you show pictures to people). If someone really wants to infringe your copyright, it is going to happen. This is similar to the css encryption for dvds.
While, you can never completely stop piracy or infringement, you can at least make it more difficult for the average person. If you contain the delivery on the image to the display on a handheld device, encryption would at least stop most people from taking out the hard drive and reading it elsewhere. Although, i am not and don't claim to be an expert on hard drive encryption, so I could just be full of crap!
1MP files still aren't going to print very large, though, regardless of my pipe dream encryption ideas .
Brian Lingle wrote:
My Hitachi plasma screen won't work with the DVI-HDMI from my computer. I call tech support and the Hitachi tech told me that my particular model won't accept a signal from a computer.
The Hitachi tech was correct and incorrect. While your model does not have
VGA or DVI input (there he is correct), if it does have HDMI input, all you need is proper cable "DVI to HDMI" and also very important to set your video card software properly and you'll be all set(here the tech was incorrect). You should have dual DVI video card or at least dual output with at least one DVI (but why would you want to run your main monitor in VGA?).
Thanks, Dan. That did clear up some things for me.
corypolis, I really meant it when I said, "That's great!" Very cool development. Can't wait till it's affordable to me - or can I? Sounds like very disruptive tech for photographers, as dragonfly said.
alkorn, Wow! those are really low prices. And the quality is good? Thanks.
I called Hitachi again today and got a different story. They told me I'd have to adjust my video card, like you said, but then they told me not to do it and said that displaying images from my computer could damage the tv. I asked how and they only repeated the warning.
I plugged my girlfriend's Macbook into the tv with my DVI to HD cable this evening and it worked very well. The color balance was slightly off, a little too much yellow/brown tone, but not bad. Anyway, it sounds like I need to figure out how to adjust my video card.
venkman, I shot the smallest, lowest quality jpeg photos available on my D300 and displayed them with the camera's direct HD to HD on the tv this afternoon and they looked as good as the high res, large images. I just checked the camera though and they're still 3.1MP images, 1424 ppi on the short side. Anyway, I guess we can still use relatively low res images for the slide shows.
Brian Lingle wrote:
venkman, I shot the smallest, lowest quality jpeg photos available on my D300 and displayed them with the camera's direct HD to HD on the tv this afternoon and they looked as good as the high res, large images. I just checked the camera though and they're still 3.1MP images, 1424 ppi on the short side. Anyway, I guess we can still use relatively low res images for the slide shows.
I don't do HDTV - just SD, and one of the cute things I can do with the higher resolution images is to crop them to a high aspect ratio and then slide the whole thing across the screen (without upscalling it).
Just displayed some photos on the TV by plugging a usb drive into it. Images looked ok but slow loading. Not as good as from the computer and no option for running a slide show. Do most HD tv's have usb ports?
Brian Lingle wrote:
alkorn, Wow! those are really low prices. And the quality is good? Thanks.
yes, you'll pay like 10 times more in regular store (BB or CC). They are the same cables, you just pay real price, not marked up.
You should not damage your TV, that statement was ridiculous.
invalid2, I don't know what you mean by "SD" in this context.
alkorn, The only thing I can think of is I heard that images can get burned into the screen on plasma screen if they're left on too long. I imagine that's why the tv shrinks the image to a small size and moves it around the screen when I leave it on Pause for awhile. It didn't do that with the screensaver image from my girlfriend's laptop. Not sure if I gave it enought time, though. So, maybe that screen function doesn't work with computer generated images on this tv. Guess I'll have to time it to find out.
I have a Sony crt tv. It takes their memory sticks, limited to the old 128mb - which given even hd res, is a lot of images. For the life of me (actually just to the point I don't want to waste time with it) I can't get images to display consistently. The odd part is it seems random as older ones did, newer ones didn't, then some did on a second try. It's got dvi and vga inputs as well on the back of an almost 200 lb set "'tied down for earthquake resistance. Nope, I'm sticking to viewing on the computer and prints for now. And my mother will likely never move off the paper print.
But when resolution and viewing distances are right, they do look great!
My guess is the consumer ease of use/compatibility issues will fall off rapidly when broadcast goes all digital next year, the consumer products folks will look to sell inexpensive devices to interconnect phones, etc., to the tv's. More and more folks are using digital satelite and cable sources so sets are adding more input points and makingthem more conveient to reach, front and side panells as well as centtered on the rear. Once the consumer types - tvs and accessories - have cracked the compatibility hurdles, it should be easier. Right no there are still a lot of frustratng compatibility problems that the different makers/service providers can blame on the other parts of the chain.
And truly necessary or not, "full" 1080p will be a driving selling point, much as megapixel wars drive/drove digicams to and past 4-5 megs, for pretty much all tvs, not just the bigger ones
Cable(TV) or Video in HD usually cost more. However, I don't think for wedding or any type of photography service we can charge extra for HD or higher resolution images. Consumers always want everything cause they have an impression that it doesn't cause u any money to give them the full resolution JPG files.
I do agree HD TV is the way to display photos in a home, however I am pretty sure some softwares should be able to on the fly generate a slideshow with music and effect on a computer and feed to a HD TV in the near future. So, everyone can modify their albums to their own tastes. Therefore, photographers just need to provide them images as content along with their other media files like music and video.
Currently I supply DVD slideshows in standard DVD format and I don't see many clients with HD players in their living room yet (Blu-Ray or HD). I think it is another year or so before HD players start to become the norm,
I find the DVD slideshow is extremely popular with clients. A 20-30 minute slideshow which is well editted and set to good music is very effective.
I don't see a decline in demand for printed albums yet, and the latest digital albums can look stunning with good layout design which appeals to clients.
What will be interesting to see is how the blurring of video and photography will occur in the coming years. SLRs will soon have video capture capabilities, and video cameras will acquire decent still capabilities.
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