We recently did a post on the increasing size of our photo sets. Also increasing in size over the years has been the size of the images themselves. When we started 13+ years ago, the images were approximately 800×600 pixels, but sometimes smaller. At that time (the late 1990’s), the main limitation was the actual file size as everybody was on dial-up and download times were SLOW. You really wanted to keep images in the 100-120KB or smaller range to prevent excessive download times. To a lesser extent, the quality of the scanners of the day also limited image size (we were shooting 35mm). Even with a good quality negative scanner, you didn’t want to make the images too large or the overall quality of the scan deteriorated. When we switched to a digital camera in January 2000, overall image quality improved dramatically. But most people were still on dial-up, so we were still limited on how large we could make the file sizes. The resolution on those early digital cameras was also not the greatest. Our first digital cameral was 2.5 megapixels with a maximum resolution of 1712 X 1368 pixels – but at least it was a true SLR and we didn’t have to waste hours scanning images any longer! But as the years pasted, technology improved (as it always does). Broadband connections became standard, digital cameras improved dramatically, and even monitor sizes increased significanly. All these changes allowed us to continually increase the size of our images. Currently, we size horizontal images at 1600 pixels and vertical images at 1200 pixels (click on the samples below). We could make the vertical images larger, but then the image would be significantly larger than the vertical resolution of most monitors and thus require resizing or scrolling to view – something we personally find annoying. We do wonder how much bigger image sizes will go. Monitors are continuing to get bigger, but more and more people are using smartphones, touch pads and the like to surf the web, and those have considerably smaller screen sizes. But in all liklihood, as technology moves ever forward, we will continue to increase our image sizes.
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I can only speak for myself. For me personally the introduction of HD video clips in the BTS-section was a great improvement. I really enjoy the larger clips. Commonly I reach speeds of 1,5 MB/s, when I download from Imago Studios, so there’s no problem to get the clips.
Image sizes don’t make much difference to me as long as they can produce a full page print with good resolution. My problem has been with the file sizes of the video clips. I understand many people are on cable now, but since we travel so much I’m still on an air card. Unless I’m in a hot wifi location where I can get megs per second I’m limited to download speeds less than 100K. Because of this, for sometime now, I haven’t been able to download any BTS clips, etc because the file sizes are in the hundred meg range.
The size and the brilliant quality of your images are only two of the many reasons why your site is that great. The main reason, of course, are your gorgeous models, as you can see in the two sample images. 🙂
I am really enjoying the larger digital images, especially when you compare them to your early work. A photo of Britney can never be too big 🙂