When You’re Right, You’re Right.

Last week I wrote about some of the issues that come up when seniors (or almost any group) set out to learn digital photography. None of the issues are totally new. Taking a lot of pictures to develop the skills, and maintaining a good filing system are common to both chemical and digital photography. The new skills that are necessary come with the greater power to enhance and manipulate the digital forms.

So this week I bravely took a short seven-minute video into a senior users group to show what can be done with a bit more effort after they have mastered the basics of digital photography. The video includes sound bite additions, fades and wipes, inserted stills, etc. In a couple of short scenes I had to manipulate the lighting to make some faces stand out better, but overall, it was an amateur production of the type that is loved by your family and no one else.

The software to do this is sufficiently inexpensive that all the seniors could afford it (I used Pinnacle for this demo, but others are available and I sometimes use them depending on my mood.), but I did warn them that they would need more computing horsepower for digital video processing than they were used to, and that if they wanted to burn DVDs, they should be prepared to wait for the conversion from purely digital formats to the DVD output format.

The blank DVD I had burned was a freebie left over from last year’s Black Friday sales specials, and the label was gratis courtesy of a Fry’s special. With all these pluses, I thought for sure that the demo would excite the regulars and inspire them to want to produce cute videos of their grandchildren and various holiday events. It did not.

While everyone was polite, and several asked questions, no one seemed interested in the slightest in trying their hands at digital video processing even though I know that some of them have digital camcorders. After some desultory discussion, one of the members pulled out two photographs he had printed on his inkjet printer at home. He said that he had taken an image from his camera and stored copies in both JPG and TIFF formats. Then he printed them out and couldn’t see any difference, so why did we tell him that repeatedly storing an image in JPG format will cause degradation? If he can’t see any difference, then there is no degradation.

What a can of worms that opens! He didn’t say what kind of printer he used, but almost certainly it degraded the images much more than any format change, but he went on to say that he didn’t see any difference on his screen either.

I really wanted to avoid a technical discussion that wasn’t going to go anywhere. After all, I was still smarting from the realization that my video demo had failed to stir up any interest, and here was a concerned person, trying to learn new things, and he was not being served by our group. That’s when I realized there was only one good answer for this gentleman. He was right. If for his purposes, he saw no difference, then there is no difference: end of story. He should not worry about anything else at this time. Just take good pictures, learn how to use digital processing to correct small errors and make enhancements, file, and backup all images.

If he wants to take the next step, he should learn the elements of how to produce an effective slide show. Maybe I will write about slide shows in the future. Most people leave the slides up too long, and after getting some experience with the features available, they go overboard with Ken Burns effects and music overlays. The same thing happens with novice PowerPoint users who discover animations and audio effects. (I’ve sinned like that - haven’t you?)

Digital video can wait.

(BTW, my son is appalled at my video camera. “You still use tape?” He asked with the same expression he might use if I had worn a polyester leisure suit.)

Click here to read about my new tutorial on helping seniors. The new version has grown considerably over the original. It has more topics and anecdotes, and fewer typos. While you’re at it, check out my expanded tutorial on decision theory.

[tags]jpg,senior computing,tiff,senior education,digital photograph,digital video[/tags]