Welcome to Digital Photojournalism at SMU

I'll post information here that will aid in your course work for this class as well as keeping you current on the rapidly-changing landscape of digital photography.

The class is called digital photojournalism because we'll work exclusively with digital cameras. Film cameras are quickly disappearing and in fact, just this past week Nikon, one of the largest manufacturers of film cameras, announced that it will cease production of film cameras for all but the professional market. Expect other large manufacturers to follow suit shortly. Quite simply, digital photography and digital cameras have become ubiquitous. Their ease of operation and the immediacy of viewing images instantly has made them the choice of amateurs and professionals around the world.

As you accumulate more and more digital images, particularly during this class, you're going to deal with storing images. Image files are large and will quickly begin to hog space on your hard drive. Image storage is a growing problem for amateurs and professionals alike. Currently, storing images on cd is the recommended method but at least one expert advises that the cds you and I burn are unlikely to last more than two to five years. Kurt Gerecke, a physicist and storage expert at IBM, says that digital tape is the only safe method for storing images long term. He's only one expert but there's long been concern in the digital photography community about the long term stability of cds.