Beeb sends teaboy outside with iPhone We're delighted to report that the BBC has taken El Reg's advice and sent the teaboy outside with an iPhone to grab a snap of its own building. To recap, we reported yesterday that the Corporation was using a Getty Images stock photo to illustrate an illuminating piece by Robert Peston: BBC report with Getty image of own …
My Money is on an iphone 3. (the characteristic iPhone fog is the giveaway that you dont get elsewhere)
For many years iPhone users have been saying they don't need cameras in phones because they have proper cameras. I think this proves them wrong.
..is the font rendering of the article. Do I detect the not-so-dulcit tones of that abomination called Clear Type? Whatever the cause you have to admire (ha ha) the way it has combined blurring with a significant reduction in contrast.
I'm the one getting my coat because Clear Type and its ilk always make feel sick if I look at them for too long.
"Maybe it's just where el Reg has hit <Print Scrn> and saved in a compressed lossy format so the page doesnt take long to load...?"
No, the file was saved at 92% quality with 1x1 sub-sampling and no smoothing.
If anything, they're much larger than they need to be. The 94kb image could have been under 40kb and still had adequate quality.
No, that's obviously anything other than Cleartype. It's plain anti-aliasing, possibly on Linux or Safari using its native rendering.
Cleartype is fantastic, and if you honestly don't think that then you must either be using a CRT or an LCD that doesn't have its sub-pixels arranged in square R-G-B patterns. If you do have a B-G-R or other LBC type, just use MS's tweak tool to adjust the rendering to your weird screen's needs. You can also control how thickly it renders the strokes of the fonts.
Cleartype is just MS's name for a generic method of smoothing fonts. It's also used by Macs and other systems, and goes back to the 70s. If the text on a Mac LCD system/laptop is smoother than your Windows LCD system/laptop with cleartype enabled then something is wrong with your system.
Another possibility is that you're not running your LCD at its native resolution, are not set in 32-bit colour mode or have your graphics card set up oddly.
@AndrueC
You are not alone in your dislike of MS Cleartype. Over the years I've tried it on many different LCD displays with various graphics cards, always using DVI-D connections and running at the panels native resolution and, not once have I found turning Cleartype on actually improves the readability of text - using the MS Cleartype tuner tool does make a difference, I can vary the readability from poor to very poor!
Take a screen grab of some small text, (black on white) with Cleartype on and off and then compare the magnified images - I find with Cleartype what should be nice solid black is just a muddy grey with smeared grey edges to the characters. All it seems to do is make my nice sharp TFT display look like a crap old CRT.
oh god, there's a reason for getty!
Not only has it got hideous glare, it's uneven, not to mention it looks like a faded newspaper clipping. Teaboys with iPhones can't take decent photos. Bad Reg! *slaps El Reg on the wrist
Although you would think they could...
(a) have one of their own photographers take a picture of their building (they must have some!)
(b) not put a picture on an article which doesn't need it.
(c) not put a picture on an article which doesn't need it.
(d) seriously guys, sometimes the pictures aren't even relevant, what's the point?
(e) seriously guys!
(f) I think the TV license is as good as a tax you fuxtwits.
Have another look at the picture in the first version. A nice bit of processing has resulted in good contrast and colour-balance, but it was initially taken on a chronically cheap camera, so there's all sorts of lens flare and internal reflections going on.
Why do Getty accept moderately crap pics from amateurs with cheap cameras? Because they're willing to sell them for less, which means more profit for Getty. It also means market rates drop considerably, and the pros have to charge less.
The dream of everyone with a stake who either archives or uses stock photos is a workforce of "incidental photographers" who give their work away for free or near free.
So wave goodbye to the professional photographer, peeps....
I thought the basic journalism curriculum at a university had a photography course in it. At least it used to have in 5th world countries in the days when I was going to a university.
Judging by this snap quite clearly we are paying too much for a TV license and the BBC is getting too much public funding. A 70% cut to put salaries in line with the material they are producing is clearly on order and should not be delayed.
It also explains why they were using stock images initially - it is called "basic competence" problem. This kind of problem is often experience by public funded organisation after a long spell of communist-style government which think that having a large public sector is a jolly good idea. This problem also tends to linger after privatisations, making companies "independent". This is just one example - plenty of others.
LuMan, you are so right. But that photo has been looked at and accepted for publication...hasn't it? Damn, I'm still making the assumption that the Beeb knows what it's doing. Now we know they have no content vetting process for their website - or possibly a vetting person who is as blind as a bat. [Yes, yes, I know bats aren't blind - it's a figure of speech, OK?]
Why exactly was a cut to Auntie's pension bonanza top of the 'Other Top Stories' pile yesterday anyway? What's next? 'Beeb Reporter's Wife Nagged Him This Morning?' Or maybe 'Who pi$$ed on my Wheatabix?!'
Shouty Shouty: Because that's what the Beeb were using their own news service for.
I think it's Bernie you want a word with.
Unlike years past, where local TV facilities and directors were used, FOM brought it all* in-house and now supply the world feed. So, if Bernie doesn't want to do HD broadcasts then NOBODY in the entire world** gets F1 in HD.
* Except for the Monaco GP
** Except the Japanese for some inexplicable reason but even then only for the Japanese GP.
No, now we've ended up paying for both methods of getting a photo, giving 'the commerial sector' a stick twice as big to bash them and their care-free attitude to money and the frittering away thereof.
A wise news editor would have either just left the article alone and let the storm fizzle out of its teacup, or remove it completely. By displaying fear and panic like this, they're showing a red rag to the bull, which will only result in more people hearing about this. It's like when you stare out a predator. The moment you run or dither, it pounces!
You're not gonna believe this. They've replaced it again, this time with a Press Association image.
http://www.aoakley.com/misc/peston-pa.png
So that's two image royalties plus timewasting for the teaboy. Good to see the budget cuts working hard at Auntie.
The photo switch was a joke on the part of someone at the Beeb who reads The Reg. Given the amount of business the two companies do, the original image likely cost nothing or next to nothing. The rubbish quality was probably intentional too.
I think some people need to lighten up!
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