Field Artillery: Digital Photo Shooter's Guide.

The revolution of the "battalion digital camera" now in progress allows units to take and instantly download action photos of their latest training exercise or deployment to briefing slides, home pages and reports or to make inexpensive color prints of awards ceremonies for esprit de corps distribution to family members--all excellent applications. But this revolution also can be a challenge for the magazine. For printing purposes, we need photos shot at the highest resolution and in the largest frame size the digital camera will allow.

However, if you must take and send us electronic photos, please read on.

When sending photos to Field Artillery, our first choice is for you to mail or over-night glossy color prints (preferably) or black and white photos from traditional film cameras. This allows us to scan and work the photos in our software designed for publishing and ensures each electronic image has the high-quality resolution we require.

1. Shoot the Picture. When taking a picture, set the camera on the largest image size and the highest quality resolution settings the camera will allow. Set the image size at the largest your camera allows, usually "Full" or "XGA." The highest resolution settings usually are called "High," "Super Fine" or "Ultra-High." (Cameras set at "Standard" or "Basic" quality settings produce images only good enough for web sites.)

Do not shoot a small photo on a low-resolution setting so you can save data space on your camera's storage capacity. Shooting small images at low-resolution will allow you to take more photos per shooting, but we won't be able to publish any of them.

The higher settings create larger photos and files. A color photo usually results in a tile of at least 2 MB and a grayscale photo of at least 1 MB. There is no "hard and fast" rule about the image's file size but, generally, the bigger the size of the digital photo, the better the quality of the photo.

If your camera gives you the option, shoot the photo as a PC tif file. We also accept jpg files. When saving a file as a jpg, choose a "Quality" setting of "Maximum" or "10" and the "Format Option" of "Baseline (Standard)."

2. Download the photo in raw data. When downloading the file from your camera or its removable storage card to another drive, save the image in raw data. Do not manipulate the data (resize or try to edit the image). Let us take care of that.

3. Send us the digital photo. By following the first two steps, you'll have a large file for each photo. One way to get your photos to us is to send them on a 100 or 250 MB Zip disk or a CD. In some cases, a jpg file will fit on a 3.5 floppy disk--but do not resize the jpg photo to make it fit.

And, please don't try to "beef up" the resolution of the small, low-resolution photo you shot. For example, shooting a 500-kilobyte image and enlarging the pixels per inch until the file size is 1.5 MB will not make the image clearer-- it only will make the image larger (bigger dots, not more of them).

Our magazine's email will accept 5 MB or smaller per message. Do not try to send us larger files via email--the attachments will be stripped out. You may be able to send us several photos by email, one at a time. Be sure each message with a photo attached includes a caption of who's doing what, when and where in that image; who shot the photo; the title of the article it is intended to illustrate; and the name of the author.

Mailing or over-nighting individual electronic photo files larger than 5 MB is one option. Another is to send it to us digitally via the a special upload site. The Fort Sill ASP File Upload Site on the internet can handle large/single file uploads without special software. To access the ASP site, go to our "Digital Photo Shooter's Guide" on our home page at http://sill-www.army.mil/famag. Click on the ASP File Upload Site link that's toward the end of the guide.

If you have questions, call the Art Director Bob T. Coleman at DSN 639-5121/6806 or Commercial [phone]/6806; the Fax number is DSN or Commercial 7773. Our email is [e-mail]. Our mailing address is Field Artillery, P.O. Box 33311, FortSill, Oklahoma 73503-0311 Over-night your photos to Room 7, Building 758, McNair Road, Fort Sill, Oklahoma 73503.

The majority of our digital shooters are not professional photographers. You are our authors and photographers-- soldiers and Marines. Even better, you are mostly Field Artillerymen, telling the story of the best branch and best Army and Marine Corps in the world. Help us illustrate your article with your photos--follow these instructions for taking and sending us digital photos.

Good Shooting!