I’m New To Digital Photography. I Want To Send Sports Photos To The Local Newspaper.?
August 3rd, 2009 | 
Author: They require that the photos need to be in jpegs,5″ X 7″ or larger and at least 200dpi. How do I take pictures that meet those requirements and how good of a digital camera do I need?
I know it seems to be jumping a bunch of steps to want to send pictures to be published in a paper when I’m just starting out in digital photography but that’s what I want to do but I obviously need some guidance. Thanks for your help in advance.
Posted in digital photography | 
Tags: Digital, Local, Newspaper., Photography, Photos, Send, Sports, Want
Be prepared to part with some money. Good sports photos require a fast camera and lens combination, especially for indoor photography. That means lenses in the f/2.8 range and for zooms that will open that wide you will have to spend some serious money.
In terms of pixel count, that works out to less than 3 megs so any new digital SLR you buy will be well beyond that.
Before taking the sports photography plung I’d suggest buying “The Digital Photography Book” by Scott Kelby. It will be $15 well spent. There is a portion of the book dedicated to sports photography and he tells about the equipment needed and how to do it much better than I can.
I process digital photos at a newspaper- do you have photoshop?
The photos I see directly from digital cameras are 72 dpi. Higher resolution seems to be handled by the size of the picture getting bigger. I often take digital pictures that are 15″ wide or 24″ wide or wider and resize them in photoshop (we don’t require the photographer to do that- we just want high enough resolution pictures.) The crop tool lets you set the width, height, and dpi. Its a proportion thing- If you’ve got a picture that comes out 35″ wide at 72 dpi, its the same as a 17.5″ wide 144 dpi picture or about a 10″ wide 216 dpi picture.
The main thing for sports photos will be speed for capturing action. If you want to concentrate on sports, I wouldn’t get anything but a digital SLR with a quality long lens.
you have received some good advice on the other information, so I want to throw in another factor for you to consider. You can take the image… download to a laptop with photoshop… manipul;ate the image and send it into the newspaper according totheir specs over the web.
You should not need to take them prints or even a CD. Insist on a by line.
Save copies for your portfolio.
Beaux