Charles Turnbow's Slip and Fall Notebook

Digital Cameras

  These photographs are great, but what about admissibility?  This is a common refrain heard all over the country.  Because of economy, ease of use, immediate results, and previews of each exposure, digital cameras are becoming widely used by experts, investigators and others to record and document accident sites and inspections. 

  There is no rule that photographs have to be captured on photographic film.  Many people feel that since there is no physical negative, the evidentiary value of the photograph is diminished.  I have never found this to be the case.  Not only do I have the ability to archive the photograph on floppy disk or CDROM, I easily make duplicates of the file and send them anywhere by email.

   Are digital photographs easy to alter?  A good photographic editor program makes cropping or editing of the image easy.  However, we have been able to do this in the darkroom using conventional equipment for over 50 years,  Twenty-seven years ago, I had the good fortune to teach a course in photographic misrepresentation at a major university.  In this class, I taught the practicing attorneys, insurance investigators, engineers, scientists and others the techniques of double exposure, masking, overlays and other techniques commonly used to edit photographs.  Moreover, the theme of the class was how to detect and expose such alterations.  It was not always possible to detect the alterations.

    Then as now, the integrity of the photographer was far more important than the existence of the strip of negatives.  Often it is possible to do extensive editing "in the camera' without resorting to tricks in the darkroom.  Whether or not there is a film negative is not really important.

The camera pictured above is similar to my 4.3 mega pixel single lens reflex camera.  This camera can take 157 high resolution photographs on a single 128 Meg smart media card.  With a couple of storage cards in my pocket, I can be film independent for a month's worth of shooting.  The Fujifilm FinePix4900 gives me the option of previewing each exposure before saving.  The electronic focus gives sharp images from 6 inches to infinity.

I get clear, sharp 8 x 10 prints of award winning quality.  I use two color printers, a HP 890c Deskjet and a HP Colorlaserjet 4550.  While both give satisfactory prints, I prefer the color laser printer for ease of operation and speed.  A good color ink jet printer can be purchased for under $200.  The prices on color laser printers is dropping.  The current model of the HP printer is about $1600.00.  I take and print about 10 to 15  eight by ten photographs for each site inspection.  The cost is nominal.

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