The New York Institute of Photography is, right now, finalizing its new course in digital photography. It looks interesting, it's price doesn't seem unreasonable, and I know the school has been around for many years. However, I've never spoken with anyone who's taken a course through them. Have any of you done so and are you willing to share your opinions, both good and bad, on the school? Probably more folks than just I would be interested in hearing about first-hand experiences.

-- Barbara Coultry (bcoultry@nycap.rr.com), July 15, 1999

Answers

bbbI'm not familiar with them, but I did find a link to one of their online courses in a response in the forum. :-)

Try: http://www.nyip.com/sub_idx_pgs/digitalidx/digitalidx.html

It'll probably give you some idea of their course material and style. You might want to do a forum search, I recall a few posts from someone who claimed to be an instructor there. They were concerning how great the new Epson 1200 printers are, if my swiss cheese on rye memory serves... :-)

-- Gerald Payne (gmp@francorp.francomm.com), July 15, 1999.

All,

Please pardon the bbb stuttering in my reply. I'm using a tiny Amity CN laptop with chiclet sized keys and a too short keyboard joystick situated just above the "b" key. My "slightly" oversized fingers are a troublesome match for the wee, blithering, (expletive deleted) teensie keys. :-)

-- Gerald Payne (gmp@francorp.francomm.com), July 15, 1999.

Barbara,

I don't want this to be taken as a negative comment on someone else's work, but I think the lessons I gave the link for were written for the complete beginner. Read on, and please understand I intend no offense to the author of the material, the lessons were certainly intended to be written for that level.

I'm not sure what it's worth, but I had a free hour or so tonight and read through quite a number of the parts of lesson #2 on the site I sent the link about. Now, it's purely my opinion(we all know that old saw about what opinions are and that everyone has one...), but some of the information presented there just plain seems to be incorrect despite being presented in an authoritarian manner. Generally, the lessons are OK, but there are a few "Rules of thumb" that seem a bit strict. Such as the references to needing 300PPI to print a photorealistic image, and some of the assumptions made about how single color filtered pixels are layed out and masked in a ccd and then combined to form a larger number of pixels are a bit off. But, overall, it's not a bad explanation of the many topics covered. Maybe the author is a bit more demanding of the pixel count than I. :-)

Sad to say, from what I've read from you in the forum and in your article on camera buying, I don't think you'll find a lot of interest to you unless their later lessons are considerably more advanced. :-( But, who knows, they may very well be.

Let the rest of us know what further info you find? Personally, I'm pretty well up on the technology issues(maybe just a tich ahead of the curve on most :-) ), but I wouldn't mind finding a good course on becomming a better photographer, period. I'm certainly lacking a good bit there. ;-)

-- Gerald Payne (gmp@francorp.francomm.com), July 16, 1999.

My impression of the NYIP site is that they're unlikely to give anything much away for free. This impression has been gleaned from reading their online "introduction" to digital photography, which is certainly elementary.

I, too, am looking to become a better photographer. What I'm hoping is that the new course they'll be offering will be, essentially, a traditional course with a digital twist. They can't possibly address the technical aspects of the cameras and scanners without having to keep in mind that each brand has its own specs and idiosyncracies. They mention that a requisite of the course will be having access to Photoshop, so I assume the instructors must, therefore, be experts in using the program. Right, I know, assumptions aren't always wise.

Ultimately, I just want to take more professional-looking pix and I want to do so with my digital camera.

If anyone out there has any suggestions on achieving greatness in one year or less, I'll bet there are gobs of us who would be all ears.

-- Barbara Coultry (bcoultry@nycap.rr.com), July 16, 1999.

I'm with you Barbara, achieving greatness in 6-12 easy steps would be(well, for lack of inspiration), great... :-)

I may eventually go the more usual route and see if anyone has a good traditional photography book/course or class and would allow the use of a digicam in place of the conventional equipment. It seems to me that the things I want to learn translate pretty well from one medium to the other. I'm most interested in learning more about things like composition, lighting, effects, etc. Granted, effects would be more likely to be done in post processing on a PC with digicams, but I can handle that pretty well already.

Maybe someone will come up with something useful. I've enjoyed reading much of the "Complete Guide to Photography" presented by Curtin at: http://www.shortcourses.com/ Has anyone else spent any time there? Any credit for this link should go to Imaging Resource, as I lifted it from their "Other Resources" page. Thanks, Dave. :-)

-- Gerald M. Payne (gmp@francorp.francomm.com), July 16, 1999.

Barbara, if you would like to learn more about Photoshop 5 you might be interested in looking at www.zdu.com. This is Ziff-Davis (the publishing company) University. They have all kinds of computer related courses online at amazingly cheap prices. While they do not offer photography courses, the Photoshop lessons may be of some help. If interested, check out their course catalog.

-- Steve (tuna-boat-captian@ibm.net), July 16, 1999.

You're right about a traditional photo course. The elements of good design don't change with technology. I'm not sure, however, how many schools out there have caught up to the digital world. I live near a decent-sized metropolitan area, but the courses offered in the 8 local colleges are utterly film based. If they were otherwise, I'd sign up in a nanosecond.

The Ziff-Davis stuff looks decent, but I'm really looking for that perfect combo of digital camera and Photoshop that NYIP seems to be offering. When they finalize their plans, I'll let everyone here know what I discover. And if I decide to take the course, I'll also let everyone know how it worked out.

-- Barbara Coultry (bcoultry@nycap.rr.com), July 17, 1999.

Hi Barbara,

You might check out Arthur Bleich's site, www.dpcorner.com (I think) He's offering an on-line course, where students are given assignments, and then he comments/critiques the results. Looks very nice, very reasonable price. (I think a coupla hundred, for something like 8-10 "classes" Focus is more on photography than digital.

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), July 23, 1999.

A close friend of mine completed their course about a year ago and swears by them. The difference in the quality of his photos is very dramatic.

-- Gary Moss (Biomo@ibm.net), August 07, 1999.