Looking at quality.
The quality of the imagery available for download from archive sites like The National Archives is variable to say the least. To some extent, there is the issue surrounding the technology available when hard copy was digitised.
But in some cases, there was a lack of diligence – no pointing fingers here, I’ve been guilty of hurrying stuff with the result that quality suffered. So don’t feel that I have the right to level any critisism.
When you look at older images that have been digitised, then it is content that we are looking for. Moving more into the era of digital photography, really from 2000 on. We are looking towards much better quality images, created using digital cameras – you can find recent full uncropped 45 MP images available to download.
The images in the gallery below were found over a number of official photographic archive sites, all the images are free to use – even if you want to set up a for profit shop. All the original images will readily print at ten by eight inches or twelve by eight inches at full 300 PPI quality, so finding modern good quality images is not difficult. The images would have to be downloaded from the original sites, at the original resolution for printing at those sizes.
The home pages!
The collection of the images in the gallery above was put together from a number of sites. The home page of the organisation is always a good place to start, they frequently release high quality images – want to do a RAF based calendar? You should be able to get everything that you need from a number of sites, remember and check that the images can be used the way you want to use them.
Photographs Courtesy of United States Air Force
Dave Munro