A cave diving coffee book?

[Jill Heinerth]

We have considered publishing a high-quality coffee table photo book for some time now. The barrier to making it happen is production and printing costs. In order to produce a state-of-the-publishing art product, it would have to retail for about $99US.

As such, the market for such a book is extremely limited.

This would be a full-blown professionally designed book with hundreds of hi-def images and short articles about the cave diving experience.

We have recently published a cave diving book "Cave Diving Articles and Opinions"
CaveDivingBook
and the cost of reproduction and printing of the black and white images contained in that book was the single most expensive issue involved.

Heinerth Productions, Inc. is a multi media company and we can design, lay out and publish ourselves, but when it comes to photo reproduction, we won't skimp on quality...and eveyone knows that quality costs $$$.

An example of the images can be found here: www.IntoThePlanet.com

We would love to see this project come to fruition, but the devil's in the details.

The project is still floating around on our back burner, and it would be interesting to know how much people here are willing to spend on a high quality coffee table book.

Safe Diving,
Robert and Jill

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

$42 seems reasonable, and I'm willing to bet if a large order was made, that price could come down.

Most dSLRs are easily capable of producing images with no quality degradation considering the print sizes involved with a coffee table book. Its not like you're printing posters. I'd like to take a look at Glen's book to see the print quality, but the price seems more than reasonable if the printing is well done.

I wouldn' pay $100 for a coffee table book though. If I had to pick between a book or a trip to go dive the caves, I'll take the experience anyday.

 

[GLENFWB]

Yeah, the quality of that picture is not good...but the picture just cracks me up. My screen saver at the store has various diving pictures. Can't tell you how many times that picture has popped up, and people ask me shocked..."what is happening to that guy?" Here is the picture...taken on a very silty USS Massachusetts

Damn Glen, that was awesome dude!

I almost spit out chocolate milk at the starfish attack picture, I hadn't thought about that in ages!

 

[GLENFWB]

Well I vote for you guys to make one...I know it would be awesome! I put my order in for two!

We have considered publishing a high-quality coffee table photo book for some time now. The barrier to making it happen is production and printing costs. In order to produce a state-of-the-publishing art product, it would have to retail for about $99US.

As such, the market for such a book is extremely limited.

This would be a full-blown professionally designed book with hundreds of hi-def images and short articles about the cave diving experience.

We have recently published a cave diving book "Cave Diving Articles and Opinions"
CaveDivingBook
and the cost of reproduction and printing of the black and white images contained in that book was the single most expensive issue involved.

Heinerth Productions, Inc. is a multi media company and we can design, lay out and publish ourselves, but when it comes to photo reproduction, we won't skimp on quality...and eveyone knows that quality costs $$$.

An example of the images can be found here: www.IntoThePlanet.com

We would love to see this project come to fruition, but the devil's in the details.

The project is still floating around on our back burner, and it would be interesting to know how much people here are willing to spend on a high quality coffee table book.

Safe Diving,
Robert and Jill

 

[TSandM]

Many high quality photo books run in the $100 range, and I have bought them. Unfortunately, a lot of them end up on that sale rack at Barnes and Noble, marked down to $20 or so . . . Having seen your cave photography, Jill, I'm quite sure I would buy a high quality, color photograph coffee table cave diving book if you published one.

 

[irishsquid]

$42 seems reasonable, and I'm willing to bet if a large order was made, that price could come down.
..........
I wouldn' pay $100 for a coffee table book though.

I agree with your assessment here. I'd put an order in for one from you. It would have to be autographed from one friend to another though!

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Most dSLRs are easily capable of producing images with no quality degradation considering the print sizes involved with a coffee table book. Its not like you're printing posters.

Your looking at photography from the wrong end of the camera; the person behind the camera is more important than the camera!

There are plenty of published photo's taken with P&S cameras down to 4 megapixels (Oly 4040). I have many images that were cropped some and printed at 12"x18" from my 5050 (5 megapixel).

Due to the premium lens shared by those two cameras mentioned above, they also have much better low light focusing capabilities than the vast majority, which comes in handy for ambient cavern shots.

With a good strobe system there are many P&S camera systems that will take great pics under the rock.

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Your looking at photography from the wrong end of the camera; the person behind the camera is more important than the camera!

There are plenty of published photo's taken with P&S cameras down to 4 megapixels (Oly 4040). I have many images that were cropped some and printed at 12"x18" from my 5050 (5 megapixel).

Due to the premium lens shared by those two cameras mentioned above, they also have much better low light focusing capabilities than the vast majority, which comes in handy for ambient cavern shots.

With a good strobe system there are many P&S camera systems that will take great pics under the rock.

No I'm not, you are assuming I don't know how to use a camera and don't know their limitations.

You can take some great pictures with PnS's, but per pixel sharpness and exposure lattitude will suffer. Larger prints like your 12x18s will likely lose some detail during printing compared to a dSLR with the same(or more) filesize images.

A premium lense on your PnS, which goes from wide to telephoto will suffer comparitively to specialized lenses built for a SLR cameras.

Don't get me wrong, you can take great photos with PnS's and even make great prints, including larger sized prints with the higher megapixel'd cameras(I've got a 16x20 of me in JB's cavern taken by a PnS in the hands of Ed Jackson, taken with a 10mp PnS).

However, this has nothing to do with my previous statement. It was more geared towards the high definition comment. You can take HD images with just about any camera on the current market, PnS or not... That term doesn't equate well to photography, better kept in the videography world I think...

 

[ShagMan]

Glen, my wife and I were both impressed with the content/style you did, I definitely want to see/borrow one of those when they get in, my wife and I might do something similar.

Jill, I'd put $100 down in a heartbeat if you ever put one out, however I agree that it's a very small niche, and I don't know that you'd get a return on your investment in time and costs.

good discussion guys!!

 

[GLENFWB]

I will be glad to let you borrow one...heck, you and Bugman are in a bunch of the pictures....I was hoping you guys wouldn't hit me up for royalties.

Glen, my wife and I were both impressed with the content/style you did, I definitely want to see/borrow one of those when they get in, my wife and I might do something similar.

Jill, I'd put $100 down in a heartbeat if you ever put one out, however I agree that it's a very small niche, and I don't know that you'd get a return on your investment in time and costs.

good discussion guys!!