we've had some photos taken professionally in digital format and the photographer has offered to make up a protected slide show on CD. At the moment I don't know what the format is or whether the pics will be digitally watermarked but the guy told me that I wouldn't be able to make prints off the CD.

There must be a way of hacking the pics. Is there a standard photographic lockdown routine and is there a way of hacking it? Any ideas?

Phil

If you want the prints, pay the photographer for his time and get him to make them for you. Why do you think they're protected?

I think you'll find that once you've taken time, equipment, materials and know-how into account, most professional photographers are far from being loaded rip-off merchants - which is a shame really since I've considered trying to become one myself.

If you want the prints for free, go take the pics yourself. If you can't, that's why they're worth paying for [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Gotta agree I'm afraid 'cos essentially you're talking about breaking copyright - his copyright.

He may assign you copyright if you pay him for it but otherwise he is just protecting himself.



JoshL

Any comments?

So, to paraphrase:

You want to nick this guy's work for free? ;)

It will be possible to circumvent protection, but legally you're in dodgy water as he owns the copyright on the photos. This should all have been made clear when he originally contracted to do the photos.

The best thing to do is enquire about buying the copyright to the photos, then you're entitled to do anything you want with them as they're yours :D

Cheers,
Nick.

th prints are between £600 and £700 each, hence wanting to copy them. If they were £50 each I'd buy them.

Phil

Oh, well that makes it OK then.

Personally I hate the 'c' word, it's well over-used, usually by litigious companies with an uncooperative attitude and a genuine desire to rip off their customers for all they're worth. The moral argument for not paying them a penny is indeed a strong one.

In this case, however, you're proposing something that'll cost one person a lot of money. It's a whole lot more serious than copying another over priced, talent-free CD. How would you feel?

Didn't you know the cost of prints (which seems a lot - they must be huge!) before you had the photos taken? Why did you bother to go ahead with having them taken if you knew you couldn't afford them? Have you actually paid your photographer a fair price already for his time, materials, equipment and expertise?

Try negotiating - maybe you can order a smaller size instead?

Did you pay the photographer for his time to take the photos, or did he do that for free? If you did not know the print price up front what was the deal ?

Dave.

700 quid is obscene - there will be a way to snaffle the disc contents, but I doubt you will find it in here, try and remove the word "hacking" from your thread title for starters ;)

don't think the slide show pics will of any great quality, doesn't need a huge JPEG file to look good on a TV or PC, you might be able to get A5 prints off it


kev :)

This all started because my wife won a free photographic session at the gym, not something that I would normally have gone for.

Now the pictures have been taken, there are a number of really good ones but they cost the earth and she wants four. We've already had the "well if you want them... you pay for them" argument. The CD costs £100 which I'm more than happy to pay for but there's no way I'm paying over £2K for four pictures.

I'll just give up on the whole thing.

Phil

I wonder how many others "won" a photoshot at the gym sounds like a con to me, bit like the schools now, end of term photo's £50 each they take 5-10 snaps of each child say average 200 children to a school, and parents feel pressured into getting atleast one or 2 (one for granny etc etc) [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Si

700 squid....thats obscene....tell him where to shove it.

He has pics worth nothing... you have cash. Why would anyone else buy her pics. Your his only market. offer him £180.00 a pic or walk away.

Your wife won a "free" photo session, but has to pay for any pics? As has been said already, this sounds, looks and smells like a scam.

If they're charging £700 a pop for repro the prints should be the size of your wall or something!

If, as suspected, this lot are back street con-artists, it's likely that whatever "protection" is on the CD won't be too hard to crack. However, two wrongs don't make a right, and putting yourself up for copryright theft isn't really the answer. Besides, as has already been said, it's likely the resolution of the images on the CD will be too low to get tidy prints off.

If she really wants 'em, phone up another pro snapper in your area and ask how much they'd charge for equivalent size prints. Get the cost of the reproduction only , cos, don't forget, the session itself was a "prize" and was thus free.

Once you find out the repro costs (which I'm sure will be less than £700 a plate unless they're lifesize/framed in 24ct gold), offer the first mob the same amount, or tell them to sling their hook/that you're reporting them to your local Trading Standards Office/shopping them to Watchdog.

[Edited by greasemonkey - 7/25/2003 2:03:45 AM]

I wouldn't even pay the £100 for the CD !

Write it off as a bad experience and go see a proper professional photographer tell him exactly what you want. If after that you think it's worth it, you can always go back & buy the CD.

As already stated, anyone with half a brain would only put low res pictures on the CD, so even if you hack it, you will only bet pants pictures when printed anyhow.

Yep its an age old "scam" you are paying for the hundreds of other people who also got photographed that did walk away.

face it, any photographer worth his salt will make you want photos

why do you think most insist you visit them to view them once developed, its because you dont have time to really consider what you want and how much

... or just so people can't take the proofs away, scan them and then return them saying 'no thanks'. They're just protecting themselves; wouldn't you?

It definitely sounds like a con anyway - very few photos are worth £700 unless you want to use them commercially. Get a real photographer to re-shoot the pics if you want them, it'll be a lot cheaper since you won't be paying for time spent taking pictures of lots of other people too.

They could send the proofs easily if they wanted to. Most snappers just put a big copyright warning across the image so it'd be more trouble than it's worth to scan and Photoshop the text out.