Welcome to Image Mechanics' Counter Intelligence, the online magazine and brick and mortar kiosks devoted to digital photography.  This is where we share our knowledge as digital capture experts and track industry trends and technology that are relevant to photographers.  We started sharing our knowledge with our highly praised DeathToFilm blog 3 years ago as a way to evangelize the merits of digital capture.  One of our first articles compared the cost of shooting an average advertising job on film to shooting it digitally.  Since then, most advertising jobs are now shot digitally so our controversial tongue in cheek blog name no longer seems relevant.  It is kind of like saying death to steam engines or down with manual looms.  So just like technology changes constantly, we are also changing.  We will leave DeathToFilm up as an archive but all new tech articles will be posted on Counter Intelligence.

The photo and digital capture industry is also changing.  Full frame high resolution DSLRs are now affordable and software like Adobe Lightroom make managing and processing images more manageable.  Budgets are also shrinking with the current economic crises and we find ourselves teaching and supporting our photographer clients' DIY efforts for when budgets don't allow our full service package.  Speaking and teaching internationally has also heated up and we have expanded in-house workshops along with events at A&I Photo Lab, Calumet, APA and the California Community College system.

As the Counter in the name implies, we opened our version of a genius bar dedicated to digital photography at our Santa Monica headquarters. You can set up an appointment for one on one instruction on digital capture, Lightroom, Photoshop, archiving or anything technology related.  We also rescue media cards and hard drives, calibrate laptop screens, give personalized camera instruction and help with most Mac computer issues (and some Windows).  You can even drop your external hard drives off and have us organize them in Lightroom, back them up off-site for you and load the selects into an online web gallery with 24/7 access.

We are just getting started with support services and DIY help.  Soon our online bookstore with a new concept in photo how-to manuals will go live.  Keep an eye on this site for other upcoming features like our forum replacement where we answer your email or phone questions directly.  If we don't have an immediate answer to your question our relationship with software and hardware manufacturers will give us direct access to the people who do.  No more guessing which answer is correct or wading through fanboyism and pixelpeepers with their slanted agendas.  Just the straight answers.