Quality control

Quality control

What does the term ‘quality control’ mean to you? Is it just a small slip of paper in the box with a new camera or lens which assures you that someone has checked something at some point? Or is it something that really has a meaning for you, a reality?

As an auditor, I was very much concerned with quality, in terms of what we did. Most of my career was in organisations where we cared a lot about our reports being accurate, supported by clear evidence, and delivered in a way that made them acceptable to our auditees. Earlier on, we asked for a numerical rating of several different things that mattered to us: latterly, we asked for the feedback that they wanted to give, which told us far more about our work!



Is QC different from quality assurance? It probably shouldn’t be, but my impression is that QA is more about proving that you haven’t done anything wrong, rather than that you’ve done anything at all right. Popular with regulators, who often seem less concerned with the end-to-end times of their work or delivering something helpful than perfect internal process. Good advice delivered late is not a lot of help to anyone.

The idea that everything should reach a certain (specified) standard seems pretty basic to me, although the parameters may be a little flexible some of the time. And it’s massively difficult to see what you’ve got wrong than analyse other people’s pictures. For instance, there are times when perfect exposure and sharpness simply don’t matter: in news photography, obviously: but sometimes the perfect aesthetic moment means that either they don’t matter, or even – scandalous thought – getting it wrong is what makes it right.



Interesting and beautiful may end up mattering more than anything else…

I must add one scandalous story about Kodak’s use of the term ‘Quality Control’ back in the days when it was illegal to send explicit nudes through Her Majesty’s Post Office’s services. The company used the term to check that they were not committing an offence by returning processed slides to photographers: I believe that they contacted photographers and asked them to collect the film in person. A different ‘Walk of Shame’? – Or, possibly, a badge of honour… Janet Cook was a professional glamour photographer who worked for the Paul Raymond organisation’s magazines under the by-line ‘Fanny’ – in an interview in a camera magazine she complained that she’d never been asked to collect pictures, so she assumed that she’d never achieved ‘quality’…