This practice provides a basis for choosing, specifying, recording, communicating, and standardizing the conditions and processes that determine the nature of a photographic image of a specimen. Its provisions are particularly useful when the photographic image is used to preserve or communicate the appearance of a specimen involved in an aging or stressing test that affects its appearance. It is often useful to compare photographs made under identical conditions before and after a test to illustrate a change in appearance.

This practice deals with specific details of camera technique and the photographic process, so it will probably be best understood and implemented by a technical photographer or someone trained in photographic science. The person requiring the photograph must clearly indicate to the photographer what features of the specimen are of technical interest, so he may use techniques that make those features clearly evident in the photograph, without misrepresenting the appearance of the specimen.

This practice provides useful guidance on presenting photographs for viewing, providing an indication of dimensions or scale, indicating the orientation of the picture, and referring to particular points on a picture. These techniques should be useful to those writing technical literature involving illustrations of the appearance of specimens. The methods of this practice should contribute materially to the accuracy and precision of other standards that rely on pictures to indicate various grades of some attribute of appearance, such as blistering or cracking.

For acceptance testing, manufacturing control, and regulatory purposes, it is desirable to employ measurement, but in those cases where there are no methods of measuring the attribute of appearance of interest, well-made photographs or photomechanical reproductions of them may be the best available way to record and communicate to an inspector the nature of the attribute of appearance.