BALTIMORE -- Yolanda Vazquez watched a news broadcast on a high-definition television for the first time with mixed emotions.
She was impressed by the way it rendered the anchors in such vivid detail. "It's amazing," she said, "like you're not in 3-D but in 15-D."
But awe gave way to self-conscious jitters once Vazquez, a reporter and anchor at Maryland Public Television, realized that her turn in front of an HD camera was coming.
"You're really under the microscope," she said, "and if you've got a new pimple or a stray hair, it's obvious."
Such is the lot of on-air talent as momentum builds for the most significant technological change in broadcasting since the advent of color TV. Prompted by a federal mandate to switch from analog to digital broadcasting by Feb. 17, 2009, stations around the country are steadily upgrading their equipment to transmit shows in HD.
With at least four times the resolution of traditional equipment, HD cameras and television sets will display Vazquez and other small-screen personalities in images as large, clear and detailed as they are unforgiving.
The change has sparked particular concern among those who perform live. Unlike movies and recorded programs, on which retakes and post-production tweaks can compensate for poor lighting or bad makeup, live shows provide no safety net.
More ominously, in a profession in which personal appearance can be pivotal to success, veteran TV newscasters worry that HDTV could turn a spotlight on imperfections that traditional TV technology overlooked.
"These people are under pressure to look good, and frankly, there aren't a lot of 22-year-old anchors out there, so this really scares them," said Doug McAward, co-founder of Kett Cosmetics, a New York company that specializes in Digital Age makeup.
Older makeup techniques don't work on HDTV because thick layers of powder, pancake and cream show up as clearly as the blemishes they're intended to cover. "If somebody has an imperfection," McAward said, "you want to cover just that imperfection, not coat the entire face to cover it up."
Makeup artists at HD stations with big budgets use airbrushes to apply specially formulated cosmetics. Their makeup contains no silicon or mica because those substances make people look shiny and frosted under the brighter lights that HD requires. Also absent are kaolin clay and other materials that appear to cake in HD.
