February 25th saw a talk from Chris Jeffree entitled "Focussing on Plants". I think that's the first time we ever had 3-D glasses at the club! Chris has vast experience of photography from both the laboratory end, using scanning electron microscopes and the field end, recording plants in high detail in the open air. As Colin explained recently, the problem with macro work is depth of field. That means small apertures, which means shortage of light. If you want the high detail and sharp focus with a dark background, you need as small apertures as you can without significant diffraction softening.
So you need loads of light, right next to the lens. hence the self-designed twin flash unit Chris has for his Nikon. The additional ability to do focus stacking makes mirrorless an attractive option- hence the Z7.
The results speak for themselves. (I came home with 4 of his cards). The degree of detail in his photographs is exceeded only by the detail in the electron microscope images. I expect he could fix that given a £250,000 camera, but it's clear a great deal can be achieved with gear as basic as a mobile phone or compact camera, with a bit of thought and a lot of practice.
Macro photographers seem to be expert at making their own equipment, sometimes using scrap materials and junk. I expect a certain amount of experiment next week when we will be trying a bit of macro work with help from Colin. We are unlikely to match Chris's standards, but we'll see what we can do. Bring camera, tripod if available, something to shoot and any other gear you think might help- extension tubes, old lenses (to use reversed), flashguns etc.
The 18th.of February saw a good turnout for the Monochrome Competition, with 4 categories, Landscape, Street, Portrait and Texture. Several members forgot about the categories when submitting their entries and had to make last minute choices about which category to enter which image into. Judge Libby Smith stuck to the categories in her assessments, so we all need to keep this in mind with the entry date for the Annual Competition approaching fast. (March 3rd).
Libby is a very experienced and considerate judge and an even more experienced photographer. Her comments are always worth hearing, even - perhaps especially- when she tells you what could have been done better and how. Our thanks to both her and to husband Neil for the commitment to club photography that brought them across from Carluke on a winter night.
As Libby said, she was judging what she saw on the screen, not on the PC monitor. It was noticeable, as always, that detail on the monitor was (in most, but not all cases) better than on the screen. It's perhaps more obvious in mono. To some extent this is inevitable - the two technologies are very different- and something we must learn to allow for. When editing on a monitor, it pays to bear in mind that there will be loss of faint luminance detail and contrast, especially in the sky, on screen. Particularly in monochrome, strong skies do stand out. Also, as Libby pointed out, a big bright area on a 24" monitor becomes a VERY big bright area onscreen. Maybe one day we will be able to afford a 3 metre wide 32K monitor and ditch projection entirely...
...meanwhile, experiments with the projector's "Active gamma correction" suggest one way forward. We will do a two minute comparison next week and take a vote.
Tuesday 4th we had "favourite photos" from Gillian and Grace - one set family images and holiday pictures, the other of a private animal sanctuary near Lauder. Probably 99% of photography world wide is about the creation of a visual diary, a record of where we went, when and who with. They are personal, like the ones Melanie showed of her daughter last week. This is what cameras are for. They are recording instruments. These days, most such shots are taken on cellphones, but there's no reason for that beyond convenience. A better camera can give better records.
Competition judges tend to be sniffy about such "record shots", but that's because they are viewing them in a competitive context. Most of our images are not intended for competitions. What the competitions are supposed to do is teach us how to take the best record shots possible to document the important events and people in our lives, which is what we got the camera for in the first place.
We then had one of Colin's master classes- this time about what "focus" really means. I was anticipating talk about phase v contrast systems and back button compared with half-press shutter release. As usual, Colin bypassed the obvious and got down to basics. Not every image has to be sharp. The point is to use focus to show the viewer what you want him to see. That may mean deliberately using depth of field creatively (or software blurring) to put parts of an image out of focus to draw the viewer's eye where you want it to go.
Where you do want front-to-back sharpness, you must consider the softening effects of diffraction as well as the increased DoF of small apertures. You may need to combine focus stacked images. (Not just in macro work; stacking can be used in landscape images too). Or you might use a smaller sensor camera- which is where cellphones shine.
Moving targets demand fast focus response. I spent hours last summer trying to get decent pics of bees in flight. It never entered my head to use the "stalk of grass" trick. Roll on, Springtime.
I also learned what an Airy disc is. Watch for this one in the next quiz.
No fewer than eight valiant members braved howling winds on Thursday Jan 30th to play with flashing lights and sparklers in the A1 underpass. I think a local farmer wondered if he had fallen amongst Satanists or something. Rather more warmly clad, photographers. We even saw a meteor.
January 28th was a bit different. We had some rather lovely photos from Lorraine and Elaine and a talk about the feeding and appliance of a lensbaby from Norm. We had revelations about the contents of kitbags- Bill Paterson compared his two cameras for performance and ergonomics. (They both seemed pretty comfortable to my grip, but the XT20 is similar in size to my Olympus- and lighter. The extra weight of the DSLR was significant. )
Mike Thomson had some rather lower tech in his bag, designed to help the photographer get down to ground level. He didn't give details about getting back up. None of us is getting younger. Lighter cameras and something to kneel on get more important with each passing year.
The most useful tip I ever heard was to stash a spare SD card in your bag and another in your wallet- so the day you forget to put one in the camera, there's a chance you didn't just waste the day.
January 14th was the Audiovisual competition, won this year by Melanie, with a "Photo-Roman" entitled "The Unsent Letter"; This kind of digital storytelling is a very different approach to the traditional slides-set-to-music. Rather more work, too!
A few years ago, the whole A/V concept seemed moribund and the competition appeared doomed, but the broader definition of what constitutes "A/V" seems to have breathed life back into it. Given that most modern cameras can do good video, we have scarcely scratched the surface.
Colin's moth images illustrated several important points- First, an urban garden can be surprisingly rich in night active species. Second, cameras are recording devices. It's easy to overlook that if we obsess on competition images. Third, moths are surprisingly cool! Not only can they eat your curtains, they might inspire designs for the replacements.
A visual record of your life and interests is one big reason to use your camera every day. In particular, as climate change affects our ecosystems, a record like Colin's may have value that far outweighs scoring points or winning a cup. Get out there and photograph stuff!
The high winds of climate change did not deter the valiant souls who took part in the annual HCC Quiz on January 7th. The winning duo , Alison and Andy, scored 60.4%, a score they might have improved by merely bunging the judge a fiver for a look at the answers. We now all know how many jpgs would fit on an IBM 5150 PC with all 3 memory add-ons, (none), how many Cape Gannets nest on the Bass Rock (none) and what chance I have of being invited to do the quiz next year.
Dec 17th , we had the results of the photo safari, with the teams showing the results of their labours. There were mince pies as well!
Tuesday Dec 10th was the theme competition. The theme this year was "Curves", with Neil Scott judging. We continue to experiment with judging methods and scoring systems . Feedback from both judges and members will be taken into account at the end of this year when deciding what systems to use in future, so give it some thought and let everyone know what you think. I hope Neil and everyone else got home OK, as it seems a lot of roads were closed due to the high winds.
Tuesday 26th was the "Match a Picture" night with North Berwick Photographic Society. The final score was NB 39, HCC 29. A very enjoyable evening and many thanks to Gordon Rae for coming all the way from Lockerbie to judge it for us on a wet and foggy night.
29th October. The "Season Starter" competition was the first to use the new scoring system. This replaces the "points out of 20" score with a 1st, 2nd, 3rd system , but adds categories, so more people have a chance at a "first" in different types of photograph. This simplifies some aspects of scoring while complicating others. In particular it means the judge must be fast on his feet, as he gets no chance to examine the images before the event.
Charles Summers was the "Guinea pig". He was still standing at the end and I'm sure he will be fine after a good night's sleep. Charles pointed out potential areas for improvement in each shot as he went, after a rapid run through of 62 images he had never seen before. This is the important bit about competitions- that we learn something from criticism of our own and everyone else's images. Judges see a lot of shots, from a wide range of clubs, so they can give valuable comment on what could be better- because they will often have seen the same subject differently treated.
Whether we score a 1st or not is less important. What matters is that we continue to improve. I saw some great shots last night that didn't "win" , especially among the prints, which by their very size don't get the punchy presentation of DPIs. (It helps to sit at the front.)
A big "Thanks" to Charles for his stalwart performance. It can't have been easy! We will be assessing the scoring system throughout the year.
22 October. Colin gave us an impressive demonstration of preparing an audio-visual presentation using a mix of freeware. The main program "Photostage" is available free to download for home users here.
In the middle of a live demo, Colin also used both Faststone Image Viewer and GIMP to edit images at the same time, while simultaneously remaining upright and talking. This impressed your jaded scribe no end.
Seriously, what this demonstrates is just how good freeware has become. All the software used (except Windows) is available for no cost to home users.
Using the Windows 10 Photo app to create an A/V is probably simpler if you stick to the basic options, but if you fancy producing something more polished, why not try Photostage for yourself?
We also had 5 favourites from John and some favourite locations from Paul. Keep them coming, everyone.
15 October. So, why do you like some landscape photos a lot more than others? Do all your "good" images have things in common? If so, can you say what those things are? That's a simplified version of the question Neil McCoubrey asked himself. Few of us would pursue the question in the sort of depth Neil has, but none of us (as far as I know) is working towards a PhD in photography. We are used to the sort of "Rules" of composition which score points in club competitions. Cheerfully ignoring rules of thirds , slapping the principal element square on the optic axis of his lens and laying his horizons wherever he thinks they belong, even if it's right in the middle, Neil looks for 2-D geometries which can fade in milliseconds of overthinking the image. I think there are a lot more ways of seeing images than his , as I'm sure he would agree, but I liked a lot of his images, even if my reasons differ from Neil's. A lot to think about here , in a very different approach to Landscape from that of Neil Mcdade a few weeks ago.
08 October was a "Members' night". In theory, so is every night, insofar as if any member has something to contribute, they are very welcome to do so. That might be "5 favourite photos" , or a suggestion for something you want to know a bit about; it might be a query about how to solve a problem with your camera, or about which camera / tripod / software to buy. It might be something you found out that you think we should all hear. It can be any input at all and the more the better. It's your club. Don't just sit there. Stand up and shimmy.
Links to the free editing programs we mentioned are below. All four are free to home users, though if you feel like contributing something, I'm sure the people behind them would appreciate it. For most of what we need as club photographers, "Faststone Image Viewer" is fine, as Colin demonstrated. If you want layers, try Gimp. If you want to edit raw files in Gimp, try one of the two raw handlers- Rawtherapee or Darktable. The links below are to the correct download sites.
This fellow, Michael Davies, has a load of tutorials on Gimp and Darktable.
01 October. Wow! Eagles! Buzzards! Bison! Dolphins! Dragons! OK , no dragons, but if there was one on Mull, Zaneta Blasczyk would have a great picture of it. There are two key aspects to wildlife photography- knowing your equipment and understanding your subject. Real wildlife photographers must master both and it's clear Zaneta fits the description.
Of course, willingness to go where the subjects are is critical, too-which is where a willing assistant like Chris comes in very useful. No wildly exotic locations here though- we've all been to Mull and Musselburgh is just up the road. This is the sort of quality we can all get if we a) Are willing to get up early at the right place and b) Have an incredibly good eye for animal behaviour. It just takes hard work and talent. Which lets me out. I enjoyed this evening very much. It really is time I went back to Mull.
24 Sept. We covered a lot of ground this evening. First, Colin gave a briefing on the "Safari" and teams were chosen. Paul, Colin and Jim showed five favourite images, with Jim giving the first presentation of prints rather than projected images. Everyone's photography is different and these short presentations let every member show a bit of what they do and tell us what they like about it.
Grace then gave us a double item, first about using phone apps to edit images downloaded from a camera, so sidestepping the need for pricy software like Lightroom by using apps which are free or cost literally pennies. She then gave a talk on what photography is for from her point of view. Most of us would share several of her reasons for carrying a camera, but there are loads of others- photojournalism, for example. If anyone would like to do a similar talk, just speak up at a meeting.
17 Sept. Some really lovely views of Scotland tonight from Neil McDade, the man behind Facebook's "Spectacular Scotland" site. I would have been happy to have taken any of the images Neil showed us. He is determined, whenever possible, to find a new viewpoint from which to photograph Scotland's best known views, so his results are recognisably different. I have images of the Forth Rail Bridge from Dalmeny station, but it never occurred to me to go there at night, in fog. It occurred to him. The tree-framed shot of Kilchurn Castle, the snowy highland border hills beyond Stirling Castle, from Bannockburn- original variations on old themes that present known scenes in a fresh new way. It clearly takes a lot of time and effort- which is usually the secret of doing anything well. Neil's off to Iceland soon. I will be interested to see what he brings back.
10 Sept. Apart from a closely averted disaster with the kitchen cupboard keys, things went generally to plan at the first meeting. There was a lot to get through and I can imagine first timers and maybe several old members were reeling from information overload, In particular, the new competition rules do need a bit of explaining. It will be easier when we actually do it.
Same goes for the hasty explanation about the projector resolution. Keep that screen height limit of 1050 pixels in your mind and don't worry about the rest. We will go over it again.