Library display

The display in Hillcrest Library promoting the club went up today and, although I was disappointed at how few picture submissions were received from members, I think it looks pretty good. The display:

and the poster I did for it:

Member's pictures

Click on a pic to see an enlargement

Here are a couple of pics from Verena:

By Verena Illingworth

A great effort for what is a very hard shot to take; those bikes are moving at an unbelievable speed. There is a lot of action in this picture and the guys are obviously pedalling their hearts out. There is a nice use of differential focus in which the background is blurred, so as not to be too obtrusive, and the leading riders are sharp. In this situation you would want the rider in the front to be the sharpest but the one behind him in the white shirt is slightly sharper. It's not a major problem as far as I'm concerned, however.

I think that the shot could have been better with the bike wheels showing in front and a bit less sky. As it is, it could be improved for my taste if the rider on the extreme right were cropped off along with a bit of sky.

By Verena Illingworth

This is a cute picture of a man and his dog watching something. It happened to be the cyclists in the Amashovashova race but that isn't important, the story here is about the relationship between the man and the dog. The picture works very well for me and I don't feel I need to see more of the man or the dog's face. It is also a good example of a photographer taking pictures at an event but not forgetting to look around to see what other subjects are there to be found.

Click on a pic to see an enlargement

Photo books / news

There are a couple of items of news for you today including the fact that photo books are now obtainable locally. What these are is collections of your pictures printed out on a variety of sizes of paper and neatly bound in hardcover binding. Photo World in Pick 'n Pay Centre in Hillcrest have samples in various sizes to show, and they are quite reasonably priced.

One very cool thing about them is that they don't require any layout skill because it is all done with a computer program which is available from Photo World for R25, I think it was, or which can be downloaded for free here. You just plug your pictures into the templates provided and take the resulting file down to Photo World. You can also have calendars and postcards printed in the same way.

I had a very interesting morning on Saturday when Jack Fisher and I visited SuperMax in Springfield Park. SuperMax is one of Durban's few professional-level photo labs and has branched out into photographic studio equipment, tripods, and the like, and have opened their own studio. One piece of good news is that the price of studio equipment has come right down and you can now get a kit with two flash heads, stands and related equipment for around R6000. An extra couple of umbrellas, a flashmeter and radio transmitter for the flashes takes the total to something over R9000. Backgrounds are extra and how much you will have to spend depends on whether you want canvas, paper, cloth, or vinyl.

We then visited the SuperMax studio in Kensington Centre in Durban North, and got a lot ideas about how to set up a studio. I also got some ideas which were less welcome when I caught sight of the studio camera which is an EOS 5D, which has a sensor the same size as a frame of 35mm film, and the rather special 24-105mm F4 L lens attached to it.

One of the biggest drawbacks to digital photography, especially if you're shooting hundreds of frames, is the time needed to 'develop' the pictures and get them ready for printing. Max Fowles, of SuperMax, was telling me that there is photo lab software on the way in the few months, which will allow him to accept raw camera files and prepare them for printing. This would save professional photographers a lot of time that they can put to better use shooting pictures for other clients.

Member's pictures

Click on a pic to see an enlargement

Here are a couple of pictures from Natalie. The first is from the recent outing to the Butterfly Farm and the second is from the Amashovashova Cycle race the next day.

By Natalie Knibbs

This is a really nice picture of the two little girls. The lighting on them is good and, although there is a fair amount going on the background, it doesn't overpower the subjects. The girls are quite central in the picture but it doesn't bother me.

By Natalie Knibbs

This is a nicely panned shot of this cyclist which gives the pic a good feeling of movement by blurring the background. The slowish shutter speed has also added blur to the spokes of the wheels adding to the feeling of movement and the cyclist has plenty of space to move into, which is good. The picture is a little flat, to my eye, and could have benefitted from a levels addjustment and saturation boost. I would also have cropped the yellow lampost off at the left and tried to clone out the white squarish thingy behind the bike.

________

Natalie's two pictures have been compressed to the point where they are looking less than their best. This can happen when you send pictures by e-mail using the e-mail programs' automatic settings, which are usually designed to make pictures as small as possible. For display on this blog, or other website, you aim for a size of 1000-1600 pixels on the longest edge of the picture, and choose a medium or medium-high quality setting.

The best way of preparing pictures for display on the web is to size them in your usual image manipulation program. You will find that making pictures smaller often results in them losing sharpness and you might find it a good idea to give them a light sharpening before saving them using a medium or medium-high quality setting. When sending them by e-mail, you should specify that they are sent at their original size.

Click on a pic to see an enlargement

PS Album Starter

By Andrew Begg

Photoshop Album Starter Edition is a cousin to the well known Photoshop application. It is mainly meant for use to cataloguing your photographs. As we begin to collect those literally thousands of images, it becomes increasingly important to be able to retrieve a certain picture at a moment’s notice.

You have the ability so sort your pictures by date, or by tagging. Tagging allows you to place each of your pictures in a category. Categories include: People, Places, Events and Other, but you can create your own additional categories as you need them.

With date view, you are able to select a specific day, and watch a slideshow of your pictures shot that day. Once correctly installed, PS Album, will detect when your camera or media card is connected to your PC, and will transfer your images to your hard drive, into a folder named after the date/time of the import (transfer).

PS Album will support JPEG and AVI (for those people who shoot video clips), but not RAW. For RAW, one will need something a bit more advanced. When your images have been transferred, and catalogued, you have the option of performing basic corrections to your image. Under the General Fixes Category, you may fix colour, levels, saturation and contrast. Additionally, red eye removal is possible, as well as image cropping.

The final task is printing, which you can do directly from PS Album. Unfortunately, the variety of printing options is limited as we tend to use A4 size paper in this country, and the majority of the printing options are intended for use with the US standard “letter” size paper.

The great thing about PS Album is its price: it is free to download from the Adobe Web Site, and after registration, the program is yours.

Photo opportunity

Verena sent in this about a beach festival which sounds interesting:

"October 27-30: The South Coast is set to sizzle with the South Coast Surf Carnival. The programme includes a national longboarding contest and kitesurfing on Scottburgh and Kelso beaches, as well as development surfing clinics and the family orientated sport of kite flying. Kiteboarder registration opens at 10am at Kelso on the Friday, with registration for longboarders at 6pm at the same venue. Registration for kite flying opens at 9am at Kelso on Saturday."

Window success

Harry has stirred his stumps and has put up a club picture board at Photo World at the Pick 'n Pay Centre in Hillcrest. Pictures chosen by popular acclamation will be posted there each month.

October outing: reportback

A great time was had by all at the Butterfly Farm last Saturday. Hopefully, in due course, we'll see other pictures taken on the outing. The butterflies were pretty elusive but I did see a lot of shots being taken of Natalie's cute daughters.

You may know that Natalie was expecting and you'll be pleased to know that the new baby has been delivered; a Sony A100 10 Mega-pixel DSLR. It has built-in anti-shake technology which looks as though it works like a bomb to reduce camera shake. Click here for a review of the camera.

The club at breakfast by Jack Fisher

Great flash exposure. Must have been taken with a Nikon !! ;-)

Click the picture to view an enlargement.

Lens reviews

Here's a link to PhotoZone which does good lens reviews. You'll also find the link on the right-hand side of each page on this blog.

Extra Outing

We had a wonderful well-attended outing today to the Butterfly Farm. Hopefully, we'll get some pictures to put up in due course. In the meantime, some of the folk who were there decided to get together again on Sunday, 22 October, to take pictures of the cyclists in the Amashovashova race. We are going to be meeting from 7pm onward at the bottom of Bothas Hill at the corner where Kassier Road leads into Old Main Road. There will be a skottel so bring something to cook for breakfast and, of course, something to drink.

Cyclist by Allan Jackson

Online Photo Albums

In the Sunday Tribune some time ago, I wrote an article on online photo albums which you can use to post your pictures on the Internet so that others can view them. You can read the article by clicking here.

In it I wrote about a new service called Picasa Web Albums which was on test and which was unique because it allows you to upload to your web album directly from the free Picasa photo organiser program on your computer. The albums are now open to all and you get 250Mb of free space to store your pictures online. Click here for more info or to sign up.

A sub-section of the committee - by Harry Lock

Library directions

Thanks to Patrick for the reminder that I didn't include directions to the Hillcrest Library in the monthly mailshot. You turn into Hospital Road. as though going to the Hillcrest Sports Club, but go past the entrance and take your first left into Delamore Road. The library is about 100m down the road on your left, in the small municipal complex.

Barrier of Spears

THE FRIENDS OF HILLCREST LIBRARY

will host an audio-visual presentation
(this will include ”Photography – the Art of Painting with Light”)
of a revised reprint of Reg Pearse’s

BARRIER OF SPEARS

by his son

MALCOLM PEARSE

Superb photography * Magnificent scenery * Exhilarating commentary

Time: 19:00
Date: Friday 3 November 2006
Place: Hillcrest Library Hall
Cost: R30.00 entrance fee
Wine and snacks will be available after the presentation

Signed copies of the book will be on sale at a discounted price.

Tickets available at Hillcrest Library or at the door.
Telephone: 031-761 5830

A car guard will be on duty

Member's picture

Here's a picture of a Blue Headed Lizard from Andrew Begg.

You can click on the picture to view an enlargement and you'll see that it has superb use of differential focus to draw attention the main subject. The back leg and body forms a nice line leading you into the picture. It's an excellent picture. One little nitpicking comment is that I would have liked to see a bit more space behind the animal and a bit less in front; that would have put the head on the intersection of thirds.

Why not leave a comment on the picture by clicking the link below.

News / October 2006 outing

* Hillcrest Library has asked us to put up a display in the library at the beginning of November to publicise the club. You are therefore all asked to contribute a small print, 5x7 or 6x8, to the display. You are welcome to mount the picture on card and put your name on it. Prints should be handed to one of the committee members at the outing to the Butterfly Farm on 21 November or dropped off at Harry Lock's home at 7 Edward Road, Hillcrest, before 29 October. The idea behind the small prints is that there will be room for more pictures, and it won't matter so much if any go missing.

* The outing this month is to the Butterfly Farm in Pietermaritzburg on 21 October. You can either meet us in the car park of the Hillcrest Sports Club at 08h30 to do the usual car sharing thing or meet us at the farm at 09h30. We'll do our photographic thing and have a meal afterwards. The cost will be R22 per person (R8 extra for the monkey house) and the meal will be extra. You can get to the farm by following the N3 around to the right of Pietermaritzburg, taking the Orthmann Road turnoff and going right over the freeway into the industrial area. The farm is well signposted.

* The next meeting is on 7^th November and we'' keep you posted about that once we know what's happening.

Getting exposure right

Here's a nice article on exposure. Click here to read it.

Member's picture

Here's a nice pic of the London Eye by Pat Kernick.

I like it and can only imagine that the print would be a stunner. I think that the inclusion of the ferry in the foreground balances the main subject nicely. Would a little more of the ferry have helped? I don't know; the pic is nice as it is.

Why don't you make a comment on the pic? You can do that by clicking the Comments link just below this.

September outing: reportback

We were relatively few on the trip to Alveston but a lot of fun was had by all. Click on the picture to view an enlargement.

By Allan Jackson

How's this for a lens?

DP Review has a story on a lens produced by Carl Zeiss which is world's largest. The Zeiss Apo Sonnar T* F4.0 lens has a focal length of 1700mm and rumour has it that it was ordered by a wildlife photography fanatic who had some oil wells in his backyard. Click here to read the story.

Photo composition

Check out this article in the Telegraph on photo composition. Click here to read.