Wonders never cease

Here's a sign.

By John Teece

Professional lighting

I have found a very interesting site on getting better results with flash. The Strobist site is actually a blog (using the same service as we do) and you can read it here. One of the readers of Strobist is X-Pose, and you can read his tutorial on building a diffuser panel here and view samples of his work here. He describes how he achieved each of his pictures, which makes it especially interesting.

Important note: Looking at other people's pictures is one of the best ways to improve your visual literacy and, thus, your photography. You're highly unlikely to become a good writer if you don't read, and the same applies to photography and looking at pictures. Why is, do you think, that experienced photographers still buy photo magazines and books?

X-Pose mentions the Canon ST-E2 infrared transmitter, which is what we Canon users have to buy in order to be able to move our dedicated camera-top flashes off-camera, but still allow the camera to control the output of the flash. Users of Nikon cameras are luckier because most of their camera bodies have wireless flash control built-in.

MEMBER CHALLENGE

Send in your pictures of signs to me at the usual e-mail address.

Sign of the times by Allan Jackson

PS Elements 5.0 review

Last week I wrote a short review of Photoshop Elements 5.0 for my column in the Sunday Tribune. You can read it on my computer blog here. I'm often amazed at just how good Elements is, even in comparison to the full Photoshop package.

Interesting article

Check out the Digital Life page in the UK's Online Telegraph. It has usually got an interesting beginners' article on digital photography, digital questions and answers and crits on a couple of readers' pictures.

Member's pictures

Click any picture to view an enlargement.

Cecil Hodgson sent in some pics from the recent outing to the Butterfly Farm and I have chosen two to put up here.

I'm not knowledgeable about birds so I don't what kind this one is. Nonetheless it is a good picture of the little fellow. The picture is well composed, sharp, and the background in nicely out of focus so it doesn't intrude. The colour is very good even though uploading it to the blog has degraded it a bit; the colours in Cecil's original are more vibrant than they appear here. The only improvement I could suggest would be to clone away the nearly-in-focus stem on the right or, which might be even better, crop it off along with a bit of sky at the top.

This butterfly picture [I hope it is a butterfly and not a moth] has all the strengths of the bird one above, in that it has good colour, the subject is sharp, and it has an unobtrusive background. For me, the failing in the picture is the banana in the foreground, which is overly dominant in the frame and which and draws my eye every time. I think that the picture could be improved by cropping off most of the banana; a square crop would work quite well with this picture.

Food which distracts from the subject, is quite a common problem with wildlife pictures and I've seen it, for example, in insect pictures and in ones taken at vulture restaurants. I'd recommend that, when coming across an animal posing nicely [and that includes humans], you take the shot immediately because you might lose the opportunity if you faff about. Then, if you've got time, you can have a bash at improving the picture by re-framing it or changing your viewpoint.

Click any picture to view an enlargement.

Photo opportunities

Verena sent in this exhaustive list of photo opportunities around KZN in November:

Fish Eagle Coast Mile Swim
11/11/2006
Venue: Richards Bay
Contact: Casper Kriel 0828966011
casper.kriel@mondibp.com

Whale Watching
November 2006
Venue: St Lucia
Contact: 035-5901259
advantage@zululink.co.za

Nature Trails

18 and 19^th November : Canoe Trails on Umgeni River. Phone Ross 031 201 1303

11^th November : Bat watch at Umdloti – Phone Juan 082 830 6334

Walks and Runs

24^th November : Coca Cola Fun Run (Wildlife) – Amphitheatre Chris 083 452 3465

Cricket

22^nd November : SA vs India
30^th November : Dolphins vs Warriors

Canoeing

8, 15, 22, 29^th November : Landrover Dice Series at Shongweni 033 347 5320

Radio Boat Club

Every Saturday at Blue Lagoon : Steve 031 564 9878 or Sheldon 031 262 1506

Horse

11, 12^th November Novice Team Champs – Shongweni
18, 19^th November Shongweni Showing Shows – Shongweni

Motor Racing

12^th November : Senior Motorcross at Springfield
19^th November : Karting at iDube Raceway Phone Gay 031 266 5640

Surfing

25, 26^th November : Rip Curl Gromsearch Finals – Durban

Swimming

12^th November : Masters Grand Prix – Kings Park Pool. 031 312 7272
25^th November : Synchronised swimming KZN Primary Schools – Anne 083 236 7555
26^th November : Capital K 1000m swim – Midmar – 033 3428492

Steam Train

26^th November : Inchanga Choo Choo 082 353 6003

Guided Tours

26^th November – Botanic Gardens. 031 309 1170
26^th November – CROW 031 462 1127
26^th November – Annual Toy Run from Pavilion – Joy 083 285 0815 (Bring toys)

Christmas Parties – Public

29^th November – Uncle Jumbo’s – Richard 083 775 8166

Water Skiing

19^th November : Tournament – The Farm, Camperdown. Linda Quinn 031 207 3377

Every Saturday

10 – 12h00 : Jazz on Wilsons Wharf – phone to take photo’s 031 305 1677

For sale

Melissa is selling a Nikon D200 kit including a Nikon D200 body, Extreme3 Sandisk 1gb card, 70-300mm nikkor telephoto lens, nikkor afs18-70mm ed dx lens, mulitgrip battery pack ,sb 600 speedflash, camera bag, plus 2 nikon batteries. Terms will be cash and she is open to genuine offers.

There is also a studio flash kit available. It includes 2 Hensel Contra studio flash untits, 2 stands, 2 umbrellas, 1 softbox, a remote flash trigger and other accessories for R10,000. There is also a black paper roll backdrop for R600, a very large black fabric backdrop for R200, and a very large white fabric backdrop for R200.

Drop me a line on my usual e-mail if you want to make an offer on any item.

Photoshop Tip # 1

At the club the other night I demonstrated a cunning technique for selectively darkening or lightening areas in a picture. Called painting with light (PWL), it is similar in effect to the dodge and burn technique used in traditional dark rooms.

Photoshop users can download and install an action from ActionCentral which will automate the creation of the two extra layers required for PWL. Click here and, once you arrive at the site, scroll down until you get to Chip Springer’s PWL action. Download it and go here to find out how to install it in Photoshop.

Users of other image manipulation programs can also use the technique but you have to create the layers yourself. The steps are as follows:

• Open the image you want to work on.
• Create an empty layer above the background layer, name it Paint Light, fill it with black and set its layer blend mode to Color Dodge. Your Layer Palette should now look something like this:

• Create another empty layer, name it Paint Shadow, fill it with white and set its layer blend mode to Color Burn. Your Layer Palette should look something like this:

• You can now lighten areas in your picture by painting white onto the Paint Light layer using a large soft brush.
• Conversely, you can darken areas in your picture by painting black onto the Paint Shadow layer using a large soft brush.
• Turn down the opacity of the brush to 5-10% and build up the effect gradually, to get the best results.

Member's pictures

Click on any picture to view an enlargement.

Chantell Joubert sent some pictures in and Harry Lock commented on them.

Of the two cyling pictures you sent in, I prefer the one of the single cyclist. You have gotten in close enough to get the facial expression and good detail in his outfit.

You will see, in the example below, that I have cropped it a little closer. I feel that if the whole of the front wheel had been in the picture it would have been fine, but since the bottom of the wheel is missing, one may as well crop it, as the viewer will still know that he is on a bicycle.

You will notice that I have also cleaned up the background a little - one of the advantages of the digital era. But it is also something of a disadvantage as we expect every picture to be perfect!

The guy on the ski is a good photograph, as you have his face in focus and captured the action well. You pressed the shutter at the right time on his stroke. Again, I have played with the cropping, the vertical pic shows the waves behind him giving the impression of him being chased. This sense of excitement is lost in the horizontal crop.In both instances, I lightened his face.

Click on any picture to view an enlargement.

Reminder - Meeting

** A reminder about the talk on the newly reissued book Barrier of Spears at Hillcrest Library this Friday evening. Full details further down in the blog.

** Remember also the meeting next week on Tuesday, 7 September. We are going to have a short talk about flash from John and a little bit of Photoshop from myself. We'll then have the usual showing of members' pictures.

Joy by Allan Jackson

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.