President’s Report

October Fun, friendship and Learning

OFFICE BEARERS President: Trevor Faulkes Events Organiser: Narelle Howard Vice President: Gail Douglas Secretary: John Van Rijswijk Shutterbug: Gail Douglas Treasurer: John Van Rijswijk Publicity: Narelle Howard

Buy, Swap, Sell

Presidents monthly report Hi Everyone, 2019 is almost over and the Cherry Festival Exhibition is done and dusted. Thanks to all who helped setting up, manning open days, and taking the photos down ensuring they would be returned to exhibitors intact. Although the overall entry was slightly down the quality was as good as ever. Our thanks to the judge Struan Timms. To all our members I would like to wish you A Very Merry Christmas and A Happy and Healthy New Year. As a lot of members will be away, we have decided to cancel the last (December) meeting. We will arrange a dinner get together for early February where we can present trophies and plan for the year ahead. We will advise you re the date in the new year. Regards Trevor

Next meeting is the February 2020 Subject/challenge is— Just a note. Can members please bring a prize for the club night raffle (under $10.00). ______________________________________________

UPCOMING EVENTS We will advise at a later date when our first meeting will be and also the date and time for our Christmas dinner.

A GRADE – Subject— Signs 1st – 2nd – HC – C – A GRADE – Open 1st - 2nd - HC - C – JUNIORS— Open 1st - 2nd - HC - C - C - JUNIORS – Subject— Signs 1st – 2nd – HC - C – LARGE PRINT 1st - 2nd - Please note the change in the club competition: B Grade will be suspended. A Grade only subject/challenge and open class. Meta Data to written on back of photo. Junior and large print remain unchanged. Subject/challenge to be announced at previous meeting and included in Shutterbug. All photos must be taken within one month of comp. Photos must be sole work of entrant. Member must present photo in person or via a sibling only. Monthly comp to be judged/critiqued by guest presenter. Print sizes and presentation to remain unchanged.

Results —Camera Club Comp

How to Take Better Photos of Christmas Lights

Here is an article describing how you can get better photos of Christmas lights. I’ve focused on the tree, but these concepts will work for most any lighting display.

“Wrapping Up the Season” captured by Andy Castro

This time of year, everywhere you turn there are pretty lighting displays — ones worth capturing with our cameras.

But how?

While pretty, most of the Christmas lights we see are not very bright and come with a lot of photo problems if we hope to capture them accurately.

Christmas lights can be fairly tricky to capture since they are so dim. If we use a flash (on camera or off), we get a nice im-age of the base subject — the tree, decorations, presents, et cetera. But the flash will totally overwhelm the Christmas lights, and we either can’t see them at all, or they are nothing but a dim glow that adds nothing to the photo.

If we don’t use a flash and opt for a long shutter speed (to capture the tree’s lights), we get a nice festive image of the lights, but the tree and other decorations aren’t properly exposed and don’t look as good as they should.

A middle-of-the-road approach will give you results that are unsatisfactory at both extremes.

Here are three options you can try:

1. If you have a camera that is capable of doing a double exposure, you have it made. Do one exposure with the flash turned on, then another with the necessary settings to maximize the lights.

2. If you don’t have a camera capable of double exposures, you can still take the two images described above and combine them in Photoshop or some other editing program that allows you to do such a thing.

But there’s a third way to get better photos of Christmas lights…

3. The third method requires a little bit of camera mastery, and I highly recommend that you take advantage of the season to learn how to do this.

You will have to take the camera off automatic and actually employ a few advanced techniques.

Keep in mind that every setting you use in every photo has both advantages and drawbacks. It is the various choices you make that will define your creativity and photographic style.

Here we go…

To begin with, you must have a tripod. Don’t even try to shoot Christmas lights without one.

How to Take Better Photos of Christmas Lights (Cont)

“Live View” captured by Lee Morley

Turn off all the other lights in the room so that the tree’s lights are all that are lit. We don’t want extraneous lights throwing off our exposure settings.

Next, you need to determine the settings necessary to best record the lights. Our exposure will be concerned with three settings: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.

ISO

Start with your ISO setting. I recommend 100 or so. The lower the ISO setting, the less “noise” will be introduced into the photo. Every individual pine needle will be sharp.

Aperture

Next, the aperture. Here is where we start making the creative (as well as the technical) decisions.

If you have a high-quality lens, you can open up your aperture to the maximum size. (This will be the smallest F-stop num-ber, i.e., f/2.8, not f/16.) On the positive side, this will allow in the most light. On the negative side, a wide-open aperture will give you a very shallow depth of field, and some lower quality lenses tend to have aberrations at the extremes.

To avoid the aberrations and/or if you want more depth of field, most lenses have a sweet spot in the middle range — around f/8. Begin there, and adjust later if necessary.

Shutter Speed

Once you’ve decided on the aperture you want, the last way we can control the amount of light getting to our film or digital sensor is with the shutter. If we have used a low ISO and a middle-of-the-road aperture, our shutter will have to be open for a very long time.

Generally, when we consider shutter speed, it is in relation to some sort of motion or movement in our photos. In this case, there is no movement, and it is strictly a mechanical decision. (It has to be open long enough to get enough light into the camera.)

“Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours!” long exposure (30 sec.) captured by Scott Schiller

How to Take Better Photos of Christmas Lights (Cont)

This will be a very long shutter speed. That’s why you must have a tripod to get better photos of Christmas lights.

If your camera isn’t able to give you a long enough shutter speed, if you MUST, you can make adjustments to the ISO and the aperture.

Going from 100 ISO to 200 ISO will cut the needed shutter speed in half. Going from 200 to 400 will cut it in half again, and so on. Opening up the aperture one or two F-stops does the same. Try one of each until you get the right exposure.

Be careful. Underexposure will eliminate the beauty of the lights, and you won’t be able to see background objects. Overex-posure will blow them out.

Flash

Once you have decided on the combination of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, you need to capture the lights, then we need to turn our attention to the tree and other items in the photo.

While we now have a proper setting to record the lights, due to their strength and placement, they are not going to be bright enough to show the tree, pine needles, presents, and so on.

Like any other low-light situation, we need to add a flash. Here is where it really gets fun!

Our shutter speed may be a long time, but our flash isn’t! That is OK. Our flash will give us the burst of light that will prop-erly expose the tree, while the shutter remains open long enough to capture the lights!

“The Night Before Christmas” captured by Robert S. Donovan

Ta-da! It’s almost like a double exposure!

When shooting with a long shutter speed, most of your better quality flashes will allow you to set them so that they will fire either at the beginning of the exposure or at the end of the exposure. In this case, since there is no motion, it doesn’t mat-ter which one you choose.

If you aren’t aware of these settings or don’t know how they work, it’s time to pull out your flash’s manual and read it. It’s worth the effort. You’ll learn a pretty cool option that can give you some interesting and creative photos all year long, not just get better photos of Christmas lights.

Then you’re all set!

Decide what area you want a photo of, set up your tripod, and fire away! The flash will fire and show you the tree, then the long exposure will allow the beauty of the lights to show.

White Balance

By the way, be sure your white balance is set to record the white lights as white and not the orange/yellow produced by low

How to Take Better Photos of Christmas Lights (Cont)

temperature lights. Unless that is what you want.

“Christmas Lights at Night” cap-tured by Thomas Quine

I hope this article helps. These settings really aren’t as difficult to do as they may sound, and to get better photos of Christ-mas lights and decorations, they are essential. Plus, the techniques you learn will translate to other types of photos, too.

6 Tips for Getting Great Pictures With a Basic Camera

Great pictures don’t necessarily come from high-end cameras and expensive lenses. Here are tips that you can apply even when using cameras like the one on the iPhone. If you can use these principles to get great pictures using basic cameras, imagine how much better a photographer you’ll be with serious photography gear!

1. Use Available Light

Available light usually means natural sunlight, but it can also include available sources of artificial light, e.g. an overhead din-ing table lamp. With the light positioned correctly, you can get professional looking pictures without any additional flash equipment. Joyce Latham; ISO 400, f/1.8, 1/60-second exposure.

2. Mind Your Composition

One element usually found in great pictures is great composition. Looking at the LCD, you’ll be able to see where you could ask your subject to move or move yourself so that you avoid having a tree jutting out from behind the subject’s head. This is even more crucial in basic cameras where you are unable to control depth of field to make the tree go out of focus.

Photo by Sherry Chen

3. Use Complementary Light Sources

Take advantage of your surroundings when travelling. Imagine you want to take a picture of your spouse on a busy street in Hong Kong at night. Instead of resorting to using the built-in flash, get her/him to move closer to the rows of brightly-lit shop signs so that they become the light source. Not only will they give a more natural color cast in relation to the surroundings, the light distribution on your subject’s face should also be more flattering.

4. Know Which Direction To Shoot

If you are taking a picture of a person with the sun behind you, you’ll be able to get blue skies in an outdoor scene, assuming you actually have a blue sky on that day. If the sun is shining at you, instead of behind you, you may get a washed out sky, with only very light tones of blue. This is because the auto metering on basic cameras will try to expose for both the person and the background, rarely achieving a good exposure for either one.

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6 Tips for Getting Great Pictures With a Basic Camera (Cont)

5. Anticipate the Right Moment

Pictures with people usually benefit from having some element of emotion. Even with the best camera, emotion in pictures is not possible if the photographer does not know when to press the shutter button, or is not ready when the emotional moment happens. Photo by Tong Chai Siew; ISO 32, f/2.2, 1/320-second exposure.

6. Avoid Clutter

In a scene that has too much clutter, look for a plain wall to place your subjects against. Plain coloured backgrounds like a plexiglass panel, a wooden door, or a brightly coloured red wall also work well. For shooting still life, try reflective surfaces like a glass table or textured surfaces for an interesting background.

Photo by Georgie Pauwels

Keep these simple principles in mind on your next photo opportunity, and you’ll be on your way to producing great pictures even with the most basic of camera gear.

How to Light and Photograph Smoke and Steam in a Home Studio Setting

Every subject has different properties according to shape, color, and material that determine the way you light it. With smoke, you want to keep a dark background and a grazing light. Here are a few things to consider when you light and photo-graph smoke in a home studio setting.

Have you ever tried to photograph smoke or steam? Perhaps you’re doing a portrait of a smoker or a steaming cup of coffee. Odds are that sooner or later you may face this challenge. Fortunately, the lighting technique is not as elusive as the subject.

Safety first

Before you start to photograph smoke, keep safety in mind – even if it is just smoke. If using a cigarette, always place the cigarette on an ash-tray, or place incense on a burner, etc. Remember, you are working with ignited materials – you can never be too careful to avoid burning yourself or starting a fire. Also, it’s always good to have a fire extin-guisher handy.

Backdrop

To photograph smoke, you first need to set up a lightbox. If you don’t have one, make the set by putting a piece of cloth as a backdrop. Black or any dark color will create more contrast.

Subject

To create the smoke, you can use an incense stick. It’s the best way to create continuous smoke for a long period of time.

Place the incense far enough from the background so that it’s well separated and the light won’t spill into it.

Light

Set up your flash to the side of the subject. Never place it directly in front of the smoke or it will illuminate the background. Then put a piece of cardboard to direct the light towards the subject. For more tips on this, you can check How to Control Your Background Tones by Manipulating Light Fall-Off.

It also works best if it’s a hard light.

You can always use a continuous light source too, but be sure to narrow the light fall-off by using a modifier or barn doors.

How to Light and Photograph Smoke and Steam in a Home Studio Setting (Cont)

If you place the light in front you won’t get the dark backdrop you need. Camera

Place your camera in front of the subject, the distance will depend on the focal length of the lens you’re working with. I recommend a telephoto lens because you will get better background compression. To help you decide which one is good for you, see this article. With a telephoto lens, you can work with a smaller background. The left image was made with a 35mm lens, and the one on the right with a 75mm. Also, if you work with a telephoto, the background can be smaller. And not less im-portant, you can position your camera further away, which will protect your lens from any damage by the smoke. Settings

Again, this will depend on the focal length, the distance between camera and subject, and the intensity of your flash. However, I can give you some pointers to take into consideration.

Shutter speed

When setting your shutter speed, try to keep your settings fast so that the lines of the smoke are well-defined, instead of a blurry cloud. This is particu-larly important if you’re working with a wide source, as with this pot of boiling water. If you’re using something smaller, like a stick of incense, the effect is less drastic. Still, don’t underestimate it. A longer shutter speed creates a stronger motion blur. This image was made with a 1/30 of a sec.

Aperture

Keep in mind that the smoke is not a flat, static surface. You want your aperture to be wide enough to keep it all in focus. But you don’t want it to be too much that it will capture the texture of the background. Don’t forget to consider other elements of the composition if you have them. A small aperture creates a deeper depth of field. This image was taken with an f/11.

Focus

Using manual focus, set it before you turn off the lights. Focus the source of steam or smoke you’re using. For example, the tip of the incense stick if you’re going to do some abstract smoke shots. For this to work, you need to use a tripod so you don’t change your distance. Extra tip: to create more smoke, capture the image just after you put out the flame. If

you placed it inside a container, keep it covered to concentrate the smoke, then uncover it to let it all out at once. ISO

Keep your ISO as low as your lighting and other settings allow you to go. This is because you want to avoid noise as much as possible, and dark colours make it more evident. Conclusion

This is a very basic studio set-up to photograph smoke that can be done at home with minimum equipment.