Digital Photography SIG     

July - Digital Photography SIG Advance Notice

The next SIG Meeting will be on the 4th Friday July 24th at the SMSoA at 10am. Check the notice at the lifts for the room,  usually on the 1st floor.

The Digital Photography SIG will try something new in July. We will try a hands-on session making a PhotoStory3 show for the ASCCA competition (or not as you wish).

To enable this we ask everyone that can to bring along a laptop (with mains adapter to ensure 2 hours use) with PhotoStory3 installed. And bring along about 10 photos (cropped etc) to tell your story.

Guidelines : 3 minutes max, 20 images max, topic "Travel", "Special Event" or "General".

Please e-mail me if you are coming and if you can bring a laptop. We hope we should be able to have 1 laptop for 2 people.

If you want to uninstall PS3 later, set a restore point and download Revo Uninstaller Portable too. If your Windows fails WGA we will have the installer, but it will save time if you can install beforehand.

• • PhotoStory3
  • ASCCA rules PDF
  • Revo Uninstall Zip

See you then,

Peter Collard

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April Digital Photography Report

Good Evening Fellow SIG Members,

Last Friday Colin Bolton and I stood in for Peter Collard who is on R & R in Thailand; Colin did all the work and I handled the "housekeeping" and Q & A. Colin showed us comprehensively, what a versatile and friendly to use program Adobe Photo Elements is.

Colin has only been using it for a "few days" but is impressed enough to say that this will be his default "photo editing program". This is something that I identify with and I'm sure a lot of you do too: how many photo editing apps. have I tried...you tried? I will now concentrate on finding "my default" photo editing app. and learning to use it properly, and it may well be Photo Elements. Have a look at this site for a free trial... but you can buy it cheaper ...let me show you how below!!

Try this site to buy: ... and I'm sure you will find even better prices if you just keep on "googling"!!!

This is just a summary of what we covered on Friday...don't forget to look at some of those websites that Peter included in his March report...you will be amazed (or fazed) at the detailed information that can be obtained on anything photographic!

The next Digital Photography SIG is on 22 May 2009 at the usual venue at 1000hrs. Be there, bring your camera/s, your friends and your ideas on what aspects of Digital Photography you would like to know more about, or maybe show us something that you think we may want to know more about.

I'm sure Peter will be in touch before our next SIG to finalise the agenda. Don't forget our Membership Stall at the UNSW :

MEMBERSHIP DRIVE
Sunday 10 May 2009
9.00am - 3.00pm

University of NSW

Cheers,

Bill Parry

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Report of meeting on 2009-01-23

• Administration

• Updated software this month from: FileHippo Graphics Page

What topics are you interested in presenting or learning about in future meetings ? Suggestions are:

I would like a balance between photographic techniques, processing & hardware. As I am not an expert in techniques the best I can do here is to introduce the concepts and hope for a lively discussion from you.

• Photography Exercise

• Discussion of Topic : last year's techniques - some interesting efforts including night shots, collage and action.

• Q&A

1. Colin directed my attention to a test of rechargeable batteries by 'Choice' - they recommend VARTA.

2. Regarding sunsets, can you damage your sensor by pointing the camera at the sun?
   YES. "Cameras which have an EVF [Electronic Viewfinder (e.g. uses LCD screen)] and no mirror and mechanical shutter ARE prone to sensor burn out when pointed at the sun. Cameras (film or digital) with a mechanical shutter but no mirror can have the shutter damaged by the sun, especially using a telephoto lens." The general consensus is that with a DSLR that uses a mirror you will burn out your eye before damaging the camera. Don't risk it, as the repair could cost more than a new camera !! (and eyes aren't cheap either).

3. Can raw format hold EXIF data?
   My Canon with CHDK saves a .JPG as well which holds the EXIF data. Some raw formats may hold the data, but it may be lost when saving to .JPG. See the Exiftool page above, or the UFWRaw limitations at http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/
4. Leaning buildings - how to avoid or fix?
   I think this is one of those things the eye/brain fixes live but not in images. A trapezium/perspective distortion could fix it. See here for the expensive way to prevent it or try this site for general information.
5. Firework pictures from TV, look washed-out, why?
   I don't know, but maybe the 'white balance' is wrong for these artificial colours or the sensor is picking up IR from a hot plasma screen?.
6. How can I prevent camera shake from crosswind while using extreme zoom and a tripod?

Geo-Tagging & Cataloguing

• Geo-tagging
• • This is the process of putting geographical location information into a file - in our case into the EXIF data of a .JPG image.
  • Unlike captioning, the easy part is adding the data, the harder part is collecting it.
  • The computer doesn't know where you took the photo unless you have a GPS camera) so you must create a list of latitude and longitude coordinates for each location and associate them with the photos. I use a spreadsheet for this and here are some options:
  • • You can get your information from a map (paper laborious, Google Earth or Maps is easier). There is a plugin for Firefox (minimap) that allows you to save a list of places from Google Maps and export to a .CSV file, ideal for your spreadsheet.
    • You can use Google Earth and Google Picasa to enter the data into the photos individually. A GPS logger with DG-Manager will do so as a batch, with textual location from www.geonames.org.
    • GeoSetter is designed for this task, allowing you to save favourite locations and apply this to a group of photos, or individually by the Google Maps pane. You can get textual location from the web too (but it is not as accurate as geonames).
  • EXIFTool will write the information to the photos (I use the spreadsheet to create a batch command to do this) or extract EXIF data to a .CSV file to go into the spreadsheet.
  • CSV-Edit helps trim unwanted data from the .CSV files.
  
  
• The catalogue
• • I keep my catalogue as a spreadsheet, effectively a database file with easy import-export and data manipulation.
  • The data you keep is up to you, I store - Date/Time, Country/State/City, Comment, Latitude/Longitude, Image Size, a technical comment and where the image is stored. All this is linked to the image name. Most of this is extracted from the EXIF data - I geotag the image if GPS data is available then extract all the information I need with EXIFTool and import to the spreadsheet. Then I fill in the missing data (e.g. Caption/Comment) and then use the spreadsheet to create a batch file to write the information to the photo. [Don't worry if you have entered captions as we discussed in November, these can be imported to the spreadsheet so you don't need to type them again.]
  • The spreadsheet saves a lot of typing, just copy/paste data for images taken at the same place. You can keep frequently used location data in another page for quick copying.
  • The last step is to link the spreadsheet to the image, so that a click in the spreadsheet brings up the image in IrfanView, which can then display the location in Google Earth.
  • A final touch is to use Picasa to export a Google Earth data file of your selected photos so that you can send it to a friend to view a travelogue of your trip in Google Earth.

• Software Used * All freeware *

You usually have to pay for the internet use !!

A small extract of the spreadsheet and the batch file will be put on the website.

Next meeting is on February 27^th

The main topic will be Rainbows and Sunsets. Due to quibbling, we define these as "colourful natural atmospheric phenomena" thus excluding stars, balloons and UFOs. We may need a separate session on taking X-File photos - blurred and unrecognisable images of UFOs and Loch Ness Monsters.

Peter Collard

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Photograph small items like a Professional

Sometimes you may want to photograph small objects without showing distracting backgrounds, glaring highlights or harsh shadows. Now with the aid of "instant" backgrounds made quickly from common home office items, you can easily produce high quality pictures without the expense of special studio equipment.

For demonstration purposes, this wireless mouse was photographed on an instant background using natural lighting from a single window. An even better image could have been produced had the camera been set on a tripod and adjusted using a variety of advanced capture settings.

The instant infinity background was constructed using six sheets (for stability) of standard white copy paper and four paper clips. All sheets are clipped together with two clips attached about one third up from the bottom. Another two clips are attached near the top of the sheets. By carefully sliding the top clips together with the rear three sheets down towards the bottom, a self supporting curvature is formed as illustrated.

Simply by positioning this or a coloured background with consideration to the light source and camera aspect, an infinite variety of subtle highlights or shadows can be achieved.

An even simpler 3D background can be made using just 1 sheet of paper, and 1 paper-clip. In portrait view, from a spot (about 20 minutes past the hour) tear to the centre of the sheet. Next, overlap the torn edges anything up to 90 degrees and use a paper-clip to hold. The over-lapped section now forms the base of your instant self supporting corner background. This provides even greater scope for extending your mastery of small item photography.

While lighting is beyond the scope of this article, I must mention having successfully photographed many small items outdoors by shooting within fully shaded areas while using these simple backgrounds. As always, the naturally diffused light from early morning and late afternoon sun normally produce the best results.
John Lucke