Weekly Meeting May 14 2014

Guest Speaker: Richard Miller

Topic: Digital Photography

Notes:

Most important thing with digital cameras is to edit the photos in the camera before you download. Delete all of the dud shots.
Next you must get a card reader instead of connecting the camera. This eliminates a lot of problems you will have.

Then get a simple photo editing software program. Use the KISS principle.

When you get your new camera play with it a lot, first on automatic, then switch to manual. It doesn't cost anything if you make a mistake with a digital camera, like it used to with a film camera.

If you have problems with your Apple iPad or Mac they have a great help service via the telephone.

Invest in an external hard drive. Burned CDs and DVDs have a shelf life and should not be relied on for more than a year or two. A USB thumb drive is good but also not reliable.

If going on an overseas trip, make sure you have a very good memory card for your camera. Cheap cards can be very slow. Also don't just rely on one card and only use a card of a maximum 8 Gb.

Also your camera has a setting for the quality of the photo. The higher you set the quality the less photos will fit on a camera card.

Try using RAW format instead of JPEG which will enable you to do more manipulation and print much better quality.

What digital camera should you buy? Canon have led the market for a very long time. Megapixels are not the most important thing in a camera, the sensor is the key to the best quality. For example an iPhone 5 has a good camera, 5 to 8 megapixels, but it has a tiny sensor so the quality is not as good as a good SLR camera. Some are as big as a bazooka like a Nikon with a huge lens, or some good ones are quite small like a Luminex. Check the specifications on the box.

A new breed of camera called the Three Quarter is a really good one to get, e.g. Fuji and Canon.

Look at the reviews and magazines and compare the advantages.

Tips for taking photos:

Light is the most important thing in photography. Try to avoid very bright harsh sunlight.

A prime lens, i.e not a zoom, has the best light processing quality.
A zoom lens loses quality on full zoom, so try to move closer to the subject if possible.

Look at the surroundings before framing your shot. Make sure there isn't a tree growing out of someone's head.

The aperture is also very important. The lower the number the better it is and able to be used in low light. You can also change the ISO, say 100 for a bright outdoor shot, and 800 for indoors. However a higher ISO will increase the 'noise' or 'grain' in the photo.

Using the Auto setting will give you great results most of the time. For special situations like Lions on safari you could get a better shot by using some manual settings. Practice on your pets before meeting a lion.

For getting portrait shots with the subject only in focus you can change the aperture to a very low setting.

Finally, staying automatic is fine but Richard recommends using manual settings and play for more interesting shots.