An evening stroll.

Above: Everyone gathering for the evening walk.

I went on a pleasant stroll behind Temple Meads station with some other members of the Bristol Flickr Group on Sunday evening. Apart from a run in with a Security Guard a great time was had by all. If your interested then some of the pictures are starting to appear in this Flickr group and I’m sure more will be posted over the next few days. You can see many pictures with a Bristol theme and some of the ones from the evening walk in the Bristol Flickr Group as well.

Thanks to Myk for organising it yet again.

I took a picture of my foot! Has it won?

So after seeing the London Salon exhibition CD at the last meeting I hope you’ve had your horizons broadened or even shattered! It just goes to show that you should never discount any of the pictures that you take as there is always someone who thinks it’s a good shot. Although they may be on LSD or have just taken some other hallucinogenic drug when they said it.

To try and prove that I present to you a proper foTOE. As you can see it even lets you know it's genuine. It has the stamp (get it? stamp!)of approval to give it proper FoToe credentials. What do you think? Is it a winner or not?

Why you don't need raw!

We have another guest Blogger for you. This time it's our very own Steve Hallam. When he's not breaking the clubs laptop (sorry couldn't resist) he keeps an eye on our purse strings in his role as the clubs Treasurer;

OK, at least the title made you look. Here are my views on using raw (not RAW, it's not an acronym). A raw image is the output from a digital camera sensor, more or less unprocessed by the camera electronics and software.

A raw image in itself is completely useless. You cannot send it to a printer or project it. It has to be processed into something useful, normally a JPG file. This can be done in the camera, or externally. There are a number of software packages that will do this - often Photoshop or Lightroom, but there are many others.

All cameras can produce JPGs directly - so why not use them?

Here are some arguments commonly put forward for using raw:

A raw file, if correctly processed, will sometimes give better results than an out of the camera JPG.
It's easier to rescue badly exposed images if they are in raw rather than JPG.
It's easier to correct bad colour casts in raw images rather than JPG.
If you are trying to create HDR (high dynamic range) images, you really need to start with raw.

Let's consider these points:

1. Most cameras will produce decent JPGs. Some camera makers manage to produce very good ones.
2. In most cases the visual differences between processed raw files and out-of-camera JPGs will be imperceptible.
3. There is no excuse for producing badly exposed digital images.
4. Learn to use the histogram display on the camera, and bracket if in doubt. it costs you nothing.

Learn how to use the white balance control on your camera. Don't rely on auto white balance unless you know it works well. Getting it right at the taking stage is much better than trying to correct later. Minor corrections are no problem in JPG.

If you want to work in HDR, most packages seem to work better with raw files.

Arguments against raw:

1. Raw takes up more storage space than JPG (this used to be a problem but isn't really now as storage is so cheap).
2. All digital images are inherently soft. If you process from raw, you MUST sharpen your images adequately. Your club projectionist is fed up with being accused of not focussing the projector properly. It's your images that are not sharp.
3. Raw processing can be very time consuming if you have a lot of images to process.
4. You are totally dependent on the quality of the raw processing software: the best results often come from the camera makers' own packages.

So to sum up, what would be a sensible strategy?

1. Learn how to use your camera properly - in particular how to use histograms!
2. Your default camera settings for JPGs are probably rubbish - almost all cameras over-sharpen and over-saturate colours. Some experimentation and asking fellow owners is required - a little Googling will often find what you need to know.
3. Make sure that JPGs are saved at the highest possible quality (again, the camera default is often NOT to do this)
4. If you are taking pictures in reasonable lighting conditions and your camera is properly set up, raw is probably a waste of time (literally!)
5. If in very doubtful conditions, I use raw+JPG which stores both on the memory card.
6. Very intensive processing of images may require raw files to produce the best results. 

Too many people regard raw as some sort of magic bullet that will guarantee good results and manage to produce output inferior to JPGs! If you use raw, you will have to learn to do it properly.

A couple of points to ponder:

1. Our current "Club Photographer of the Year" always works with JPGs.
2. The last judge we had (at the club battle) does not own a digital SLR and always works with JPGs. Despite these handicaps, he has gained ARPS, DPAGB and APAGB qualifications!

London Salon travelling exhibition CD.

If your not sure that your coming along to the next meeting then let me try to persuade you that it will open your eyes to a side of photography that will either see you arguing that it's not photography and asking everyone what the hell is that supposed to be.  Or you will absolutely love it and think it's amazing.

The London salon seems to either bring out the greatest admiration for photographers trying to extend the boundaries of what is acceptable or make you think that the judges and people who took the pictures were on very strong hallucinogenic drugs!

On the front page of their website is the following statement;

'The aim of the London Salon is to exhibit only that class of photographic work in which there is distinct evidence of artistic feeling and execution'

It's not often that you can say it, but it's an organisation that certainly keeps to it's mission statement!

Club Battle: Reflex vs A1

As you all, should, know we had A1 Camera Club from Weston Super Mare visit us for a club battle.
I'm glad to say no one tried to smuggle baseball bats or any other weapons into this weeks meeting. So the only person who could cause any kind of trauma, all be it only mental anguish, was the judge Tony Byram. I have to say he did a fantastic job. Not only did he give each picture a fair score. For every negative comment on a photograph he also made two positive ones. The judging of the print section went smoothly with some fantastic pictures being shown from both clubs.

We went to the half time break with the scores at 227 for A1 and 238 for Reflex. So as you can see it was really close with either of us still able to win.

With the break over we all sat down to listen to Tony's thoughts on the Digital Projected Images. Unfortunately the club's laptop seemed to have other ideas and we had to ask Eddie House to run home and grab his laptop. So a great big thank you for that and apologies to his daughter for suddenly finding herself without a computer for a couple of hours. So with the laptop problems sorted we settled down and listened to what Tony had to say about the rest of the images.

I'm very pleased to say that the final score was 474 points for A1 and we were the victors with 494 points.

It was an enjoyable evening and all of us at Reflex want to thank A1 for taking part and hope you enjoyed visiting us. We're looking forward to the rematch next year.

DPIC Results

Clevedon Pier © Richard Price

The DPIC results are out. We managed to get equal 43rd out of the 51 clubs that entered. 1,020 photographs were submitted and the average score was 10.60 with the highest being 15. So if you received higher than 10 you did well. Our scores ranged from a 12 down to 8.

Congratulations to Rich Price for getting that 12 point score with his picture of Clevedon Pier, shown to the left. That put his picture in the top 18% of submissions. If you look at the score sheet you will notice a cross symbol next to Rich's name. Which means at least one judge awarded him a top mark. The points shown are the average of the three judges score's.

Club Battle

This week we have A1 Camera Club from Weston Super Mare paying us a visit for a Club Battle. But please don't bring baseball bats or any other weapons along it's not that kind of battle. Over the last month or so we've scoured the photographs you submitted and chosen the ones that will represent us on Thursday night. Lets see if we can improve on the result we got last year. We won every category but unfortunately didn't win over all because we didn't get enough points in total. I've got a good feeling about this year and I'm sure well do really well.

Also don't forget, this Thursday is your last chance to enter prints or digital images for the 4th round of our Open Competition. Bring your prints on the night and you can submit your Digital images via Dropbox (preferred), email or bring them in on a memory stick.

The Other Ones

(c) Alison Davies

Sorry for the delay in updating the Blog and if some of the writing seems to make less sense than normal you'll have to forgive me. 

Last Thursday we had a practical night and it was great to see so many people coming along and enjoying themselves. There were some great pictures taken of the band and Rich's macro demo went down a storm as well. 

Don't forget if you took pictures please send them in via email, Dropbox or bring in on a memory stick or CD.

The band gave up their free time and we asked them to come along. So its only fair that they get something out of it. 

The next meeting is a guest speaker David Southwell who will be giving us a presentation on using HDR and other techniques. Unfortunately the website I have for him no longer exists.