Clubbing, or Camera-derie...

I've always thought it would be good to join a camera club or photography society as some of them are known, but like many people I've been put off by talk of obsession with distinctions (LRPS etc) and competitions, snobbery, and most of all by the times of the meetings. I work reasonably long hours and I'm not always able to commit to getting out of work on time to get to an early evening start, so I've never got around to joining or even visiting one and my photography was largely a solitary pursuit or something done with the indulgence of my lovely wife on days out and holidays etc.

Around six months ago I heard about a local camera club from a fellow member in the woodcraft club I also frequent. This one was different by the sound of it, as it was quite a young club so no long history to live up to, most of the members were relatively inexperienced in photography as a medium or as an art, it was just around the corner from me, and best of all, meetings started at 7:30 or 8:00 pm so I could get to them easily. So it was that before long I found myself a member of Roby Mill Community Camera Club.

The club meets in The Star at Roby Mill every other week. They're unlike most other clubs I've heard about due to their active programme during the summer months - they like to be out and about taking photos whenever possible. It's very much about going out together and taking shots, and much less about homework and critique, though there is still obviously a level of critique, as you would expect. In winter they are more confined by the conditions but there's still a lot of actual camera activity. 

One of the nights earlier this year was a fifteen minute challenge where we all piled into cars, went to a less than obvious location and took the best picture we could in fifteen minutes, then returned to the pub to look at each other's best pictures. We've also spent time in a cemetery car park taking photos of a man dressed as a Jedi and waving a lightsaber, had a presentation on using Lightroom and Photoshop for post production, had a talk from an L&CPU judge (Lancashire and Cheshire Photographic Union) about what it takes to enter competitions, and as a result a few of us have entered some pics into the annual LCPU Individual competition, entry for which requires you to be a member of an affiliated club.

Overall impact of the club has been huge on my photography. I've taken lots of pictures that I wouldn't have had the chance to capture, used my tripod more times in the last three months than the whole preceding three years, talked to more people about photography technique and compared images with more interested parties than for a long time. And I like to think I've helped a few people to learn something as well, just as they have for me. 

Prints, prints and more prints

In the mail today I received a packet about an inch thick, and a tube about 40 cm long. Contained within were 380 (theoretically - I haven't counted) 6x4 prints and one A3 "poster" print. All but one of which were from my recent holiday. Why so many you ask? Well.

I remember when I used to shoot a lot of film that I always bemoaned the fact that a digital process encouraged the taking of thousands of pictures but the printing of none. In order to prevent the same phenomenon overtaking me, I invested in a decent photo printer within a couple of weeks of getting my first digital camera, and for a while the two were technological soulmates; any time I took a lot of pictures at least a couple would be printed in spectacular glossy colour on expensive A4 paper. I then moved house a couple of times, my life moved on in many ways and I found myself among those people with a huge archive of digital files but very few actual recent prints. I then discovered Photobox.

If I remember correctly I first discovered Photobox when looking for a route via which to print something larger than my printer could cope with. I don't think I went straight in with the 40x30 inch giant print, but that may have been my second or third order once I was confident of the quality. Since then it's mainly been when printing large volumes of shots that I've turned to they of the green splat logo. After my wedding and honeymoon I sent them about 500 shots and within a day they were printed and dispatched. There's something really exciting even now about waiting for your prints to arrive. Even though there's no longer the wondering what you're going to get, it's still nice to have some physical prints to flip through, maybe put one on your desk and a few on the wall. The A3 one is destined for framing if only I can find a wall with space for it.

As to why so many, I'm going to have to go with why not? I took 1500 shots on holiday of some amazing places and great experiences. I flicked through those and those 380 called out to me. At those volumes prints cost about 7p each, so my 380 + 1 cost me £38, and I should have plenty of options should I wish to fill an album.

If you're fed up of looking at photos on your phone or iPad, perhaps it's time to go back to a simpler time just for a few days , order some prints, and fill an album. Just maybe your grandchildren will thank you for it.

Mini Hint #281 - Protection Filters

With any interchangeable lens camera your first accessory purchase should be a protective filter for the lens. These are optically neutral (or close enough) and are mainly there as a sacrificial surface to take the scratches that you really don't want on the front element of your lens. Look for a Hoya multi-coated (HMC) UV filter (colourless and will supposedly cut down on atmospheric haze) or Skylight filter (slightly pink to reduce the blue effect of distant scenery), put it on your lens, and leave it there until you either break it, or inevitably get dust behind it and have to remove it to clean it.

Some people will say that every extra layer of glass reduces the optical quality. This is technically true, and I certainly wouldn't put a £5* filter on a £400 lens, but unless you're a professional and can afford to take the risk (in which case you wouldn't be reading this) then adding a decent bit of Hoya glass between lens and subject isn't materially going to hurt anyone.

* prices of filters depend on quality and thread diameter. Some tiny filters for lenses on things like the Nikon 1 or similar may actually cost only £10-15 or so so be led by brand in that case. Hoya HMC beats Hoya, which beats Hama. Cokin screw-in filters are probably somewhere in the upper middle range. It's rare for me to see anything that's not one of those four, but Canon etc do also make their own filters. I only have one of those :-)

Night Fever

One thing that often stumps people as they get into taking pictures on a more serious level is how to deal with low light or night photography. They point their medium to high end compact at a beautiful scene, press the shutter, and are immediately disappointed with the results.This is because most compacts in auto mode don't support or at least won't choose long shutter speeds. Those that do support longer speeds often only allow them to be used in the 'semi automatic' or manual modes. If you turn on Auto ISO (The Devil) then problems are further compounded as the camera will crank up the sensitivity in order to get you a hand-holdable speed. Of course in this case we're not expecting a hand-holdable speed. Consider the attached shot.

This was shot at ISO 800, 1.6 seconds at f/4, on a 20mm lens. I've adjusted levels and done some slight sharpening in Photoshop 6.0 to get the best out of the medium JPEG because I didn't have the tools to hand to process the RAW file. Local time was around 11pm and the light was fading as we approached this bridge which connects the island containing Copenhagen with mainland Denmark. In a one-chance situation like this it's important to plan what you want to get and how to get it before the 'decisive moment' (as Henri Cartier Bresson would describe it) arrives and then is left in your wake, mocking you about having missed the shot. In my case I took a number of test shots before this, and came prepared with one of my favourite photographic accessories, the Pod, SLR edition. This is a squat cylindrical beanbag with a tripod thread at one side. It's perfect for propping the camera on a rail or similar and letting go for a second or two, when a proper tripod is either too bulky or just not available. What I normally do is set the camera on self timer with a short delay (2 seconds on my SLR) unless I have a remote release to hand, prop it in place, push the shutter, then let go entirely, hovering my hands around the camera until the shutter opens and closes. This allows me much more freedom to use longer speeds than would otherwise be possible. 

In terms of hand-holdable speeds the rule of thumb has always been the reciprocal of the focal length (i.e. for a 20mm lens, 1/20sec). Modern cameras and lenses often include stabilisation which allows a couple of stops of leeway on that, so maybe 1/4 of a second or so. At that speed, given that my lens aperture was wide open I would have had to increase the ISO by three stops, to ISO 6400. Even if my camera supported that the quality would have been awful. Hence the pod. 

I was therefore limited only by the 'environmental' features inherent in this shot - namely the motion of the ship and the crush of people around me. I therefore settled on a compromise of 1.6 seconds, boosted the ISO to 800, and let the aperture stay fully open, as the depth of field would be sufficient given the wide angle lens and the subject distance. More than 1.6 seconds caused visible movement in the bridge itself, and less would have required the use of ISO 1600, which was further than I wanted to push it.

In term of the remaining technicalities then, the camera was on evaluative metering which did a pretty good job with exposure (albeit a bit flat). This is what I'd recommend you try first if you have options. You may find that the whole scene turns out a little too light and lacking in contrast, in which case you can dial in a stop or two of exposure compensation to bring it down. Again, keep taking test shots until you're basically happy with the appearance and then you can concentrate on composition.

Many compact cameras will only go to these longer speeds if given no other choice so if you find your pictures being very dark and your shutter speeds hovering around the 1 second mark, try shutter priority if you have it and see whether you can force the speeds to go long.

Locational Inspiration

I've recently been lucky enough to have a lovely holiday round northern Europe and having not taken a lot of shots recently it was like a smorgasbord of inspiration. I couldn't decide what to shoot and what not to but of course as we're firmly in the digital age I didn't have to make that decision and shot everything. It's opportunities like this though where I think I learn most about this craft. Take the attached pic of Rostock's main square. I took about six variants of this one with different composition, different apertures etc. Happily the exposure was simple. Other places I bracketed exposures due to tricky lighting, messed with white balance to get beige ceilings the right colour, and generally did lots of things that in a more normal or more structured environment I either wouldn't have time to or wouldn't need to consider.

Of course I also shot raw files so if I do get that white balance decision wrong I can sort it out later. Belt and braces and all that.

The Rostock pic is also an example of the balance rules I talked about earlier. The horizon is pretty much on the upper third, the foreground is given plenty of weight of repetitive detail to balance it with the intricate details in the background, which has been maintained by using a small aperture. In the wide aperture variants too much is lost at the back. I have a load of my favourite shots from the holiday on Facebook (totally unprocessed jpegs straight from the camera) and while most are just record shots, there are a few arty ones on there I think - if you have me on your Facebook see if you can spot where I've used the rules and where I've broken them, and I'll post more soon.

Happy shooting :-)

Mini Hint #117 - Auto ISO and the Devil

To clarify. Auto ISO *IS* the devil. If you want high quality shots, turn it off and forget you ever saw it. Your camera doesn't care if you get noise in your shadow areas. It has no vested interest in the quality of your pictures. It's trying to help you get acceptably sharp pictures by speeding things up, but remember - You are its master - take charge and tell it to use ISO 100, unless you consider the conditions and decide otherwise. Or you're drunk.

Compositional Rules

In any pastime or activity there are people who will tell you that there are certain rules that you must not break. Photography is something of an exception in that you will rarely be introduced to the 'rules' such as they are, without also being told that they are there to be broken. What you will also be told however, is that to break them effectively, you must first understand them. In this section I will introduce one such rule. It's the most well known of the compositional rules and it is usually referred to as 'The rule of thirds'.

Before we get into that though I think it important to mention balance. This is the balance of an image and its composition rather than that of the photographer, who may be extremely lopsided with no negative impact on their pictures... Sometimes you will see an image that feels awkward, lopsided, or weighted too heavily towards one side, or the top or bottom of the frame. Often in images seen in magazines or online portfolios, this is a deliberate choice by the photographer to induce a sense of unease in the viewer, usually considered appropriate to the subject matter. There will often be a story associated with the image, which the feeling of awkwardness somehow enhances. Conversely though, many photographs seen in magazines and particularly on posters will feel very relaxing as your eye wanders over them; as of everything is in its right place and the whole thing feels balanced. Left and right are given equal precedence whether that be subject points, large background elements, or similar levels of nothing. The foreground and the background (usually frame bottom and top, respectively) each have something to offer, whether that is interest or space. This is compositional balance, and is what many photographers strive toward, much of the time.

And so to the rule. If you take a typical scene with a main subject, some background interest, maybe some empty space, and imagine you're looking at it through a 3x3 grid, like a noughts and crosses (tic tac toe) board. The image is split equally into nine squares or rectangles. The rule of thirds asserts that if you place your main subject on one of the four intersection points, and any horizon or other horizontal dividing lines across either the top or bottom third, you will likely end up with a more balanced and interesting photograph than if you point your central focus point directly at the main subject and fire the shutter. Go back to those landscapes on the net or in magazines or on posters. Many of them you will see follow or almost-follow this rule, and the ones that don't are not even close, like they set out to deliberately go against it. Even those where the subject is central or symmetrical horizontally will often have a horizon or other dividing line on the upper or lower third boundary.

As I said, the rule is meant to be broken but first (grasshopper) you must understand what you are breaking and why. Take the rule of thirds with you on your next landscape photography trip, or next time you visit a stately home or monument, and see how different your photos turn out from those you took before. Sometime soon I'll return to 'the rules' and discuss how and when to go about breaking them.