NEWSLETTER OCTOBER 2007

FORTHCOMING PROGRAMME

Nov 13th: Presentation by Cathy Lewis, plus Portfolio Tutorial

COMPETITION PROGRAMME

Nov 13th: Symbiosis

FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Nov 13th: Meeting

Please note that the Meeting (start time 2000hrs) will be at our new  venue - The Casson Centre, Rodway Road, Patchway, BS34 5DQ (map)  It is probably easiest to access it via Durban Road, off Highwood Road - you can turn right at the traffic lights if coming from the Gloucester Road direction. It is the white building next door to the Patchway Town Council Offices. There is off road parking immediately adjacent to the Centre and further spaces along Rodway Road, near to the local Spa shop.

The main presentation will be by Cathy Lewis who will give a short talk on her recent trip to French Polynesia. An exotic, off the beaten track destination where snorkelling with humpback whales is just one of the attractions for the underwater photographer.

The monthly competition theme is 'Symbiosis'.  Even if you don't feel you have any winners, send some in to benefit from the audience feedback  - you must have some anemone fish at least! Send your digital files to our new Competitions Member, Kathryn Rosling (kathryn.rosling@blueyonder.co.uk) or bring your slides on the night (let Kathryn know if you require a slide projector).

With our Annual Portfolio Competition next month, there will be a tutorial on how to put a portfolio together. Also, following his recent BSoUP success in the Best of British portfolio competition, I am hoping that Trevor Rees will be there to discuss his winning entry.

RECENT EVENTS

October Meeting

Monthly Competition - Available Light

Bob Anthony was the outright winner this month with a shot taken in a cave on Yolanda Reef.

Two of Arthur Kingdon and Tamsin Eyles' images shared Second Place:

Arthur's shots were of the workshop of the Chrisoula K, on Abu Nuhas reef, and a manta ray photographed off Koh Bon, Thailand. The exposure for the workshop was 1/6th sec @ f2.8 at 1600 ISO.

Tamsin's shots were taken during her recent shark trip to the Bahamas.

Tamsin's third entry also picked up a vote - a case of splitting her vote methinks!

There were also votes for Anna James' jellyfish and Trevor Rees' diver with clownfish (a Magic Filter shot)

Jim Drakes' monochrome diver, shot in Cromhall Quarry, near Bristol, picked up the final vote.

Time lapse Photography - John Ruthven

This was a fascinating presentation by John who showed several short videos which had been created using a Nikon D70 linked to an interval timer, all housed in a custom made aluminium case. John is a film producer who mainly uses high definition video equipment for his productions but he has achieved some unique footage using the D70. Setting the camera to record a medium jpeg every six seconds, John leaves the camera in position for around two hours ending up with some 1200 exposures. Up till now, he has used twin Sea & Sea YS 120 strobes and the batteries in these will last for 1200 exposures. He has recently experimented with video lights and is also planning some natural light sequences.

John pointed out that HD video cameras record a 2mp image but the D70 records a 6mp image, so the quality is extremely high. It also means that the image can be cropped considerably without loss of quality. The wide shot and the close up can be obtained from each frame.

The secret of time lapse photography is to select a suitable subject - preferably something that moves slowly. John showed some amazing sequences of brittle stars, urchins, sea stars and top knots. To see the brittle stars, with their bodies pumping, whilst getting out of the way of urchins charging through them was quite stunning. These views could never be captured with conventional video.

The housings that John had made were of simple construction and relatively inexpensive. However, it is worth noting that the D200 has a time lapse function built in. This means that a separate interval timer is not needed, so the camera could be used with the standard housing - food for thought!

Photoshop Tutorials - Arthur Kingdon

Arthur gave a short tutorial on black and white conversion using CS  and Elements. Rather than simply changing mode to grayscale, this tutorial looked at keeping the colour information and adjusting the channels to get the best out of the image. Arthur also showed that by keeping the colour information it was then easy to achieve a toned effect using hue and saturation tools.

Resizing of images is still a problem for some members and a short tutorial on this hopefully helped. Arthur pointed out that a bit of sharpening will usually be needed if full sized images are reduced to size for projection.

Arthur