Forest BB

Hello!

The Forest photo group kicked off this week on the 5th. We chatted a bit about what people would like to do, and talked about some of the basic settings of cameras and what they do: shutter speed, aperture and ISO rating.

Here's a great illustrated article by Simon Mackie explaining all of these things very well. It's only five pages, you'll whiz through it:

http://www.photographyjam.com/articles/ ... re-and-iso

The next meeting will be on Tuesday 19th. Between now and then, go and take some pictures! Of absolutely anything. Then bring them along and we'll talk about them.

In the meantime, please use this thread to ask questions, post photos, or look for company to go out shooting with. I'll start a new thread for each meeting (1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month).

Hey swith: have you figured out your new camera yet? I can't make the meeting times, but I'd still like to pick your brain as you figure it out (we have the same camera). Let me know if you want to snap things sometime.

Are you working Saturday? If not, we could do something then. In winter the sun is low, and even more so in the morning/afternoon. It could be good to take advantage of this to get some shots that you wouldn't so easily get at other times of year.

I've had my camera on manual (M) but autofocus. You can see how light/dark the picture will be from the screen. Use the jagged wheel which you can turn indefinitely to move the shutter speed and aperture around. Clicking the wheel toggles from one to the other. There is a button (SET I think) which lets you position the point to focus on for autofocus. Press this, then use the cursor wheel to position it, then press the button again to set it.

That is as far as I've got with it. But I haven't been out snapping anything yet.

Wow. That is much further than I've gotten in two years. I will read the guide Martin posted and see.

I'm off on Saturday. I was thinking of going to Glasgow, but flexible. Morning or afternoon - which would you prefer?

How about morning, so you can still go to Glasgow and not have to rush back? We could RV outside the Forest at 9, say, and then wander round for an hour or so, and then back to the Forest for a coffee. The building sites will have lots of interesting objects and shapes, both large scale and close up.

Anyone else want to join the Powershot duo?

Sounds good. But if no one else is coming, let us meet at one of our flats, since we live close and no one will be lonely and waiting outside of Forest.

Can I tag along even if I don't do pictures?

Of course. You can be like Diane Arbus helping her husband in Fur.

I'm not carrying your shit, if that's what you've got in mind....

Drat. Is Sean doing anything then, Shannon?

Actually, we're supposed to be at the auction in Leith starting at 11am. So we should meet and head down that way. Dan says there's good stuff on Junction Street. The auction is on Jane Street.

Sean's schedule is a mystery to me, but he will probably refuse to carry your lenses too.

Although it was Diane Arbus who in the end became far more famous than her husband ....

Anyway, I might have to miss tomorrows meeting, but for a good cause - I'll be in Dundee, lecturing art students about photography

You're sposed to be lecturing us on photography. Judas!

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It's like God's vagina!

My sincere apologies for not making it last night. At the last minute I had to stay late at work and couldn't make it. Really sorry guys. Are there any notes you can put up for further reading...and whats the challenge this fortnight?

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It's like God's vagina!

We looked some photos that I'd taken and talked about what went wrong, and then Martin showed people a program called ufraw, which is good for working with RAW formats. It behaves more like a digital darkroom (Martin's phrase) than image editors like GIMP. You can redo the white balance, exposure, curves etc. It exists as a stand alone program, a batch converter and as a GIMP plugin.

thanks Swith.
Feel free to post your pics up, so I can give you my proffesional, highly respected and esteemed feedback

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It's like God's vagina!

Here is one I like - some shutters on a shop on Leith Walk. I cropped the bottom slightly so that the horizontal line is in the middle.

I haven't got used to composing properly with the screen. I suppose one thing to do is to just go back a bit and get more in the frame and crop later. A lot of the other ones I took were a bit off.

I like the way the shutter comes into the corner.
I hope you don't mind just playing around with gimp a bit and messing around with Curves. Changes the focus from the angles to the contrast between light and dark.

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It's like God's vagina!

Aplogies from me also, I had to work late last night and and couldn't make the meeting.
I'm off to Berlin tomorrow and will hopefully get some photos I can share.
The plan is to shoot pretty much anything and everything I can.

Swithun, how is the new Canon?

I got some pics to put up to for some feedback.
The leaves/trees were taken whilst waiting in a 4 hour long cue trying to get down to my bros house and the motorway was shut down. Autumn was in full swing and the colours looked nice, so open the car window and pointed me camera out.

The very white, ghosty one was shot in my office, and just turned out like that, don't know how, but it kinda looks cool.

And the buildings pic is from my/Lauras balcony, just trying some settings out on me camera.

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It's like God's vagina!

balcony

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It's like God's vagina!

ghost

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It's like God's vagina!