Corbiere Lighthouse by Barry Nash.

Transcription

1 Corbiere Lighthouse by Barry Nash

2 This is extracted from the Report to the AGM May 2013 by our Chairman, Michael Krier: "Most years, usually in November, there is a Committee Agenda item inviting nominations for 'Honorary Life Membership' of the Club. In recent years this has resulted in no further action, but not so this year. Although it fell to one long-serving member of the Committee, to present the case for awarding Honorary Life Membership to one of our members, there was not an iota of dissent, rather immediate and enthusiastic approval by the Committee that Honorary Life Membership be awarded in recognition of this person's outstanding, long term contribution and commitment to our Club. We believe that he first joined Cheltenham Camera Club in 1972 He has held numerous positions on the Committee and he has served twice as Chairman He is a very good photographer, so successful within the Club that you will find his name engraved at least once on most if not all of our Club trophies - and, speaking personally because I was there, I know that he was the first recipient of the Jean Krier AV trophy back in 1979 He is seen by many to be the person to beat in the Advanced Aggregate and other competitions as well as the Annual Exhibition - thereby providing a stimulus to others to raise the quality of their image making He is always willing to offer advice to less experienced members and responds willingly to requests for advice and help within the Club He is a nationally and internationally acclaimed presenter, lecturer and judge in Audio Visual He has just prepared, over many hours, the AV presentation of the First Cheltenham International Salon He has shown his work to the Club on numerous occasions and not just in his specialism His contribution to photography extends beyond our Club; he is a regular lecturer and judge at local clubs and further afield (over 400 such lectures I believe). He is thus a great ambassador for Cheltenham Camera Club He was, I believe, the originator, and remains the organiser of, the Gloucestershire Young Photographer Competition which has done so much to encourage young people in their photography, has widened our Club's profile within the county and has enabled us to secure Arts Council funding His services to the Club and MCPF was recognised in 2003 with the award of APAGB "for meritorious service" He has received many other awards in recognition of his contribution to photography He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society Martin, please come forward and receive this certificate of Honorary Life Membership of Cheltenham Camera Club in recognition of your outstanding commitment and contribution to the Club over 40 years."

3 This event was a first for Olympus, being part launch of the new OM-D camera and part master-class with Damien McGillicuddy. The initial competition prize was for 50 photo enthusiasts (plus one guest each) just to get there, as they wanted to restrict the numbers. I was lucky enough to win the opportunity to have a real treat. The day was an opportunity to use the new OM-D camera whilst having exclusive performances by five acts to photograph followed by a Masterclass on portraiture. As an additional they gave an SD card to each of the winners, I imagine so we did not risk the demonstration cameras. As we walked towards the circus tent the camera count increased exponentially. Everyone was being terribly British, watching a separate private master-class in portrait photography going on while wondering if they could take photos or start queuing to get the best seats and equipment on offer. The performance was by five very different acts: solo tightrope, magic with juggling, horse riding, Tweedy the Clown and finishing with four Ukrainian tumblers. Extremely different in speed, size, light and space filled. The setting in a tent with dark stage and roof and under-lights, but with full midday light coming through any gaps and from under the stage seating gave a special challenge to photograph. To give focus there was a competition consisting of three photos demonstrating Atmosphere, Movement and Close-up as there was a competition to win an Olympus Pen camera only on offer to those there on the day on Flikr. In other words really good odds to win something compared with a CCC competition! The kit was handed out pretty much as much as you wished. I acquired a fully charged and prepared OM-D with both a 18 75mm zoom and a 45mm fixed. Three minutes later (two finding the on switch in the semi dark) and I was taking photos with shutter speed override and loving the first feel. The specials menu allows you to choose preset types of settings and the view finder is in the same so no need to guess. In this situation the 'Pop Art', 'Sepia' and 'grainy black and white' worked well for the arena lights. The 'Keyhole', 'faded' and other settings really called for natural light.

4 Damien McGillicuddy is an award winning fashion photographer who is currently in partnership with Olympus. There were two models for the Master-class, the Opera singing lady and Tweedy the clown. It was very professional and would have taught us a large amount but it was obvious that only a single model would have been a far better demonstration for time as it took about 45 minutes for each set up. Unfortunately as we had started at noon without lunch very few were concentrating as we entered the third hour without a break. The OM-D E-M5 looks it is the OM4 in small size. Four thirds (17.3x13mm) sensor, 16.1 million effective pixels with 4608x3456- pixel output, Weather-resistant magnesium-alloy build, 3in, 610,000- dot, tilt-able LCD touch-screen, 1.44-million-dot EVF, Up to 9fps or 4.2fps with continuous AF, Street price around 1,150 with 12-50mm kit lens, eye sensor detects when you hold the viewfinder to your eye and switches the viewfinder on and the screen off, and vice versa. This is truly a threat to the DSLR as it has it all, in a small, fast, light package. I would have one tomorrow but is a bit overpriced, so on second thoughts maybe not. Competition site for the photos taken - Editor's note: Archie's article just missed the last edition of In Focus, so it is sometime since his visit to Giffords' Circus. Not only a great opportunity to try out a new camera, but a chance to see a unique, Cotswold-based entertainment. Gifford's Circus is like nothing else! Giffords is touring the Cotswolds (including Pittville Park) later this year.

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7 I have now entered a new area of photography for me. I have long wanted to explore macro photography and have finally purchased a good macro lens. However, I had always been a little put off by the very narrow depth of field in some macro shots but impressed by the results of focus stacking which several club members have used. By combining images taken with different focus points, this can effectively increases the apparent DOF enormously. This is not something that you can necessarily achieve in camera as very small aperture settings (F22 and higher) result in soft images due to diffraction. I was investigating an aid to focus stacking called a macro rail. At the last DIG, Graham Wakefield demonstrated that there are now many applications for photography which can be run on a tablet computer. This triggered the thought that this might be a way forward for capturing focus stacks without using an expensive macro rail. After investigation, I discovered that there are several solutions based on using tablets to remote control a DSLR camera. Some use a wireless connection but these have some limitations and are expensive. Most currently use a USB cable connection. There is very limited choice for an ipad but more choice for Android and Windows tablets. I finally chose a Tesco Hudl which was a bargain for an Android tablet at 119. I now use this with the Helicon Remote App which cost 35. I would recommend that you ensure that the combination of your tablet, camera and App will work as not every combination is successful. Fortunately I found an individual who claimed that he had successfully controlled a Canon EOS 5D Mk ii from a Tesco s Hudl using Helicon Remote. Helicon Remote can only be used with a limited range of Canon and Nikon cameras (which all have live view). The live view is displayed on the larger Tablet screen along with many touch controls to set camera parameters. For focus stacking you can choose the nearest focus point using the tablet and zooming in for accuracy which you then set. Similarly you then focus on the furthest focus point and set that. Helicon will indicate the number of shots needed for the selected aperture. By touching the shoot button, Helicon controls the camera focus taking a series of images to capture the focus range. I have Helicon just record my raw files on my camera card and I process the stacks later though it is possible to process the focus stacking images on the tablet. So far I have tried Combine ZP (free) and Photoshop CS6 to actually stack the photos but there is other software available and Zerene Stacker is recommended by many (but costs about 58). Helicon Remote also helps with High Dynamic Range (HDR) capture as well. With my Canon camera, I can only set auto bracketing to 3 exposures but with Helicon remote, it allows up to 15 exposures. I will probably regularly use Helicon Remote on my Tablet for macro shots and HDR shots which require more than 3 exposures. Having bought the Nik Plug-in suite now marketed by Google, I have been able to evaluate different HDR solutions. I find that Oloneo is still the fastest and easiest to use with generally excellent results and natural colours. However, Nik HDR Pro can handle more difficult cases as it has localised adjustments. Lightroom using 32 bit files is very effective but not as easy to use. Photomatix still has a problem in that the final output can be hazy (this may be due to the fact the final preview image you see is not always the same as the final output). With the choice of these four, I normally use Oloneo but revert to Nik for challenging cases. If I was faced with just buying one of these, I would probably choose Nik because the rest of the Nik suite is also good and now represents good value for money at the new Google price. I have finally got round to converting my old PC to a Home Server. I upgraded the Vista O/S to Windows 8.1 and used the Storage Pool facility in W8 to group four spare disk drives (two internal and two external). They are configured in Raid 5 mode so, even if one drive failed, no data will be lost. I am now using this for archiving and backups for other computers on my home network. I have found writing data to the pool is relatively slow so this solution is more appropriate for the long term archiving of large files. This will also give me chance to come to terms with W8 which I do not like though W8.1 can be configured to look similar to W7 which feels more familiar.

8 I am off to London for a couple of days soon and like to see if there are any interesting exhibitions to see. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year is on at the Natural History Museum (until 23 rd March) but this is also on at Nature in Art at Twigworth (until 16 th March). Round the corner at the Science Museum, there is a collection of prints Only in England by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr taken in the sixties and seventies so we might look at that (until 16 th March). The Photographers Gallery, near Oxford Circus, is always interesting (and sometimes a little weird), but it has a decent café, not too crowded, so worth calling in. Just over Oxford Street is Getty Images but their exhibition of Rainer Schlegelmilch s Formula One photographs does not start until 14 th February (until 15 th March). One for Des and the other motor sports enthusiasts. I might just catch the Taylor-Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery which finishes on February 9 th. MK reports that this is not so good this year, but we might have a chance to decide for ourselves as it may be coming to The Wilson in June. If you are near St Pauls, the Museum of London has the UK Picture Editors Guild Awards (until 16 March).