Welcome to the u3a Dacorum Photography Club .

This is where we display the Topics that were presented in our Meetings.

Photography Club meeting Wednesday 14th February  2024.

The subject for this months  images was on “motion“ so you can now look at these and any others:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/xs261j992vhcy55xzvvxu/h?rlkey=r8chj73ucwsdw3chr0do434uw&dl=0

Just open a folder and double click on the first image, you can then advance to see them one at a time.

I just love these and also again a thank you to everyone for such fab contributions.

Also another thanks to Jo for the presentation and she has kindly allowed me to share this with you.

Combining My Hobbies

Finally, if you managed to follow the demo I include the script for testing it out.

How to Quickly Soften Rough Skin and Wrinkles in Photoshop (and Affinity)

1. Duplicate the background layer by pressing CtrI + J. (Cmd + J Mac)
2. Press CtrI + I to invert the layer. (Cmd + I Mac)
3. Change the blend mode to Vivid Light.
4. Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Filter >Sharpen>High Pass AP
5. Set the Radius to 24. Press OK.
6. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.
7. Set the Radius to 3. This number will vary based on the image resolution. You’re looking for a number that gives a slightly-over smoothened look that can be dialled back later. Press OK. b
8. Press and hold the Alt button and click on the new Mask icon to create an Inverted mask (all black).
9. Press B for the Brush tool. Then select a Soft Round brush.
10. Make the foreground color white. Press D and then X if necessary.
11. Set the Flow to around 15 %. Opacity 100%
12. Brush the effect onto the face to the areas that need to be softened. Avold the eyes.
13. When finished, you can lower the Opacity if necessary to reduce the effect to taste, try 60 – 90%

How to make an ‘Action in PS’ ‘Macro in AP’to repeat at the click of the mouse:

If you open a file.

PS go to ‘Window/Action’, AP go to View/Studio/Macro’ From here you start a new action/macro.

In PS call it ‘soften wrinkles’ save in default folder, In AP you do this at the end by clicking the 2nd icon at the top with the + in.

Run through the above script to stage 8 then press ‘Stop’

Steps 10 – 13 are done manually.

When repeating just open a new file find and run the script.

Photography Club meeting Wednesday 13th September 2023

Terry;s  presentation for this meeting was a guide to printing your photographs on your Computer Printer and covered the various types of Photo Paper available to use.

There are many types of paper available for photo printing.

Here are some things to look out for:

• Photo printing uses lots of ink, so use the thicker papers developed for photos. Plain office paper doesn’t work well.
• Paper comes in gloss, satin, and matte finishes.
• While glossy paper looks the most professional, it’s the hardest to see in brightly-lit conditions.
• Photo paper is expensive, so choose the right inkjet photo paper. For best results, choose the highest quality you can afford.

Inkjet photo paper varies in size and finish. Some have glossy or satin finishes, while others have matte finishes. Coatings range from cast coated, which is generally on cheaper base paper, to micro-porous, which is usually on top of a higher-quality paper.

When you shop for inkjet photo paper, you don’t need to be too technical. 

Advances in inkjet paper surfaces allow for more creative printing, such as transfer paper for iron-ons, printable stickers, and more.

see this pdf file for details :how to print photos

Photography Club meeting Wednesday 12th April 2023

Tips on Photographing Flowers

A request to have the presentation again as notes for those that came today (big turnout) but also for those unable to come due to illness and other commitments.

see this pdf file for details :Photography Club Tips for photographing Flowers

I have added some more captions and also included the quick focus merge demo image at the end.

Photography Club Meeting Wednesday 9th November  2022

Topics this month:

A talk by Terry on mirrorless cameras, what are they, benefits etc.

see this pdf file for details:mirrorless cameras

As you all seem to like practical stuff , John brought  along his copying set up again, mainly to demo print copying this time but will revisit the slide copying set up too for those who missed it last month.

Photography Club Meeting Wednesday 13th July  2022

Terry is going to go a bit deeper into the Apple Photos App (Photos features an immersive, dynamic look that showcases your best photos. Find the shots you’re looking for with powerful search options. Organise your collection into albums, or keep your photos organised automatically)

Mac Photos App Tutorial july 2022

John will do a demo on some fun techniques like posterization and using grey layers to enhance the effects. I just love this.

Photography Club Meeting Wednesday 9th March  2022

Topics this month included lens performance, how to test and get the best from your lenses.

It should help to unravel the jargon to just a few ‘easy to understand’ pointers about lens performance and how to simply test your own kit.

Always some practical tips and demos.

Now showcasing members images is paramount, please feel free to bring along approx. 12 images on a theme of your choice to show. You can email them to me beforehand or just bring along on an USB stick.

Terry showed some images of his recent trip to see the northern lights.

Photo Club lens performance

Photography Club Meeting Wednesday 12th January 2022

This was our first Zoom meeting for a while, and it was good to see there were lots of members participating in the meeting.

Terry Started the meeting with a presentation about Tips for Snow Photography which covered lots of ideas about composition and also camera settings for White Balance, Aperture setting and also thinhg such as preventing your camera from condensation and keeping the spare battery warm etc.

snow photo tips

John’s presentation was a follow up on his previous session on Copying old photos and covered how to revive the photo using various tools which improve the appearance and clarity of the image.

John’s example included some of his old family black and white photos which he had copied and then used Lightroom to restore the original  and remove the faded sections etc. The Before and After views were very impressive.

He also showed a number of photos that he had copied from old colours prints , which had suffered very badly with some of the colours fading and looked very yellow. Again by using Lightroom tools, John showed us how to restore the colours back to near the original and remove any of the colour casting .

Finally we had three of the members showing us their “Showcase” of some of their photographs using the Zoom “Share screen” facility to display the images to the rest of the zoom members.

There were some excellent images shown, which were enjoyed by all, and we were taken on a world wide tour seeing views from around the world without needing to leave our seats.

Thanks to all who took part and hopefully it will encourage some more people to put together a Show Case fir future meetings , either via Zoom, or when we are back at St John’s hall .

The next scheduled meeting will be on Wednesday 9th February at St John’s Hall starting at 2pm.

Regards John & Terry
group151@u3adacorum.org

Photography Club Meeting 10th November 2021

Hi all,

We had a good meeting on Weds, lots of space, great presentation from Terry with lots of Xmas ideas.

Here’s the Presentation on creating your own Xmas or Birthday Cards or Gifts.

Photo Books & cards

I showed how you can have fun with an LED torch and some colour gels.

I gave out some colour gels for free and will bring a few more next time.

Also I am in the throws of throwing out some surplus studio stuff so if you are interested in reflectors, screens, bits and bobs, maybe the odd stand etc do get in touch.

Topics will cover a re-visit on some camera settings, use of layers and some basic retouching, plus some fun practical stuff too.

Please support the U3A website and send to Mike any winter images cropped to 900 pixels wide x 300 pixels high (resolution not important but can be 72 dpi).

Photography Club meeting Wednesday 11th August 2021

Terry  showed us how to put slide shows and presentations together with a slide show of his own.

Steve and I  demonstrated a refresher on the basics in processing, cropping, saving your files both in Affinity and Photoshop (not infinity and beyond…) so noting how to do this on both bits of software will enable you to do this with any software as the principles are the same.

I keep getting asked to do this so here’s your chance to get to grips with it.

A look at the shots members took in the Old High Street.

Here is the link for Terry’s Slideshow maker presentation

Slideshow Presentation Aug 21

Photography Club meeting JuLY 2021

Held at the Old Town Hall in Old Hemel High Street

Well I hope you all enjoyed the session, the weather was kind and considering it was the first meeting face to face (albeit outdoors) it went very well and after a good hour of tips and tricks members did start using their cameras and trying out what we had covered.

I am sure you won’t remember everything but hopefully you got to grips with a few things and gave you a bit more confidence in taking a portrait and also using a flash gun. Like riding a bike just have ago and practice.

For those of you thinking about buying a flashgun the suppliers I use to look at are

https://www.wexphotovideo.com/flashguns/

https://www.parkcameras.com/lighting/flashguns/

as well as the usual Curry’s and John Lewis etc. Avoid the really cheap ones as they lie about their performance!!

 

Make sure it is compatible with your camera so you will get the functions and try to go for a decent brand (own camera brand or Metz are good independent).

 

Some notes and the main features to look out for:

1. GN (Guide Number) is an indication of output. A low number is perfect for all close ups and small groups and indoors at home. A high GN will be required for shots from greater distances, bounced or diffused lighting and in halls. The higher the GN the bigger the gun and more expensive. If you can try one out on your camera. A GN of around 40 gives a good range, my big ones are GN 60, but even one around GN 30 will be better than the pop up and reduce red-eye.
2. Ability to tilt the gun up and rotate the head so you can bounce the gun off a wall or ceiling.
3. Make sure it covers your lens range,
4. A small clip on diffuser makes a good cheap accessory. If you can look for an extension cord too, maybe put on Xmas list as the family always don’t know what to get us!
5. Recycling time will be fast on the more expensive guns, whatever the stated time is this may double as the batteries wear down.
6. Use good batteries, Duracell Ultra are great and you can get good deals on line or at Costco. Carry a spare set with you.
7. Small folding cheap reflector are good especially for closer work (we can do another session on this when we can find the right location). Now I find a white/silver or semi diffused silver the most versatile with a grip like https://www.wexphotovideo.com/lastolite-standard-trigrip-silverwhite-12309/?mkwid=svK2mMVid_dc&pcrid=310558797289&kword=&match=&plid=&product=12309&pgrid=62111518496&ptaid=aud-321738727162:pla-615135612887&gclid=Cj0KCQjwub-HBhCyARIsAPctr7x-EJ9uJnN1ckHUrJL_ql4RSMPQAZe_KrbZfbMveiLoiMGwMWB-XzQaAuf2EALw_wcB but can get really cheap ones on the internet and they are fine just won’t have a grip that’s all. If you like the warm tone for portraits in cloudy weather then go for ‘sunfire’ as it is not as yellow as ‘gold’ which can be too strong.

Photography Club meeting  Wednesday June 2021 

Steve took us through some steps in Affinity Photo to make your own montages.

If you missed it or need a refresher follow this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgcOKHOVoys

Terry covered offered good advice in improving your landscapes and I covered panoramics in more detail than previous.

Landscape Tips

My short notes are:

‘Wide angle’ lens will accentuate the foreground and send the background proportionally smaller

‘Normal’ lens gives the same perspective as your eye.

Camera rotates about the front of the lens to avoid parallax

Rehearse the view, maintain camera level

Works best with camera with a normal lens in portrait mode

Overlap images 20 – 30%

Now looking ahead to July, by a majority of support, if the weather is good to us, we will be holding an outdoor ‘field’ meeting.

If the weather is not good we will be back on zoom. Details much nearer the time.

We also discussed meeting back at the St John’s Hall and we decided to make a decision at the tail end of summer.

Our thanks to Steve for his excellent stacking demo and to Tony, Gary and Trevor for a showcase each, very interesting they were to everyone.

For those with Affinity (still free to trial) and wish to play with Steve’s stacking set of images here is a link (though they will not be there for ever).

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmEqElzHsOo4iasc6ouKOEuCpr_wPA?e=ZS14Hk

Here is a pdf of Steve’s Affinity Image Stacking presentation  and also a quick précis of John’s Composition Notes.

Stacking Images-1

Photography Club composition

And finally, we do hope to hold an outdoor meeting/workshop soon in the nice weather and with eased restrictions, many members thought this was a good idea so more about this later.

Showcase slots all free for next month, either new people or anyone wishing to do another please email me. These are great.

Photography Club meeting  Wednesday 14th April 2021 

Topics this meeting:
John Larkin had another look at using Affinity and review of Curves, Levels & Colour Balance etc.

There were two Showcase Presentations which  we all enjoyed, from our regular contributors.

We would like to see more Showcase Presentations each month, just choose 12 images that you wish to display and save them in your favourite Photo viewer software before sharing your Zoom Screen.

Drop an email to either John or Terry to let us know that you have a showcase that you want to share.

John’s second Presentation was about using Flash , either with the build in camera flash or a separate Flash Gun. His presentation is available as a pdf

Terry’s Presentation was about “Nature Photography Tips” and showed a selection of photos taken at some National Trust properties to illustrate various guidelines when taking Landscape or closeup views

Here are the .pdf files :

Photography Club flash 140421

Nature Photography Tips

Thanks all for tuning in to the last meeting, there were 38 of us armed with our cuppas and exchanging images and hints.

 

Photography Club meeting  Wednesday 10th February 

Topics this meeting:

•  A follow up by showing how to save and organise images off your phone onto your PC for archiving and editing. Here is the .pdf file which contains the details: Transfer SmartPhone Photos to PC-compressed
• An introduction to the editing software ‘Affinity’.
•  A demonstration in converting your images to Black & White, adjusting them to achieve the correct tonal range.It would be helpful to us with the register by renaming yourself with your firstname and surname when you log in.

Photography Club 1st Meeting 11/11/2020

This was the first meeting and we were feeling our way with timings. We did intend to have a 10 minute comfort break in the middle for Q&A but in the end we had to rush through the last topic. We hope you enjoyed the session and will join us on future meetings, same log in.

File management on the computer, how to organise and keep your images.

Here is the .pdf file which contains the details: Organise your Images

Please let me know if you would like to do a ‘Showcase’ to share your images with others and I will add you to the list, we would like to have a couple each month.

To ‘showcase’ we ask you to prepare 12 images only on any subject of your choice to reflect your style of photography. It can be 12 images of several locations on the same subject or 12 images all taken on the same day, but there should be a theme to it. When sharing the images we would like you to pace it to spend about 30 seconds on each image to comment and to answer any questions, making a total of no more than 6 minutes.

Now as I rushed the last bit, on the demonstration of copying, I thought I would attach some notes on the subject:

Copying old photos or paintings

Setting up to copy old photos or paintings often gives a superior result with DSLR to scanning (which suffers from reflections due to lighting angle, dirty glass and insufficient resolution on smaller subjects).

Principle of copying is to have even lighting from 30 – 45 deg angle to reduce reflections and minimise creases.

Using a mirror to aid setting up squarely to the subject.

Best lens is one which has macro facility and focal length from ‘normal’ to slightly ‘long’, avoid wide angle lenses. The lenses I use are 100 mm macro and a normal 50 mm (when the frame is tight) on a full frame DSLR.

At home, easy way to set up is with a tripod, set up on largest subject (picture) first, smaller subjects can be brought nearer to camera by lifting them on a box to save messing about with the tripod. If making a stand the usual thread for a camera is ¼ inch Whitworth. Could also improvise with a workbench.

Your lights could be anything as long as they are the same. If using natural light, set up not too close to a window and make a reflector using foil to even up lighting. Cut away a large box (like a soap powder) to stick foil on outside as a reflector. It stands up easy, you just need a weight on the inside to keep it upright. Test for even lighting by observing the shadows of a stick under camera.

Test shot with bright white paper for easy colour balancing. Use this to set custom white balance or for post work in RAW format.

Once you have a set up it’s easy to copy lots of pictures.

 

 

 

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