Best Picture by Mike Liberson. “Spider’s Web” Click to enlarge it

The Group met at 10:15 on 14th March with the theme ‘Fragile’.
Of the six portfolios submitted, Pam Liberson tied for best set of four and Mike Liberson’s photograph of a spider’s web was voted Best Picture.
Theresa Twitchell could not attend but sent a portfolio – her adjudged best picture wittily showed a gin bottle, beer bottle and aspirins!
Discussion centred on autofocus modes, especially the advantages of using spot focus/exposure to maintain accurate colour for the prime subject in the picture – especially when photographing wildlife.
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Theme for next meeting is ‘Group of Three’.

Bottle Glow – Best Picture

The Group met at 10:00 on 13th December with the theme ‘Low level light photography’. Of the six portfolios, Theresa Twitchell submitted the best set of four and Rosemary Crumplin’s photograph of a effectively lit bottle was voted Best Picture.
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The group returned to the discussion on post-processing editing. The Liberson’s showed some photographs where increased brightness gave prints which were much closer to the on-screen pictures – it also served to give a visually enhanced depth of field (more ‘punch’!)

Rosemary confessed that she took several pictures of the bottle at various angles and camera settings but did not know what settings were used for the best picture. John Hawke showed her how to change the ‘View’ in File Explorer from ‘Thumbnail’ to ‘Details’ – this gave all the camera settings for any picture (EXIF data).

Part of Rosemary’s portfolio was a fireworks display. The difficulties in taking such pictures were discussed and was complemented by Theresa showing an excellent photograph of a display taken at a very short shutter speed – this froze the action and generated a perfectly black background.

Theme for next meeting is ‘Christmas’.

Best Picture “Autumn” by Mike Iberson

The Group met at 10:00 on 8th November with the theme ‘Autumn’. Of the six portfolios submitted, Pam Liberson and John Hawke tied for best set of four with Mike Liberson’s photograph of ‘Autumn’ voted Best Picture. We welcomed a new (old!) member, Mike Liberson. Theresa Twitchell could not attend but sent a portfolio – her adjudged best picture wittily showed a rake, trug, leaves, etc. – a true representation of autumn!
Pam and Mike showed the changes in colour prints as their HP printer cartridges changed with age caused by only having a black and colour cartridge. John Hawke uses a Canon printer with individual colour cartridges with the benefit of replacing each colour as they were exhausted.

Rosemary/John get their prints developed in an Andover shop – up for sale, so the future looks doubtful.
We also discussed allowing post-processing editing – limited to cropping until now. It was agreed that some editing could be used to get prints close to that on the camera/PC screen (exposure, brightness/contrast, sharpen). John Hawke emphasised the danger of over-editing and getting the best shot in the camera.
John Hawke gave some tips to Mike to get the optimal settings for his new Panasonic Bridge Camera (auto ISO limit determination, single-point focus for birding, etc.)
Theme for next meeting is ‘Lowlight photography (dawn, dusk and night scenes)’.