Fort Wayne

Date	Question	Response
1/9/07	Lens selection Do any of you shoot with prime lenses? I have 2, and love how tack sharp they are. I'm looking to buy a new lens, and I'm torn between another prime, or a zoom. I'm not sure if I want to trade the wide aperture, light weight, speed, and sharpness for the convenience of comparably-priced zoom.	You can have the best of both worlds. You already have 2 prime lens so I would recommend getting a zoom lens. With all lens being computer designed they will provide the performance you need and you can use your prime lens for low light or small depth-of-field situations. There are many ranges and associated maximum f stops available. I would recommend a zoom lens with a 28 mm to 200 mm (35 mm equivalent) as a good all around zoom lens. If you are using a digital camera look for 18mm to 200mm with the APC size sensor as you will have a 1.5 multiplication factor. Be sure to get a lens with internal focusing so you can use a polarizer without readjustments when you refocus. Aftermarket lens manufactures such as Tamron, Tokina, Sigma or Vivitar are good alternatives to your camera manufacturer's lens. You might want to also factor in filter size when choosing a new lens. Ron Patton
1/10/07	Monochrome for competition With the advent of many computer aided photographs in print competition, what is the correct placement of a color picture converted to B/W but with a single color left in such as blue eyes, red lips or roses, etc? Would it go into color or B/W? or would it need to wait for its own category? Also, in the situation of two colors being shown? Secondly, on a B/W print with hand coloring, where does that go category-wise? And would that be considered in the same fashion as the above computer altered pictures?	This is somewhat of a difficult question. The way I have generally looked at it is a B&W image with a single selective color would still go into B&W because it's originally a monochrome image and the overwhelming preponderance of the image is monochrome. As for a hand-colored image, even though the original is B&W, if the entire image is hand-colored (or the overwhelming preponderance) than I think it would go into the Color division -- unless there's a specific category for it in Monochrome. Generally, in both cases these type of images would be entered under specific categories. That's not to say, though, that they can't be entered under regular categories. We've discussed this point in the past, but I don't believe there has ever been a concrete resolution yet. Let me contact the Board members, as well as the Print Committee, and we will determine the proper solution for this. It may not happen until our next Board meeting (the night of the Feb. Club meeting), but I will make sure we come to an agreement/decision. Keven Oswalt
2/4/07	Photoshop Technique I have a photo of a double rainbow against a stormy sky. The bottom of the picture has grass and trees with shadows. The sun was to my right when the picture was taken. I would like to know how to lighten the grass and trees while at the same time keeping the clouds in the sky dark with good contrast. I have adobe CS 2. original After Ron's recommended changes	I would start with creating a duplicate layer, then using the Magic Wand tool (tolerance = 40 or so & Contiguous box checked) select the various areas of the sky and erase these areas until most everything is gone (works best if you turn off the eyeball in the Background layer). Then use the erasure tool to remove anything missed with the Magic Wand. Then reduce the Magic Wand tolerance to 16 or so and erase all of the sky areas that appear between the branches of the trees. You can do this to your heart's content or until you get tired of removing small details. Then using the Blur tool (brush size around 24 or so and Normal mode setting) soften all of the edges where you removed details. This will make the image seem more natural instead of having sharp edges. Next, you can use the New Layer Adjustment tool under the Layers menu and select either “Levels” or “Brightness/Contrast”. For your image the “Brightness/Contrast” tool worked best for me. Before you make this selection make sure that the “Background” layer's eyeball is turned off and that you have selected the “Background copy” layer. When the initial “New Layer” checkbox opens check the “Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask” checkbox below the “Name” box and click OK. You can select various combinations of brightness and contrast to suit you preference. For the image I did I used settings of 45 for Brightness and 30 for Contrast. Click OK and then activate the eyeball for the Background layer. This should give you a finished image. You can go back and tweak various areas of the image to correct specific areas for improvements. I did not use the “Smart Sharpen” filter, try to adjust the color saturation or remove the telephone in the image I processed. Hope this helps you get the image to what you want. Ron Patton
2/7/07	Bringing a camera in from the cold What is the most practical method of avoiding and/or mitigating the effect of condensation on lenses when coming from the cold to a warm humid environment? I had this problem today when we went swimming at the Barr St. "Y" and then went to the Botanical Conservatory. My bag is padded but it didn't protect against that cold. The lens on the camera eventually warmed up but it took quite a while. I didn't dare change lenses since my 105 macro was so cold that it had beads of moisture on it.	The best way to prevent moisture on a lens or camera equipment is to insulate it well. You can do this by wrapping a shirt or towel around the equipment. Otherwise, you have to gradually transition the temperature. The best advice I can give is to try and not expose your equipment to dramatic changes in temperature. These changes can cause water spots in the lens, rust and or damage to internal circuitry. All this is possible but I must say that from my experience damage from these conditions are very rare. Daniel Scheerer
2/10/07	Question about how to join the club I am interested in joining your club and wondered what I need to do to join. Do I have to bring any pictures I have taken or just show up? Also I noticed you have a meeting coming up on beginning photoshop. Is this appropriate for Photoshop elements 4 or not? Is there a fee or preregistration? Is it one night or on going? Do you need to bring a laptop? Also I would like to bring my husband to that class as he is much more computer literate than me to help me figure it out. Is that possible?	Thanks for your interest in our Club, To answer your questions: 1 -- To join, you just need to pay the yearly dues which are $25. However, since you are joining in February you would only pay 1/2 price. 2 -- You can bring images to enter on a competition night. If you come on a workshop night, you could bring images if it's a Critique Night workshop, otherwise just show up. 3 -- The upcoming Intro To Photoshop will include Elements (predominately aimed towards those who are new to/just beginning Photoshop 4 -- There's no fee/pre-registration, but you do need to be a member. You could actually pay your dues ($12.50) that night. 5 -- Our workshops are on-going, but this is the only Photoshop-based workshop we currently have scheduled. If you have a laptop w/ Photoshop Elements installed, please bring it along. 6 -- Yes, your husband could come w/ you. We have a great group of people w/ a wide variety of personalities, styles and knowledge/experience. It's a great group to know and anyone can learn more about photography by being a part of it. To give you a very brief synopsis: we meet at the Townhouse Retirement Center on the first Thursday of every month for competition, alternating between slides and prints. We meet generally on the 3rd Thursday for a workshop, but sometimes we have 2 workshops scheduled. We try and dedicate ourselves to helping advance the joy and knowledge of photography, and we generally have at least 3 exhibits per year in various establishments in and around the city. Also, membership in our Club automatically provides membership w/ the Southwestern Michigan Council Of Camera Clubs. You can visit their site at swmccc.org if you would like to learn more about them. Keven Oswalt
2/11/07	Blending two pictures in Photoshop I have Adobe Photoshop CS2. How do you blend two different photos into one? How do you blend a portion of one photo into another? Thank you.	“How do you blend two different photos into one?” To blend two different photos into one open both of the photographs in Photoshop. Select one photograph and create a new layer (Layer - “New” - “Layer”. Go to the other photograph and do a Select All command (Select - “All”) and copy (Edit - “Copy”). Go to the other image and select the “New” layer and paste the other image into that layer (Edit - “Paste”). Select the Layers command (Windows - “Layers”) and make sure you have selected the “Layer 1” layer. You should see the image that you pasted in on this file. Go towards the top of the “Layer” window and you will see a box with 100% in it titled “Opacity”. Click on the triangle and you will see a slider box. You can vary the setting, from 0 to 100%, and watch the screen for the amount of mixing you want for both images. You can also reverse both images, i. e. put the bottom image on top, to see if this changes the image for the better. Just make sure you either change the “Opacity” back to 100%. “How do you blend a portion of one photo into another?” This is much the same process as described above except that after you copy the second image, this should be the one you want to crop, into the new layer titled “Layer 1” you will need to erase the unwanted portions of the image using a combination of the eraser tool and the select tool. Ron Patton
3/20/07	How to select a new scanner Looking for a new scanner. Besides photographs, I may also wish to work on slides and negatives to reduce the generational gap into digital. Are there recommendations for flatbed scanners that come with attachments for slides and negatives? Or would I be better off with a stand alone slide and negative scanner as well as a flatbed? I realize there are a ton of selections out there, but I wish to look more closely at those with which club members have been happy, and successful on print nights.	There are a lot of brands of flatbed scanners on the market, and I am only familiar with the Epson line, so that is all I can address here. The Epson Perfection 4870 Photo is what I have, and it is on the pricy side, but it is a professional quality unit capable of 9600 DPI optical. In general I would say that if you are going to scan slides / film, you want something that can do a minimum of 4000 DPI optical. I keep saying optical, because some brands (HP is one) claim much higher scanning resolutions, but their optical scan resolution is much lower, and they come up with the high numbers by “interpolating” between the dots in software. That is NOT the way to do pictures as far as I am concerned. It must also specifically say it can do slides/film, because they require a second light in the cover. My experience has been that the flatbed does fairly well on medium and large format films (positive or negative), but when it comes to doing 35mm slides or film, even thought it came with the holders for those sizes of film, it just doesn’t seem to yield the quality of a dedicated slide/film scanner, and it is a lot more work doing the “small stuff”. As for dedicated 35mm slide/film scanners, the primary name out there is Nikon. Minolta used to have a couple of reasonably priced units, but they got out of the business about 2 years ago. Nikon’s lowest cost unit, the Coolscan V ED does a very nice job on 35mm, and is very easy to use. I own one, and would HIGHLY recommend it. I hope this info has helped. Don Gagnon
3/24/07	Local places to get prints made I am a new club member. At the last meeting I asked where to go in town to get good quality not extremely expensive larger color prints made. The prints would be of either landscapes, nature, or sport - people photo's like wrestling or pole vaulting. Right now I am trying to print up some wrestling ones for the photo journalism workshop that got canceled. Is there a print size or framing requirement for print competitions or critiques? I live Northeast and someone told me to go to the one hour/Asian food store on Coliseum. I went there and they no longer do photos. Could you recommend any other places? I am just switching over to digital photos. Has anybody had good success getting larger Like 8x10 prints made online - either send on line and pick up at a local place or send on line and they are mailed back?	Welcome to the club, it's nice having you with us. There are a number of good quality online printers, look in your photographic magazines for one and just start trying them out. As for locally I hear Sam's club does very well, also. Print size for competition is limited to 72 inch perimeter. This includes matting. Daniel Scheerer Editors Note: you can also check out www.digitalwondersphotography.com/services_printing.asp here in North East Fort Wayne
7-7-07	I am very excited that I have an unexpected opportunity to go to Europe this summer! I will be taking my advanced digital Canon (NOT an SLR) which zooms from like 35mm to 420mm and if I can figure it out has the capability for using manual settings. I plan to take pictures of -well everything! - but probably a lot of buildings, lanscapes, counrtyside, stuff. I have never used any filters before and wondered if it would be worth getting a couple to take along to improve the sky,landscape, sunrise,sunset colors? What 2 or 3 filters would you reccomend and what advice would you have for using them? Also I hope to plan some time traveling around Tuscany in Italy and wondered if anyone knows what towns / areas have the most awesome sceanery you might suggest for me to explore? I also plan to go to Monet's garden outside Paris and wondered if anyones knows how to get in there before or after hours when the light is at it's best? Thanks	Congratulations on the trip! As for filters there are two basic filters I would recommend. They are an ultraviolet (VU) filter and a circular polarizer. The UV filter does nothing to the photograph, except at high altitudes to eliminate UV light, but is used to protect the front lens element from damage. The circular polarizer intensives the blue sky when used at right angles to the sun and reduces glare and reflections from objects such as water and windows. The filter is adjustable from no effect to maximum. You will lose around two f stops of light when using the filter but shooting outdoors on sunny days should not be a problem. Make sure you get the circular polarizer and not the linear polarizer as the linear polarizer will not let your autofocus work. You can look at the front of your lens or in the manual for the filter size. It should be a number such as 49mm, 52mm, 55mm, etc. Beyond these two basic filters you may want to consider the following filters: 1) an enhancing filter which provides more color saturation to warm tones (reds, oranges, yellows etc.) without changing the cool tones like greens and blues. This filter would work well with subjects like Monet's garden, flowers on buildings etc., 2) an 8X neutral density filter which reduces the amount of light going through the lens and is used to reduce shutters speeds when you want a long exposure for blurring water or showing motion, and 3) either a star6 or star8 filter which creates a star burst effect, either 6 rays or 8 rays from bright point sources of light reflections or point light sources in your photograph. Ron Patton
10-14-07	My wife and I have a Nikon D80 and D200. We are advanced beginners. We would like to purchase a flash attachment for our cameras. We would like any suggestions you have. We are starting with zero knowledge.	Nikon has three ”general use” flashes available: SB-400 98 ft. (ISO 200) $110 SB-600 98 ft (ISO 100) $185 SB-800 125 ft (at ISO 100) $315 The 600 & 800 have been available for a while, but the 400 is fairly new. I don’t know a lot about the 400, but the 600 is a good general use flash that will do just fine for most photographers. The 800 offers more light (power) output, and more electronics that allow you to control other flashes for setups where you use 2-5 flash units to light a subject. The 800 acts like a master control for the 600’s (and maybe the 400’s??). In general unless you feel the need for higher light output or you plan to buy several, in which case one would need to be a 800, then I would recommend the 600. The only other thing is, if you buy a 600, it does not come with a translucent plastic diffuser that snaps on the front of it, and you’re going to want one. B&H carries one made by someone else for about $15 and I would suggest one of those also.
10-15-07	I'm trying to set up a shot with am all white background with back lighting on the subject. I'm thinking I need a transparent white material and a bright white light. I tried to make a "light box" with florescent bulbs inside and a frosted glass. The frosted glass is OK but the three 16 in fluorescent bulbs create three distinct bright stripes behind the glass. I could place the bulbs closer together but I'm afraid I will continue to get striping in the light source. I would like to work in both a vertical and horizontal format--i.e. I would like to stand the object in front of the light source, and in some shots lay the object onto the surface of the light source.	Assuming you are shooting with digital and either auto-white balance or custom-white balance to eliminate the effects of florescent bulbs you might try this simple solution. Buy a cheap shower curtain liner, white or clear plastic, and layer several layers within your light box between the bulbs and where the light comes out. If this doesn't work then turn the light box around, without anything if front of the light bulbs, and use a white material, like a sheet or cardboard or shower curtain, to reflect the light onto your subject. Differences in these approaches will vary the total amount of light on the subject which you can adjust whit a combination of ISO setting, f stops and or shutter speeds. I would shoot on a tripod at slow shutter speed, maximum or near so f stop and the lowest ISO value you can use (to reduce noise).
4/14/09	I have a Kodak M883 Digital Camera. My wife and I took a trip to Mexico and did the tourist thing, taking lots of pictures. I took pictures of the Temple steps of Chitzen Itza and expected it to look like all the other pictures I have seen. They didn't. The pictures I took have designs in the steps that look like iron fillings would look like if a bar magnet was placed underneath. I have tried my best to send these pictures to others, or to print them, and each time the designs disappear. It seems that they only appear on the digital camera and nowhere else. What could the camera have seen that I, and my Wife did not? The only pictures that were affected were the pictures of the stairs.	It appears to be in the lcd of your camera. It is what you view your photos with on the camera. Two things could be happening. It is either something called a mosaic effect where it just looks that way on the lcd or your lcd could be broken. Hope this helps! Daniel Scheerer
5/3/09	I was just wondering what the age range is of your club? Also if i would need a certain camera?	Our club members range from High School to 80+ ....a wide range. Any camera from a point and shoot to high megapixel digial 35mm or film camera is fine. And experience ranges from very little to decades of experience. We have a lot fun, there is a lot of learning and sharing. You are welcome to come to a meeting or two and check us out before having to decide if you want to join or not.
6/3/09	I am thinking about joining but what are the different photographic categories this club approves of? I am a creative photographic artist and I don't do landscapes, flowers, birds or bees. When I lived in South Carolina, I was the President of the Sumter Camera Club. It was a very conservative club, which I opened many category doors that were closed to it's members. I reviewed your wedsite and nowhere does it mention the different categories.	My name is George Mundell I am the clubs new president. The 2008-2009 year has just ended. The 2009-2010 year will start in September. This past year I was the print chairman. We alternate each month between prints and digital projection. Each month there were five catagories. Three repeated each month.....open-nature, open-no nature and on print month one called camera/computer art. Our club has been around since the 1940's. We do have conservative members as well as progressive one's Now as president I want to strike a balance between camera and computer rmeaning we are photographers that accept the creative possibilities the computer offers to arrive at a final image. You say you are a creative photographic artist. The word photographic is key. When we start the 2009-2010 season, each month we will have subject themes suitable for tradititional photographers and open themes for the creative photographic artist. You are welcome to visit our meetings to see for yourself.