Spring has arrived! Join us for the April meeting when Ken Conger will be talking with us about nature photography and sharing some of his wonderful images.

The days are getting longer, flowers are blooming, and people are just getting out to enjoy some of the warmer weather that has arrived. You may want to venture down to the pipeline to observe the blue heron rookery or you might want to walk over to Belle Island to photograph the kayakers as they negotiate the white waters of the James. Or perhaps you would like to walk along the trails at Pony Pasture or James River Park. Of course, there are always interesting things to photograph at Maymont Park. Now is a great time to get out, enjoy some beautiful weather, and take a bunch of photos.

It appears that the Staunton photo shoot is shaping up nicely. John Boatright and Taft Carter have put a lot of effort in this project and those of you who have signed up to attend should have a great day. I know that I am looking forward to it.

For those of you who are relatively new to photography, please do not hesitate to talk with some of the more experienced photographers in the club to seek their advice and ideas. I have gotten feedback from some former members that they left the club because it was too advanced for them. This club is for photographers of all levels, and the best way to learn and advance your skills is to ask questions and work with some of the more experienced members.

Have a wonderful April and enjoy all of the new beginning that spring has to offer!

Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Film Speed or Sensor Sensitivity (ISO).

The craft of photography can be summed up as the mastery of these three variables. The art of photography, of course, is much more, but the craft of determining the appropriate settings of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to achieve the desired exposure will enable your artistic creativity to flourish in ways you may not have previously considered and without the use of image manipulation software, such as Photoshop.

Don't get me wrong, I think Photoshop and other tools are great for achieving effects and exposures not possible in the camera alone, such as the blending of multiple photographs to achieve the High Dynamic Range (HDR) described in Peter's recent article. However, for most of my photography, I strive to get the exposure exactly like I want it in the camera at the time I make the photograph rather than spending the time fixing it in Photoshop. In fact, the photos of which I am most proud are those that I can proudly proclaim are "completely un-retouched."

I find there are several advantages to investing the time necessary to truly understand the relationship of aperture to Depth-of-Field (DOF) and shutter speed to motion blur. To do this, however, you will have to switch your camera out of "Green" mode (Full Auto). And no, the "P" mode does NOT stand for Professional. I suggest you start with Aperture-priority mode as most modern camera's have a much wider range of shutter speeds than most lenses do apertures so you're more likely to achieve reasonable exposures in this mode as you experiment with various apertures.

The wonderful advantage that digital presents us with in the form of adjustable ISO for each shot versus a fixed value for an entire roll of film opens up additional opportunities to ensure that your exposure exactly matches your vision for each frame. Of course, understanding the strengths and limitations of your camera in regards to high ISO noise is critical as you adjust it to compensate for low light situations. Many cameras have a "High ISO Noise Reduction" feature that doesn't actually kick in until the ISO is set to a certain threshold. Consult your manual to find out what this threshold is so you don't get frustrated like I did when photos I shot at ISO 560 were noisier than those set at ISO 800. My camera's High ISO Noise Reduction threshold is ISO 800.

The fourth variable that you will quickly want to understand and master is White Balance. If you never adjust your White Balance or have it set to Auto, I'm sure you've noticed, photos made in rooms with fluorescent lights have a greenish cast and those shot indoors with incandescent lights have a yellow cast compared to those shot outdoors. Most modern cameras do a pretty job of guessing a good White Balance setting if you leave it on Auto White Balance, but if you set it to the proper setting for each shot, you'll be surprised how much better they turn out.

And finally, without getting into the heated debate about whether it is "better" to shoot in RAW or not, I will simply say that I shoot in RAW in all circumstances that the photographs are important and I am not simply testing my photographic craft skills. The flexibility that the RAW format provides when used in conjunction with a powerful software program like Capture NX (for Nikon Cameras) or a similar program for Canons far outweighs, for me, the cost of being able to fit fewer pictures on a memory card or on my computer hard drives. If you use Nikon cameras and don't have Capture NX yet, please check it out. Key words ... non-destructive editing and access to many camera settings after the fact (including white balance)!

In closing, if you want to improve your photographic craft skills, study, experiment, evaluate, adjust, and practice, Practice, PRACTICE!

Happy Shooting.
- Kyle

The following article was submitted by club member Tom Williams. Here is a short bio that Tom Provided: Tom Williams once worked for a small West Virginia town as their public relations photographer. To augment the few hours a week required to record everything that happened in a town of 3000, they filled the rest of his work time by hiring him as the part-time janitor at the water treatment plant.

"It ain't what we don’t know that hurts us. It’s what we know that ain’t so." -Josh Billings

Last year, when I first visited the Camera Club, I asked someone "On a digital camera with a smallish sensor, what do you consider the proper size for a normal lens?" "Fifty millimeters," he responded, waxing eloquent on how perspective trumps image size as the definition of "normal," and confirming my pre-existent feelings about the issue. Thus encouraged, I joined CCR the next month.

The only hitch is that we were both incorrect.

In the decades before digital, many 35mm film SLRs came with 50mm focal length lens. We were all told "It’s because it matches the perspective of the human eye." So we started with that, later springing for a 200mm when we could afford it, and then maybe 20mm for a wide angle. So far, so good.

These days, though, most DSLRs come in one of two sensor sizes, "Full frame" or "APS/C." As the name suggests, full frame is the size of a traditional 35mm slide; APS/C, found in most Canon and Nikon consumer DSLRs, is about 2/3 as wide and 2/3 as tall.

Since the sensor is smaller, the marketing folks say, using a 200mm lens with an APS/C sensor is just like using a 300mm lens on a full frame sensor (or on film). If you are in the market for a "normal" lens, they say "The 35mm focal length is what you need." The gullible newbie buys the 35mm lens, while knowledgeable photo-veterans chuckle, saying things like "200mm is still 200mm."

We’ve even seen pictures in books about photography confirming that 200mm is 200mm. The image is not really any bigger; it’s just cropped. (Hence, one of the ways of describing an APS/C sensor is to say it has a "1.5x crop factor.") Right? Well, uh, technically yes, but functionally, no. As a matter of fact, in hindsight, it’s silly. When I take a picture, I don’t crop – I fill a viewfinder.

Let’s say I want to take a portrait on my D40, crop factor of 1.5. Being a gullible rube, I set the focal length on my zoom lens to 70mm, thinking it will mimic a 105mm portrait lens from my late, lamented 35mm film SLR. On my old SLR, I would have stood about 9 feet away from the subject to fill the frame with head-and-shoulders. So what do I do with this 70mm lens? Answer: I stand 9 feet away from my subject, filling the frame with head-and-shoulders.

Wouldn’t that be 6 feet? Nope. Although the 70mm lens has a shorter focal length (making the image smaller), the smaller sensor is filled faster by the smaller image. The end result (ignoring depth-of-field) is the exact same image.

Oh. Duh. Whoops.

It turns out that the marketing guys, and their rube customers, are more right than wrong. As a matter of fact, just to tweak people, I think I’ll rename "crop factor" on digital sensors to "focal length factor."

"Ah," the PhotoVet says, "you’ve forgotten the effect that shorter focal length has on perspective. Your portrait will have a big nose and will look funny."

If you’re gonna treat me like that, then it’s time to throw down the gauntlet.

That was the confrontational version. A gentler, more useful phrasing of the above is:

What about all those pictures in the how-to-take-good-pictures instruction books, taken with different focal lengths to show you how perspective changed? Sorry kids – in each of those cases, the photographer moved the camera until the foreground subject was the same size as before. Of course the perspective changed then.

And relative nose size is purely a function of distance. It ain’t the zoom lens that does the perspective flattening (or honker exaggeration) – it’s the distance from the subject.

Need proof? Let’s look at some pictures. They were all taken from one location on a tripod. The focal length varied from 200mm to 18mm, using two zoom lenses – 18-55mm and 55-200mm. Focus was done manually. The picture was composed to have multiple perspective vanishing points. I used my mailbox as a stand-in for a nose, but you get the idea. The mailbox in the foreground is five to ten times closer than the various building parts in the background. If focal length causes a perspective change, we’re going to see it.

Using "The Gimp" (the poor man’s answer to Photoshop), each image was cropped to show the same portion, and then rescaled to 500 pixels along the X axis. I also did a tiny bit of sharpening on the 18mm pic, which was after all an itty-bitty fraction of a 6 megapixel image.

18mm	38mm
55mm	98mm
200mm

Other than some foliage that shifted in the breeze, and white balance variations due to slight cloudiness, there is no difference – certainly no perspective change over a 10-to-1 focal length change.

Lesson learned: If you have an APS/C sensor, you lucky dog, you can go ahead and buy that 35mm lens and use it as if you have a 50mm (well, 52mm) normal lens on a full-frame sensor. You can take nice portraits at about 70mm. And yes, that 200 millimeter focal length on your $150 zoom lens can indeed substitute for that other guy’s $500 full-frame 300 mm lens.

The Camera Club of Richmond invites prospective members to attend our meetings which are held the second Wednesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Science Museum of Virginia.

Annual dues are $25 a person, $40 a couple. See our website for additional information.

The club’s website is: www.CameraClubOfRichmond.com

Club Officer Contact information is available on the web: www.cameraclubofrichmond.com/officers.html

Please send submissions for future newsletters to the Publications Director.
We want to know what you are doing!

Our club is a member of the Photographic Society of America. Visit PSA online at:
www.psa-photo.org

For a membership application, see Carole Hagaman, our club’s PSA representative.

Club Member News.