Dragonfly by Peter Geary. November Competition Results. New Committee. High ISO and Digital Noise

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2 Dragonfly by Peter Geary I took the Dragon Fly photo using my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28 camera set at 1/125sec. at F4, ISO 160, on close up mode using manual focus. As a bridging camera it can produce a good photo. We were on an ill fated attempt to climb Mt Kinabalu in Malatsia, 4095m or 13300ft in the old scale. After realising we weren't going to get to the overnight accommodation we retreated to Poring Hot Springs to recover. Poring means Bamboo in the local language. The area is part of Kinabalu National Park, about a 1 hour drive from the park entrance. The photo was taken while wandering through the tropical gardens which also include a butterfly enclosure and a tree top walk. The area has an abundance of flora and fauna. On a good day one might get to see a Rafflesia, the worlds biggest flower which grows from a tuber on the forest floor. Getting there is via the capital Kota Kinabalu which is a 20 minute flight from Brunei. It is a great mix of modern and colonial buildings, with great markets and an interesting Zoo. November Competition Results The link to our Results. As usual you will find this month s critiquing slide shows for PC and Mac and anything else relative to the competition. New Committee This is the time of the year when the club decides on a new committee for the coming year. It's healthy for a Camera Club like ours to rotate committee members from time to time and of course some who have served for a while might like to stand down and allow others to take the reins. None of the committee jobs are hugely time consuming, but I think the perception may be that they are more difficult or time consuming than they actually are. The club needs new ideas and different people with different views. No one person has all the answers all of the time. So, all members should give it some thought. Don't forget you're not alone and we are a friendly bunch. You don't have to nominate yourself but nominate other club members who are willing to stand. High ISO and Digital Noise A friend of a friend asked recently why is it that beginner cameras offer iso from 100 to 3200 yet enthusiast and pro cameras offer 50 to The questioner wanted to know if you would ever use and what would the image be like. Could it be used or not? He asked: If not, why do they offer these iso settings? In the questioners experience the noise in a photo taken at night with a 2000 ISO was virtually unusable

3 This is an interesting subject, but if you Google it, you may quickly lose the will to live. Most of the articles will bore the pants off you because many seem to love infinite technical details. We are more interested in a solution to the problem. Noise in our images increases as we increase the ISO. Then again, we all know that, don't we? The larger the digital sensor, (SLRs) the less noise it creates when compared to a camera with a smaller sensor. Canon 400mm Lens 1600 ISO -100 th of a F5.6 So, the question was, suppose we shot an image at 3200 iso or higher and it was very noisy. Would it be usable? Probably not, if we were looking for an image of the quality we expect in camera club competition circles or one we wanted to use as a large print. Before anyone reminds me, I am setting aside a high ISO setting used as a deliberate creative tool. Consider being at an air show where you capture a batch of noisy shots of the aircraft due to a very high ISO setting. Your peers are not likely to be very impressed with the results due to a lack of quality. However, if you captured a noisy shot at a very high ISO of an aircraft crash landing. The noise would hardly be an issue at all. You would sell that image easily all around the world and anyone looking at it may not even register the noise. In this case the content of the image is the significant issue, not the quality. So, if higher iso settings create more noise, it seems pretty obvious what our approach as photographers should be. Keep the iso setting as low as possible and never increase it unless you

4 physically cannot hand hold the camera and get a sharp picture ISO 400mm Canon Lens th of a F7.1 How do we know where that point is between what we can hand hold and what we can't? Well, we don't know for sure because some people have a steadier hand than others, but there are some simple guidelines you can adopt that really work. 1. Keep your iso set at its lowest setting as standard. Don't use 400 iso as a catch-all setting so you don't have to worry about camera shake at all. Adopt this strategy only if you're willing to always be battling excess noise in your photographs. 2. Always try to ensure that the shutter speed you use is equivalent to the focal length of your lens. i.e. If you're using a 200mm lens then try to achieve a 200 th of a second shutter speed. This is not an exact science, but it's a good practical guide and easy to remember. At least this rule/guide alerts you to be aware that camera shake is possible and to take precautions. 3. Those precautions are: Use a tripod A bean bag - Find some street furniture that you can brace yourself and/or your camera against or just take what extra care you can while shooting. 4. If you have no choice other than to increase the iso, then increase it the minimum amount you need. 100 to 200 rather than from 100 to If you have raised the iso, then the one thing you must NOT DO is allow any under-exposure to occur at all. Anyone who has done any image editing knows that raising detail from shadows also creates noise. If you under-expose, you're adding more potential noise on top of the noise from the higher iso. This is why the questioner was concerned about high ISO for night photography.

5 6. If possible expose to the right. Meaning squeeze as much light into your sensor as you possibly can. Add exposure compensation when shooting in any automatic exposure modes. (Auto Aperture Priority - Shutter Priority) Look at the LCD and if no burnout of the highlights can be seen, increase the exposure. The trick is to virtually over-expose the shot, (for want of a better way to describe this) without going so far that you then cause more problems with blown out highlights. When you finally get the image open in your image editor, you're moving those sliders in a direction that helps the noise, not the other way that makes noise worse. Look at the two image examples below: These are two differently exposed images of the same subject. (Auto Exposure Bracketing AEB) It's a a 200% enlargement of the claw of the Blue Bower bird above. Both images were shot at 1600 ISO. The image on the left is untouched in camera raw and was exposed for what the camera felt was the correct exposure. 250 f5.6. The one on the right was exposed at 100 f5.6. That is one stop more exposure or double the light. I have darkened the one on the right a little so the two match better in density, but even at this tiny size you can see a massive difference and this is achieved with just exposure alone. 7. Photoshop and Lightroom have some superb tools to combat noise. For example in Camera Raw look in the detail tab at Luminance. These tools seem to have the ability to smooth out noise, but without making edges overall soft. Be careful you don't go too far with these tools and make your image look a little cartoon like. Final thoughts...there is always a possibility of dealing with excess noise in your image via Photoshop or Lightroom. There is almost no possibility of doing anything with a blurred image. Creating Artwork When it comes to presenting images via an on screen slide show we know that we can do that fairly easily with PicturesToExe, but if we add some artwork from our image editor like Photoshop we can make something a bit different.

6 Here we use Photoshop and create a 35mm film strip. Using copy and paste it only takes a few minutes, it's really quick and easy to do. We created ours for a slide show, so we need size for animation, but you could easily do what we demonstrate in our video using a 3:2 aspect ratio and make a film strip frame for your images. Download the Video Tutorial from HERE Guest Speaker for December is Richard West A RIDE AROUND THE BLOCK Our member, Richard West, recently undertook a huge adventure and rode his newly acquired Yamaha motorcycle on a solo journey around Australia. He did this in an amazing 46 days and he s 62 years old. Still a young fella but not bad. Richard is a keen photographer although admits that passion doesn t necessarily equate to skill. Richard says he is learning all the time and finds our critique sessions of awesome value. During the trip Richard managed to get some great shots which he ll share in our December meeting. More importantly he ll also tell us what inspired him and how he did it. He had some close shaves. Riding a motorcycle over 16,000 kms does not happen without significant risk. He spent two nights in prison during the journey but I ll let him explain that.

7 As most of us are actual or potential grey nomads his story will have information that might help us plan our own adventures. The club contributed $100 to his charity, Beyond Blue, for which he raised $5,995. Great effort! Any regrets? None, he says, 'except in hindsight I wished I'd spent more time focussing on my photography. He says he ll do better next time - then runs for cover before his wife starts beating him. Only joking. Maureen his wife actually wants him to do it again BUT with her AND not on a motorbike. AND not in 46 days. Looks like Richard has received his marching orders. But seriously Richard will tell anyone that listens, It s never too late; It s never too soon; Just do it.

8 2017 is coming All members should be aware that we will not be meeting in January 2017, which means the newsletter editor may take December off. We will not require file drop links for January, so the next newsletter will be in January ready for the February meeting. Please don't stop sending ideas and suggestions, especially photographic subjects you would like to see in the newsletter or demonstrated in the monthly video. Just Barry Beckham and we will do our best to accommodate you. So, does this mean I should say Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year? I suppose it does