 DIGITAL DIVERSITY Ontario Horticultural Association Meeting
by Cheryl Yuill
Presenter: Clement Kent
Talk will highlight the main benefits of digital cameras, and differences between digital and film photography.
Why do we photograph our gardens?
- for the beauty of the flowers
- a reminder of what they were like at any point in time
Ø the collection of a famous photographer from about 100 years ago, Ruben R. Sallows, has recently been put onto the internet – put his name into a search engine and you will get a search of the collection of his photos of Bayfield and Goderich).
- communicate and educate
- memory of places we’ve been
- capture unexpected moments
When is digital better than film?
- cost – no need to have prints of everything
- quantity leads to quality – professional photographers take hundreds of pictures to capture those perfect shots – can take loads of pictures and delete those that aren’t good
- sharing – easy to send over internet, on CD
- reusability – can use a digital photo in a collage and still retain the picture
- manufacturers are competing to improve the technology and decrease the size of the cameras; no need to have multiple lenses any more; can take pictures up to ½ inch away without changing the lens
Ø depends on what you’re going to be taking
Ø eg most gardeners focus on 1 inch to 20 feet away
- immediacy – no developing required – can use images as soon as you take them; can check and see if you captured what you wanted to.
When is it worse?
- cost – when take a lot of pictures, end up having to purchase more space in respect to hard drives, etc
- quality – if carefully composed, and use high quality camera, you will get a picture that is as good a quality as a photograph; however many less expensive cameras do not take that great a quality of pictures. You can change the quality of the digital image by altering the setting on the camera with some of the newer digital cameras.
- sharing – can be more difficult with a group of friends, since need to fire up computer
- reusability – difficult to crop, manipulate; easier to snip up pictures, cut and paste them.
How can you learn to take digital photos?
- point and shoot
- talk to a friend
- take a class
- ask in a camera store
However, once you get past the point and shoot phase, you usually want to learn more, and invest in a better camera
Which camera is right for you?
- depends on you
- for a beginner – ideal is pocket sized, point and shoot camera ranging from $150-200
- if you’re good at film photography, ambitious – go for a mid-sized model around $350 with manual controls, with 7-10 megapixels (how fine the grain of the pictures will be; higher pixels is better quality, especially when blown up)
- pro – $800 +; 12-20 megapixels and a full lens set
What criteria should you use to select a camera?
- Using should be as easy as falling off a horse
- as you gain some confidence, you want to be the boss –
Ø camera with autofocus will want to focus on things with strong vertical lines – so first upgrade is manual focus and manual shutterspeed overrides
- power – batteries will run out fairly quickly if ordinary chemical batteries
Ø purchase rechargeable, NICAD or something of the same; buy at least 2x as many as you think you’ll need and buy a recharger
- shake, rattle, and roll – antishake is wonderful in the garden; avoids use of tripods, avoids effects of wind
- memory – get as much memory as possible; depends on capacity of memory chip that you put on the camera;
- buy at least 4-8 megapixel chip – will hold an entire vacation’s worth of pictures;
- get a spare chip so that if something goes wrong you don’t lose out completely, especially if you’re going somewhere special
- focus – able to change from auto to manual focus
- zoom – need to look for the small print on the camera or box that tells what the Optical Zoom is
Ø Optical Zoom is the closest you can get before losing quality
Ø shows you what you’re taking picture of;
Ø in newer cameras, can twist it around to see it, no matter how you’re holding the camera
Ø many digital cameras have great sensitivity with their flash;
Ø want to be able to turn on and off the flash
Ø when you take pictures under dim settings, the camera will automatically move to a higher ISO setting, which will make picture more grainy, but usually no a great loss in quality
What will a digital camera allow you to do?
- Digital camera allows you to become a reporter for your society
- Allows you to take photographs of framed pictures, pictures in a photo album,
- With a lot of old pictures, quality is so good you can blow them up a lot
How do you store digital images?
- Can use various forms of storage – CD, flashdrive, on hard drive
- Biggest disadvantage is that if you store on plastic, the plastic will break down in sunlight;
Ø breaks down more slowly when exclude the sun, but will still break down with oxygen;
- Best advice is to turn over the computer storage every 5 years, writing it onto the newest form of storage that is available
- Printing – inkjet pictures are not colourfast for a prolonged period of time;
Ø need to get archival inks and good acid free paper to preserve pictures;
Ø commercial services may not use good quality paper and ink, so be careful!
Ø esp places like Walmart, Zehrs
How do you decide on what film resolution setting to use?
- e.g. if your camera allows you to change the # megapixels for the photos
- Depends on what the ultimate use the pictures will be
Ø Fine grained photographs good for larger photographs such as 8x10, presentations on large screen
Ø for wallet, don’t need great resolution
- Go through this with the camera store when purchasing, since they can help advise you
What sort of lens do you need?
- For flower photographs, especially if using a macro lens –
Ø one of the places where you are likely to want a manual focus, because otherwise the camera will focus on wrong thing
Ø auto focus will usually choose a strong vertical line near the centre of the view, and use that to focus on; will blur out the flowers
- Zoom lens – if good camera, will have great magnification capabilities
(2009-01-25) |
