Let’s go in reverse order from the title. First, the admission.

There is a saying that goes something along the lines of

The best laid plans of mice and men…

In an attempt to revitalise my interest in the blog I started three new series on the blog:

1. Photo of the day. With over 20,000 photos on my hard disc I was intending to share many of them on this blog in an attempt to get some decent comment and traffic, both on my blog and my Flickr stream.
2. My Week in View. Was going to be released on a Wednesday and give a quick run-down of the good, bad, ugly and utter shit that happened in the previous seven days.
3. The Beginner Photography series. I was attempting to share some of my knowledge and help beginners with the basics and getting the most from their digital camera.

As you may have noticed, I have failed on all three counts. I had about 10 days worth of photos posted, I reviewed my week just once and three editions of the photography course. I ran out of time and enthusiasm, then I had one or the other but never both at the same time.

I apologise to both the people following the photography. If you really want to learn more then please leave a comment and I will point you at some sites and magazines that are running exactly the same thing and doing much much better than I have.

The “Cloud” and Linux parts of the post are intermingled, so excuse me if this makes no sense!

Freedom from the desktop is awesome. Plain an simple. I can dedicated more time to real life instead of stuck at the PC answering emails, all the new documents I create are staying on Google Docs and I can share them with contacts without having to block the tubes with attachments. I have hit a problem with it though.

We redecorated the lounge, taking about a month to achieve start to finish. In this time my Ubuntu machine was unplugged in the other room. I had a sudden thought that perhaps I could re-jig my Sony Vaio PIII 833mhz (128mb RAM) with a small Linux install. I had heard of Damned Small Linux through conversation with a geek buddy so I looked. 50mb download, 10 minutes to install and it was up and running on the laptop. Nice and quick too. I only want it to get on the ‘net in the living room and check my mail, possible work on some Google Docs and be happy. Two problems I have hit so far:

1. The version of Firefox that’s pre-installed is (quite rightly) a hugely cut-down version. There’s no flash support and although I have told FF to install the plugin, it’s not working. This kills quite a number of sites (including this one), anything with Video (YouTube etc), the Farnborough Arshw Website and limits functionality on other sites like eBay and anything else with flash embedded.
2. More importantly than the flash, Google Docs works a treat for Word type documents, but will not play with the Google Spreadsheets application at all. This makes it rather inconvenient as I’am doing large amounts of work with spreadsheets for various projects I’m working on.

So, Google Docs is great, but I might have to dump DSL and either try another Linux distro or set the Ubuntu desktop machine up again. No great shakes with that but I like the idea of being able to completely hide the laptop. Can’t easily do that with a TFT screen, keyboard and mouse…

It always gives me pleasure when I get the opportunity to wind up people in the business (not my department of course!) with legitimate cause.

My mission today was to visit one of the business units with a view to printer rationalisation. The business is way over subscribed on printers and in an effort to save costs and standardise on a particular manufacturer we are talking to the business about their requirements. So, the conversation today went something like this:

Me: Hi! yay, happy me! I want to talk to you about printers.
Manager: Okay, what about them?
Me: Well, I want to take some away from you.
Manager: [slaps forehead] You are f***ing kidding!
Me: Nope.
Manager: [huffs and puffs] I’ll f***ing tell you how many f***ing printers you can take off us! None!
Me: fnar fnar…

I asked the manager to accompany me into the main office area. I pointed around the office.

Me: That one’s dead, so’s that one, that one and that one. There’s nine printers in the office for seventeen staff and four of ‘em are dead.
Manager: …
Office Worker: [Pointing elsewhere] So’s that one!

After the manager had calmed down we discussed requirements and possibilities. The manager flounced, yes flounced back into his office leaving me to do my job.

Oh what a fun afternoon!

By the way - I must apologise, I have been snowed under this week and haven’t had time to write the next article for Beginner Photography. Guess you’ve got another week to work on your photos!

Rather than overload my loyal readers with yet more information than they both need right now, I thought I’d do a very quick recap (very quick!) and reminder about the first challenge.

If you’re reading this for the first time then welcome! You can read all the posts in the series so far by looking at the category archive for Beginner Photography.

So far we’ve got:

Article 1 - Introduction to the series and choosing a point & shoot (P&S) camera.
Article 2 - What to look for in a P&S
Article 3 - Some of the most commonly used photography terms.

My dad suggested that I’d missed “Exposure” from the list. I felt at the time (and still do) that the “exposure” can get particularly technical and really isn’t necessary. As long as you remember that if someone asks what the exposure of a particular shot was then they probably mean what shutter speed and aperture (both in the article) you used. I also realise that I haven’t mentioned white-balance. This is something that will be addressed in next week’s article.

Challenge Number 1.

First announced in article 3 (above) the challenge is simple:

Your task, should you wish to accept it is to take a photograph of a car. It doesn’t have to be a special car, it can be your daily ride. What I do want though is for you to take it from a different angle. Be it on the ground, directly over the top, really close up or really far away.

Once you have taken your photo, process it on your PC, take note of the shutter speed and aperture of the photo and upload it to a photo hosting site 3 and then leave a link to it in the comments with a short description of what you did to take the photo and what you think is good or bad about it.

No evaluation of your photo will be done unless you specifically ask for it! This is about self improvement by trying and doing rather than competing with other photographers. The photo must be an image taken for the tutorial and not a stock image that you have piled on your computer!

So, let’s see what you can do! I will be playing along and using my Point and Shoot camera so that we are all on a level playing field. Of course, if you don’t own a P&S but have a funky DSLR that’s fine too!

Tags: Beginner Photography, challenge, P&S, photography, point and shoot

Whilst trying very hard not to utterly confuse the reader with terminology, I want to provide a few of the most commonly used terms, phrases and colloquialisms that can be heard in photography and photographic circles. I will try and provide a link to more detailed information for those that want to go deeper. Bear in mind that these will be very basic explanations. So:

• Shutter Speed. One of the two most important things to consider when taking a photograph. The shutter is what lets light into the camera to make the photo. The shutter speed is how long the shutter will stay open for. For example, on a cloudy day you might compose your photo and see that the shutter speed is 1/125 second. That’s one one hundred and twenty fifth of a second that the shutter stays open for. Not long is it! On a bright sunny day that could be 1/500 or even 1/1000 of a second. By comparison, some of those lovely night shots that you see couple have the shutter open for 30 seconds, or in some cases even minutes!
• Aperture. Also known as the f-stop, this term simply describes how big the hole in the lens is. The bigger the hole, the more light will get in and the less time the shutter will need to be open to correctly expose the shot. ¹ Aperture also affects depth-of-field (below). The aperture is normally written as f5 or f11 (as examples). Try and remember it like this: The higher the number, the smaller the hole. The smaller the hole, obviously, the less light can get in.
• Depth-of-Field. This describes how much of the photo is in focus. We’ve all seen those photos where part of the main subject is very sharp in focus but an object behind is out of focus? The photographer (if he hasn’t manipulated the photo in post-processing) will have changed the aperture to affect the d-o-f. You can remember depth of field by remembering the smaller the f-stop, the less d-o-f.
• Composition. As we get further through I will talk more about the composition of an image and the basic guidelines you can follow for what is guaranteed to make your photo ordinary or stand out. This includes the simple things like checking for blinking people, cutting off heads and/or feet right through to putting a particular point of interest on a “third”².
• Chimping. I think I’ve already mentioned this, but chimping is where the photographer will take a photo and then immediately look at the screen on the camera to check the composition and/or exposure. Think of a Chimpanzee that picks his nose and then spends ages looking at it. Chimping. It’s not a bad thing, especially when you’re trying a new technique, so don’t worry if you get caught chimping!

Those are the most important terms I think we need to know right now. Have I missed any that are really important to the absolute beginner? If you think so then perhaps you’d like to leave the term in a comment with a simple explanation of what it means?

The Challenge
I promised to a couple of readers that I would set a task. It’s been difficult to set a task when I haven’t really explained much of the technique for actually taking a photo but anyone can just “point and shoot”. So. Your task, should you wish to accept it is to take a photograph of a car. It doesn’t have to be a special car, it can be your daily ride. What I do want though is for you to take it from a different angle. Be it on the ground, directly over the top, really close up or really far away.

Once you have taken your photo, process it on your PC, take note of the shutter speed and aperture of the photo and upload it to a photo hosting site ³ and then leave a link to it in the comments with a short description of what you did to take the photo and what you think is good or bad about it.

No evaluation of your photo will be done unless you specifically ask for it! This is about self improvement by trying and doing rather than competing with other photographers. The photo must be an image taken for the tutorial and not a stock image that you have piled on your computer!

I’ll give you a couple of weeks and then I’ll write a new post with all the links to the photos for everyone to see.

Good luck!

If you’re in the market for a point and shoot (p&s) camera then there are a few things you need to know before you buy. The number of makes and models of p&s is bewildering. Use these tips to help you decide your requirements and eventually choose the right camera for you.

1. Budget. This has to be the number one consideration (unless you are a millionaire!). Deciding how much you can afford to (and want to!) spend will set you in the right price range for the camera. Don’t forget though that you will need to factor in for things like memory cards, a case and batteries (if the camera uses AA type rather than proprietary batteries). If you can be a little flexible then all the better. For example, you set your budget at £200 for everything you want.

Dependent on the make and model that you choose you will (unless you can get a deal) need to budget for a memory card. The memory card is what will store your images and the larger the capacity the better. Figure to get at least 1gb cards, 2gb is preferable.

So, let’s start with the Camera. Say £170 (eg for the Ixus 75 I mentioned in the last article). Memory cards for that camera are called Secure Digital or SD. The 1gb minimum I mentioned above is £15 at Jessops for the basic card. I will be talking about memory cards in more detail in another post.

Ok, a case. Although the camera comes with its own case, it’s more for dust protection than bash and bang protection. Lowepro make awesome camera bags and cases and as an example, the Lowepro Rezo Pouch 15 (left) will take the Ixus snugly. That’s another £15.

By my calculations that’s £195 of your £200 budget gone. You haven’t got a tripod yet! Whilst the tripod isn’t necessary, without one it’s almost impossible to take photos in the dark, something the Ixus is perfectly capable of doing.

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