This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

Weekly Assignment

The weather outside may still be frightful, but that was no reason not to participate in last week’s assignment, Seasons. Now of course, some people also did have summer but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t frightfully warm. There were a lot of entries this time and we tried to pick ones that really exemplified the season that was being shown. Our winner was amy-rose for her shot of her daughter eating a lollypop. What was interesting was that although the picture pretty much screams summer, was that it was taken in the cold of winter. It must be the bright colous. Our runners up were cbmrj777 for a picture of a snowy path taken right after their 4th major snowstorm, and kairos for the picture of the beech tree that lost it’s branch during a winter storm, showing the menacing nature of winter weather.

Our current assignment is Straight From Camera. That means that *no* post-processing is allowed aside from cropping the picture to meet the forum’s 600px maximum length guideline. So turn on that jpg mode on your camera for the assignment this week and see what you can do without the help of any post-processing! In order to be eligible for the mini-contest, not only can your picture not be post-processed, but it must have been taken between 6 to 19 February 2008, the exif must still be in tact, and you must include the words “Assignment:Straight From Camera” somewhere in your post. Next week’s assignment will be Rivers.

Weekly Poll

This week we asked users a gear question: what kind of tripod head do you prefer? Not surprisingly many of our forum members had experiences with both kinds and preferred one kind of another. The votes were fairly even this week! So whatever kind of tripod you prefer, know that you’re not alone.

mrodgers said that he felt he would prefer the pan/tilt head because even though “It has a pan/tilt head. I only have a day’s worth of experimenting with it, but I would think I would like this better than a ball head. I think using a ball head, it would be difficult to keep the camera level when moving it around. I think it would be easier to level the tripod, then you don’t have to worry about it any more when you move the camera around.”

Joeb on the other hand said “I prefer the ball head. I have a pan/tilt head but have played around with a friends ball head tripod. I think they are much easier to use since you don’t have to deal with different knobs to adjust a shot, but make sure you hold your camera when you loosen the knob on a ball head.”

Watch for this week’s poll later in the day.

Hot Threads

• Where do I start?: So, you’re just getting into photography as a hobby. It may all seem a little overwhelming. From looking at what camera to buy to figuring out all the different terms and technologies, it’s a lot to take in. This thread offers some advice about how to get started.
• Everywhere – How do you carry your camera?: One of the most common pieces of advice that people get when they ask how to get started (once they have the gear, etc) is to “take your camera everywhere.” Of course, that means that you’re going to have to carry that camera with you. See how forum members carry that camera with them all the time in this thread.
• “Take your camera everywhere” shots: Well, if you’re carrying your camera everywhere, you’re bound to get at least one or two shots that you know there was no way you could plan for and could only have gotten if you were always carrying your camera. Why not come and share these “happy accidents” in this thread.
• Are borders non-cool?: A bit of a post-processing / general question. When people post pictures on the internet, some people use borders, some don’t. But what do you think of pictures that use borders? Do you think they enhance them or do you think they’re just a distraction. Join the discussion in this thread.

Other Threads to Note

It’s time for another week of What Would You Do, the forum’s weekly post-processing thread which let’s forum members work on another member’s picture and post the results back so that we can all get an idea of different ways to post-process and image and hopefully learn something too! Why not show off your post-processing skills or work on improving them in this thread.

And finally, this week marked the end of the competition to win a new camera or one of 5 photography books. No announcement has been made yet, but one will be soon. Good luck!