This Week in the Digital Photography School Forums

Weekly Assignment

There were lots of excellent entries for this week’s contest, “Wide Open”. The challenge was to use the widest available aperture for the chosen lens and focal length. A simple restriction like that can force the photographer to look at things with a fresh eye – our winner, Gaby, was using a point and shoot camera but got up close and so still was able to enhance the photo with a narrow depth of field. Our runners up were
Chuck, with a beautiful cat portrait (exploiting the low light benefits of the a wide open aperture as well as narrow DoF) and Liliann whose model had her eyes as wide open as the camera lens. Congratulations to all
the winners and well done to everyone who participated.

The new assignment is Low Light / Night photography. People often think as photography assomething that needs good light; that is true but “good light” doesn’t have to mean “lots of light”. Go out after dark and you will find plenty of bright objects, like the moon, passing cars and brightly lit cities. If you can slow down your shutter speed enough you will find that your camera can even see in the dark, revealing a whole new slant on the world as it slowly registers an image of what it sees over time. In order to be eligible for the mini contest, your picture needs to have been taken between 7 May- 21 May 2008, the EXIF must be intact, and you need to include “Assignment: Night / Low Light Photography” to indicate you want your picture included in thecontest. Next week’s assignment is “The Five Senses”.

Weekly Poll

This week’s poll is thanks to sk66, who wants to know: Do you calibrate your monitor?

About 70% of those who have responded say no. It can seem a complex task and requires special equipment to do properly. However, some users have presented strong arguments for taking the time to take this step – it is a luxury for some photographers but essential if you want to be sure that your colours are right when you send the image for printing.

Check the forums later this weekend for the next poll so you can tell us what you think.

Hot Threads

• Very relevant to this week’s assignment, we have discussed how aperture works on point and shoot cameras compared to DSLRs. One
  discussion was started with the plea Fstops make no difference for me! and there was also a useful Aperture Comparison Chart. You can get a narrow depth of field effect on a point and shoot camera but you have to get much closer to your subject.
• We have also had discussions of gear. A topic that comes up from time to time is asking for Tripod Help. Many photographers consider a good tripod to be almost important as having a camera and lens but the range of options (and prices) can be bewildering. A less frequent subject but one that has caught people’s imagination this week is about where to find an
• Indistinguishable Camera Bag so as not to advertise that you are carrying lots of expensive and portable equipment to potential
  thieves.
• We also discussed How do I make sure blue skies come out blue, and not white: Answers have included picking a suitable metering mode and adjusting the exposure in camera as well as solutions for fixing the problem back in the digital darkroom.

Other Threads to Note

The forum has seen almost a full year of What Would You Do – the weekly post-processing thread, where you getthe chance to practice your post-processing skills on a member’s photograph, is on week 51. If you have a picture that isn’t quite right but you have run out of inspiration, see the first post in that thread for how to submit it to the queue and benefit from the talents and creativity of fellow photographers across the world.

Finally, take a chance to rock out with out Classic Rock Challenge. This week’s album to interpret is The Who’s Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy.