This evening started with a review of the exhibition and a few of the comments visitors wrote on their voting forms. We discussed how wide our audience was, having visitors from places as varied as Australia and Iceland.
Many visitors asked how much Photoshop manipulation had been done on some of the images - there was actually surprisingly little. We wondered how best to communicate this in future years.
Then we moved on to a review of images taken in April:
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| Callenish Stones © Amanda Gregory |
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| Towering Bluebells © Craig Purvis |
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| Avebury morning © Derek Liversidge |
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| Bluebells © Graham d’Aucourt |
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| Puerto Banus © Helen Day |
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| White Tailed Eagle © Julia Lloyd-Parkes |
We then continued with a talk given by Tony Bamford, of our own parish, on Macro Photography. This was a prelude to an upcoming photo challenge, photographing plants and flowers in Amanda's garden on Saturday 11th.
He discussed:
- Close up filters
- Extension tubes
- Fully connected bellows
- Lens reversal
- Macro lenses
- Lensbaby offerings
- Exotic probe lenses
Moving on to lighting options he then discussed the various merits of using LED lights vs flash and the different systems offered by different manufacturers.
The talk then moved on to the most challenging aspect of macro photography, the lack of depth of field. Diffraction was mentioned (a good reason to never use f/32) finally ending with the merits of focus stacking and a shout-out for Helicon Focus, which somewhat leaves Photoshop in the dust when blending those focus stacked images.
Our next meeting will be on 24th May.