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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
With all the rules and laws for photog-raphy, it’s a wonder who came up with them. Just like rules, some are made to be broken, with a creative influence, while others are better off being followed. The Reciprocal Rule is one that ought to be followed. It is a relatively simple rule once you wrap your head around it. What is means is that to be able to handhold your camera without any recognizable camera shake, and thus blurring, in the image, the shutter speed should be at least the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens you’re using. Sounds complicated, but it’s really not in when you apply it. Here’s the 1 to 1 breakdown: Let’s say you’re photographing a friend’s portrait and you put on your 50mm lens, to apply the reciprocal rule, you would need a minimum shutter speed of 1/50th sec to capture a tack-sharp image. Now let’s say you’re photographing the same friend’s
kids playing in a sandbox. You don’t want to get too close, thereby distracting them, so you attach your 70-200mm tele-photo lens. Applying the same rule, you would need to shoot at a minimum of 1/70th sec at 70mm and 1/200th sec if you’re zoomed in at 200mm.
If you follow the Reciprocal Rule, there will most definitely be times when you will need to bump up the shutter speed to meet the “requirements” in order to have that sharp image.
There are best 3 ways to increase your shutter speed, and they all have pros and cons:
Open up the Aperture
An open aperture allows more light in, which lets you increase your shutter speed. As such, a small f-stop has a wider aperture opening, resulting in a shallow
Tack-Sharp Images Using the Reciprocal Rule Posted by David Peterson on 13 Jun 2013
TACK SHARP IMAGES USING THE RECIPROCAL RULE
1
BASEBALL SEASON QUIZ 3
WEB SITES TO TRY 3
LETTER FROM GRANMA 3
SOUTH MTN. FIELD TRIP PHOTOS 4, 5, 6
PSA CERTIFICATE 11
MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION 13
MASTER THESE 5 LIGHTROOM SLIDERS TO MAKE PHOTOS POP
2
CALENDAR OF EVENTS 2
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1: TACK SHARP IMAGES
7
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2: MASTER 5 LIGHTROOM SLIDERS
8, 9, 10
PRESIDENTS REPORT 12
Inside this issue:
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
The View Finder
Continued on page 7
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
Have you ever opened up Lightroom (or any other professional level editing program) and said, “Oh my – where do I start?” If so then this post is probably right up your alley.
Today I’m going to show you how to take the process out of processing photos and how you can get some great results simply by learning how a handful of sliders work. After you learn these basics you can start to dig deeper into the program and learn how to bring out even more of the hidden details in your photographs.
The Seven Lightroom Sliders to Master First
Lightroom is filled with all sorts of op-tions from drop down menus to sliders and all this can make get started for the first time overwhelming, especially if you’ve had no editing experience in the past, so today we are going to look at the very basics of Lightroom. When you break it down there are five key parts of almost every photo that you’re going to want to adjust and those are as follows: mid-tones, shadows, highlights, sharpness and white balance. We will tackle all of these areas by us-ing just a handful of sliders in the basic tab of Lightroom. To get here simply click on “Develop” and then if it isn’t opened already click on the “Basic” tab. Now let’s get started!
Exposure When I process photos I like to start with the exposure slider, as it’s a good overall adjustment to get started. It is designed to adjust the mid-tones of the photo and therefore will help to add or
If you’re
photographing in
RAW you’ll see more
options available to
you and have more
control over the final
outcome of your
image
Calendar of Events
Jul 3 Favorite Image Projection/Travel equip. round table
Jul 17 Competition - Old / New Image (side by side)
Jul 20 Field Trip - USA White Water Center
Aug 7 Competition - Print Open
Aug 21 Instructional - B&W Image processing
Aug 24 Field Trip - Hickory Ridge, Boone, N.C.
Sep 4 Competition - Projection Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Sep 18 Competition - Depth of Field EXTREMES
Sep 21 Field Trip - Mingus Mill—Mtn Farm Homestead
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
Continued on page 8
Master These Five Lightroom Sliders and Your Photos Will Pop
by John Davenport
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
Baseball Season Quiz
Test your knowledge of the game’s history in the Tar Heel state.
1. Captured Union soldiers in North Carolina played baseball as early as 1862. What town in Rowan County was the site of a large prisoner of war camp where the inmates rounded the bases?
A. Salisbury
B. High Point
C. Concord
2. What famous professional baseball player hit his first home run during an exhibition game in Fayetteville in 1914?
A. Jackie Robinson
B. Babe Ruth
C. Chipper Jones
3. The North Carolina Baseball Museum has hundreds of artifacts exploring the history of baseball in the state. It is located at historic Fleming Stadium in what city?
A Wilson
B. Rockingham
C. Dunn
4. A native of Person County, Enos Slaughter played in five World Series during his professional baseball career. A member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Slaughter was know by what nickname?
A Country
B. Cowboy
C. Chief
5. Major league pitcher James Hunter, a Hertford native, played for the Oakland Athletics and New York Yan-kees from 1965 to 1979. Hunter was know by what nickname?
A. Tom Cat
B. Catfish
C. Possum
Answers on page 7
http://500px.com/popular
http://digital-photography-school.com/
http://photonaturalist.net/
http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/
http://www.steeletraining.com/
http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/
Click on the links above
Web Sites to try
Letter from grandma One day I received this letter from grandma... The other day I went up to a local Christian bookstore and saw a "honk if you love Jesus" bumper sticker. I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, fol-lowed by a thunderous prayer meeting, so I bought the sticker and put it on my bumper. Boy, I'm glad I did! What an uplifting experience fol-lowed! I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good He is and I didn't notice that the light had changed. It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he had-n't honked, I'd never have noticed! I found that LOTS of people love Jesus! While I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed, "For the love of GOD! GO! GO! Jesus Christ, GO!" What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus! Everyone started honking! I just leaned out of my window and started waving and smiling at all these loving people. I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love! There must have been a man from Florida back there because I heard him yelling something about a "sunny beach". I saw another guy wav-ing in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air. I asked my teenage grandson in the back seat what that meant, he said that it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something. Well, I've never met anyone from Hawaii, so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign back. My grandson burst out laughing. He was enjoying this religious experience, too! A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me. I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed. So, I waved to all my sisters and brothers grinning, and drove on through the intersection. I noticed I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again and I felt kind of sad that I had to leave them after all the love we had shared, so I slowed the car down, leaned out of the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away. Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks! Grandma
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
South Mtn Park Field Trip Photos
Photos by Ed Lane
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
South Mtn Park Field Trip Photos
Photos by Tom Devlin
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
South Mtn Park Field Trip Photos
Photos by Donny Teague
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
Continued from page 1 Tack-Sharp Images Using the Reciprocal Rule
Baseball Season
1. A. Salisbury
2. B. Babe Ruth
3. A. Wilson
4. A. Country
5. B. Catfish
depth of field. Whereas a larger f-stop has a smaller aper-ture and a greater depth of field. So, keeping this in mind when you’re playing with shutter speeds will help you determine how far you to with your f-stop in order to achieve the depth of field you want. It’s all about balanc-ing the shutter speed and aperture to achieve the best re-sults. That’s why it’s a good thing that we have other methods for raising shutter speeds if we don’t want to go low on the f-stop.
Increase the ISO Setting
Most people think to increase the ISO in low light situa-tions, but there are times in brighter situations where you still may need to do so in order to match your focal length with your shutter speed. Keeping in mind that the higher the ISO, the grainier your image will be is the best guide for using this tweaking. If you can keep it at 400 ISO or less, you won’t be faced with as much noise in your images. However, sometimes that is exactly the re-sults you want. It will come down to your creative genius to determine if a higher ISO is the best way to go to allow for that faster shutter speed.
Use a Flash
Bright lights! A flash probably has the most impact on results when used to increase shutter speed. There are times when a flash makes all the difference, like a fill-flash to fill in unwanted shadows on faces, but there are
also times when you really just want the softer lighting and might opt for changing your aperture or ISO instead.
If none of these three settings are an option, the non-setting option is a tripod. A tripod will give you the sta-bility you need to keep camera shakes at bay.
One last note: you shouldn’t rely on your camera’s LCD preview to determine an image’s sharpness, unless it’s completely obvious. The LCDs are a tool to use as a pre-view screen, but later when you’re at home uploading your images, the results are often a bit different and any signs of image shake will be more apparent.
The Reciprocal Rule is a handy guide and an easy ‘rule’ to follow compared to some of the other photography ones. Since with photography we are allowed to break the rules, this is one that can be broken, but better to fol-low it!
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
Continued from page 2 Master These Five Lightroom Sliders and Your Photos Will Pop
Continued on page 9
reduce to the overall brightness of the scene. To lighten an underexposed photo simply slide the ex-posure slider to the right – if you’d like to reduce the brightness then slide it to the left. Watch your histogram and you’ll start to see the da-ta shift from side to side as you make the changes. In the photo below I added just a small bit to the exposure to brighten it up slightly.
Contrast Next up is the contrast slider, which will help to de-fine the areas of lightness and darkness. In the vast majority of my photographs I’ll end up increasing the contrast slightly as it tends to help bring out de-tails and make the photo “pop” a bit more. As you watch the histogram you’ll notice that the data will either get stretched out or be pushed to-gether depending on which way you go. The more contrast you apply the more defined the difference between lights and darks will get which can be ob-served in the stretching of the histogram. In my dragonfly photo I pushed the contrast up slightly which helps to get the subject separated from the background a bit more and adds a bit more crispness to the photo.
Shadows/Highlights One of the best features in Lightroom 4 are the Shadows and Highlights sliders. (Note: if you’re using an older ver-sion of Lightroom you’ll do something similar with the Fill Light and Recovery sliders, but they’re not nearly as powerful).
These two sliders work in opposite directions. The more detail you want in your highlights the lower you’ll drop the slider, for more detail in the shadows you’ll increase the slider. Make sure you’re aware that these do come at costs and you’re not going to be able to get detail out of blown out or completely black areas of your photo – there must be data there to recover for these to work.
Again as you watch the histogram when you make the changes you’ll notice that the shadows slider has an effect on the data towards the left side of the mid-tones and the
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
Continued from page 8 Master These Five Lightroom Sliders and Your Photos Will Pop
Continued on page 10
highlights slider will work on an area to the right. The black and white sliders (which we aren’t talking about today) will have an effect on the very edges of the histogram in much the same manor.
Clarity
There is an entire area of Lightroom dedicated to sharp-ening your images, but the clarity slider is a good place to start with if you’re trying to keep things simple. You won’t have as fine of control over the process, but you will be able to help crisp up your images a bit by using one simple slider.
As you’ll notice when you start moving this slider around it works in much the same way as the contrast slider, just on a finer detailed level. Again, in the vast majority of
my photos I’ll be adding a bit of clarity to give the photo the punch it needs, but often times in portraits you might end up toning down the clarity to give that soft look to your subject’s face.
White Balance
Finally the temperature and tint sliders control the white balance of your photo. For the time being I’d suggest just using the Lightroom presets as they do a decent job of getting into the ballpark and make it a lot easier to deal with than trying to figure out the right amount of warmth and tint to add or subtract.
However, if you want that little extra control in your hand then use the “Temp” slider to adjust the color temperature of your photo. Moves to the right will produce a warmer
One Small Note
If you’re photographing in RAW you’ll see more options available to you and have more control over the final out-come of your image, if you’re a JPEG shooter some op-tions I talked about today will be limited as a result of the smaller file sizes and the compression that has already tak-en place in your camera. You can read more about RAW photography here.
A Few More Before and Afters
Here are a few more before and after images that I pro-cessed in a similar manner using only the techniques talked about in this post. It’s truly amazing how much just a few minor tweaks can change your photo and just imag-ine what can be done once you dig a bit deeper. If you’d like more tips on Lightroom editing feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
Continued from page 9 Master These Five Lightroom Sliders and Your Photos Will Pop
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
Hell Club Members,
The Fourth of July, our country’s birthday, is coming up this week so there will be numerous fireworks displays. If you
haven’t photographed fireworks before now would be a good time to try your hand at it. You do need to plan ahead to
be sure and get a good spot to shoot from and be ready to shoot when the time comes. One good place to view and pho-
tograph fireworks is at Tweetsie Railroad on Hwy 321 between Blowing Rock and Boon. Another is lake Norman area
where I have been told there are good fireworks displays over the lake.
Our first meeting this month is when we get to show each other our favorite image without a critique. Be sure to get the
images in to Ed Lane by Monday July 1st. 7:00 p.m. The second meeting is a projection of side by side images. Taking
and image you have take earlier and reshooting the image and show some improvement. Later in the month we have a
field trip planned to the USA Whitewater Center outside of Charlotte. You will need to bring your best action shooting
skills to take pictures of some fast action on this trip.
We received some good news this week about the National Geographic’s exhibit that we are working with the Hickory
Museum of Art to bring to Hickory in the fall of 2014. Lisa at the museum have received word that the exhibit is availa-
ble and Dennis Hacker, with a committee of club members, are working with Lisa to make this happen. If it does happen
we will need to prepare to raise money to pay for the exhibit to the tune of approximately $13,000 for the exhibit plus
some advertising money. This is a wonderful opportunity for our club to raise community awareness about photography
as well as promote our club in the area.
Have a happy and safe Fourth of July.
Donny Teague
Presidents Report
We’re on the Web
http://cvcclub.wordpress.com
Club Officers
President: Donny Teague [email protected]
Vice President: Richard Griffin [email protected]
Secretary: Judy Young [email protected]
Treasurer: Chip Young [email protected]
Image Coordinator: Ed Lane [email protected]
Webmaster: Scott M. Powell [email protected]
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
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Volume 2, Issue 6 June, 2013
C a t a w b a Va l l e y C a m e r a C l u b
Application for Membership
NAME_____________________________________________DATE__________________
ADDRESS_________________________________________________________________
CITY_________________________________STATE____________ZIP_______________
E-MAIL___________________________________________________________________
PHONE: HOME_________________WORK______________CELL________________
Dues are $35 per year. Meetings are the first and third Wednesday of each month.
Students: $15 per year
CLUB USE ONLY: Date Received__________________ Cash_______Check______
Please print clearly as our club correspondence is conducted via e-mail.