Photographic Guild of Nova Scotia

We had excellent attendance and great feedback from the workshop yesterday. Everyone enjoyed the event and thought it was an excellent value. I’ll be posting links here from the presenters and adding more info as I receive it.

Steve Kaiser – Tips from a Pro

DOF Master has a variety tools to help learn and calculate depth of field so you can make sure your pictures are sharp.
www.dofmaster.com

Peter Steeper – Off Camera Flash

Strobist.com is the premier site for learning about off camera flash. Lighting 101 is a great starting point to improve your skills. You can learn more about about how the Canon flash systems work in this article on Canon EX flash system. He recommends the 580EX II in the article but I’ve had the 430EX II for several years and it has done everything I needed. More info about the Nikon CLS system is available at Nikonians.org.

An excellent book about lighting is Light Science and Magic. It is very good for product photography but it also discusses lighting for portraits. Need better light? Bounceman to the rescue!

Sources for wireless systems:

The Cactus Triggers are a cheap system for learning about wireless flash. They are very cheap but not completely reliable.
Cybersyncs from Alien Bees/Paul C. Buff are a reliable intermediate system.
Pocket Wizards are the choice of pros and they have longest range and most features.

The following systems will transmit TTL information for fully automatic remote flash:

Radio Poppers are a new company that created the first TTL remote system.
Pocket Wizards also have a TTL system now.

Mike McCarthy – Adobe Lightroom

Lightroom Tips & Tutorials:
Lightroom Killer Tips
Adobe Lightroom Support

NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals)

Presets & Plug-Ins
Presets Heaven
Presets at Adobe

You can buy educational versions of Lightroom for $99 USD at the Adobe Store. You will need proof that you are a student or faculty.

PGNS
Program Change Highlights for 2009/2010
September 2009

1) New Trophy

Mervyn Kumar-Misir has generously donated a new trophy to be awarded annually to the person with the highest cumulative score in Guild and CAPA Theme Competitions.

2) Print Competition Entries

Prints no longer need to be mounted for Guild, CAPA or PSA competitions. Prints that are not mounted will be the new norm. However, previously mounted prints may be entered in PSA and CAPA competitions. Print images should be a minimum of 80 square inches e g 8 by 10 .

3) Additional Digital Competition

An additional digital competition has been added to balance with the John Wm Webb original slide night. The rules are identical to a Guild Competition i e maximum total of 7 entries with no more than 2 entries per category; and all images must be new (never previously entered in any competition at the Guild.)

4) Trophy Calculations

CAPA pictorial slides will not count towards the Tim Randall Trophy for cumulative pictorial score. CAPA and PSA slides will not count towards the Cyril Smith Trophy for cumulative nature score. All CAPA and PSA slides will now count towards the John Wm Webb Trophy for slides (in addition to slides entered in the four regular Guild competitions and the JWW special slide competition.)

5) CAPA Changes

All entries in CAPA competitions must be taken within the two year period before the competition closing date. i e the date by which club entries are to be submitted by the Guild. So, for example, in the case of the CAPA competition scheduled for the Guild on September 20, the closing date for our submission of entries is October 30th. Therefore all images for the competition must have been taken after October 30th 2007. Timing requirements for all other CAPA competitions will be posted in the schedule on our website in due course.

CAPA has a new Altered Reality Competition where images must be “heavily manipulated” and obviously creatively enhanced. This includes, but is not limited to, composites, creative filters, etc. The images are not meant to look like a regular photograph.

CAPA no longer has the rule for the Nature Category that : No more than 20% of the original image may be cropped.

CAPA print images must be a minimum of 80 square inches in size, excluding any digital mat area.

6) PSA Print Competition Changes

The Guild will be competing in 4 PSA print categories:

- Large Colour Print
- Small Colour Print
- Large Monochrome Print
- Small Monochrome Print

There will no longer be a distinction between prints made by the “Maker” and those produced commercially “Trade”. Both types of prints can be entered in any of the four categories.

Maximum dimension for a small print is 96 square inches e g 8 by 12 inches
Maximum dimension for a large print is 16 by 20 inches.

The Monochrome categories include black and white, sepia tone, and allows one highlight colour.

In each PSA print competition, members may enter up to four prints with a maximum of 2 per category. For example you could enter one print in each of the four categories, or two prints in Large Colour and two prints in Small Colour. (The rule that only one print per maker per category may be sent away has not changed.)