CAUG Digicam SIG
November 12, 2002
Program notes by Dauris Granberry

The Digicam SIG met Tuesday, November 12, at Parkdale Library with fourteen photographers attending.  Our assignment was to take photos of three subjects, both with and without flash.  Bruce Switala's photos were taken in his yard, beginning with the seedpods of Golden Raintrees.  From his photos, we learned that colors are changed by flash and that flash photos are often sharper, particularly in low light situations.  In one photo where part of the overcast sky was in view, we could see how the light from the sky had cut back the exposure leaving the plant in the dark.  In his second shot, the flash illuminated the plant and corrected  the exposure. These photos illustrated the joy of digital cameras in that one can see each photo and make corrections until the desired effect is achieved.

Joan Stephens brought photos of  items from her Mexican collection taken indoors with tunsten lighting and with flash.  From her pictures we learned that indoor lighting produces a warm orange light and using flash made for truer colors.  Flash, however, tends to create glare or bright spots on many reflective surfaces found inside our homes.  By taking photos from an angle one can sometimes avoid the reflections.  Again, the flash made for sharper photos than the hand- held camera in the lower light indoors.  Joan's delightful solution was a lovely picture of objects illuminated with candles. Again, with digital cameras we can experiment until we find the answers.

John Hoffman and Patty Beasley repeated their photos from October as many of us had not seen them.  Patty also showed us beautiful pictures taken in Carlsbad Caverns, some with an infrared option on her Sony camera.  She also shared some beautiful landscapes from her trip to Colorado.
Stitching photos to create panoramas was demonstrated, first by Bruce who used  pictures of the local toronado destruction near his home. Stitching photos together gave the viewers dramatic closeup views of broken trees and damaged oil storage tanks. Bruce used Encore Stitch and HP Arksoft.

Patty Beasley then gave a demonstration of the Jasc Aftershop stitching program.  First, she showed five photos of a long Native American ceremonial pipe that she took  by beginning  at one end of the pipe and overlapping each additional photo by 1/3 without changing her position or the zoom or focus  ( locking the exposure if possible).  Within the program format, she arranged the photos in order and with what seemed simple steps, the software stitched them together one at a time. Quite miraculous!