Chimp - Issue 03, Volume 1 (Autumn 2007) by Leigh Stark

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The stars may not be perfectly aligned, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still an awesome sight. Image by Tony Virgo

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CHIMP From The Editor ..................................... 05 Chimps Of The Issue ................................ 06 The Beginnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Guide To Astrophotography ................................... 08 Dealing With Long Exposure Astrophotography ................................... 14 Finding That Image: A Guide To Digital Asset Management & The Power of iMatch (Part 2) ..................

Photoessay: Venizia Carnivale ...................

Pictures Of The Issue ..............................

Photoshop 101: Simple post processing ............................

Looking At Composition: Shape ..................

Events ................................................

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CREDITS

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the people that helped to shape the issue you hold before you

Leigh D. Stark

Gary Stark

Editor

Publisher

Steve Kilburn

Tony Virgo

Feature Article Writer

Peter Stubbs

Matt Kaarma

Feature Article Writer

Educational Writer

Mark Atkins Article Writer

Chimp is published online four (4) times a year by DSLR Users.com. All rights reserved. Chimp is a not-for-profit magazine and not only are none of our contributors paid, but any and all money made from advertisers or donations goes into funding events, management, maintenance, and challenges from DSLR Users.com and / or an eventual published form of this magazine. A pocket edition of Chimp is made available for each issue in the form of a re-designed publication for use on PDA’s, phones, and other devices that support the Adobe Acrobat PDF format. The pocket edition, the articles in this issue, and articles from any past issue as well as the issue releases themselves can be found at http://www.chimp.com.au If you have an idea for something you’d like to write for a feature or a review, or maybe if you’ve got a photo-essay you’d like to have in a future issue, email editor.chimp@dslrusers.com with said idea and we’ll try to get you into a future issue. All images in Chimp are owned and copyrighted by the people who have shot them. In the case of articles about selected photographers, said photographer owns the images and all the rights herein relating to said use of the image. If you would like to use said images, contact us at editor@chimp.com.au and we’ll forward your request on to the said photographer.

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FROM THE EDITOR LEIGH D. STARK

I’m late! I’m late! I’m late I’m late I’m late! And if I say “I’m late” one more time, I swear I’m going to turn into a white rabbit with a fetish for frantic deadlines. Welcome to the third issue of Chimp. I’m running a little bit late with this issue, and I apologise for that, but regardless it’s out all the same. I hope you enjoy this issue as for this one, you’re likely to get to learn a lot about a field not even I have really touched upon before: astrophotography. We’ve got two expert photographers, each with an article on what astrophotography is and how you go about getting yourself shooting within the field of astrophotography. We’re also deviating from the normal practices of Chimp( which is hard to define seeing as there have only been two issues before this one) by not specifically having a “Photographer Of The Issue”. This time, we’re making both of our astrophotographic journalists – Steve Kilburn & Tony Virgo – our Photographer’s Of The Issue.

Both of them are excellent at what they do and, certainly for Chimp, are going boldy where no Chimp has gone before... or at least no Chimp that I know of, anyway. Actually, reading, proofreading, and editing the articles has taught me more about this amazing field than I could have ever expected to learn from two articles. Not to downplay anyone elses articles on photography of the skies, but this is a feature well worth reading even if your interest in astrophotography is only one that appears at the back of your mind when you’re watching sci-fi movies. We’ve also got the second part of Peter Stubbs’ iMatch feature continuing on from the last issue ready, so if you’ve been sitting at your desk for months waiting to know what you’re supposed to do next... go outside already. Get a sandwich. Have a glass of wine. THEN go and read Part 2 of the iMatch article. And if that’s not enough to whet your appetite for reading, we’ve also got an article on Photoshop by Mark Atkins, something educational that continues on from what we’ve been taught already by

Matt Kaarma, a photo-essay by the upcoming Wendell Teodoro, a whole bunch of fantastic pictures from some fantastic photographers, and a tiny little ed-op article from both the editor (the one you’re reading now) and the “publisher”. And if you missed it earlier, I have to apologise for the tardiness of this issue. It’s just that I’m late– *poof* Cheers, The White Rabbit

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ISSUE

We’ve gotten wind that the chimping disease is spreading out there... wherever “there” is... Anyway, some of our members have been spotting chimps both in the forum and out of the forum and as such, one column per issue is barely enough to hold down the amount of chimps we’re getting sent to us!

Images by Jeff Leaming

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Images by Leigh D. Stark

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If you’ve ever looked at the skies and wondered... “How can I take a picture of what’s up there?” ...then you need

The Constellation of Orion: 30 second exposure shot untracked on a Nikon D70 and 50mm F1.8.

THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WRITTEN BY STEVE KILBURN Humans have been looking to the heavens since before time was recorded. Astronomy has been an important part of the ritualistic daily life of civilizations for thousands of years. Man’s attempts to understand the seasons gave way to the study of astronomy while we were still hunter-gatherers, long before we had left the caves and started even the most basic of agriculture. Some of the earliest examples of astronomy imagery – images of the sun, the planets and comets – are painted as petroglyphs on the walls of caves in Europe and Asia during the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras (5-20,000 BCE.) Obviously telescopes have paved the way to seeing far into the universe, but without the aid of cameras, much of what is seen would be lost to the naked eye, even in the most powerful and largest telescopes. Long exposures need to be taken in order to resolve enough light to create an image that would otherwise remain unseen. Although chronologically new to astronomy, astrophotog-

raphy – the photography of celestial objects – has vastly accelerated our understanding of the universe in which we live. In the earlier days of astrophotography, large photographic plates were used but in more recent years, digital CCDs have replaced film. The better known centres of astrophotography include Siding Spring Observatory, near Coonabarabran in NSW, The Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Palomar Observatory in California and the Hubble Telescope in orbit around the earth. So where does that leave us, the beginning amateurs? Getting Started There are two easy ways to get into astrophotography. I will cut them into two for easier digesting. The Easy Way (Part 1) The easiest option is to use the equipment you already have. That is I assume you already have a camera, a lens and a tripod. By utilizing all three of these things, you will be able to make a basic start to photographing the heavens.

The best way to test this on a clear night is to put your camera on the tripod, choose a nice wide angle lens, point the camera towards the sky and open the shutter for about 30 seconds. The result will most likely be an image of the Milky Way galaxy which we live within. That thin strip of stars is the galactic plane of which we are but one of billions of solar systems. If you have a remote timer you will be able to extend your exposure past 30 seconds. Try this with exposures at 2 minutes, 5 minutes or even 10 minutes. The longer you expose for the more detail you will see. The big problem with that is that you will also see much more noise. Unfortunately there is little you can do except choose Long Exposure Noise Reduction in your cameras menu. This will double your exposure time as the camera will have to create a ‘noise mask’ with which it will apply to your initial image to reduce the overall noise in the original shot.

Nikon digital cameras suffer badly from a problem caused by CCD heating where you get a large purple patch on a long exposure image that gets worse the longer your exposure is. Canons suffer much less than Nikons. The only way around this is to make sure you have long exposure noise reduction set on your camera. It’s the price we

There is only one way that this can be achieved and that is to utilise ‘tracking.’ Simply put, tracking slowly moves your camera and lens at the same speed as the stars move in the sky. There are two basic ways to achieve this: 1. Using a guiding scope to point the camera at a known reference point, usually a nearby star, and manually ad-

CHIMP pay to use digital for this type of photography. Film does not suffer this problem but will still suffer from ‘noise’ the longer the exposure, due to film grain.

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begin to wonder what other focal lengths you can use. Unfortunately, due to the simple fact that stars appear to be moving across the sky, you will see that they cause streaks on your images.

The Easy Way (Part 2) Once you have finished experimenting with wide angle sky-scapes, you will probably

While this can sometimes be used to create interesting effects, it is generally not what you want. Ideally we want to see the stars as bright colourful dots, not curved lines.

just the tripod mount to com pensate for the movement. This is a very tedious and extremely difficult thing to do but it is cheap.

with an auto-guide tracking computer attached. These are not too expensive and will cost about as much as a quality pro camera lens.

Some people do this to great effect but the learning curve is long and hard. I have never done this as I don’t have enough patience.

All you need to do is buy a small mount for the telescope that your camera (and lens) can attach to and point your camera along the same axis as the telescope.

2. Use some kind of tracking mount. The easiest thing to use here would be a telescope

Simple tracking for a small-ish price.

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This page: The Great Orion Nebula: 60 second exposure on a Nikon D70 & Meade LX90 telescope. Previous page: The Moon: 1/25 at F8 on a Nikon D70 and 500mm F8 Nikkor reflex.

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The Transit of Venus, viewed from Woodford, Queensland on June 8, 2004. Transit commenced at 3.07 PM but was still in progress after sunset at 4.59 PM.

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The Tarantula Nebula: A 60 second exposure on a Nikon D70 and Meade LX90 telescope The Meade ETX series of telescopes would be ideal for this application. Celestron also make entry level telescopes with autotracking.

and declinations isn’t even necessary when you can just easily tell the telescope computer what object you want to look at.

The real beauty of having a small telescope to do the tracking for you, other than not being ‘too’ expensive, is that it will replace your tripod in this application and provide a nice little toy to view the stars with.

Simply choose your object, press the GOTO button and it will take you there. Once it has the object in sight it will track it for you and it will not disappear from the eyepiece until it sets below the horizon or the sun comes up. (Clouds, fog, mist, trees and mountains also have a similar effect on your visibility.)

You can also attach the camera to the telescope using a T-Mount and use the telescope as a lens. The effective focal length of a telescope is somewhere between 500mm and 2000mm depending on how many inches of mirror your telescope has. Most telescopes will have an aperture in the order of about F8, but a focal reducer will decrease the aperture to make it easier to gather light for the camera. Another great benefit of autotracking is that you don’t need to worry too much about learning astronomy. A simple knowledge of right ascensions

The Expensive Way. Now to the expensive way to astrophotography. This option is best if you are single, have little or no social life and have a high disposable income. It normally requires the purchase of several thousand dollars worth of telescope and eyepieces, mounts and any other hardware required. Frankly, this way is more for the intermediate and advanced user.

Once you have discovered a passion for astronomy and astrophotography, you may want to expand your needs and lighten your wallet. You could easily spend tens of thousands of dollars on a system and still not be happy with the outcomes. I doubt there is an astronomer in the world who is happy with the equipment he has available and wouldn’t like something bigger or more powerful. The rest is up to you. The best way to learn is through trial and error and reading other people’s experiences in magazines of on the internet. There is a wealth of information a simple Google search away that will help you decide where and what you want to do tonight. __________________________

Steve Kilburn can be found at: http://www.stevekilburn.com/

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Have we got your attention? Why not take it a bit further with...

DEALING WITH LONG EXPOSURE

ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WRITTEN BY TONY VIRGO So you have seen those astronomical pictures and have decided that you would like to try these for yourself. You’ve probably also read the previous article by Steve Kilburn giving you the general understanding on astrophotography. Now it’s time you learned a bit more about the science and the challenges of astrophotography to help you decide if all of the effort and expensive is going to be worth it. Challenge number one is all about movement. When photographing the wonders of the night sky, you’ll note that the Earth is in motion, rotating around its axis as well as orbiting the Sun. As a result, the objects in the sky appear to move from the east to the west at a rate of 15 degrees per hour. The net effect of this is that if you use a long focal length camera lens or telescope to image through, the stars and other objects will trail across your sensor resulting in streaks of light rather than nice sharp objects.

This can actually show up in as little as 15 seconds. Shorter focal lengths are slightly more forgiving but you are trading resolution. Another problem with the trailing is the photons from the object in question are not striking the individual pixels for a long enough time to build up a sufficient charge to record the faint detail of these objects. Therefore tracking serves two purposes, one it cancels out the apparent motion of the objects and two, it allows enough photons to strike the individual pixels to build up a significant charge, which in turn records a fainter object. So, how do we track the sky? To do this we need a motorized mount which is able to move the camera or telescope at the same rate as the Earth is turning on its axis. It needs to be very accurately aligned to the South Celestial Pole (SCP) and ideally should be capable of being auto guided. These mounts are commercially available and like anything in life, range in price and quality.

Here in Australia you can expect to pay anywhere from $2000 to $20,000, with anything cheaper than that probably not able to guarantee satisfactory results or limit how long you can accurately track for. A $20,000 mount does give you the ability to control it over the Internet though. Challenge number two is one mainly concerned with the issue of distance. The objects that we are trying to photograph are very faint and often can not be seen by the naked eye. To solve this problem, we have to allow for extremely long exposures so we can capture the detail. You will need to decide if you are going to use the camera lens or attach the camera to a telescope. Camera lenses you already have however a telescope you may not. You may, however, be able to find a friend who is an astronomer and collaborate with them. I would absolutely encourage you to do this. Telescopes can be very expensive and unlike our camera

The Orion Nebula.

lenses, have limited use as finding and focusing on these dim objects is the next problem that we have to overcome. It is very difficult to focus on an object that you can not see! Even if you are using a camera lens, this can prove to be very difficult. This is because the infinity focus point for most lenses does not bring the dim dark distant objects into focus. This seems to run against intuition, but try it and see: your images of the stars will be slightly bloated, so a tiny adjustment needs to be made and for most modern auto focus lenses this will require manually turning the focus ring just short of infinity. Naturally auto focus is not going to work on these dark objects either so it will be manual all the way. It you have attached your camera to a telescope via a T-adapter, the task of finding focus can be even more time consuming. This is because of the way the light is brought into focus by the telescope onto the imaging sensor of your camera. For a telescope of f/5, the focal plane is 0.016mm. How are you at making those micro adjustments? Combine this with the fact that we often can not see the object through the viewfinder and you can appreciate the challenge. So how do we solve this? Well, when you purchased your camera it came with software that allows you to

CHIMP connect your camera to a computer and download images where you can then view them. By taking some test images and viewing them on a computer screen, you can over time see the results of the micro adjustments you are making to the focus. Unfortunately, the rear display on your camera is not good enough to check the focus of the stars: it is too small, the stars are too small and what often looks sharp on camera can be out of focus. It would be very frustrating to have returned from an imaging session without any useable images because they are all out of focus, so downloading the images is the only way to be sure of guaranteeing accurate focus. One other thing about focus: during the night as the temperature cools, the focal plane shifts due to the contraction of the materials that the telescopes are made of. This means that you have to check the focus as you photograph and will need to make small adjustments throughout the night. Challenge number three is overcoming light pollution. If you take a long exposure from a light polluted area, then the photons from your dark distant objects may become lost in the light pollution. Clearly when you are in the middle of a large capital city and you look up at the night sky, you can not see as much detail as when you are in a

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dark location such as the outback. If you have the luxury of being able to travel to a dark site to carry out your astrophotography, then you will be able to photograph for longer without the effects of sky glow. When travel is not convenient, you will need to take some test images to work out how long you can expose for before the image is degraded by the sky glow. In a light polluted area this may be as quick as 30 seconds. Unfortunately if you live in a light polluted area, this will severely limit the object selection as you will be restricted to bright objects that only require short exposures. The easiest way to beat light pollution is to travel away from it. This, however, may require a drive of many tens of kilometers, perhaps hundreds, depending on where you live. The lucky ones will only have to go out into their back yard. Challenge number four is overcoming the noise which is generated by your camera. This usually occurs when taking an exposure longer than 30 seconds. The noise will show up as red specks on your image and as a general rule, the longer you expose for, the more noise that your sensor will generate. Different brands of camera generate different amounts of noise and at the moment, the Canon CMOS sensor generates the least amount. All other things being equal but with

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effort, any brand of camera which is capable of long exposure photography can be used and a quick search on the Internet will show many fine examples of astrophotography taken by all of the digital SLR brands.

Well in astrophotography if you are recording galaxies or nebulae, the longer the better. The more you expose the more detail you will record and it is always going to show far more than you can see with the naked eye.

You will need to conduct tests for your camera to calculate how long you can expose for before the noise generated by your sensor overwhelms the image. You will also need to look at each of your ISO settings to see which are useable in these longer exposures.

As a general rule, 10 minutes at ISO 800 is a good starting point. Ideally we would like to go for an hour or two for most deep sky objects but this is not always possible and you can usually get more than satisfactory results in a 10 minute exposure.

In the case of the Canon 30D a 30 minute exposure at 800 ISO is still quite useable, whilst at 3200 ISO for the same time, it is far too noisy. You will also need a remote camera control to lock the shutter open as you can not simply hold the shutter button down for 30 minutes: you will shake too much and the resulting image will be blurry. Most camera manufactures offer a more advanced remote which allows you to select how many minutes you wish to expose for and the number of exposures that you wish to take as well as the delay time between each image. Once you have determined what the longest useable exposure is for your camera then you are ready to start taking picturesâ&#x20AC;Ś finally!!! So, how do you determine how long to expose for?

gas that make up this region. In the central part of the object is an area known as the trapezium because of the shape made by the stars. These are surrounded by very bright clouds of dust and gas. Around the outer parts of the Orion Nebula, the clouds reduce in brightness, eventually fading into the background. If we where to take a single exposure which was of long enough duration to record the outer fainter clouds, then the inner trapezium region would be over exposed quite dramatically.

Challenge number five is dealing with the large dynamic range in the astronomical objects. When we take a picture of a nebula or galaxy, there are often regions of very extreme brightness combined with those that fade to the almost pure blackness of deep space.

By selectively altering our exposures, we can layer them together and preserve all of the detail.

Fortunately, dealing with these extremes sees us using the same techniques as making a normal high dynamic range photograph and the technique of layering. You will need to take a variety of different length exposures and may even change the ISO setting as well to help give accurate control over the final image. Your aim will be to try and preserve all the detail of the object that you are imaging and this will mean making exposures for the various range of levels found in the object.

There are many articles on layer masking that you can read on the Internet but the method I use is as follows:

If we use the Orion Nebula as an example, we see that there are stars and coloured

Our eyes do a wonderful job of this when viewing objects through a large telescope so we are trying to duplicate what the eye is seeing.

After taking all of the required frames and loading them onto the computer, I use an imaging processing program to open the images. I use Adobe Photoshop but any that handles layers will do. I then spend time aligning the images to ensure that all the stars are going to line up. To do this, I use the move tool and reduce the opacity of the layer to 50% so that I can see the background layer underneath which I use as the reference.

The vast unknown in a dark sky view of the Southern Cross.

I move the layer until the stars are lined up, then I change the opacity back to 100%. I repeat this for all of the layers. Once all the layers are lined up, then it is time to go through and adjust the opacity of each to preserve the detail of the object. These adjustments come from knowing what the object should look like from all the years of doing astronomy and looking at others peoples efforts. At this stage you are free to make any sort of aesthetically pleasing photo you want but I try to keep them as accurate as I can and there are reference stars you use to match colour to aid in this process. All of your usual image processing techniques such as levels, curves, colour balance, saturation, etc., can be used to help in producing your final image. I must admit that I do not do very much of this as I personally like taking photographs but I do not like spending too much time post-processing them. The more talented people could probably work miracles with my images, but I can always come back to them at a later date. The noise that your sensor develops can be dealt with if you find it too offensive. Some cameras now have a long exposure setting where the camera will take a light frame. Once this has been completed, it will then close

CHIMP the shutter and take another exposure of equal length. The on-board processor of the camera will then subtract the dark frame from the light frame, resulting in some noise cancellation. This will have the best effect on the region of the frame where the sensor reads out and is sometimes referred to as amplifier glow. Clearly this will double the time taken for you to take the images and if like me you sometimes make a single exposure of 30 minutes, it can become a very time consuming way of doing things. Another alternative is to make a library of dark frames. You can place your lens cap on your lens and then take a series of exposures for all of the ISO and time settings that you are going to use in an imaging run. These can be taken during daylight hours and if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re using a timer remote, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll just set the exposures and away you go. This is something you could do whilst watching television for example. Once you have this library of dark frames, you need to make sure that you label them in such a way that you can easily find the right dark frame to match the right light frame. They have to be of the same ISO and time setting to be useful. Through the use of software, you will subtract your dark frame from your light frame

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to help reduce the noise. Keep in mind that these techniques work best with RAW images. The sixth and final challenge that you will face is the viewing conditions of the area you are shooting from. Each night the atmosphere dances to a different tune based upon a very complex interaction with weather patterns. What this means for you is some nights you will get pin point stars and on other nights you will not. On a night of excellent viewing conditions and when the atmosphere is very stable, you will be able to produce very detailed high resolution photographs of the sky. There will be many nights where the conditions will not allow you to do this, so you have to decide on these nights if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to bother shooting or if you will try and hide the negative effects of the poor conditions by shooting wide field (note that this is much lower resolution but will disguise the poor conditions somewhat). The moon too will have an effect on your imaging sessions. It reflects a lot of light back into our atmosphere and will make the task of imaging the deep sky objects harder than it needs to be. One only has to go outside on the night of a full moon and have look up to experience the negative effect: you can not simply see as much in the night sky as when the moon is not there.

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The Centaurus A Galaxy.

This means that in any month, you will get about one week of truly favourable conditions. Astrophotographers hope that these evenings are cloud and wind free and that the atmosphere is behaving itself. So after reading this article you might find yourself asking â&#x20AC;&#x153;why do these guys and gals bother trying to overcome all of these challenges just for a photo?â&#x20AC;? Well, the answer comes from the subject of these photographs themselves. The wonders of the night sky have their own intrinsic beau-

ty and the photographs allow us to share these with those who may not be able to get out there and see them for themselves. It is a rewarding experience to produce your first deep sky astrophotograph but be warned it will be one of the most challenging areas of photography you will have ever tried.

Try to be realistic in your expectations and be prepared for a sense of achievement when you succeed as well as the frustration when you do not. In the end, the positive results make it all worthwhile. __________________________

How may of you have ever taken a 30 minute exposure with your camera? For the game, I do encourage you to have a go.

Tony Virgo can be found at: www.petelee.smugmug.com/tony

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FINDING THAT IMAGE

A GUIDE TO DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT & THE POWER OF IMATCH (PART 2) WRITTEN BY PETER STUBBS

Digital Asset Management (DAM) is about having a searchable centralised repository of your images and an accompanying database of information such as keywords and shooting data.

to send great Aunt Mabel. If you haven’t done so already I suggest you have a read of part 1 now. This article assumes you have already imported your images into an iMatch database.

With the right tools and a small amount of effort it’s pretty easy to make DAM the centrepiece of your image processing workflow.

Culling your images The first thing you’ll most likely want to do after you’ve imported all the images from a shoot into iMatch is to cull them to separate the good images which you’ll go on to post process from those shots which fail to meet your expectations.

In part 1 from the last issue of Chimp, I covered the process of creating the image database and importing your image thumbnails. In this part I’ll show you how to use iMatch to cull, tag and search your images so that you can quickly find that shot you were after

iMatch provides a number of different ways to do this, but I find the most useful is the slide show mode. I suggest as

a starting point you choose Preferences from the Options menu in the main iMatch window and then click on the Slide Show tab and configure your slide show display mode to match the settings in the figure on the following page. Once you’ve configured how the slide show displays, you should do the following to enter slide show mode: • If not already in Database view mode, hit Ctrl+Alt+1 • Locate the folder containing your newly imported images in the area on the left hand side and click on the folder. This should show you the image thumbnails in the large

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you can click its thumbnail in the filmstrip (If the filmstrip isn’t showing hit the S key). In the filmstrip, the currently selected image will have a red border. To move through the thumbnail strip you press the left or right arrow keys and the selected image will change.

thumbnail area on the right of your screen • Click on the first image thumbnail and then hit Ctrl+A to select all of the thumbnails • Hit Ctrl+F12 or choose Slide Show from the image menu • You should now be in slide show mode and see a screen much like that to a lightbox whereby you have a large image on the top, a series of thumbnails on the bottom, and an information bar beneath that. This is the slide show screen. The slide show screen The slide show screen consists of 3 sections: a preview pane, a filmstrip and an info bar. It is possible to hide the last two so all you see is the preview pane. The Preview pane This is the largest area of the slide show screen and shows one selected image as large as will fit on your monitor.

You can have the source of this image as the thumbnail created when the image was imported or you can have a high resolution generated from the original image itself. I personally have my thumbnail size on import set to 300 pixels. I find this gives a slide show preview that is usually sufficient here and has the added benefit of displaying much faster than the high resolution preview Thumbnail film strip Below the Preview pane is a filmstrip of image thumbnails. It is possible to position this vertically to the right of the preview pane or to hide it completely. To cycle through these 3 display options you can hit the S key. To change images you can use the arrow keys to move through the images picture by picture. To jump to an image

You can also click directly on a thumbnail to preview an image. To scroll the thumbnail strip move the mouse cursor towards the extreme right or left of the strip until it changes into a double headed arrow. At that stage the strip will start to scroll. The closer you move this cursor to the edge of the screen the faster the strip will scroll. The Info Bar Below the Thumbnail film strip is the info bar which shows a number of buttons at the right-hand side and some image info on the left-hand side. You can hide or display this Info bar by hitting the I key. The image information displayed in this bar is also user customisable. You can choose what shows here via the Configure button in the Slide Show tab of the Program Preferences dialog shown earlier in this article. At the right end of the info bar are a number of buttons. To see what a button does, point at it with your mouse and a description will appear below the button Marking images to keep Now that you know your way

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The Slide Show screen looks like a lightbox with a preview, thumbnail, and infomation panel. around the screen, it’s time to actually use it. From the slide show screen you will scroll through all the images and mark the ones you want to keep for post processing. To do this you use the bookmark feature. Hitting the B key while viewing an image will bookmark that image (you’ll see a small yellow icon appear in the top right corner of the image thumbnail in the film strip). Hitting the B key a second time removes the bookmark.

So to identify all of the images to be kept for later post processing you scroll through them one at a time and bookmark the ones you want.

To do this you’ll use a very handy feature in iMatch that locates all bookmarked images.

Having bookmarked all of the images to post process, press ESC to exit slide show mode.

• Go to the Selections View mode (eg hit Ctrl+Alt+3) • At the top left of the screen click on My Bookmarks • On the right you’ll now see all of the images that you bookmarked while in slide show mode. • If you decide you want to remove the bookmark from an image select the thumbnail for that image and hit Ctrl+B.

At this stage, you haven’t done anything to the images. The next step will be to separate the bookmarked images out from the ones you decided aren’t keepers and put the new images into a separate post processing folder (which we’ll call PP).

The steps are as follows:

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It will disappear since it is no longer bookmarked. • Now we are viewing ONLY the bookmarked files, click one of the images then hit Ctrl+A to select them all • Right click an image and choose Move or hit Ctrl+Shift+M to display the move dialog. By default it should show the current folder name. At the end of that name, type “\PP” (without the quotes) and then click the Create New Folder button. • Finally, make sure that Add Folder to Database is ticked and click on OK • iMatch will now move all the bookmarked images into a subfolder called PP • Once this is complete you will be again viewing the image thumbnails, but the images are in their new location. • The last step is to remove the bookmarks as you don’t want to mix these up with the next lot of images you’ll bookmark. You do this by selecting all of the thumbnail images and hitting Ctrl+B. When you do this the thumbnail preview screen should go blank since there are now no bookmarked images. Post processing If you go back to the database view mode (Ctrl+Alt+1), you should see a new subfolder called “PP” in the original image folder. At this stage, you can go off and post process those images. It is important that when you do so you use the

CHIMP same name for each version of the image for reasons I’ll explain in the next section. For example, in my case I batch process them through DxO Optics Pro and then manipulate them in Photoshop so I’ll ultimately have THREE versions of each shot: the original RAW file (eg _DSC1234.NEF), a DNG file from DxO (_DSC1234. DNG) and a file from Photoshop (_DSC1234.PSD). Once you have post processed your images you should return to iMatch and have iMatch rescan your PP folder to add the newly created image files. The easiest way to do that is to right click the PP folder in the Database View (Ctrl+Alt+1) and choose “One Click Rescan” from the menu that pops up. When that is complete you should see THREE thumbnails for each image (assuming you have set up iMatch to create thumbnails for each of those file types). Buddy Files and Image Sequences So why did I insist in the previous step that you used the same file name for each variant of your file? Buddy Files This great iMatch feature is designed to keep like files together and treat them as a single unit so that if you perform a move, copy or delete action, it applies the action to the whole group.

Consider the following group of files: _DSC1234.NEF – my original Nikon RAW file _DSC1234.DNG – DxO conversion of the same file _DSC1234.PSD – Photoshop file of the final post processed image _DSC1234.JPG – A web friendly resized version of my image with a border and caption _DSC1234.WAV – a sound clip describing the image (recorded on my D2X when I took the shot) It isn’t rocket science to see that it would make some sense to keep these together even if I delete them. That’s the purpose of the buddy file feature. You tell iMatch what file extensions are variants of a particular file name and it does all the hard work of keeping the bits together for you. To set up this choose Preferences from the Options menu, then click the Buddy Files tab to display a dialog box (Image can be found on the following page). You specify the master file extension first followed by the matching extensions separated by a semi-colon. This is a set and forget option; once done this you will most likely never need to change it The important thing here is that iMatch only performs group actions if you act on the master file. So if you delete the PSD file the others would remain, but

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iMatch allows you to setup a “Buddy Files” system so that similar files become grouped. if you delete the NEF file (the master file) then EVERYTHING is deleted. The same applies for moves and copies. Image Sequences Following on from the concept of buddy files is that of image sequences. When you are viewing your image thumbnails of the files in my example above you’d have a very similar thumbnail of each of the first 4 files in the list.

That’s a lot of wasted screen real estate. If you want to see only ONE of these images you can tell iMatch to do so via the Filter button in the iMatch thumbnail toolbar (it’s the button that looks like a funnel). When you click this option a window pops up. If you choose “Fold Image Sequence”, then all but the JPG file is hidden. If you choose “Hide Buddy Files”, then all but the master file is hidden.

Which of these two you choose is up to you. I prefer to use “Hide Buddy Files” so that if I move, copy or delete the file I’m looking at, iMatch also does that to the buddy files. This is different from if I chose to use “Fold Image Sequence” as if I chose to move, copy or delete, the action would apply to the JPG only since it’s not from the master file. Enough already!

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Make sure you mark images you plan to keep before you start culling. This is about Asset Management isn’t it? So far I’ve walked you through the process of getting your final post processed images into an iMatch database. The whole intent of this, of course, is to allow you to use that database to manage your digital assets in an efficient way. Hopefully this overview has given you a grounding in the image import aspects of iMatch so that when I discuss the meat of this you are well placed to use iMatch as a whole.

For space reasons I’ve decided to hold over the asset management discussion until the next issue of Chimp where all the discussion will be focussed on efficient ways of categorising your images in iMatch for speedy search and retrieva l. Stay tuned for Part 3 of this article in the Winter Issue of 2007. Given the complexity of this program I’ve also created a forum topic for discussion of this article. The topic can be found at DSLR Users.com in the Chimp section.

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Concept art from the first page of this article has been made available by Photools.com for press purposes. At the time of writing, iMatch was priced at $59.95 US for a single user license. Photools.com iMatch exists in a 30-day evaluation version which you can download from the iMatch site. Photools.com iMatch can be found at: http://www.photools.com/

VENIZIA CARNIVALE A PHOTOESSAY BY WENDELL TEODORO

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Wendell can be found at www.zeduce.org

Pictures are the puzzle to the question of why we take photos. Every issue, the panel of Chimp writers selects six different photographers and showcases one of their images.

Theodoros Chliapas iposiniditos Kozani, Greece

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Nick Whitehead pippin88 Newcastle, Australia

Dee flipfrog Vancouver, Canada

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Wayne Wong Pirostitch Melbourne, Australia

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Leigh D. Stark Nnnnsic Bondi, Australia

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Sheila Smart Sheila Smart Avalon Beach, Australia

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Photoshop 101: Simple post processing

By Mark Atkins When you’re working on your images, chances are that you’ve heard comments like “Perhaps up the contrast a little” or “A quick play with the curves” and yet when you hear them, you can’t quite help to wonder “wait, what are they on about?” or “how do I do that?” Well, if this sounds like you then read on. For starters, best you understand what Photoshop or the various other photo editing programs are capable of when it comes to editing photos. Put simply, these programs are the digital version of the darkroom. In this article, I’m going to cover a simple post processing technique that you can use to give your photos a bit of a lift. Just a note of warning, this article assumes you’re using Photoshop CS2. The techniques in this article can be used in other versions, as well as other programs, but to get results similar to what is written and shown here, it’ll work best if you’re using a minimum of Photoshop CS2.

Firstly, open your RAW image in Adobe Bridge (if you have it) and make adjustments using the sliders for white balance and exposure as required. When you’re done with that, open your image in Photoshop. Why Raw? Well, it’s the maximum amount of data the camera is able to capture with its sensor, and as a result you have more information to work with. Also, shooting RAW will allow you to make fine tuning adjustments to white balance and exposure beyond that of a format like TIFF or JPEG including recovering details that weren’t previously visible if you need to. I have rescued quite a few shots that were shot RAW that otherwise would have ended up in the recycle bin if they had been shot in JPEG. If you don’t have a RAW file you can still use this technique, simply skip this first step and open your image in Photoshop. I have Photoshop CS2 set up to run the following steps as an action, pausing to let me make the desired adjustments where necessary. Don’t be concerned if you don’t know how to set up an action, you can still follow the same steps manually.

The first thing to do when opening your image in Photoshop is to duplicate the background layer, (as seen on the opposite page in figure 2). This gives you a layer to make changes to that can not be performed with an adjustment layer and at the same time keeps the original image intact as the background layer. After you’ve done that, create a new levels adjustment layer. Each of the sliders you see as triangles can be moved here. It would pay to experiment to see what effect each slider has on your image as every image you post process will have differing needs. Next create a new curves adjustment layer by repeating the process shown in figure 3, only this time select curves instead of levels and make your desired adjustments. When it comes to curves, I usually drag the top slider to the left and the bottom one to the right to suit my taste, there are presets you can use here, but again I suggest trial and error to find your own personal preferences. By this stage you should have noticed that all the adjustments are done by creating a new adjustment layer. This way you can simply double click on the icon for the layer you wish to change

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Figure 2 above shows you one way of duplicating a layer in Photoshop while Figure 3 below shows you where to go to create a new adjustment layer.

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in the layers pallet and make fine tuning adjustments as necessary or simply delete the layer or layers and start again with your original image remaining intact as the background layer. There is also the benefit of being able to change the opacity of each layer to suit your taste as seen in Figure 4. You also have the ability to turn the layer on and off by clicking on the eye. This can helpful to see what effect each adjustment layer actually has in the post processed image. Now, repeat the new adjustment layer process again but this time for a Brightness/ Contrast layer. You’ll want to make only small changes here. I usually just up the contrast 1 or 2 points, once again it’s all about personal taste. Finally click on the new duplicate layer created in the first step and run through the following selection on the menu bar: Image -> Adjustments -> Shadows / highlights. This selection opens sliders for adjusting shadows and highlights. Once you’re here, adjust the shadows and highlights as you see fit. Now save a copy of the image as a PSD file. Saving your file as a PSD will allow you to come back at a later stage and edit any or all of your layers again, all the while working towards a fine print.

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And there you have it: a post processed image. On the right-hand page, you’ll see two images. The image in the top corner is straight from the camera, re-sized and saved as JPEG, whereas the image filling the page has been post processed with the method described here. One thing to keep in mind when post processing your images is the age old phrase “less is more”. Don’t go overboard with the changes. Small increments are best as you can always sneak up on your desired effect. Aside from this, over processed images are quite obvious and they can also tend to become quite noisy. Everyone will vary in how they like to use the tools and what settings they prefer. If you’re new to post processing your photos then the best suggestion I can give is for you to experiment with them for yourself and find your own preferences. Photoshop is a very large application and there are a lot of ways and combinations of ways that you can achieve various results. Also, don’t forget the help file as there’s lots of good information about levels, curves, shadows / highlights, and contrast along with explanations of what each of the adjustment sliders do. Have fun!

Figure 4 shows you where you can change the opacity of each of your layers. Just click on each layer and change the amount of opacity each layer has. __________________________

At the time of writing this, Adobe Photoshop CS2 is no longer available. It’s replacement, Adobe Photoshop CS3 can be bought from $1,125 AUD for a full version or $345 AUD for the standard edition. Adobe can be found at: http://www.adobe.com.au/

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LOOKING AT COMPOSITION

PART THREE

By Matt Kaarma In the first 2 editions of Chimp, I outlined the importance of lines and shape as part of the basic structure of a photographic image. The 2 vital pieces of information you need to take away from those chapters is: lines should not lead the eye out of the image space, but rather into, or around the image space. And as for shape, force the strongest / most interesting shapes you can from your subject. By being aware of and exploitingthese 2 elements, you will have exercised some control over the composition of your photograph. I emphasise the word control because most photographers only control the point of view before firing the shutter. In an elementary sense, the actions that will define the style of a photographer are subject matter choice and camera position. For instance, James Nachteway only photographs war and he mostly uses a wide angle lens and gets very close to his subject. Ansel Adams

only photographs landscapes and works well back from his subject and always from a tripod. Elliott Erwitt only photographs dogs and he usually shoots from a low point of view. But that’s style. Other elements of composition that should be considered are: 1. Form: Form describes the ‘roundness’ or lack of it in a subject. You can minimise form (make a round object look flatter) by using soft frontal lighting. This would be useful if you were shooting a portrait of a subject with a pointed chin or very long nose. 2 lights at about 45 degrees angle in front of your subject will make the nose or chin look shorter. This is a trick portrait photographers often use. You can exaggerate form by using side lighting. If your subject has a flat face or stumpy nose then careful lighting will make them look more pleasing. If you want to learn how to control form then put a white soccer ball into your studio and learn to light it so that you can control its ‘roundness’. Shadows are important in relation to form. 2. Texture: Texture refers to the surface information visible on different types of material. We can identify materials

such as glass, wood, marble, concrete, fur, skin, etc., by the appearance, or texture, of the surface. Photographers can exaggerate texture or diminish it by the way they light it. Using portraiture once again as an example, a very old person with wrinkled skin could be photographed using soft frontal lighting to diminish the wrinkles. This would make them look younger. Or we could employ strong side lighting to make the wrinkles more prominent and give more character to the face. Side lighting creates small shadows that make the surface come to life. If you intend doing any aerial photography then early morning or late afternoon will give you the most pleasing and interesting images as the shadows will give ‘lift’ to the ground detail. 3. Symmetry: Symmetry refers to images that are symmetric or asymmetric. Got it? To expand: a formal shot of the royal Guards might have the Queen sitting in the centre front row and the same number of troops sitting on the left as the right of her. This would be a formal shot and it would be symmetrical.

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Another example: a church door dead centre with a column on either side. Symmetry normally defines the formality of the image. Asymmetrical images normally indicate movement or youth. 4. Scale: I guess you’ve all seen pictures of the man holding his hand out with the moon sitting in his hand? Or pictures of a fish held close to the lens to make it appear larger? That’s playing with scale. Imagine 2 men shot against a pure white background. One is very small and one is very large. Without further information there is no way of knowing if one man is closer to the camera, the other well back, or if in fact they are different sized men. That’s playing with scale.

CHIMP There may be some who would prefer a third of the way down or a third from the bottom (satisfies the rule of thirds). What, if any, different reactions would these pictures invoke from a viewer? What choice would you make, and why?

5. Balance: Imagine a man falling from the top of a very tall building. You, the photographer, have 1 shot left on your card and you need to make a decision as to when to trip the shutter.

Perhaps the least satisfying image would be the ‘exactly halfway’ shot because he would seem suspended in air. The building pulling him equally both up and down. Compositionally, the ‘near the top’ or ‘near the bottom’ would be classed as unbalanced but invoke the strongest emotional reaction from a viewer. The ‘one third’ from top or bottom would be the most comfortable images to look at because they have little visual tension, or energy. (By the way, due to some miracle of the gods, our hapless subject falls into the back of a passing recycled cardboard truck and survives to attend the opening of our exhibition. Unfortunately he commits suicide a few days later due to a problem with the taxation authorities, but we were not there to consider the pictorial implications of that act).

As I see it you have 3 obvious choices: catch him just as he begins to fall so that we see a small figure with a long way to drop. Catch him exactly half way (satisfies the neat and tidy and perhaps we could say ‘balanced’). Or catch him just before he hits the ground (impending death/splat)

6. Further elements: Not necessarily in order of importance, we can add the following elements of composition to the above list: Perspective, tones, balance, point of view, focal length, depth of field, point of focus, and no doubt some purists could dredge up more.

With a fisheye lens I can photograph my wristwatch and make it much larger than a semi-trailer in the background. I love images that play with scale.

So, what are we to make of this information? I think it was Ansel Adams who said “thinking about the rules of composition before you take a photograph is like consulting the laws of gravity before you go for a walk”. But then if anyone had time to structure his image before shooting it was Adams, with his cumbersome 10 x 8 plate camera and heavy tripod. He often waited hours for the light to work its magic and he would have examined the ground glass very carefully many times over before he was satisfied. So let’s not be too dismissive about this subject. I urge my students to write the elements down on a small sheet of cardboard and put it into their camera bags. Then when you get that all important subject and your reputation depends upon a successful outcome, read the list and consider every element. That is the very best that you can do. If you find that you always shoot instinctively then at the very least, examine your failures and verbalise why you think they fail. For example, “These lines lead the eye away from my main subject and I have diminished the form because the light comes from the front and I have too many distracting elements in the background”. By doing this you will eventually eliminate common errors and your photography will improve, as it must.

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