2014 Competition Winners

Congratulations to our 2014 winners!

In AA division first place goes to Lynn Wiezycki, second place goes to Curtis Frey, and third place is awarded to Fred Keating. In A division first place goes to Fang Shen. There were no qualifiers for second or third place in this division this year. Here is the final results score sheet Portrait Without A Face special competition results Your participation is appreciated and we are looking forward to a fun 2015!

2015 End of Year Holiday Party

Our annual holiday party will be held on December 12th. 7:00 PM at tRG studio. As always, we will be having a print show – please bring a print to hang and be prepared to talk briefly to everyone about your print. We will be awarding the prizes for the competition winners and we will have a few other fun surprises You are welcome to bring a guest and please bring an appetizer, entree, dessert, or drinks to share. We have tableware, cups, ice, and decorations covered already. You may use the following form to let everyone know what you are bringing. This list can be looked at first so that you can see what others have already signed up to bring and avoid duplicates.

Sign up for the Roller Derby field trip

There will be no meeting at tRG studio this upcoming Friday the 26th of September. This is our field trip month and those who are interested can attend our outing on Saturday the 27th. The bout takes place at Downtown Skate in Temple Terrace.

As long as a minimum 9 people sign up using the form below then the payment amount is only $9 (regular admission is $15). They will also reserve front row seating for us. We have been advised that it will easiest to accommodate us as a group if we arrive by 7:30 and come inside together. Parking is difficult there. It is suggested that you park across the street. I am now an official league photographer and will be there early. I will meet everyone outside at 7:30 You will be given wristbands that will allow re-entry if necessary and will be color coded to indicate if you are of legal age to purchase alcoholic beverages.

The bout starts at 8:00 PM and will last between 1 1/2 and 2 hours. (Cigar City Mafia vs. Switchblade Sisters) The lighting is not bright and is fluorescent. Be prepared to use high ISO ratings in order to achieve action-stopping shutter speeds when shooting. Be prepared to set a custom white balance if you shoot jpg. (Note: I typically shoot about a third of my exposures in black and white and I also experiment a lot with panning and motion blur shots when I’m there.) You will be able to shoot from your seat in the front row or you may move down to the suicide seating area at your own risk. You cannot stand in the suicide seating area and you must be prepared to occasionally get out of the way quickly if you choose to sit there and shoot. You will want to shoot with medium wide to medium telephoto length lenses to frame the action depending on the distance of the skaters as they progress around the rink.

Please sign up using the form below only if you are sure you will be attending. Make sure you sign up by midnight on Wednesday September 24th. I will use the list to make a payment to the league for our group. Please bring your $9 to the rink on Saturday to reimburse me.

League information: http://www.tampabayderbydarlins.com/
Basic summary of roller derby rules: http://rollerderbyresource.com/info/how-to-play-roller-derby/

Photo Booth

At our 4th Friday meeting in April Michael Stephenson gave us a presentation on how to setup an easy and fun photo booth for events. We had plenty of fun playing around with the setup. Here are some of the photos we took while testing out the setup:

Upcoming Meeting 03-25-2014 Topic

Tony's Presentation

Tony’s Presentation

Club member Tony Gomes will be giving a presentation regarding achieving sharpness in images and will be covering several aspects of sharpness. Read the following message from Tony:

Getting a sharp picture what does it take.
2 months ago I was at Circle B Bar reserve in Lakeland and I ran into a group of people that included a middle aged lady with a Nikon D800 Camera and the new Nikon 80-400 AFS VR zoom lens. I asked her how she liked her equipment and her reply was it would be great if she could get a sharp picture out of it and she was planning to send it back. This is a $6000 combo and she was disappointed. I tried explaining Autofocus micro adjust and lens -Body tolerances. She shrugged me off suspiciously saying she never heard about that.
I know that pain, having struggled with my own equipment for years. Returning them to Nikon and getting them back in the same state, that is Nikon saying that they are within specs.
My talk is aimed at preventing people from having similar bad experiences.
However our perception of sharpness varies with our photographic development and the size of enlargement that we make.
I would like to walk you through the factors that contribute to a sharp picture.
Having said that if you look at National Geographic 100 most important pictures. Most of them are out of focus.

Please read up on : AF micro adjust, MTF charts, Focal plane, Chromatic aberrations, Vibration reduction, Predictive AF, Autofocus by phase adjust, autofocus by contrast adjust. Camera shake. Focus Shift, field curvature, lens resolution, lens contrast, Dot gain by printers, Diffraction, noise as a sharpening tool, Deconvoling technology.
See you on March28.
Please note this is to be an interactive discussion.