How To Use A Digital Camera

21/7/15                          Learning Activity 03: How to use a digital camera

This learning activity involved quite a lot of research. It was quite helpful in developing an overall picture of how photography works, there is far more to it than just point and click like you do with your smart phone. Later on it should be fun to explore how a fully manual camera works.

1.   Why go digital? What are some of the reasons to use digital photographs?

Two major reasons for choosing a digital camera over film are the cheaper ongoing costs and the convenience of seeing your photos before they are printed. 

2.   What is a digital photograph? 
What are Pixels?

A pixel is an individual dot on a screen that is made up of many dots. Screens, like those on a digital camera, are made up of thousands of little dots.

3.   What is the relationship between the number of pixels and quality of the image?

The greater the number of pixels, the better the picture.

The three steps of digital photography 
Explain the three basic steps involved in creating and using digital photographs and briefly give examples.

4.   Step 1. Inputting photographs

ISO stands for International Standards Organisation and is the digital equivalent to the measure of how sensitive camera film is to light. In a typical situation 100 ISO is a good amount. Aperture adjustments affect how much light is allowed into a shot. Allowing more light into a shot causes more of the shot to be in focus, allowing less light in means that only the foreground of the shot will be in focus. The shutter of a camera is a mechanism that stops light touching the light sensor. A shutter speed increase allows you to capture moving objects as though they were not moving, and a shutter speed decrease causes the subject of a photo to blur.

5.   Step 2. Processing photographs

Processing a digital photo requires the use of some software to adjust certain things like brightness and contrast as well as crop parts of an image that aren’t needed. Digital photo processing can be done with software built into a camera or on especially designed programs like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.

6.   Step 3.  Outputting photographs

Digital photos can be used in various ways, including in a printed format and on digital devises like phones and computers. Photos can be transferred to a computer by plugging the camera’s memory card into the computer, using a USB cable, or in some cases wireless transfer. In order to print digital photos, the files can transferred to USB storage and taken to a camera shop.

7.   How a digital camera works.  How similar is a digital camera to a traditional camera?

A digital camera uses a light sensor to capture images whereas film cameras use photosensitive film. Digital photography is different to film in quality; film has a better picture in many situations, especially when there are many shadows and significant contrast between light and dark. A digital camera allows users to take as many photos as they like, but a film camera offers higher quality for a lower price than high quality digital.

8.   What is hand-colouring? 
What is the history behind hand colouring?  Why was it used?

The technique of hand colouring photographs was used before invention of colour photography. The first record of hand coloured photography is in 1939 and it was done by a Swiss man named Johan Baptist Isenring. The Japanese took to hand coloured photography as a kind of art form and it had mainstream appeal in Japan from 1860-1899. Hand coloured photography was popular right through to the 1950s when coloured film became available.

Types of digital cameras  

9.   Point and shoot cameras 

Also called a compact camera, point-and-shoot cameras make the process of taking pictures entirely automated. Point and shoot cameras are designed for people who happy snaps and aren’t interested in learning the finger points of photography.

Price point: between $50 and $300

10.   Prosumer cameras

Prosumer cameras have far more features than a compact camera and allow the user full manual control over the photography process. Still compact like a point and shoot/compact camera, prosumer cameras are part way between amateur and professional, allowing quality minded photographers an option when they can’t carry around a full DSLR. These cameras can be of sufficient quality for print publication photos. 

Price point: $350-$1000

11.   Professional Cameras

Professional level DSLR cameras produce higher quality images and allow changing lenses so that the user can choose the optimal lens for the situation. DSLR’s have optical view finders that allow you to see the object you are photographing with a mirror rather than through a digitally reproduced image. The ability to control all camera functions manually is of use to professional photographers using DSLRs. 

Price point: $400-$7000

12.   Speciality cameras  

These sorts of specialty cameras have recently come on the market.  Describe some of their advantages and special features.

Waterproof, infrared, and panoramic cameras are  types of camera used for special situations. 

Waterproof cameras can, as their name suggests, take pictures under water. Taking pictures underwater is good for divers who like to photograph things coral reefs.

An infrared, or thermographic, camera takes pictures of heat which can be useful at night time. In a security situations it might be more practical to use an infrared camera than to shine a light on something as doing so might disturb the subject or let them know you can see them. 

Panoramic cameras are designed to take in a wider picture than regular cameras. Landscape photographers may choose a panoramic camera in order to improve the quality of their shots.

Image storage
13.   Describe how digital cameras store their images.

Digital cameras store images on small cards that you can remove a place in your computer. Cameras can also have a small amount of built in memory to save photos to.

14.   Name some of the popular makes of Flash cards on the market.  What are their features?

The three main kinds of flash cards for a camera are: SD, SDHC, SDXC. Each flash card can be purchased at different speeds of upload. Purchasing a faster card is good if you are taking data intensive shots using raw image files. SD stands for “secure digital” and is a good card for point and shoot style photography. SDHC stands for “secure digital high capacity” and can have loading speeds of 25 MB/s, twice as fast as SD. SCXC cards are up to four times as fast as SDHC cards and hence are used by more serious photographers. 

Downloading images, what to plug in 

15.   Explain the process of downloading?  What are some of ways of transferring images to the computer?

There are several ways to transfer files from a camera to a computer, one, by USB cable, two, by plugging the SD into the computer, and three, sending files to the internet or a computer wirelessly. 

Image sensors

16.   In your own words, what is resolution? Describe the importance of image quality.

Image resolution is the amount of detail within an image. The higher the resolution, the better the picture. Resolution is measured by how many single squares a picture has on the vertical and horizontal planes. If an image has 1500 squares along the horizontal and 900 on the vertical plane, it has 1 350 000 pixels.

17.   What is a megapixel?  How does it relate to the quality of the photo?

A megapixel in photography is one million pixels. Generally speaking, a camera with a higher amount of megapixels gives a better, higher resolution picture. 

Digital camera file formats
18.   Summarise in your own words some of the basic formats your digital camera offers and why would you choose them.

Three of the most commonly used photographic file formats are .jpeg, .tiff and “raw” format. The file ending “.jpeg” stands for Joint Photography Experts Group Standard. Whilst the .jpeg file format is the most common photographic format, it has the drawback of reducing the quality of an image, especially with repeated editing and saving. .Jpeg has a version that does not reduce file quality (called “lossless”) but it is not widely supported. TIFF, Tagged Image File Format, can be used for both lossless storage that does not reduce file quality and “lossy” storage that does cause some data to be lost. TIFF is the file format of choice in the printing industry. Raw format photography files have a similarity to the film photography negative. Using raw format files, a person can keep all the original data from a photo and improve it in their photo editing software with any loss of data form the original shot. Professional photographers are more likely to use raw format since there is less likelihood of their images being degraded during the storage process.

Preview screens & viewfinders 

19.   What is the difference between a preview screen and a viewfinder?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

A preview screen shows an image of a photo to the photographer before they take a photo. Seeing an image before taking a photo is valuable for aiding amateurs in photo composition. The downside of a preview screen is having less detail and the potential for shaky hands to blur the picture when they are held away from the body. A camera viewfinder is a window on a camera for looking through to see the images to be photographed. The benefit of a viewfinder is that users can see a real image rather than one digitally reproduced. Viewfinders use mirrors to show the image to be photographed and don’t lose detail in the shadows and bright spots like a digital image can.

Automatic flash 
20.   Explain the different flash modes on the digital camera.

Several different kinds of flash modes in a camera are as follows:

Automatic: flash fires if the camera detects that there is not enough light in the scene

Fill flash: this is where flash is always on

Red eye reduction: this setting causes the flash to fire a couple of times before the shot so the subject’s pupil get smaller and are less likely to come up red in the photo.

Low-power mode: with this mode users can set the flash intensity to half it’s normal amount.

Batteries
21.   Explain the different types of batteries available for digital cameras.

Cameras use either lithium-ion or nickel metal hydride (NiMh) style batteries.

22.   What do these icons mean?  1. And 2.

1 — This means battery full

2 - This means battery nearly empty.

Software  

23.   Describe some of the software that comes with the digital camera.

A digital camera usually comes with rudimentary software within it for altering photos. To make significant improvements in photos it is best to use external software such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom.

Meta Data
24.   Information is recorded in a photo.  Explain advantages of this and describe how you would insert this into a Photoshop file.  What are tags?  How can tags help the user? 

Meta data is information about the time and date that a photo was taken that is stored along with a photo in a camera’s memory. Meta data helps people find files by adding tags that users can search for. If someone is looking for a photo from a particular day, they can type that day into a search field and find the photo.

News Flash – Kodak has now folded and no longer exists. 
25.   How does this impact the digital camera market?

The end of Kodak may be less significant for the digital camera market than you might expect. Even though Kodak was the inventor of the snapshot camera, it failed to embrace digital technology. The exit of Kodak from the market will probably do little to change the digital camera market, due to not selling much in the way of digital cameras.

HDR
26.   What is HDR and how can you use it in your photography or your images?

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Using the HDR function on your camera helps to compensate for the fact that digital photography does not traditionally represent the darkest and lightest areas of an image as they are in real life. HDR could be a significant improvement in digital photography as lack of gradation in the darker areas of a photo is where it traditionally lagged behind film. 

Prepress Research: Learning About The Print Industry

Prepress LA

Part A: Video Research 

1. The printing processes described in the film are: screen printing, flexographic, offset lithographic, and digital printing.
2. Newspapers, and other non-glossy products not intended to last a long time, use cheaper printing paper.
3. Photography and art books are made with expensive printer paper.
4. Flexible aluminium, polyester, and mylar are used as printing plates in offset lithographic printing.
5. Spot colours are used for making shiny gold and silver areas on a print.
6. Digital methods of printing have the advantage of printing a different image on each page of a job, lithographic printing has the advantage of being faster.
7. An advantage of flexographic printing is that it can be done on many kinds of media.
8. The most common method for drying printed media is oven drying.
9. In digital printing the design to be printed doesn't need to be developed into a negative but rather can be printed straight from an electronic file.
10. The printing substrate is the medium which the ink is printed on.
11. Coloured artwork is separated into four plates for printing because four different colours are needed to print all the other colours.
12. Book casing is the process of making the outer part of hard cover books.
13. a) A knife folding machine has a knife that slides down the middle of a piece of paper to fold it in two.

b) A perfect binding machine shaves off the ends of folded pages and glues them together once the pages of a book have been assembled in order.

1. A guillotine is a device used to trim paper to size after it has been printed.

Part B: Comparing Offset and Flexographic Printing

Offset printing is an older kind of printing that has been popular since the 1950s. Offset printing uses a process where an image is transferred from a plate with an image on it onto a rubber blanket which finally transfers the image to the substrate. Offset printing delivers an outcome that is of consistently high quality and is used very often in magazine production. 

Flexography is a kind of printing that uses printing plates that are flexible and put in direct contact with substrate. Flexography was originally of much lower quality than offset printing but there have significant improvements in the process in recent years. Currently flexographic printing is used for things such as paper and plastic bags, milk cartons, disposable cups, and candy bar wrappers. Typically flexographic printing is not used for magazines.

Part C: Word Puzzle

G E E I N K M Y J U G W H Y F I G E D I 

M N L R I E N P W R B N E V M H X S E G 

B X E T A R T S B U S F I P Q J P N F U 

D A C D J E R F K Q T Q R T K B S P T B 

D D T A H L I F T M H E R A E C B V E L 

C E R E T Q Y D L J S S E R K K H X E A 

B I O N H R N L R S S Q D T M H R Q H N 

I C P W E G G B I E V W L U E D Y A S K 

R I H M Q M O O R S J Y O H I Q H T M E 

N N O O M E N P J A Q N F X U Y G L J T 

C L T F D S B R T S P U Q O J L E X Z Z 

V M O U G E D L T C P Y E X T W U S K A 

N H G S W E V E N H E I A E U I U X I I 

D G R G V C N E G B A R T S G N N U D B 

V J A E S C E R U J D X I C U E X J K C 

M H P N I R M N T J I Z J D S X E Q E X 

B I H L C C M T D G M P M S E T A L P T 

Y L Y S P X U R X J J L H H O E L E G H 

U F E R O H A E B C Z L C R F A W D U R 

W M X G R I P P E R S Z F Z E D C M I A 

BLANKET

DIRECT

ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHY

FOLDER

GRIPPERS

IMPRESSIONS

INK

JET

MARKETING

PLATES

SCREEN

SHEET-FED

SQUEEGEE

STENCIL

SUBSTRATE

WEB-PRESS

Screen Printing

A stencil is made from a mesh screen by first applying a photosensitive emulsion to the screen, protecting a section of the screen from light with an image, and then shining light on the screen. The photosensitive emulsion on the part of the screen with the image on it will not become blocked and will therefore allow ink to penetrate it.

To make a print, the screen printing stencil is placed over a substrate and ink is pulled over it with a squeegee in order to force ink through the holes in the screen. A sharp image results from the screen printing process.

Digitally Printed Fabric

This shirt would most likely have been printed using direct-to-garment, inkjet printing. The process would have been completed with minimal manual handling with a machine designed to print t-shirts after they have been made. There are other methods of printing directly to fabric but they are usually used for things like flags and banners that are exposed to the elements consistently.

Book Cover

There are three components that most likely would have been used in the printing of this book cover. The title and author’s name would most likely have been embossed using a device that has the letters of the words projected from the surface. After embossing, a lithographic printer would have done the colour printing on the front and back. The last stage of printing would most likely have involved lamination in order to put a shine and protective surface on the print.

Chocolate Wrapper

Typically chocolate bar wrappers are printed on a polypropylene substrate using flexographic printing. Flexographic printing uses flexible printing plates that transfer ink straight to the substrate.

Poster

This poster would most likely have been composed in photoshop before being sent to the printer. To make it work in with standard inks used in printing, it would have been composed in cyan, magenta, yellow and black format. If it was a high budget print run, the poster would have been printed using lithographic printing. If it was a lower budget print job, a digital printer would have been used.

Photo

Traditional photographic developing is a complicated chemical process that involves coating paper with a light sensitive emulsion and exposing the paper to light whilst an image is superimposed on it. These days, most photographic printing is done using digital method printing. Digital photographic printing is done with either “fine art inkjet printing” or with digital laser exposure onto traditional photographic paper. Inkjet printing is economical for small scale print runs and digital laser exposure is good for high quality archival prints.

Learning About The Various Settings On A Scanner

14-5-15

Technology Learning Activity 03: How to Use a Scanner (lineart)

In this exercise we explored how different scanner configurations effect the time something takes to scan as well as the quality of the final image. This stuff is worth knowing when are scanning large files. Normal documents don't take much time or space but a detailed picture can use 500mb.

Arranging Abstract Shapes

14-5-2015                Design:  Learning Activity 03

Part A: This learning activity involved arranging one to four squares in a way that represented a word. The squares were allowed to be of different sizes, they were allowed to be imposed on each other, and they could be cropped. 

Part B: This part of the activity asked that we find business cards and advertisements that represented various words. 

Order:

The typographic parts of this business card are well centred in their fields, this balance helps make things feel orderly. Each aspect (the business name, description of the service, and contact details) is in it’s own part of the card, so it feels like each thing is in it’s place. 

Increase:

The vertical lines in this card seem like they going right into the sky by the placement of the flat line at their bottom and by having them run off the page. “The sky is the limit” is a phrase that comes to mind when viewing this design.

Bold:

The sharply contrasting colours as well as the unusual angle make this card stand out from the crowd. A person who has an obviously contrasting disposition is often bold, as is one who approaches things from a different angle to others. This card may appear bold because it has similar qualities to a bold person.

Congested:

The front of this card has two different kinds of line. The outer lines that aim toward the centre are straight and vector-like. The inner part of this cards design has curvy and somewhat classical lines. The differing kinds of lines feel out of place with one another. The lines of the outer section are aiming into a central point and seem like they could run into each other and bring about a traffic jam style situation. 

Tension:

This design seems to have no central focus and each part runs-on into the next. The fact that there is little apparent order gives the potential for chaos which then gives rise to tension. Most of the text is in the white space, which would be left empty when trying to create a simple and relaxing experience. The aspects of the layout defined separate to the white space are empty. The fact that several aspects of this design defy expectation seems to generate tension.

Playful:

This design is well spaced, focusses on soft colours and rounded lines. Rounded lines are easy on the eye, and bring to mind a child safe space that has no sharp corners that kids can be hurt by. This well spaced design avoids having so much white space that it feels austere and spartan. Using the analogy of a child's play room: children need some empty space to play in as well as enough stuff to play with. 

Using Empty Space As Design Tool

                                Learning Activity 04


Part A: Positive Versus Negative Space

This exercise asked us to draw the negative space around a couple of things. The negative space is the empty space around an object. Focussing on negative space is an effective way to simplify a drawing.

Using Empty Space In Layout Of Type

                                      Learning Activity 04



14-5-2014 - Part B: Whitespace

1. Print Publishing

I like how the whitespace below the contents and above the page numbers gives continuity between the two pages. Having white space around the page numbers also makes it easier to read them. 

2. Street Advertising

I have always found the “braaap” branding effective. They have managed to include advertising of other brands without being so cluttered as to lose the main message. This images has both impact and enough spaciousness that it isn’t annoying.

3. Website

The Word Press approach to whitespace is probably just as effective without having the background absolutely blank. Having a faded background seems to be an effective way of including whitespace without wasting expensive advertising space on “empty space”.

4. Architecture

The spaciousness of this design gives a feeling of serenity. The inclusion of high ceilings seems to make the room more open. In interior design, empty space could be an equivalent to white space.