Alan Sweet | Guest Contributor
Alan Sweet reported that the Group’s membership had now reached 100. About 50% of these members live on the Tablelands.
Everyone present was invited to share how they had become involved with bird photography. There were some interesting stories. However, in almost every case people became involved with birds through photography, not the other way around.
During the month several photographs were submitted for identification. These were presented for discussion and analysis. This was a very useful exercise that showed just how difficult it could be to identify birds from photos. Lighting, colour and shape can all be misleading.
Cropping and Resolution
Al Sweet said that most of the requests he received related to cropping and resolution.
Cropping:
Most images will be viewed on monitors or TV screens. Most TV screens these days are either 4 x 3 or 16 x 9 so these were the most popular crops. However, for A4 or A3 prints, the best crop is 7 x 5.
Resolution:
There is considerable confusion about resolution. Because most images will be viewed on a monitor or TV, it is necessary to have sufficient pixels to match the resolution of the monitor or TV screen. This is rarely an issue as most cameras have many more pixels than TV screens (unless, of course, you possess one of the latest 8K TV sets). Even then, because the viewing distance is usually considerable, it does not present much of an issue.
DPI vs PPI:
There is a lot of confusion between DPI (dots per inch) and PPI (pixels per inch). Traditional printing methods use patterns of dots to render photographic images on a printed page. Dots per inch (DPI) refer to printed dots and the space between them. Printed dots have space between them to make white, or no space between them to make black. Colour photographs are printed using four inks, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK), and four separate dot patterns, one for each ink.
DPI is probably the most familiar and most misused measure of resolution. It is the measure of how many dots of ink or toner a printer can place within an inch.
Today's photo-quality ink jet printers will give you acceptable quality photo prints of images with 140–200 PPI resolution, and high quality prints of images with 200–300 PPI resolution.
Past challenges
The submissions for the monthly challenge “Birds beginning with C” were presented and provided much discussion. (These images will be published as an album in the Media section on the group’s Facebook page.)
The “Honeyeaters” challenge remains open until 30 November.
New challenge
The November / December challenge has now been issued!
Herons and Egrets
As we have many members who not live on the Atherton Tablelands, the Herons and Egrets challenge is designed to encourage everyone to participate.
The White-faced, White-necked, Pied and Striated Herons all occur up here, as does the Nankeen (Rufous) Night-Heron.
The Tablelands are also host to all four egrets; Great, Plumed (intermediate), Little and Cattle. As all of these birds are widespread in Australia we hope to see lots of submissions!
As usual, the challenge rules are accessible via the “Featured” button at the top of the Facebook page.
Please email submissions to alansweet2023@outlook.com by 31 December.
Next meeting
Al Sweet said that he would be on the Gold Coast for a couple of weeks at the end of the month, and would be absent for the scheduled December meeting. It was decided to postpone the meeting for one week.
The next ATBPG Meeting will be at 10:00 am on Monday, 11 December at 15 Countryview Drive, Atherton.