A4348. Advanced Digital Photography level 3 (AS)

[ericmark]

I have enrolled in a course A4348 Advanced Digital Photography level 3 (AS) and now I wonder if I should have gone for a beginners course instead but I can't find any syllabus to see what is involved.

I have been trained with Photo Shop and I understand F stops and speed with old film cameras. I have a pocket and SLR digital camera and a DV web cam. I have used bellows, reversing rings, filters etc. with old film SLR but I have not used the digital equivalent to colour filters.

Since having my Digital SLR I have done very little with the camera and I have done any improvement with Photo Shop latter.

So have I bit off too much? Should I return to college and change course. I wanted Maths A level and I did not look too careful at rest. I needed to do three to be considered as full time so getting course at low price. Also doing ICT but not worried about that as already done OCN in subject.

 

[ChrisFrost]

ring the college and get the syllabus

 

[ericmark]

Start Monday morning so a bit late now. I started to wonder after a phone call from college to change time table when he said it did not cover digital webcams and there was very little photo shop. I had expected it to be mainly PC work and I had a working back ground in that. I know the other course is a lot to do with developing your own film so I had expected this one to be equivalent with digital? Well does not really matter if I fail so I'll just give it a go.

Never quite understood why one should be able to select a film speed with digital seems like using a neutral density filter to reduce depth of field maybe by end of course I will understand. Seems odd to after picture is taken to be able to adjust brightness with camera and to change to black and white or Sepia old SLR I had to fit filters or change film type before I took photo.

 

[ChrisFrost]

Yeah, definitely a bit late. How did you receive prep material for the previous courses - in advance or on the first day?

Re: web cams - Can't think how you'd need to do anything much more than make sure you chose the model with the best light sensitivity and frame rate. There are better tools for creativity than a web cam surely?

Film speed: Doesn't a digital still have a limit to the light sensitivity of the CMOS or CCD sensor? I presume it's useful to understand a camera's capabilities and how that might affect what you can do with shutter speed, depth of field etc

 

[ericmark]

Yeah, definitely a bit late. How did you receive prep material for the previous courses - in advance or on the first day?

Re: web cams - Can't think how you'd need to do anything much more than make sure you chose the model with the best light sensitivity and frame rate. There are better tools for creativity than a web cam surely?

Ups my mistake I am using a Sony HandyCam which doubles as web cam 20x optical zoom 800x total although not really usable at that 80 is about max which can really be used. In manual mode it has all sorts of options but seems this is not part of course.

Film speed: Doesn't a digital still have a limit to the light sensitivity of the CMOS or CCD sensor? I presume it's useful to understand a camera's capabilities and how that might affect what you can do with shutter speed, depth of field etc

Today it was explained to me on how as the sensitivity increases so does noise the guy also explained the difference in size of sensor and how 10 mega pixels on small compact was not as good as 10 mega pixels on SLR because as one puts the receptors closer so noise also increases.

Seems I have a lot to learn. Next step is to get a fire wire cable to connect handycam to DVD writer. Not sure once connected that way what quality I should use on DVD there are 8 levels I will guess around centre using LP setting but need to work out how camera and DVD compare.

 

[ChrisFrost]

Camcorder - Digital zoom loses a lot of quality. Stick with optical.

Firewire to DVD Recorder - not the best way to go unless you just want to dump content to disc for archiving; in which case always choose the highest quality recording mode.

If you have firewire (or USB 2.0) you should dump the camcorder footage to the PC hard-drive then edit it with software. After that then you would use an authoring package to wrap the final product with DVD menus ready for the burn to disc. Video Studio is an easy to use edit suite and has enough creative tools to make a decent-looking and -sounding production. Remember "KISS" - Keep It Simple, Stupid. No fancy flips or visual effects necessary. Go for quality content and a strong narrative.

The principles of shot composition are similar for video as for photography. Get the photography course done first then add to that knowledge by reading a few of the many on video shooting technique.

 

[ericmark]

Well Video first. Using desktop it seems hit and miss using USB to get video from cam corder to PC. I guess PC too slow? So I have given up with that and used DVD/Hard-drive recorder instead. So there is no USB on DVD/Hard-drive so either fire-wire or Composite sync. I wonder why you say "Firewire to DVD Recorder - not the best way" I had thought that digital to digital would be better than digital to analogue to digital although I can't see any difference in quality! Only advantage is starting recorder auto starts cam corder. As to edit I can blank any bits I don't like and split into sections add names and select icon pictures without any software. It will auto insert jump to points and after transfer to DVD I can add more. Problem is sound as with fire-wire sound is automatic and only from cam-corder but using composite sync I can remove original and add music instead.

As to course they seem to be teaching use of Photo Shop on Mac's and do not require use of SLR so I guess nothing on using different lens or filters.

They do want us to look at other peoples work and do write up. And he keeps saying how its not an easy A level. But compared to Maths it a doodle. Now on to 4th week and not a thing about depth of field, F stops, speed or sensitivity. It seems to be more biased on the Art content. As yet it's point and shoot.

Just been to get some images around local canal and every one camera set on manual in the cut there is no way the camera can work out exposure. I suppose I could use select and hold but light meter readings and speed aperture all in view finder and one can adjust without taking eye from view finder so much easier than old days.

Also I can change sensitivity from shot to shot again not like old days where if you wanted to push process that had to be for whole role of film.

I think the kids with me are for a rude awaking when they go to University a few are doing media studies and digital photography without maths and I know the sound broadcast course did same maths as me doing electrical and electronic engineering seems the college is not doing too well with course advice.

I am just glad it will not affect me as I am now looking more at retirement than new job.

Thanks for advice all best Eric

 

[ChrisFrost]

I wonder why you say "Firewire to DVD Recorder - not the best way"

It's nothing to do with digital-to-digital. DVD Recorders are just a clumsy way to edit. You've already found some of those problems such as sound editing. PC editing is by far the best method of domestic editing.

I'm little surprised you are struggling to get editing on your PC to work. I had an old AMD Athlon 700 (equiv to a PentiumIII 733 I guess?) with 2 Gig of RAM about 7 or 8 years ago. The O/S was Windows 98. That worked just fine. The only thing I did special was add an extra hard disc just for the camcorder footage (rushes) and the final edits.

The computer managed fine as long as I didn't try to compose the whole project as a single file. What I found worked best was to break up my video in to short chapters. This way I could work on each chapter before moving on to the next. This kept load on the processor and motherboard down to a manageable level for the technology of the time. I also made sure that any un-needed background programs were closed.

The edit software I used was Ulead Video Studio 5. The camcorder was a basic JVC DVcam with DV in & out. The video capture card (firewire) was a Pyro DV1394. The edit software came with the card all-in for about £70 I think.

Video Studio 5 allowed me to do the usual stuff; A/B roll edits, visual FX, sound overlays from two video sources + background music + narration, and of course titling. Pretty much everything you'd need for a simple but effective video production.

I'd imagine that most PCs up to 5 years old will be more powerful than my old AMD. The laptop I'm using right now has loads more processing power under the bonnet. What spec is your PC?

 

[ericmark]

I guess I need card for PC then. I'll add to Christmas list.

 

[ChrisFrost]

The card was simply there to add a Firewire socket to a PC which didn't have one. PCs that are a bit more modern might have a Firewire socket already.

 

[plugwash]

My experiance is that firewire is generally only found on upmarket machines. If anything it seems to have reduced in how common it is lately.