All the tutorials are available as video podcasts, which means that you can watch them by downloading them to your own computer; or use iTunes to load them onto an iPod. That’s a suprisingly good way of watching them - although the screen is small, it’s a great way of filling in time during a train journey and so on.

Photowalkthrough.com can be found here - http://www.photowalkthrough.com

• The maximum resolution of a digital image is 1024 pixels horizontally by 768 pixels vertically. The file size is unimportant, but exceeding this image size would cause it to be cropped when displayed, hence the limitation.
• The image shouldn’t contain any identification of the author, otherwise it’s not possible to judge anonymously. Including titles is a matter of taste, although currently perceived good taste (depending on who you ask, of course!) is that titles tend to detract from the image itself.
• When titling the file, please include your competition number rather than your name, as this will ensure anonymity and speed up processing the files
• Images can be submitted in a variety of formats - in order of preference, these are DVD or CD, memory stick, or (preferably not) 3.5″ floppy disk. While floppy disk isn’t the end of the world, it does mean digging a floppy drive-equipped PC out of the garage, so other formats are preferred!
• The files must be in jpeg format - the compression/quality setting is left to your discretion. To get the best from the colour, I’d recommend using the sRGB colour space where possible, as this is how our projector is calibrated - and it’ll also get the best from them when they’re posted here on the website.

The full set of competition rules can be found here, but please ask if you’ve got any questions that remain unanswered.

As a reminder, competition entries are due next Wednesday 10th January.

]]> Tim http://www.yorkps.org.uk/archives/cleaning-up-a-yashicamat.php 2006-12-30T16:13:10Z 2006-12-30T16:13:10Z Hints


I recently acquired a Yashicamat twin-lens reflex medium-format camera from eBay, and although it’s in pretty good condition for it’s age (at least 35 years as they were discontinued in 1971!) the viewfinder was distinctly grubby.

Cleaning it up was actually fairly straight-forward. There are four small screws that secure the viewfinder to the body; remove these and the whole viewfinder assembly lifts out. Then you can get at the mirror to clean that - there’s a black metal clip on the top edge that secures it in place. The ground glass screen is actually in two parts - there’s the upper glass surface which is ruled with gridlines, and a plastic fresnel screen underneath. Both are held in place by two spring clips which you can remove with a bit of fiddling with a screwdriver.

As the view lens chamber isn’t sealed particularly well, there was thirty-odd years-worth of dust and debris inside, including a couple of pieces of confetti! A quick swipe around with a blower brush will get rid of most of it, particularly if you hold the body upside down - and you’ll notice a definite difference in the brightness of the finder screen once it’s done. With any luck, this one should be good for another thirty-something years…

]]> Tim http://www.yorkps.org.uk/archives/seasons-greetings.php 2006-12-24T22:14:46Z 2006-12-24T22:14:46Z Blog
Following the Mince Pie evening on the 20th December, we take a break for Christmas and the New Year, returning on January 3rd for a How-To evening devoted to preparing your work for competition and exhibition.

On behalf of all at YPS, the committee would like to wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy and peaceful New Year.

]]> Tim http://www.yorkps.org.uk/archives/a-successful-visit-to-ilkley.php 2006-10-29T18:52:16Z 2006-10-29T18:52:16Z Blog
Six of our members made the trip across the county border to Ilkley on 27th October to take a selection of our work.   Ranging from digital monochrome to sports action, underwater colour to infra-red prints, and highlights from fifty years of our President’s photography, it was enjoyed by a great turnout of Ilkley Camera Club members.   Ilkley CC will be visiting York on 29th November to show off their work, so it’ll be well worth attending.
]]> Tim http://www.yorkps.org.uk/archives/this-is-a-tutorial.php 2006-09-08T22:04:49Z 2006-09-08T22:04:49Z Tutorials
If you’re scanning colour negative films - or you’re shooting digital with a dodgy white balance - there’ll come a time when it’s necessary to alter the colour balance of the image. You could do this by eye using Photoshop’s Hue/Saturation tools, but if you’re anything like me, that’s just too hit and miss. The Curves adjustment allows a much greater degree of control, but relies on being able to accurately identify the darkest darks, the lightest highlights and the true mid tone. Here’s a devious way of doing this automagically.
1. Open the image as an RGB file
2. Select Image/Adjustment/Curves
3. Double-click the black eyedropper, and when the colour picker dialogue box appears, enter 20 in each of the R, G and B fields. This resets the black point to a slightly lighter grey.
4. Click OK, then double-click the white dropper. This time enter 244 in each of the R, G and B fields.
5. Click OK, then do the same for the grey eyedropper - but use 133 for these values.
6. Close the Curves dialogue, and answer yes when asked if you want to save the values. You won’t need to do this again.
7. Create a new Threshold adjustment layer (Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Threshold)
8. When this layer appears, move the slider all the way over to the left - then as you move it back towards the right, some areas of black will appear. These are the darkest areas of the image - in other words, the true blacks.
9. If you do the same but move the slider to the right, you’ll identify the lightest areas in the image - in other words, the true whites.

Now for the clever bit, which will help you find the midtones:

1. Create a new layer.
2. From the Edit -> Fill menu, select 50% grey so that this layer is filled. You’ll have now covered the rest of the image with an inpenetrable 50% grey layer.
3. Change the blending mode of this layer to Difference.
4. Create a new Threshold Adjustment layer as above, and drag the slider all the way over to the left. Now when you move the slider back over to the right, the black areas that come back are the true midtones!
]]> Tim http://www.yorkps.org.uk/archives/another-hint.php 2006-09-08T21:32:08Z 2006-09-08T21:32:08Z Hints
There’s a lot of advice out there about getting accurate colour from your digital images when printing, but what about when your pictures are projected using a digital projector?� It’s frustrating when an image that’s striking on screen or in print looks washed out and under-saturated when thrown up onto a projector screen.

Some digital projectors are capable of colour management in the way that you’d normally work with printers, but these still tend to be the expensive high-end models.� Here’s a couple of tips for colour management with your average common-or-garden projector:

• Most projectors will respect the sRGB colour space, but the Adobe 1998 space has a much wider colour gamut that many projectors can’t handle. � So if you know your images are going to end up projected, it’s worth making sure that they’re saved with the sRGB space embedded.
• Powerpoint is often used to run presentations - and this will respect the colour spaces embedded in the images that form part of the presentation.
• If you use the same computer-and-projector combination on a regular basis, it’s worth taking the time to set up the colour management.�� You can’t use hardware tools like Gretag Macbeth calibrators, but you can get good results with software tools like Apple’s Calibration utility (you’ll find this in the Display section of System Preferences) or Adobe Gamma on a Windows machine.
]]> Tim http://www.yorkps.org.uk/archives/38 2006-09-07T21:47:18Z 2006-09-07T21:47:18Z Hints
This is what you do…

And then you do this…

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