Photographer’s badge – producing prints, editing software Friday, Mar 11 2011

Right, you’ve been out and taken your pictures.  But really, they’re only good if you display them somewhere.  You could upload them to your facebook account (if you have one) or even to one of the many websites that will hold (host) your pictures – flikr.com and even Google offer such a service.  Some even offer a “free” option – this is great, but you are limited to the amount of pictures that you can store or display.  You can increase the number of pictures stored by not uploading the “full quality” image, but a lower resolution version.  Additionally, the lower quality image will display quicker on a slow connection.

You can print your pictures out – the higher the quality the better the picture, but it might take longer for the computer/printer to process them.  But of course, you will find that the quality of the image is wholly dependent upon the ability of the printer that you are using.  Inkjet printers for example work by squirting a drop of ink onto the paper; there is only so much precision that such a printer can produce.  However, we are talking about quality that is almost imperceptible to most people.  A 10MP image is only really needed if you were producing a picture for a huge advertising poster!

If you don’t have access to a computer, many companies such as Jessops, Tesco, Snappy Snaps do offer a kiosk service so you can put your camera’s memory card into their card reader and print pictures directly.

Now, before you print your pictures out, you might want to tweak the image to make it just a little bit better.  As always, there are loads of software products out there to make the image world-class, but some (such as the Adobe Photoshop Suite) are many hundreds of pounds.  Without showing any specific favoritism to a product, I quite like Google’s Picasa editing software at the moment.  It’s free (hurrah!) and allows you to manage, adjust and shrink your pictures quite easily.

So I don’t age this article by taking screenshots of the software products, common tweaks you might need / want to do:

Red eye removal.   Removing those frustrating red dots from your subject’s eyes when caught in the camera flash.

Picture straightening.  For whatever reason, the horizon isn’t level.

Camera wasn't straight. Some cameras will show lines/dots on the screen to help stop this

Cropping.  If you only wanted a small piece of the overall picture (or want to exclude something/someone) you can use a cropping tool.  Effectively, this is what the camera does when you Digitally Zoom on a subject.

Picture on left is a crop taken from picture on right.

Retouch.  If you realised that there was something that really shouldn’t be there (say a light saber in a picture of army soldiers) you could carefully remove it from the picture.  In many fashion magazines, this technique is used to fade out a model’s imperfections to give them “perfect” skin.

Ideally though, these should be used as a “last resort” as any amendment to a picture takes away from its quality.  It is far better to frame, check and then take the picture.

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Photographer’s badge – functions of a digital camera and compressions; types of memory Friday, Mar 4 2011

This week, we’ll start with the types of digital camera.  Effectively, cameras fall into three types:

Digital SLR (Single Lens Reflex)

Compact camera

Hybrid.

The DSLR, like the original SLR, are set up so that as the photographer you will see the image that is directed through the lens and not having been processed by the computer chip.

Left: Hybrid, Middle: compact, Right: DSLR

The photographer using the Compact Camera will see the image that is read by the computer chip – or via a small window box in the corner of the camera (this is normally found on the older cameras that make use of film).  The Compact camera rarely has space for any accessories such as filters.  The phone on the digital camera is an example of the Compact camera.

The Hybrid is effectively a compact camera, but looks more like a DSLR and will often accept additional lenses, filters etc to focus and set the picture.

Quite often, a camera will promote such features as 3x Digital Zoom, 6x Optical Zoom and 6MP quality.  So what does that mean?

Let’s start with the types of zoom feature.  The optical zoom uses lenses to make the object look closer and fill more of the screen size.  The image is then taken of this picture.  Digital zooming works on the image once it has been taken – so it effectively crops into the picture.  The effective result is that the picture looks “blocky” because the image is expanded to fill the size.

original pic

Optical Zoom - no change on picture quality

Digital Zoom - you can see the blocks appearing

 

We can see from these images how this differs.  And this leads us neatly to Megapixel and compressions.  When we take a picture, the computer chip will break down the image into a series of blocks, or pixels.  The more pixels make up the picture, the more detailed the image is (the better quality).  So a 10MP image is going to look a lot better than a 3MP – but it is going to take up more memory space (because there is more information needed about the picture).  Some cameras have a computer chip that can take these detailed images, others use clever software to calculate what the “missing” pixels might be – and boost the quality of the picture.

Finally, the types of memory.  There are many different formats of memory available – MMC, Card – each effectively providing the same function – to store the pictures.  Typically they all have their own inherent limits to the amount of data that they can hold – this is often measured in Megabytes.  There is a high crossover here with the world of computing.  The smallest amount of memory is a byte of memory.  Without getting overly technical it is easy to remember that 1,000 bytes is a Kilobyte (Kb). It’s actually 1024, but that’s really only worth points in a pub quiz.  1,000Kb is a Megabyte (Mb).  1,000Mb is a gigabyte (Gb).  Actually, each is 1,024 – but as I said, knowing that is just a little sad really – when you run out of space, you run out of space!

Various types of memory card (and of course, there's a little bit in some compact cameras too!

A 3 Megapixel image might take about 500Kb (depending on content), so a 10MB memory card would take 20 images before running out of space; a 2GB card would allow you about 2,040 images.  Of course, keeping all your pictures on the camera introduces a “single point of failure” – there are external hard drives (and computers!) that you can copy your pictures to.

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Scout Hobbies Activity Badge Friday, Feb 18 2011

 

 

 

 

 

Although during the term time a good Scout programme will enable Scouts to work towards some badges, there are quite a few more that Scouts can earn if they meet the requirements.  One such badge is the Hobbies Badge.  All you need to do is complete either Alternative A or B:

Alternative A

1. Take up a hobby or interest for which you do not already have an activity badge.
2. Keep a record of involvement for a period agreed with a member of the leadership team.
3. Make a collection or study of objects over an agreed period. Examples are stamps, metal badges, teaspoons or bookmarks.
4. Talk to a group about the collection or study chosen. Explain the reason for the choice.

Alternative B

It’s worth making sure that your interest (if you are going for Alternative A) isn’t covered by another badge – say for example, the Martial Arts badge.  If you do decide that you do meet the requirements, then tell your Leader so that they can discuss the challenge with you.

Be happy to talk to your examiner about your hobby and how you built your collection

You can't just buy a collection in one go!

It's worth telling your Leader what you are going to show BEFORE you show it!

 

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make or break – Model maker’s evening Friday, Sep 10 2010

As well as working towards the GLOBAL CHALLENGE badge, we are also working towards the MODEL MAKER’S badge.  To that end, this evening saw the first part to that with patrols being challenged to make a working, moving model.  What we would like to see for next week is the completed models & also the Meccano cars that you made.  If possible, it would be good if you could get together as a patrol to finish the models, otherwise you are relying on the person that took the model home.

Working as a patrol

building the models

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Cooking Evening – part 1 Saturday, Mar 7 2009

What a fun evening!

After beating the Scouts at the first game (to make up the fourth team!) we then moved onto a bit of theory around camp hygene.  Rather than focus on teaching, we instead got the boys to do the thinking through the use of Mind mapping diagrams.

After, we then moved into the really good part of the evening – cooking.  For some (especially the two Cubs that started their Link to the Troop) this was really good fun.  Only a few pancakes missed the pan when tossed (and I’ll admit that half of mine missed… by that I mean I flipped one pancake and half made it back into the pan and the other half was neatly cut by the pan edge and landed on the floor.  Luckily only Ivor saw it, so it’ll be our secret… unless one of you spill the beans that is…!)

(Scouts cooking - by Frog_scout – at www.twitter.com/frog_scout)

(Cooking was great!  - by Frog_scout – at www.twitter.com/frog_scout)

After the cooking comes the washing up, and it was a bit of a rush to get the pans tidied and cleared away – the cookers went into the store a little warm… but we’ll use them again next week, so it won’t be too bad.

So that’s it… the first step towards the Chef’s Badge.

 We have already warned the Scouts (and the parents that were in the hall) that we will be expecting the Scouts to cook a 3-course meal to be signed off by their parents/willing guests.

For information on the chef’s badge, the link to Scoutbase (and the badge requirements) is here: http://www.scoutbase.org.uk/library/hqdocs/badges/scout-activity-ch.htm

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