Once again the club room was packed for Gary Early’s session, with over 30 members armed with their cameras ready to listen and learn, and to shoot questions.

During the last session at SSDCC Gary had introduced members to Windows 7, since then he had taken time to become more familiar with the operating system. Released on 22 October, he had been running the full version and, compared to Vista, pronounced it a great success.

Before enlightening us with his Lightroom Tips, Gary went through final details from the previous ‘Back to Basics’ session. Loads of interesting and helpful items were covered. Here are just a few:

• the importance of Exposure Compensation – for example when a subject is heavily backlit, or taking shots in bright sunlight with high contrast. In these situations, sometimes a camera’s automatic settings will determine the wrong exposure so it is always better to manually adjust the exposure value (EV).
• Using Flash Exposure in daylight can be very useful, especially to fill harsh shadows. The trick of using flash, explained Gary, is to render an image where it is not obvious that flash has actually been used.
• Checking the Exposure – A camera’s LCD monitor is designed to give a guide only. It is up to the photographer to ensure that the exposure as seen on his/her camera corresponds to the same brightness as on his/her computer monitor – and of course all our monitors have been calibrated haven’t they(!?!?).
• Take note of what your ‘blinkies’ tell you! Take care not to over-expose resulting in ‘white’out’.

Gary did a summary of specifics covered, including details from the last session. I suppose the things he said that stuck in my mind from these sessions were: develop good practice and get into a routine of checking your camera settings before and after taking images; know your camera by increasing your photography skills; and don’t rely on the automatic settings.

Brief Introduction to Lightroom 3

It seems that Lightroom is fast becoming a revolutionary piece of software kit for all serious photographers, and especially for those who handle large batches, sometimes thousands, of images. In essence, it is designed to make life easier, and Gary Early endorsed the new Lightroom 3 test version which is available to download now, FREE, until the end of April 2010.

Gary explained that overall Lightroom 3 is a lot smoother and a lot faster, and the designers have added a host of new features. Other improvements are in de-mosaicing, sharpening and noise reduction. The input dialogue has been redesigned allowing the user to see where images are coming from and their destination, all in one window. Breakthroughs have also been made in: the develop module, auto sync, print module, library, loop view, collections, and graduated filters. There were many other features covered by Gary, in detail, but too many to mention in this space.

Gary explained that between now and the end of April the designers will be listening to users’ feedback and making even more improvements. He added that this great Beta version does not allow the user to access all functions, so we can expect the full version to be exceptionally good.

The group showed Gary their appreciation with a good round of applause and, as our Secretary, Chuck Eccleston remarked during his closing words of thanks, if anyone went away from Gary’s session without learning anything, then they must have been asleep!