Sony Camera tip

I love my Sony camera to bits. Really I do. But recently, my (own) Sony camera broke and until Santa Claus could find the time to bring me a new one, I used "my" (AdEd) Sony camera rather more than I generally do. But I couldn't understand why so many of the photos I was taking weren't so good. I've never had problems before and I take A LOT of photographs.

Not only that, but there were surprising videos that I didn't remember shooting.

The mystery was solved when I noticed that, whilst in my bag, that little dial was turning without my realising. Often, I'd take a photograph on a different setting from the "automatic" I intended (the green camera shape) Looking closely at the design of this particular camera model, the dial protrudes ever so slightly and is quite easy to turn. Once I started to check that it was set correctly before snapping my picture, all was well again.

And it's a jolly good excuse for taking a heap of bad photos too ;-)

Uploading photos

Lizzie wrote in the previous post, about her difficulties with uploading photos to this blog and sometimes, to Flickr. I have had similar problems in the past and can share one or two thoughts which might be of help.

Firstly, sometimes the photo doesn't upload because of a problem with Blogger - or Flickr - in some remote place, not on your computer. We tend to think that any problem we encounter must be down to something we are doing ourselves and that's not always the case. Web-based services such as these often have problems of their own. You can check if this is the case on their central website - I think there's a link from the Blogger sign in page - where sometimes, they report service interruptions.

Another possible reason is that the file you are trying to upload is too large. If the photos are only to be viewed on screen, then there's no need for them to be anything larger than about 100kb. Next question, how to reduce the file size...(cue Jane Carter-Dunn!)

Another thing could simply be that your own internet connection is busy. Might be worth trying again at a different time of day. Early evening and late afternoon is often the worst time, when all the schoolchildren are home and checking their email and playing games online. Try sometime mid afternoon, perhaps, or early morning.

Of course, you may still have problems....in which case I'm probably no help at all! But of course, I'll always encourage you to keep trying and exercise max patience (something which I find extremely difficult!!)

Free Software

I was at Wyedean on Wednesday evening catching up with tutors working on the RARPA project. Part of our discussion centred around the increased storage space required when saving video and photos and someone from the Wyedean IT department joined us.

He has recommended the following free compression software Infranview. Does anyone want to give this a try and let me know what they think. It looks like it has some editing capabilities in it to so may be a possible solution to the issue Sara has raised. I am interested from a VLE point of view as it will enable us to compress images we are uploading and so reduce the amount of space we need.

Getting photographs on to a computer

I've been asked for some support on getting photographs from a camera onto a computer and thought that it might be a useful thing to share here. It's easy to assume that everyone knows what to do already, but with lots of new tutors joining the dream teams and getting their hands on one of our great digital cameras this term, I make no apologies for going back to basics!





I'm going to use one of the AdEd Sony cameras and my own PC at home. Your set up may be slightly different but many features will be the same.



I'm going to recommend you use free photo storage and basic editing software called Picasa. Because it's a Google product (like Blogger) it enables you to upload photographs easily to this or any other blog and short videos to You Tube as well. There are other software suites which do the same thing - you might have loaded one which came with your computer - but I'm making no apologies for using my favourite!






Download Picasa free from the internet... http://picasa.google.com/ If you're using an AdEd laptop, you might well find that it's already there. The latest version is V.3 and it's worth making sure that this is the one you use - it has all kinds of nifty tools inbuilt.

Decide how you want to get your photos into your computer....you can either use a wire like this (which came with the camera)

Ignore the yellow and black round plugs for now and just plug the USB into the computer and the other, rectangular plug into the slot on the bottom of the camera.

If you're not sure about USB plugs, have a look here where there are photographs of a USB plug and where it fits into a laptop.

You might prefer to download your photographs straight from the memory card which can be found next to the battery in your camera. All the AdEd cameras should have a memory card fitted - please don't lose it!




On occasion you might decide to take the card out and put the card into your computer somewhere to upload your photographs, though you might need some kind of adapter for it to fit. Even though I have a Sony computer which has a memory card slot which fits my camera card perfectly, I find it quicker to use the wire method. I keep the cable permanently attached in a USB port and just plug my camera in. As soon as I connect it, a window comes up on the screen asking what I want to do - I make the choice to open Picasa and import the pictures.





If I take out the memory stick and slot it in my computer, the same screen comes up and offers the same choices.

I import the photographs into Picasa and save them in a folder where I can find them again! Picasa stores them in date order anyway and it's easy to move them around once they're in, so I don't worry too much if I make a mistake at this stage.



Picasa also offers a choice whether you want to delete the photos from your camera/memory card at this stage or leave them where they are. When I'm at home, I wipe the card/memory every time, but when we're on holiday I leave them there until we get home. Then, when I get to my home PC I can upload the lot in one go onto my home computer and wipe the card.

And that's it. The photographs are now safely stored on my computer and I can use them how I wish. I can use the basic editing in Picasa to crop them, adjust lighting and colour and to make some simple changes - change them to black and white, for example. If I want to share the photographs or move them to another computer, I can copy and save them to a USB memory stick.

Don't know how to do that? Still stuck? Your AdEd friends are here to help you. Please don't hesitate to contact one of us and we'll do our best to get you up and running!

Getting the cameras out

Had a great workshop with Leigh Preston this afternoon, where we learned how to take better photographs with our cameras. Leigh was the best kind of tutor - anticipated all our questions and readily shared his experience and one or two particularly valuable tips. One trick in particular was priceless and delighted us all but I'm not going to share it - you need to take a class with Leigh yourself!

Hopefully there will be a further opportunity to work with this very talented photographer - you know where you'll read about it first, don't you?

I've set up a Flickr set on the AdEd Interest group page. Click here to see the photographs as they were taken, no editing! Yes, we really are that photogenic...

Oh, and don't forget the link to the Sony camera manual can be found in the list of links on the sidebar.

What do you think?

Two pages of evidence from today (funny how it often involves food, isn't it?)


Evidence page 1:



At the beginning of the session (top photograph) the ingredients were assembled and previous experience assessed. Some of the group had come across lemon cheesecake before, others said they had no previous knowledge (how could we tell?)

By half way through the session, quite a few lemon cheesecakes were in the box, which was surprising really.

At the end of the session, the package was complete. The group stood back and congratulated themselves on their success.


Evidence page 2:

At the start of the session, a full box of lemon cheesecake was placed on the table by a generous member of the group.

After ten minutes, only half of the package remained.

By the time the session was completed, only the empty packing remained.

Well, what do you think?!!? Surely I don't have to show you the time/date information embedded in those photographs to prove which is true?

The small photographs in the pictures above were taken with a mobile phone camera and bluetoothed to the wonderful Pogo printer with no wire in sight. If you haven't seen this little treasure yet, you'll have an opportunity to have a go yourself at the Camel Bazaar on Friday this week, if you've booked your place. If you haven't booked your place yet, then you need to ring Hilary at AdEd 01452 425923 as soon as possible to see if there's a place left.

Did it!

The movie I made would not be uploaded but the pictures were okay. Might be my PC it is a bit old and full to the brim! Still something better than nothing. Slowly getting there....

My blogs will go quiet now - good they say! - on hol for two weeks - so expect movies when I return!!

Apparently Italian Reds are friendly bees!!

Community textiles group uses technology

We're doing a project on the River Severn, and this morning went down to the river and took photos.

When we got back, we were temporarily locked out so we had an early lunch and started copying the photos onto the laptop.

So once we got into the room we were ready to learn how to make a Power Point presentation.

Learners are keen to make short videos and power point presentations of trips to the river.

Have a look here!

I hope Lizzie won't mind my posting her photo of Jenny's glorious hat here with a reminder to take a look at our Flickr group photo pool for some great pictures of what's going on in her class.

There's a link to the page at the top right hand corner here, in the sidebar.

Lizzie, please will you thank Jenny, Pauline, Robert, Rose and Beverly for sharing their work with us here. You have a very talented group there - and they are fortunate to have such an imaginative tutor!

More photo stuff

Doing basic editing of photographs on the laptop is fine if the right software is loaded, but often the software isn't your favourite, or perhaps it isn't there at all?

There is now a version of Photoshop Express on the web and what's more, it's free.

Now, I have been using Picasa - also free - for quite some time and am more than happy with it. What's more, it will upload photographs directly to our online photostore SmugMug too. We also make use of Flickr to share some of our photographs and as a result on occasions we have difficulty keeping track of what we have where! So, I'm probably not going to be rushing to download the new Photoshop Express.

But it could be just what you or your students are looking for.

(Picture is one of my holiday photographs, taken in the souk in Muscat. I loved the embroidered caps)

Take better photos

Just come across a useful list of tips for photographing items for sale on Ebay or Etsy and thought that many of the points apply equally well to the kinds of things we record, such as student work etc.

Taking best advantage of natural daylight seems to be crucial for me - unless it's blowing a gale like it was this afternoon!

(don't believe that all horizons are horizontal...)

Photography Competition - deadline 14 March

The competition's open to 'student, amateur and professional photographers worldwide to submit their work for consideration for the Exhibition'.

The ex referred to is the Royal Photographic Society's 151st International Print Exhibition - over 120 prints will be selected and will be reproduced in a full colour catalouge; all entrants will receive a copy of the catalogue; the exhibition will tour fromJune 2008; exhibitors will have the opportunity to sell copies of their prints.

Entry fee is £15 but for that you can send up to 4 images - image size should be no larger than 16" x 20". Deadline for entries 14th March 2008.

1 Gold prize of £10,000; 2 silver of £2,000 each; 3 bronze of £1000. The allen & Overy (sponsors) Prize of £1000 awarded for the image which best reflects the theme of Justice around the world'.

I came across the competition when I was checking out what was exhibiting in the Gloucester museum (top floor temporary exhibition gallery - years, I've been going to Gloucester and the library, years! And walking straight past the museum door with its very Roman invitation, thinking 'I've done the Romans, did it at school'. Worra daft girl! Didn't realise there was such a great gallery space on the top floor.)

Anyways, there are entry forms etc for the competition at the gallery (up Brunswick Road, towards where the old Gloscat building used to be - well, still is, but when it was open).

And the present exhibition is the 150th (surprisingly enough), and in addition to a fabulous range of prints!! has a central display board with newspaper cuttings and photos from over the 150 year history of the exhibition - makes for some interesting reading.

I reviewed the exhibition for a new Forest Radio programme 'Arts Cafe' which I'm co-presenting ... but more of that in a later posting.

Entry to museum and the print exhibition is free by the way.
Open until 1 March, opening hours Tuesday - Saturday 10 am - 5 pm.

Fi
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Sharing good practice

...or is it pinching someone else's good idea?

This morning I spent time chatting to Julie Smith, one of Alison's colleagues, who is doing some research into tutor training. She asked if she may record our interview and pulled a small digital camera from her bag.

Now, why haven't we thought of using our digital cameras as simple voice recorders? Brilliant idea - and with Julie's permission, I share it here!

Our interview lasted for an hour or so and the camera was unobtrusive. The file will record the date and time of our interview (as long as the camera date/time setting is correct of course!) and is easily saved to disk or hard drive.

It occurred to me that it would be very easy to record a learner's comments alongside a photograph of their work and I intend to give it a try shortly. Watch this space to see what happens....unless you get there first, in which case please share!

I can't find any details in the camera handbook about recording sound, but have experimented using the video mode with the display turned off. The sound quality isn't top-notch but it's good enough for evidence. Your suggestions and ideas would be appreciated.

Better than chocolate

So many good, calorie-free things on the Flickr album already. There are lots of colourful images there, I feel very inspired to get on with some work myself. - thanks for sharing .

The pictures of the community art project are especially interesting - I'm looking forward to seeing how the blackberry leaves turn out.

If you haven't been to have a look at the AdEd Interest gallery already, I suggest you follow the link in the sidebar and brighten your day with some glorious colour!

Fun photo site

I mentioned a fun photo site earlier today where I'd found a message about creating a slide-puzzle from a digital photograph.

It's called Photojojo and the slide puzzle can be found here in the archive amongst some other good ideas.

Have fun.