Camera Club’s July 10 meeting

By Rex Dolby

The Wassenberg Camera Club met Thursday, July 10 at the Wassenberg Art Center. In the Wildlife competition, Will Hawkins won the print division with an impressive photo of a Blue-bellied Roller at the Toledo Zoo. Jan Sorensen’s shot of a Diamondback Rattlesnake taken while she was in Florida was second. Chris Wilson’s picture of a Blue Morpho Butterfly taken in the Grand Rapids, Mich., conservancy won the slide division.

Rex Dolby’s slide of the fireworks display after an Atlanta-Cincinnati baseball game won first place in the makeup Night Photography competition. Tracy Sterling’s dramatic photo taken at the Hot Air Affair’s Night Time Glow was picked for second place.

President Wilson stressed the need for workers for the County Fair’s Photo Exhibit and asked members to sign the work sheet.

Secretary Dolby called the club’s attention to the photography equipment given by Harold Rosendahl of Van Wert. He gave an Argus C3 range finder film camera with an f 3.5, 50mm lens and case. Argus introduced the C3 in October of 1939 as an improved version of its C2 and continued production till 1957. His second camera is a Kodak Advantix F 600 film camera that uses APS (Advanced Photo System) film that is now discontinued. It has a 2x zoom, 30mm-60mm, f4.5-f8.5, Ektanor lens. “The History of Kodak Cameras” says it was only produced in 1999.  Harold’s third gift is a Bell & Howell Super 8 Zoom 1201 movie camera with case produced in 1972 and 73. The club gratefully accepted the equipment.

Tracy Sterling and Will Hawkins closed the meeting with an excellent PowerPoint presentation on Low Light Photography. The team said that low light could mean: night time, dusk, a concert venue, or just shaded. They stressed that you must determine your priority for the shot and set up accordingly. The 3 decisions to be made are: how much depth of field you want (lens opening), the amount of light that will be needed to make the shot (shutter speed), and the ISO setting needed to achieve the picture (and still avoid digital noise in the dark areas).

They covered how each of these three are achieved and the equipment needed to get the job done. Some handy tips that were covered are: When shooting groups, a lens opening of f 5.6 or higher should be used to achieve greater depth of field.  Use ISO settings up to 400 during the day and to 800 for nighttime to avoid digital noise. Use spot metering for the subject and lock the setting so the background light does not act adversely on the subject due to the light-averaging metering system. And finally, if you mount your camera on a tripod, turn off the image stabilization system to avoid the camera’s attempts to lock onto the subject. Those present felt that Tracy and Will had done a very excellent job.

The club’s next meeting will be Thursday, Aug. 14, at 7 p.m. at the Wassenberg Art Center.

Meetings are open to anyone who has an interest in photography. If you have any questions regarding our camera club, classes or programs or would like to sign up please call the Wassenberg Art Center at: 419.238.6837, email: info@wassenbergartcenter.org or register for classes online at: wassenbergartcenter.org. Hours during exhibits are: Tuesday through Sunday 1-5 p.m. The Wassenberg Art Center is located at 214 S. Washington St. in Van Wert.