OCA Course: Shiny Surfaces.

Shiny surfaces: I tried this with greaseproof paper but it proved too flimsy, so I cut a hole in the bottom of a translucent plastic container. The hole was too big.

1. Silver Tray: strong directional sunlight from a window. Yes, I have fair hair and arthritic fingers.

2. Silver Tray: with the diffusing bucket - a horrible milky appearance and still the camera reflection because of the big hole. Lighting the same as in 1.

3. Silver Purse: the specular reflections have caused under-exposure. Heavy shadows evident.

4. Silver Purse: with diffuser the object is seen better and the shadows reduced.

5. Scent Bottle: strong sunlight has transmitted blue to the background.

6. Scent Bottle: with diffuser, the bleed of blue light has all but been eliminated, and the detail in the silver improved.

7. LLSBA Paperweight: directional light gives good contrast to the engraving, but specular reflections are a nuisance.

8. LLSBA Paperweight: the diffuser has completely flattened the contrast, and the image is worse.

9. LLSBA Paperweight: reducing the exposure improves the contrast, and the specular reflections are less evident.

10. Glass Bowl: direct light shows some detail in the shadows.

11. Glass Bowl: with diffusion, the contrast has gone and a flat image with poor detail results.

Conclusion: Whilst the application of a "light tent" can improve images of some shiny objects, it doesn't work for everything. A professionally made tent with pure white even illumination would probably give better results, but to some extent, it's trial and error.

OCA Course; Outdoors at Night.

Outdoors at Night: All the images were taken with white balance set at "Daylight" apart from the "Arena" and "Canary Wharf" pictures which were taken on a Canon S90 compact set at Auto white balance. The rest were taken with a Canon EOS 1D Mk111 and either a 17-40mm zoom, or 100-400mm zoom. All were taken using a tripod or some other makeshift support.

1. Scarborough South Bay: the blue of the twilight contrasts nicely with the yellows of the seafront lights.

2. Castle Headland from Holbeck (where the hotel fell into the sea): some of the different coloured lights are more evident.

3. The Harbour from Holbeck: a 400mm telephoto shot showing the different coloured lights, the green and red for navigation. A ship is passing on the horizon - no doubt lit by fluorescent lights.

4. The Lighthouse: illuminated by halogen spotlights for effect, but the interior lights are tungsten, and the light itself is quartz-halogen and very blue.

5. Diving Belle: if you look at the last image you can see her by the lighthouse tower. She is illuminated by the spotlights with reflection off the white walls of the tower. The night sky reflects the tungsten and sodium lights of Scarborough.

6. Olympia Leisure: how many colours do you want?

7.Money money: They'll take your money, but not always use it for upkeep.

8. Prizes: not exactly worth the effort or expense to get one. The fluorescent light has accentuated the greens though. Very Martin Parr.

9. Hotel front: the repeating window pattern highlighted by the floodlights caught my eye.

10. Car trails: a long exposure from the Spa Bridge. The blue trail is from and expensive motor with those fancy blue headlights.

11. Arena: my daughter lives in Germany and does Dressage. Whilst she was riding round and round in ever decreasing circles, I went outside and caught this at dusk. Most fluorescent lights these days are daylight balanced and do a pretty good job, so the green tint is becoming uncommon.

12. Humber Bridge 1: nice reflections and starbursts from the lens diaphragm (no funny filters used). Verticals, horizontals and curves, too.

13. Humber Bridge 2: the blue stars of Orion's Belt in top right of frame contrast with the yellow bridge lights.

14. Humber Bridge 3: it got a bit more interesting when a ship went by, lit by fluorescent tubes. This was a 30 second exposure.

15. Canary Wharf: couldn't do this exercise without a cityscape at night. We were staying at the Hilton opposite. Most of the lights are fluorescent.

There is no image of an interior store or shopping mall. The only mall in Scarborough has a glass roof and is lit by daylight this time of year, and it closes at 6pm. I could have gone into the underground car-park and took some boring pictures of parked cars lit by strip lights, and got mugged - so I didn't.

OCA Course: Judging Colour Temperature 2.

Here are 9 images of Scarborough Castle, taken firstly in sun, secondly in shade, and finally at sunset, with white balance set at Auto, Daylight and Cloudy respectively. The camera was the EOS 1D Mk 111 with 17-40mm zoom. A Gitzo tripod barely stood up to the howling wind, which nearly had me over the cliff edge.

1a. Sunny WB Daylight: A normal representation of the scene. (5236K)

1b. Sunny WB Auto: A slight warming of the scene has helped here and I think this is the best image.                                                    (4917K)

1c. Sunny WB Shade: This is too yellow. (7159K)

2a. Cloudy WB Daylight: About right as I recall it, but unsurprisingly dull. (5200K)

 2b. Cloudy WB Cloudy: This has lifted the colour a bit (and is the best image), but not as strongly as the Shade setting in 1c. (6094K)

2c. Cloudy WB Auto: Not much different from 2a. There is only 36 degrees K between the two images. (5236K)

3a. Sunset WB Auto: A nice warm image, about right. (5114K)

3b. Sunset WB Cloudy: Yuk! Far too yellow. (6094K)

3c. Sunset WB Daylight: The same as in 3a. There's only 122 K difference, so either image will do as best setting.

OCA Course: Judging Colour Temperature 1.

Here are three images of the "Diving Belle" all taken with the white balance set at "daylight". I thought her neutral grey colour, and the white of the lighthouse, would show up colour casts well. It was blowing a gale, rocking even a heavy Gitzo, so I hand-held, as 16 stone is harder to move!

1. Sunny: About 2pm with full sun. The scene is as I remember it, with no colour cast. No surprises here - it's what I expected.

2. Cloudy: A few minutes after image 1. Not so much blue, as grey, and again, much as I recall it. The most noticeable difference is in the castle, lower left corner.

3. Sunset: Not as yellow as expected, but it was an hour before sundown. Nevertheless, there is a yellow tinge. This is no surprise to me - bird photography demands a good appreciation of colour temperature in order to portray plumage subtleties accurately for identification purposes. This used to be a big problem with film, but with digital, AWB mostly takes care of it.