Hi Everyone
 
I hope all of you who were able to be there enjoyed our Christmas party earlier this week.
 
At our January meeting, as I mentioned in my email about next year’s program, we plan to have some fun experimenting with light painting. This means there are a few things you need to bring with you to that meeting. I’ll send another reminder about this nearer to the time, so don’t worry if you lose this email.
 
First and foremost, you need to bring your camera! Make sure your batteries are charged and bring a spare if you have one - we’ll be doing long exposures which chew through your battery. Then, if you have a tripod, that will be helpful, although we will have a few tripods available to be borrowed if you don’t have one of your own (I have one somewhere, but who wants a sharp image, really?). If you have any interesting sources of light such as coloured torches, then please bring them along - we’ll have some things to play with, but the more variety we have the more fun we can have.
 
Depending on the weather, we will probably try to do this outside. Whether we are inside or out, it would be best if you came in dark clothing, If we go outside, then that dark clothing really needs to also be warm clothing.
 
I don’t know how many of you have previous experience of light painting. Kevin has found some introductory videos that give you the basic ideas and show you people doing the business. These might help you in your preparation for January. We’re not expecting everyone to produce masterpieces, but we are hoping that everyone can have fun.
 
If you’ve never done light painting before, you might not be sure how to set your camera. So, if you’re a complete beginner like me, then the best starting point is to set your camera into manual mode and set a low ISO (100 or 200) a medium aperture (f/8 or thereabouts) and a shutter speed of between 10 and 25 seconds. That will be a good starting point and after that it’s all about experimenting and seeing what settings produce images that you like the look of.
 
Here are the links to the videos: