Kiama-Shellharbour Camera Club

On March 1, we’ll be displaying and critiquing the photos everyone has taken over the last month for the Photographic Hunt exercise.

Please mount your 6×4 prints on one sheet of cardboard. You don’t need to mount them to international-competition-quality standards - just stick them on a piece of cardboard so they stay together and can be conveniently displayed on the night.

Nikon has recently confirmed the existence of a banding issue with some early-production D200 digital SLRs. Affected cameras can be returned to Nikon for adjustment.

Club members with Nikon D200s are urged to read up on the reported problems, test their cameras and, if necessary, contact Nikon to have the problem fixed. Nikon’s announcement, along with D200 banding articles from various web sites, can be accessed via this page at One Stop Under.

One of our members brought the following recall notice in for the information of club members:

Nikon has announced a worldwide voluntary recall of around 710,000 camera batteries which were sold with the D100, D70 and D50 digital SLRs between August 2004 and October 2005.

The affected batteries can cause short circuits, overheat, or in the worst possible case catch fire, though Maxwell Optical - the distributor of Nikon products in Australia - says no such incidents have been recorded locally.

Maxwell is asking owners of genuine Nikon EN-EL3 batteries with a 4-digit production lot number beginning with 44A, 46A, 47A, 48A, 49A, 4AA, 4BA, 4CA, 51A, 53A or 54A to contact Maxwell to determine if their battery is one of those being recalled.

Owners of affected batteries will be provided with a replacement battery at no cost.

For more information, see Maxwell’s web site.

We’ve changed the way we handle our Small Print category in club competitions to bring it more into line with other clubs, and to accommodate the growing trend towards digital photography.

As before, there is only one grade of Small Prints (i.e. there’s no A and B grade). The original image must be the work of the competitor and photographic in origin. Small Prints can be commercially processed or processed at home, and manipulation is allowed unless the competition topic imposes specific restrictions (e.g. photojournalism, nature, etc). The Small Print category includes both colour and monochrome prints in the one section.

Small Prints may not be larger than 48 square inches (309.7 square centimeters) in any aspect ratio - in practice, that means print sizes up to 6×8″ are OK. Mount sizes should be no larger than 80 square inches, which usually means 8×10″ for traditional aspect ratio prints. The maximum thickness of mounted photos is 6mm.

Competitors entering the Small Print section may not enter colour or monochrome prints in A or B grades, but may still enter either one of the Slides sections. You may enter up to two prints in the Small Print section of each competition. The annual winner of the Small Print section point score will be given the choice to be elevated to another grade if so desired.

That sounds like a lot of legalese, but really we’re just bringing the Small Print section into line with our other competition sections.

A handout listing the full competition rules is available at club meetings.

For those unable to attend the Feb 1 club meeting, we handed out the details for our photographic hunt assignment. The idea is to take photographs of a group of set subjects over the next month, and then bring the finished prints to the club meeting on March 1 for display and discussion.

• The object is to photograph any or all of the six subjects.
• Prints need only be 6×4 format mounted on one sheet of cardboard for display.
• Slides may be taken if preferred, please bring six for screening.
• Please bring your prints or slides to the March 1 meeting for display and critique.
• You have one month to complete the Photographic Hunt, please join in and have fun with your photography.

The subjects:

1. Animal, Bird or Insect: A photograph of one or more living animals, birds or insects photographed in their natural environment.
2. Boats, Messing About In: A photograph of one or more persons engaged in some activity involving a boat or boats. The person(s) will be either in or adjacent to a boat. Windsurfers, surf skis and surfboards are excluded.
3. Man or Woman at Work: A photograph of a man or woman involved in their occupation.
4. Night Lights: A photograph taken at night featuring lights.
5. Reflections: Any photograph of reflection(s) which make an interesting picture. The reflections may range from figurative to abstract.
6. Self Portrait: Take a photograph of yourself in any situation.

If you like camping and photography, this is the trip for you! We’ll be heading up to Namadgi National Park (near Canberra) camping from February 18-20. Not only can we assure you of excellent photographic scenery, we can also guarantee many good laughs.

More details to come.

Our February 15 club competition has the subject of Nature Photography. This is your chance to show us what you learned from Richard Fackender’s excellent Nature presentation back in September!