January 20, 2009
Posted in Blue, Meetings, Online Photos, Tech Coord, iPhoto | Comments off
01.20.2008 Fac Dev: Digital Cameras & The Master Plan
If you weren’t able to make it today’s meeting, you can listen to an audio recording here:
Today, during our Faculty Development meeting, Mr. Joe Kallo graciously took the time to teach us about some of the things we can do to take better pictures on our new Canon digital cameras. Here is a rough summary of what he taught us:
1) AUTO on the top Dial takes control of all settings on your camera
2) Zones or Programs (those little icons on the dial) are presets for closeup, landscape, portrait, or motion shots
3) Look out for Movie Setting on the top Dial. If the camera isn’t behaving right, it may very well be that you’ve accidentally switched it to movie mode.
4) Turn Top Dial to “P” for Programming Settings
A. Turn off Flash by pressing Flash button on the back. The bad thing about small point and shoot cameras is that they’re not as sensitive to light. Make sure you have plenty of light.
B. ISO Settings (equivalent to old ASA settings). Labeled on the back. The higher the ISO the more grainy the photo. The goal is to lower ISO as much as you can. Start with the lowest ISO setting possible and move up slowly until you get a good shot. Trial and error is the only way to find out what works best in your setting. Auto ISO can work okay.
C. 10MP Camera - More pixels than you could dream of! For Best Quality, use SUPER FINE RESOLUTION (i.e. Largest Image Size & Lowest Compression) and then crop and compress in iPhoto or Preview (yes, Preview does let you crop!).
I announced that we have a new sample headset coming later this week that teachers can try. They’ll be an major investment, for sure, but they do come with replaceable parts, which should lower maintenance costs long term.
And speaking of equipment, today we officially introduced our new system for keeping track of peripherals, videos, books, and rubber fruit. This is still in beta, but I think it’s promising. For more details on the design of this system, read this post on the WLL Blog.
I also shared with the dept that there is a new lab-only login for students who forget their passwords. Always type the password in yourself and send the student to see me or Baker to reset password after class. Hopefully this will help you to not lose as much class time in the lab.
Finally, we discussed the master plan and arrived at a pretty good consensus as to what the department is looking for. Thanks to all who participated and stayed until 4:00 pm.
