July Program - Digital Album Design with Ron Greco.

The July program will take place on July 16th at the Kovens Conference Center at 7:30 pm. Our program will be delivered by Ron Greco of Jacksonville, Florida.

Ron's program is for the digital wedding photographer. Ron will take us through a workflow that will streamline your production. He will demonstrate the use of templates to help you design your albums.

This should prove to be an informative and educational program. We hope to see you there.

Last month, I wrote about how the PPGF website has become a portal for potential clients who are searching the internet for photographers. Most surprising was how many people are using the search engines to find a specific photographer by name. I am pleased to report that this trend continues today. Each day, the PPGF site receives hits from visitors who enter in a specific photographer's name.

The PPGF site has also been a great portal for our corporate sponsors. Both Digital Technology Group and Proangle have been loyal sponsors over the last years or two. As a small token of thanks for their continued support I installed a banner rotation system on the PPGF website.

To date, the Proangle banner has been displayed 1310 time with 32 click-thru's to their website. The DTG banner has been displayed 1309 times and has experienced 30 click-thru's.

We have no way of telling but there is a possibility that the click-thru's could have already resulted in sales for our sponsors. If this is the case, it is a good thing for our sponsors to be able to recoup their investment in building a relationship with our association.

As an association, it is in our best interest to support the companies that support us. The banner rotation is one of the ways that we do this. The companies that support us do not do so for purely altruistic reasons. They support us in the hope of receiving a return on their investment. As long as they realize a return on their investment they will continue to support us.

Advertising is a numbers game. The higher the exposure the greater the chance of generating sales. Over the course of a year the banner rotation system that is installed on the PPGF website will deliver hundreds of click-thru's to our sponsor's websites. This exposure is valuable and can be quantified in dollars and cent.

If this small gesture can help those that help us, then I am glad that we did it.

DTG Host Digital Program

Our good friends at Digital Technology are hosting a FREE digital camera show on Wednesday, July 23rd at the Holiday Inn in Hollywood, FL. The program will be held from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm

The agenda for the show is as follows:

• Color Management - Sony
• Live model Shot - Imacon
• Commercial Shot - Imacon
• Output on the spot - Epson
• RIP Workflow - Color Byte

Seminars by:

• Scott Erickson - DTG
• Bruce Wiseman - Imacon USA
• Mic Greyer - Imacon USA

For more information and registration go to http://www.dtgweb.com/events/FtLauderdale_show_7_23.html

June Meeting - Speaker: Bill Lindsey

The June program will take place on June 18, 2003 and is entitled "Photographic Artistic Manipulations in Adobe Photoshop and Studio Artist with a Wacom Pen Tablet" by Bill Lindsay. The program will take place at the Kovens Conference Center and will begin at 7:30 pm

This program is sponsored by Wacom and Pro Angle. Click here to see a gallery of images from the June meeting.

August Meeting - Inter Guild Competition

Please note that the August meeting will be held one week earlier than usual so as to not conflict with the FPP State Convention. The Inter-Guild competition will take place on August 13, 2003. The Inter-Guild Competition is the final competition of the year and will likely decide our association's Photographer of the Year.

Raw Format by Jon Laye

RAW format is simply another way your digital camera can record your photographs, like JPEG and TIFF, we have RAW formats. No, RAW is not a specific file format but a collection of formats created by various camera manufacturers. Kodak RAW files are DCR files, Nikon uses NEF files, Canon has CRW files. Each professional digital camera company has their own RAW format and they are not related.

Unlike a TIFF file that can be read by many different systems, each RAW format is designed to be dealt with by only that companies software and cameras. Each RAW file type has different capabilities and offers different features.

Kodak has an awesome exposure control for a digital camera. This stems from when Kodak was the only game in town and a 2 megapixel digital SLR was $17,000 and did not have an LCD screen. Knowing that photographers in the field would have trouble nailing every exposure using auto exposure, they created a way to capture data outside the typical capture in a digital camera. Using Kodak Photo Desk software the photographer could truly change the ISO of the shot after it was taken and detail that would have been lost was now back. For whatever reason no one else in the 35mm style digital SLR game has been able to match this capability. But with high quality LCD's on the back it's less of an issue.

Typically the RAW formats allow you to convert this proprietary format into a TIFF file and bypass the JPEG compression and loss of data that comes with JPEG shooting. We have seen that JPEG files can certainly provide top quality prints but the bottom line is that no compression or lossless compression offers the best quality. Working with RAW formats also allows you to white balance later or do other things that may be useful in post production.

You really need to examine what features are added by working in your cameras native, or RAW format. Also, RAW files typically take up 3-4 times more space on your card then JPEGs do so keep that in mind. So when maximum image quality is the bottom line, the extra space that RAW formats take up and the time it takes to process these specialized files into standard Jpeg or Tiff files make it worthwhile.

Membership

Ralph Cruz has applied for membership as an Active Member. The Board of Directors has passed a motion that Ralph Cruz be accepted for membership.

Jeff Heiges has applied as an Associate Member. The Board of Directors has passed a motion that the name of Jeff Heiges be published for comment.