Agenda

• 19:00-19:30: Sign-in and mingling period
• 19:30-20:15: COBA Retrospective
• 20:15-21:00: COBA Celebration Party and Potluck

COBA Retrospective

At the July 2009 meeting, I announced that the August 2009 meeting of Camera Owners of the Bay Area will be the last regularly-scheduled meeting of the user group. When I first started COBA — then called Canon Owners of the Bay Area — back in January, 2002, there were few, if any, user groups focused on the emerging digital camera market. Seven and a half years later, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t own a digital camera or DSLR! And today, there are numerous user groups catering to all types of photographers and subjects. For instance, I plan to attend the SMUG user group held each month at SmugMug headquarters. There’s also several clubs in the San Francisco and East Bay.

During the meeting, I will present a slideshow of highlights from over the years. COBA’s very first presenter, Jim Rose from Canon, will also be on-hand to share some of the Canon products demoed at COBA.

I do plan to hold an annual reunion for COBA members. Be sure to join the COBA Facebook Group to hear about future meetings!

COBA Celebration Party and Potluck

I hope you’re not getting misty-eyed over the prospect of no COBA in the future. Instead of lamenting COBA’s end, let’s focus more on celebrating the past seven years of digital photography and the friendships made with a COBA Celebration Party!

Beth from SmugMug has graciously provided us delectable snacks during each COBA meeting. Let’s pay her (and SmugMug) back by participating in a COBA Potluck. Bring a dessert, snack, or beverage to share with your fellow COBA members.

Meeting Location

COBA is meeting at SmugMug offices in Mountain View.

SmugMug
67 E. Evelyn Ave, Suite 200
Mountain View, CA 94041

http://tinyurl.com/apnhvz

Note: This meeting was originally scheduled to happen in June, 2009 but had to be postponed until this month.

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Richard Ressman takes photos as a volunteer for an infant bereavement organization, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. Parents of stillborn or dying infants need only call Dr. Ressman and he will drive to a local hospital, set up a small studio in a hospital room, take photos and produce prints as well as a CD and DVD that the parents can treasure. At the June 10 COBA meeting, Dr.Ressman, an Area Coordinator and Certified Trainer for NILMDTS, will present information and photos highlighting his experience with Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. Attendees will be given information should they be interested in joining and working with the organization. (www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org/)

Richard Ressman bought his first Nikon camera in 1969 as a Surgical Intern in Chicago and has been taking photographs since. He developed and printed his first photos in his eleven by seven foot Intern’s call room. In 2002, he changed careers from that of orthopaedic surgeon to full-time photographer. Exhibits include three photos in the eMotion Pictures Exhibit sponsored by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons which traveled to San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York, and Madrid, Spain. He had a photo of Bo Diddley in the 2008 eMotion Pictures Exhibit in San Francisco.

He practiced orthopaedic surgery for thirty years before becoming a full-time photographer. He did everything from operating on fractures to replacing arthritic knees and hips. Dr. Ressman recently traveled to Viet Nam to donate all his unused surgical equipment. He got two companies to donate thousands of dollars of equipment, and as a volunteer taught surgical techniques to surgeons in Ho Chi Minh City. His reason: The Vietnamese people suffered enough during the Viet Nam-American war and he wanted to give something back to the Vietnamese people. It was a rewarding experience for everyone involved. He now calls himself a Photosurgeon: that’s an orthopaedic surgeon who aspires to do photography on the cutting edge. Some of his work can be seen on his website www.photosurgeon.net.

How Accurate Are Your Prints?

How happy are you with printouts from your printer or from your favorite print provider? At the last COBA meeting, we had a long discussion about various printers and printing providers. Now’s the time to test and compare them with your fellow COBA members!

1. Go and download the 60MB COBA Test Print Photo from Sam Linville
2. Print an 8×10 photo. Either do it yourself at home or take it to your favorite print shop. Do not perform any color correction yourself in Photoshop.
3. If you are having this printed out, try to get two copies done at different times.
4. Compare with your fellow COBA members, who will be doing the same!

Perhaps after this meeting, you’ll change print providers!

Meeting Location

COBA is now meeting at SmugMug offices in Mountain View.

SmugMug
67 E. Evelyn Ave, Suite 200
Mountain View, CA 94041
http://tinyurl.com/apnhvz

WP-SmugMug

I’ve written a plugin to integrate your SmugMug galleries into your WordPress blog. I will go over the features of WP-SmugMug and solicit feedback for the next version.

• http://tow.com/projects/wordpress/wp-smugmug/

Current Event Photos

Have you seen a photo in the news recently that caught your eye? Why? Was it the technical execution, the subject matter, or artistic value?

Bring the source of the photo (magazine, newspaper, or URL) to the meeting and let’s have a group discussion.

Here are some sample photos:

• Cosmic Hand
• Storm Clouds
• Thirty-Year Old Execution Photo

Meeting Location

As a reminder for those who were not able to attend the February meeting, COBA is now convening at SmugMug offices near downtown Mountain View.

SmugMug
67 E. Evelyn Ave, Suite 200
Mountain View, CA 94041

http://tinyurl.com/apnhvz

Agenda

• 19:00-19:30: Sign-in and mingling period
• 19:30-20:30: Wireless Digital Photography
• 20:45-21:30: Sensor Cleaning

Wireless Digital Photography at Events

What do you become when you combine your digital camera with an Eye-Fi wireless memory card, an EVDO modem and an EVDO/Wi-Fi router? You’ll transform into a walking, talking, snapping, wireless digital photographer! Come and see how this set up can be used during your future event photography jobs: weddings, parties, and conferences.

Information on this setup can be found at http://tinyurl.com/8gnlkg.

Sensor Cleaning

Most recent DSLRS have features to combat sensor dust. Despite their best efforts, these features sometimes don’t completely rid your sensor of dust, prompting you to go in manually to finish the job. JC Dill will be demonstrating several sensor cleaning products, including Dust Aid. If you have any products that you find useful, bring them to the meeting to share!

New Location

After several years meeting at Stanford’s SLAC and Cordura Hall, COBA is moving to where it all started, Mountain View! This month, we’ll be meeting at the SmugMug offices near downtown Mountain View.

SmugMug
67 E. Evelyn Ave, Suite 200
Mountain View, CA 94041

Agenda

• 19:00-19:30: Sign-in and mingling period
• 19:30-20:30: Emerging Trends in Digital Photography
• 20:45-21:30: Camera Bags

Emerging Trends in Digital Photography

Lloyd Chambers will discuss emerging trends in digital photography, followed by practical tips for attaining maximum image quality via appropriate choices in cameras, lenses, tripods, and post-processing, along with tips and tricks and “gotchas”, especially with today’s high resolution digital cameras.  Lloyd will bring his suite of Zeiss ZF lenses, and if time allows, discuss the reasons you might choose alternative lenses to the standard Nikon and Canon offerings.

Lloyd Chambers’s diglloyd.com offers a wealth of material on advanced photographic techniques, and his Zeiss ZF Lenses is a reference work on those fine lenses.   Lloyd is a lifetime photographer, having used a variety of formats including 35mm, 4X5, 6X7 and 617 film, as well as numerous digital cameras.

His web site, diglloyd.com, is targeted at photographers seeking objective and high-quality information which can be trusted to make buying decisions, to learn or enhance skills, or to find best-practices for a smooth photographic workflow. He also is author of the MacPerformanceGuide.com, a site dedicated to choosing a Mac and enhancing productivity.

Camera Bags

If there’s one constant in a photographer’s life, it’s that one can never have enough camera bags. Two and a half years have passed since our last showcase of COBA members’ bags. Be prepared to bring your collection of camera bags to the meeting. Bags come in all different shapes and sizes; some are best used for transportation while others are great to work out of but hard on the shoulders or back. Is there a perfect camera bag out there that can do everything for everybody? We’ll find out!

Bird Photography

Why photograph birds? Birds are beautiful creatures. They are also interesting. They lead fascinating lives. They exhibit exciting behaviors such as predatory, courtship, reproductive, nesting, and more. However, they don’t stay still for long and can be challenging to photograph.

Oliver Klink has tackled various aspects of bird photography over the last few years. His work has progressed from photographing birds for identification purpose, to capturing their challenging behaviors, to finally turning photographs into stunning wildlife art print. You will be dazzled by the story of the Black Crowned heron picking up ducklings, the hummingbirds hugging a backyard fountains, birds in flight at sunset, and many others.

Oliver Klink has a Masters in Physics engineering and an MBA in business. Klink also studied photography in college in his home country of Switzerland. He says, “Giving Nature the ability to speak through my camera is what inspires me.” Oliver travels to many countries to teach workshops and photograph animals in the wild. Oliver’s work has been exhibited at various US and international galleries. His most recent exhibit was at ModernBook Gallery in Palo Alto, California

Creating a Dance Calendar

Marty Sohl has been creating a calendar for the Lines Ballet company for many years. Currently the calendar is sold at all Barnes and Noble bookstores nationwide. This 45 minute presentation by Edward Casati, Marty’s husband/assistant will outline the process that Marty goes through for photographing the dance company, sorting and proposing the photos that can be used in the calendar, processing the photos and submitting them for publication.

1. Introduction
2. Presentation of Materials
3. History with Lines Ballet company
4. How Marty established her relationship with Barnes and Noble
5. A calendar photo session explained.
6. Sorting and selecting process.
7. File output – Quality and specs.
8. Questions and Answers

Holiday Party

It’s the end of the year and time for COBA’s annual Holiday Party! If you can, bring some snacks, food, drink and holiday photos to share with your fellow COBA members. The more the better!

Canon 5D Mark II with Jim Rose

Jim Rose from Canon U.S.A. has received his sample EOS 5D Mark II and will answer any remaining questions about Canon’s latest DSLR.

Political Photography Part II: Jared Polis for Congress

For the past week, I have been in Colorado documenting the final week of Jared Polis’ campaign for a congressional seat in Colorado’s District 2. Following up on last month’s presentation by Mona Brooks, I will share my favorite photos and stories from the election trail. You can view photos of my trip following Congressman-elect Jared Polis on my SmugMug gallery.

For those who are more technically — rather than politically — inclined, I’ll also discuss equipment, what worked and what didn’t work, and what I’d do over had I the chance!

Gadget: What Would You Invent?

We’ve had presentations in the past from COBA members about their favorite gadget, but what about those gadgets that have yet to be invented? We’ll spend the evening discussing what we would love to have in our cameras, in our bags, and on our computers. Who knows, perhaps one day someone — or even you — will invent it!

SmugMug Monthly Contest

I completely forgot what this month’s photo contest will be, so for November, just bring the best photo you’ve taken in the past 30 days. The winner of the most popular photo will get a free 1-year Pro SmugMug subscription.

Location

Cordura Hall 100
210 Panama Street
Stanford, CA 94309

http://tinyurl.com/6ct8ob

Cordura Hall is on the corner of Campus Drive and Panama Street. Park in the lot across the street. Cordura 100 is next to the courtyard between Ventura Hall and Cordura Hall.

Photokina Wrapup

Photokina 2008 is happening right now in Cologne, Germany. We’ll have a recap of the most exciting news from the event in our annual biennial conference recap.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Last month, we spoke about the convergence of still photography and videography. The 5D Mark II, along with the recently-released Nikon D90, are ushering a the era of convergence faster than we may have anticipated.

If you haven’t seen it already, check out the Reverie video by noted photographer Vincent Laforet. Shot using the 5D Mark II, the video demonstrates what use to cost ten of thousands of dollars is now possible with a $2700 camera!

Political Photography

Mona T. Brooks will be on hand to talk about political photography her recent trip to Denver, Colorado, where she was a photographer at the Democratic National Convention. Mona will discuss the following topics:

1. How I got started and what I’ve done the passed 5 years
   • school
   • experience
   • publications and clients
2. My Passion
   • A school assignment got me interested in photographing women in politics
   • How I got to be Obama’s fundraiser photographer in the Bay Area
3. Networking
   • My business relies on word-of-mouth
   • A stranger helped me a job as a Democratic National Convention (DNC) photographer
4. Documenting “A week in a life of a DNCC CEO”
   • The access I got was a documentary photographer’s dream
5. What’s next
   • How I plan to market myself
   • Keep doing what I love

Mona T. Brooks quit corporate America in 2003 and started a new career in photograpy.  She graduated from the Academy of Art University in December 2006 with a BFA in Documentary Photography.  She’s been in 29 issues of San Francisco Magazine since November 2005 and been published internationally in Le Monde, Europa, Augenzeuge, and UK’s Intersection Magazine.  Her clients range from Obama for America to Nokia and Microsoft. You can currently see her images on MUNI buses for ads of Park Merced Apartments.  Her website is http://www.monabrooks.com and she can be found 24/7 on Facebook.

Monthly Assignment: CHOICE

We all have a choice coming up this November, so the October, 2008, monthly assignment will be CHOICE. You can choose Red, Blue, Canon or Nikon, but please choose to bring a new photo for this month’s contest!

The winner will get a free Pro Account on SmugMug for a year!

Windows Home Server (WHS)

Edward Casati of Unbound Photography (www.UnboundPhoto.com) has recently switched to using Windows Home Server (WHS) as his main ‘bulk’ file storage.

He had outgrown his ReadyNAS and decided to build his own WHS with some extra hardware that he had. He’s been pleased with its performance, and his presentation will cover the following topics:

• What to look for in mass storage: Expandability, Non-proprietary storage format, Room for growth, Remote access, flexibility.
• Brief comparison of other alternatives
• Standard features of WHS
• Hardware options
• Remote Access capabilities

Convergence: Videography and Photography

Is the convergence of video and still photography just around the corner? The newly announced Nikon D90 DSLR features a built-in 720p HDTV movie mode, and the upcoming Red Scarlet is a digital videocamera that captures 5MP images at 24fps (with burst modes going to 180fps).

In the future, will we all be using video cameras that take still photos or still cameras that can take video?

We’ll take a look at the current slate of cameras, make predictions, and debate what lies ahead for videography and photography.

Shutterbudd Monthly Contest: Life in the Bay

This month’s contest comes to you via Shutterbudd. The company is hosting a few local art displays in the San Francisco Bay Area and they’re looking for submissions from photographers such as yourself! The theme for this show will be “Life In the Bay” since they are located in the San Francisco Bay Area and will be showing the art in local businesses. They’d like to see images that really reflect the feeling of the Bay Area and of living in and around San Francisco. They are asking for stunning black and white images that evoke any number of emotions and are immediately recognizable as having been taken in the Bay Area.

For the very first show, they’ve chosen two lovely local businesses in Mountain View, California: Sweet Corner and zpizza, both located on bustling Castro Street. They have both expressed an interest in giving back to the artistic community and hosting beautiful art in their spaces, and this is a great chance for everyone to win!

For details, please check out http://www.shutterbudd.com/theshow.

NOTE: For this contest, you can use any prior photo you’ve taken in the past. It doesn’t have to have been taken in the past month.

Location

Cordura Hall 100
210 Panama Street
Stanford, CA 94309

Cordura Hall is on the corner of Campus Drive and Panama Street. Park in the lot across the street. Cordura 100 is next to the courtyard between Ventura Hall and Cordura Hall.