Monthly Meeting Minutes - February

Date: Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Place: DFW Technology Conference Room

Attendants:

Dennis Chin 秦 凱 Advisor
Charles Lai 賴禎添 Member and Advisor (03/2006)
Mrs. Lai 賴太太
Walt Hsu 徐啟祥 Treasurer and the 4th President
Fang-Li. Hsu 蔡芳理 Member(2003)
Su Li 蘇 力 Board Member and the 5th President
Lin Hwang 廖玲芬 Secretary to the President (03/2006)
Howard Lie 李孝烈 Member and previous Board Member
Tina Huang 黃金子 New Member (02/2007)
Rick Pang 龐 勇 New Member (02/2007)
Richard Chen 陳明昌 New Member (02/2007)
Victor Sheng 盛 力 New Member (02/2007)
Deming Zhou 周德明 New Member (02/2007)
Lei Zhou 周 磊 New Member (02/2007)
Windus Wong 黃進昌 Guest
Tony Xu 徐 翔 New Member (02/2007)
Lei Wang 王 蕾 Member(2006)
Yiqian Wang 王毅茜 Member (11/2006)
Greg Hoh 何英富 Board Member (04/2006)

Treasurer Report: Walt Hsu reported the balance of NTAPA’s current account status.

Individual Reports:

Dennis Chin – 1922 born in Beijing, then moved to Shanghai, to Taiwan, finally to the US. Photography history is from17 till now. Major career: 35 years services at Columbia Television Corp. Studied in the US in Movies and Advertisement. Focused on photography again about 20 years ago.

Charles Lai – A retired doctor from Taiwan. Realized money making is unlimited; but life is very limited. So he decided to devote the rest of his life to photography 15 years ago before retirement. At the earlier days, though he had to take care of 200 to 300 patients daily, he still made time for himself to take photos. This tells us that as long as you are determined to do something, no matter how busy you are, you will be able to do it. “Busy” is nothing but an “excuse” in many occasions. Because of the time pressed(just came back mid-night last night), Charles will share his work in next monthly meeting.

Mrs. Lai – Charles Lai, Dennis Chin and she, three of them just came back midnight last night from another one-week snow photographic trip from Montana. She shared her work of this trip in the meeting. In the past years she accompanied Charles Lai during each photographic trip so that she learned a lot as an “Assistant” to Charles.

Walt Hsu – The 4th term of NTAPA President. Has over thousands of his digital photos taken since 1996 now posted on http://flickr.com/photos/walthsu. This is one of the good websites to keep and share individual’s photos, free for general public with limited space, $2 a month for unlimited photos. His son and some other young friends that he knows are also studying arts at school and share their work posted on the web. [Suggested to give their web addresses so that we can link them to our blog and let our members to explorer their creative works. Also suggested to arrange a half day trip to Deep Ellum downtown Dallas to take shots at the colorful and different styles of architecture in March.]

Tina Huang – An independent Accountant. 18 years in Chicago / 5 years in LA / a few months in Dallas. Dallas is the best in terms of traffic and thus became her new hometown. Her “Office Home” (more office equipment than home furniture) in Garland, a big two story house located at a nice view backyard of others. [Suggested the NTAPA to have another half day visiting her unique house and have our next meeting there for different feeling.]

Deming Zhou – Director Electrophoresis Instruments Supply & Technique Support at Arapaho Richardson. Had collected some old film cameras displaying at his home. Attending our New Year Party early these months and willing to be a member of NTAPA.

Victor Sheng – Were once colleagues with Li Su in IT field. Now shifted to photographic coloring engineering. Helped to readjust our projector back to its best color settings at the beginning of the meeting. [Suggested to have a presentation on photography colors for NTAPA monthly meeting in future.]

Lei Zhou – A new member to NTAPA, but an experienced photographer on taking bird’s photos. Shared his recent works of all kinds of birds in the meeting. They are all quality photos. [Suggested to have a presentation on “how to take bird shots” in a monthly meeting.]

Windus Wong – From HK, learned all photography many years ago. [Suggested to share some of his work in next monthly meeting.]

Yiqian Wang – A mother photographer shared her photos on lovely babies and little children. Good works.

Greg Hoh – NTAPA welcomes everybody and is willing to put a link in the Association’s blog to each individual’s personal photo website pages so that each member has a chance to explorer his/her photos to other members and also can view other members’ works. This is a good and easy way for mutual learning.

Presentation:

Basic Camera Knowledge and Skills (by Li Su)

Gave a brief but to the point explanation of different modes on general digital cameras of all brands, covering, Shutter speed, Apparatus, ISO, white balance, how, when and why to use a particular mode, etc... Advisors Dennis Chin and Charles Lai also added some comments on critical subjects. This 30-minute oral presentation was attractive and informative to most new hands.

Li Su, who works very hard on photography, is one of the best examples that learn and improve a lot in the past three years as a member of NTAPA.

Photo Sharing:

Walt Hsu – On Portraits
Mrs. Charles Lai – On Snow scenes
Lei Zhou – On Birds
Yiqian Wang – On Babies

Conclusion:

Meeting started on time at 7:00 PM and concluded at 9:40 PM. All participants had a relaxed in mood but serious in pursuing photography evening, each attendee felt learn something, especially the novices.


p.s. Key Terms in Li Su’s Presentation:

Aperture - A device that controls the amount of light admitted through an opening. In photography and digital photography, aperture is the unit of measurement that defines the size of the opening in the lens that can be adjusted to control the amount of light reaching the film or digital sensor. The size of the aperture is measured in F-stop.

F-stop - In digital photography and digital video recording, F-stop refers to the international standard sequence of numbers that express relative aperture. F-stop is the "lens focal length" divided by the "effective aperture diameter." The smaller the F- number, the greater the amount of light that passes through the lens. Each change of F-stop halves or doubles the image brightness as you step up or down.

Focus Length - In digital photography and digital video recording, the focal length refers to the size of the image and angle of field of view as seen by the camera through the lens. This is the center of the lens to the image pickup device.

Shutter - In photography and digital photography applications, the shutter is the device on the camera that opens and closes to control how long the focal plane is exposed to light. On a video camera there is no physical shutter, instead the camera CCD samples light for an appropriate length of time, and then shuts off.

CCD - Short for charge-coupled device. An instrument whose semiconductors are connected so that the output of one serves as the input of the next. Digital cameras, video cameras, and optical scanners all use CCD arrays.

Focal Plane - It represents the area in a camera where light is focused. In digital cameras and digital video recorders the CCD rests on the focal plane.

Shutter Speed - In photography and digital photography the shutter speed is the unit of measurement which determines how long shutter remains open as the picture is taken. The slower the shutter speed, the longer the exposure time. The shutter speed and aperture together control the total amount of light reaching the sensor. Shutter speeds are expressed in seconds or fractions of a second. For example 2, 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000, 1/2000, 1/4000, 1/8000. Each speed increment halves the amount of light.

White Balance - Abbreviated as WB, white balance is a function of a digital camera used to compensate for different colors of light being emitted by different light sources. In digital photography the term is generally used to describe a function of a digital camera that allows you to calibrate the device to correctly display the color white. Once this calibration has been done, the camera should then display other colors correctly as well.

ISO – Photographic film’s sensitivity to light, its “film speed“is described by ISO 5800:1987. Hence, the film’s speed is often referred to as its “ISO number.”

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from national standards bodies. Founded on February 23, 1947, the organization produces world-wide industrial and commercial standards, the so-called ISO standards.

For more details on tech terms, please refer to the documents on training/presentations from last year in the NTAPA Yahoo Group File area.