Welcome Back!

I hope everyone has had an excellent summer!  We're back to our regularly scheduled meetings now until June.

We have all sorts of exciting content in this newsletter including…

• August BBQ
• September print competition results
• CPS is now on Facebook!
• Review of the Canon G9
• And assorted news and links

Upcoming October Meeting

Guest Speaker: Greg Gerla , fashion photographer

Print Competition Theme: Bugs

CPS on Facebook

If you are a Facebook achiever you can head on over to the CPS Facebook group and join up for another great way to keep involved in the society.

CPS August BBQ

photos by Jeff Clement

Tino and Julie have hosted an annual BBQ at their place N.W. of Calgary for as long as I've been a member of CPS and I was fortunate enough to be able to make it out there again this year.  As always, the food was absolutely amazing.  I don't know how Tino and Julie pull it off, but their steak beats anything else I've ever had, hands down, no exaggeration!  (Part of me was wanting to Edit the Wikipedia page on the Seven Wonders of the World and sneak it in under the Hanging Gardens of Babylon… It was that good!)   It was a small turnout this year, which was a shame, but those that made it out had a great time despite the somewhat chilly weather.  

Tino has been keeping busy building an incredible model railway in their backyard and he brought out the cars for us.  There are a couple dozen or so cars, all authentic replicas of real trains from his hometown's railway in Sweden, and we spent the early part of the evening watching them cruise around the track and trying our hand at shooting model trains.

Thank you so much Tino and Julie!  

September "Open" Print Competition Results 

Advanced Category 

Advanced Open – Tony Field – Stairway

 Intermediate Category

Intermediate Open  – Ryan Pahl – Tranquility

 Novice Category

Novice Open  – Mike Johnson – Done for the Season

September "Theme" Print Competition Results: "Black and White"

Advanced Theme

 Intermediate Theme

Intermediate Theme – Jeff Clement

Novice Theme

Novice Theme – Mike Johnson – Feather Fall

Upcoming Print Competitions Themes

Various Announcements

NetPhotoClasses.org contacted us regarding web-based photography courses they are running.  

"First, we appreciate this moment of your time. Thank you… NetPhotoClasses.org is pleased to announce 3 highly affordable, totally web-based photography classes, our Basic Short Course, our Basic Photography course and our Advanced Photography course .

Our Basic Short Course is for those who want to improve their photography but may not want to get into a more extensive course, such as our Basic Photography offering. Basic Photography is a more in-depth course covering the basics of digital cameras, extensive work  in composition, lighting, etc.  Our Advanced course builds on the Basic offering and moves into developing portfolios, etc."

The Camera Store is hosting the first annual Digital Photo Expo (Oct 4-5th).  CPS will have a booth at the show.  Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students.  They have a great line-up of speakers so do check out the website.  The Camera Store is also looking for volunteers and you'll get a free admission and chance to win $100 for your time.  If you are interested, contact Gail Gold at the Camera Store (403-680-9935).

The Center for Fine Art Photography (in Colorado) contact us and is accepting submissions to their "Negative Space Exhibition".  Details are on their site and there is prize money…

Review: Canon G9

I've been shooting, primarily, with a Canon 20D DSLR for the past few years and, while I love that camera, there are times where dragging the SLR, myriad of lenses, etc. becomes cumbersome.  Inevitably, whenever I try and travel light, I need whatever is in my camera bag sitting back at home (macro lens, tele, cable release, …).

My wife has a little Canon point and shoot, but that is HER camera (you know how that is).   It didn't really have a feature set that made me happy, and Anji didn't want me leaving it in all manner of weird shooting modes.  So clearly, what I needed was yet another camera!

I'd been eyeing the Canon G series cameras for some time now and finally decided to go for it.  I bought the Canon G9 (incidentally about 1 month later the G10 was released) from the fine folks at the Camera Store.

I'm hooked!  It's wonderful being able to carry a decent little camera with me wherever I am.  I work downtown and lugging my SLR back and forth just never happened.  The G9 is small enough to toss in my bag and leave there.  It makes going out for an impromptu walk-and-shoot at lunch a lot more fun and a lot more spontaneous.

So what else do I like about the G9 other than convenience?

First of all the G9 offers a great opportunity to pimp your camera with accessory grips (holding on to the stock camera, with one hand… difficult), filter adapter + filters, flash shoe protectors, etc.  There is even a 3rd party adapter that lets you attach an old school cable release to this camera.  It became obvious very quickly that, even with the new stick-on grips, I would need a wrist strap so I made my own from some leather and cord (just to add that personal touch)

The G9 has a 12MP sensor, a 6x stabilized zoom lens, knobs for ISO and shooting mode, Like my SLR, this camera has a huge number of knobs and buttons that mean I don't have to go scrolling around in menus trying to change settings like my exposure compensation, focus points, etc.  The G9 is one of few cameras of this size to actually feature a hot shoe (compatible with Canon's line of fancy schmancy flashes).  The body is actually made of metal so the whole unit just feels solid.

Full-crop @ 80 ISO f/5.0 1/100s 

Of course, not everything is rosy with this camera.  As mentioned, if you don't spend money on the 3rd party grips, the camera is really hard to hold one-handed.  It has no wireless cable release.  No exposure bracketing.  No bulb mode.  The screen protrudes a lot and is just asking to get scratched.   Shooting past 400 ISO is very noisy (see below) but at least it is possible.  

Full-crop @ 3200 ISO f/2.8 1/15s handheld (3200 ISO mode forces 2MP image)

I was very pleased to see, however, that it's low light performance for long exposures is excellent.  If you leave the camera at 80 ISO, mount it on a tripod, 10s exposures look very good!  One little snag is that you may want to turn off the stabilizer when doing that because it tends to get confused and trash your image.

The G9 is a bit expensive for a point and shoot (especially if you go nuts, like I did, and buy all the 3rd party stuff).  It's a bit bigger than most competing cameras.  But it's solid, well designed, and it just feels great in the hands.  I love this camera!  That said, I still prefer the ease of control and responsiveness of my SLR so when size and weight are not an issue…

– Jeff Clement

Web Crawl 

Mike sent a link to the Upminster Camera Club in England.  He was intending it to be used for ideas by the executive but, always on the prowl for something… anything… to fill the newsletter with, I scavenged the link to the members photo page.  There is a great variety of work on there without being overwhelming.  Possibly something we should look into for CPS?

And just in case you were thinking that you've got money burning a hole in your pocket, and wanted to offload an obscene amount of it on camera gear, Leica has announced their crazy new Leica S2 37MP camera with a larger than 35mm sensor and whole new lens line-up!  No prices mentioned but I can imagine

That's All Folks!