AV News 191 - February 2013
AV Competition at Bolton Camera Club
Keith Atkinson
Thursday 15th November 2012 saw our second and final round of the Audio
Visual competition this year. Our guest judges as for the first round in May were
Bernard Longley ARPS and Keith Fisher ARPS DPAGB who work together to
produce award-winning AVs. After each of our entries were shown they gave
their comments and observations, and whilst they were scoring the sequences
they did not reveal the scores until the end. Their comments contained many
useful tips to help our members produce even better sequences in future, in
particular to the type and length of a fade between two images.
They prefer PicturesToExe software to Pro-Show Gold as it does not have any
deterioration to the image during a fade - PSG compresses an image from jpeg
to run and softens the image in doing so. They pointed out it is important to have
a long fade between images to create a third image, and in their sequences they
use layers in Photoshop to save two images and actually create a third image to
use.
Our first sequence was 'A Walk to three Cliffs Bay in the Gower' by Ray
Jefferson, which Bernard and Keith said contained many good images, but the
fades were a bit predictable and needed to be longer and slower. They liked the
use of the map to show placement. Second was 'Born to Die' by Rob Wigley,
which Bernard and Keith recognised as similar to one shown back in May that
had been improved upon. They felt that there was too much zooming in and out,
and some of the images did not benefit from this effect. The images were very
good, but the effect lost the third image. They explained that an AV sequence
should only have a zoom effect used once or twice where the picture needs it.
Third to be shown was 'Casas Colgadas' by Mike Hesp, which Bernard and
Keith said had a good choice of music that fitted with the Spanish theme. This
AV contained text that Bernard said should be shown at the top of the images,
as people at the back of the room could not read as it was 'too low.' They also
felt that sometimes images need to be more 'pacy' to keep up with the music.
They said the author 'had a good go' and admitted it is difficult to take
photographs at that type of event.
Next to be prese