Equipment Advantages and Disadvantages Table

What equipment have you used over the past year?	Advantages	Disadvantages	What did I create with it? What features did I use?
(Hardware)  Cannon E350D Camera	Has automatic and manual modes so you can control aperture/shutter speed/focus/ISO settings. It’s very versatile and has a 38mm to 55mm zoom lens; there are also 8 mega pixels available. It’s also got an automatic white balance facility, which compensates for processing problems and redhead lighting colour from the flash kit.	It’s a very expensive piece of kit, and is rather bulky. Therefore it’s quite risky to take on location shoots. It only has a maximum of 8 mega pixels, and professionals would use a minimum of 12.	I created different aperture settings, used manual and auto focus, changed the shutter speed to create light-path pictures and still image shots etc. I used the different aperture/ISO/shutter speed/focus settings.
(Hardware) Silk Tripod	Avoids camera shake, really stable so that it can be used on different surfaces, it’s fairly light so that it’s easily portable and it also has a tilting pivot where the camera goes so that you can create angled shots.	Quite fragile so you can easily break it, they’re really expensive and if you don’t set it up correctly then shots may not be level and could blur.	I created my aperture photos with it to reduce camera shake, and I used the tilting action.
(Hardware) Lastolite paper backdrops	Disposable so you can get a really good background for your photos, and you can get them in a range of colours. (Easy to change around.)	Expensive because you have to replace them when the paper is run out (cut torn or dirty sections away), they rip and get mucky and are very large and heavy.	Used to shoot models on for final product.
(Hardware) External Flash and Flash Kit ·         800 watt Arrilite redheadsx2 ·         continuous lighting Bowens softbox and flash lighting equipment	·         Doesn’t need to be metered, they’re very durable and easy to set up. They are also fairly light so that they are easy to move around and they allow for spot and flood settings. ·         Stops pictures from getting a red/orange hue, they stop the models from getting to hot, and provides complete control over your light. Professionals would use this.	·         Give the photos a red/orange hue, they’re very hot for models to work under and industry professionals wouldn’t really use them. ·         You need to use a flash-meter, they can be difficult to set up because they are professional and can take a long time to set up. If you set them up wrong you could ruin you images.	·         Used the lights to illuminate my models and backdrop when shooting the images for my final product, and also controlled light ratios so that shadows/brightness could be achieved.
(Hardware) Apple Mac	Good for photo management, and are easy to use Photoshop and InDesign on. Really fast working with a large screen for easy editing.	Sometimes trying to do basic things can be much more confusing than on a regular computer, and if you do something on a Mac then sometimes it won’t work on a regular computer- so you can only work on that Mac.	Used for my media work and Photo editing, e.g. Photoshop and InDesign.
(Software) Photoshop CS4	It’s industry standard and really good for use of different tools. You can use different layers so that your work is easily manageable and mistakes aren’t irreversible, you have total control over the manipulation of your images through brightness/ curves/effects/colour use/ contrast etc... You can also make transparent images on Photoshop which can then be overlaid onto other programs such as InDesign, or just layered with other photos on Photoshop.	It’s not good with dealing with large amounts of text, it is rather complicated for a beginner and the files can be really large sizes. There’s also quite a lot of problems with it not recognising downloaded texts, so each time I opened my front cover, I had to go back onto ‘DaFont’, download my text again and use it in Photoshop.	·         Effects- drop shadows ·         Layers- overlapping images and text, bringing forward some layers and sending back some others ·         Text- changing fonts, font size, outlines, colour etc... ·         Image adjustment features- brightness and contrast, cropping, lassoing, magnetic lassoing, transforming selections, shape creation, brushes etc... ·         Save options- saving in JPEG format so images could be uploaded to blog.
(Software) InDesign	Good at dealing with text, you can type on it just as well as typing on Word, it also has ‘text wrap’ and ‘drop caps’ functions which give your articles a more professional look. There are also guidelines that can be applied which are really helpful when creating your columns to write in and controlling the overall layout of the page, and the files are much smaller than Photoshop.	It’s professional so can be complicated for a beginner, but once you get used to it it’s okay to use. It’s not very good with handing images; there are limited capabilities for use of images. (But it is compatible with Photoshop so you can easily quickly edit an image on Photoshop and then place it into InDesign).	·         Controlling pages and text- making specific page sizes, applying margin guidelines, making column guides, importing text, inserting and resizing image and text boxes, fitting images to their boxes and moving them about the pages, applying drop shadows/glows of text and changing the direction/size/opacity/noise of drop shadows, and controlling text elements (font, colour, size, outline, opacity etc...) ·         Colour- using CMYK colour codes, appling drop shadows ·         Images- importing and placing images ·         Exporting projects- inserting a new page with front cover from final project on, exporting the file to a JPEG/PDF so that it could be uploaded to Moodle for marking, and storing in another format so I had various copies and knew it was safe.
(Software) Microsoft Word	Good at dealing with text, easy to use and compatible with most other programs.	Not overly good with images, but pretty decent.	Used everything for development of all coursework.
(Software) Brusheezy.com	Many different brushes that you can use and they’re free to download.	You can’t test them out before download, so you have to go through the effort of downloading them and then putting them onto Photoshop- and then if they’re not right you have to delete them and go find another.	Magazine mock-up front cover.
(Software) DaFont.com	Wide range of fonts that are free to download. Therefore you can easily find a suitable font for the theme of your work.	There’s so many that it can be quite time consuming to search through them all to find the right one.	Used for the masthead of my magazine mock-up and final product.
(Software) Blogger	Good for getting all of your work in one place and showing development.	There’s limited tools to use on the posting, and text/photos are difficult to manoeuvre. Photos are really awkward to set out and often overlay the text and don’t go where you want them to go. Also when you post the work, if you have copied and pasted a table from Microsoft word then the table sometimes goes over the white background of the post and runs over the background pattern- and you can’t make it smaller.	Show skills development, used all features; change fonts, font sizes, upload images, bold, italics, underline etc...

Print Skills Audit

AS Media Production

Technical Skills Audit Print Production

Name: Kate Dow                           Tutor group: 1.33                Date: 4^th April 2011

Photographic Skills

Which of the following photographic features/equipment have you used on a camera before:

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Manual Features	X		Completed this skill every time I used a camera, I used the turning dial that’s at the top of the lens of the camera to bring the object into focus (reduce blur).
Shutter Speed	X		Completed this skill during a media lesson (practical) where we were learning to change the shutter speeds in order to capture movement. We used slow shutter speeds such as 10” to capture light movement in the dark, and fast shutter speeds such as 1/4000 to capture quick movements. (e.g. people jumping into the air.)
Aperture control	X		Completed during a media practical, learned how to increase or decrease the aperture of the camera lens to let in/not allow as much light into it. This can make an image in bad lighting brighter, and also decrease the glare or remove some light if the area is too bright and over-exposed. (Change depth of field.) Because it allows you to change the depth of field (photos above) you can creatively blur out the background to bring the main object in the shot into focus.
ISO Control	X		Completed this skill when we were practicing different types of ‘lighting’ in a media practical. The ISO is how sensitive the camera is to light, I learned that when you’re outside on a summery day the general ISO that you use is about 100 because there’s enough light around for decent photos. Whereas if you’re taking photos of fast moving objects (sports) then you can increase the ISO to 400 in order to capture things in good light.
A tripod	X		Used when I was taking the photos above in ‘aperture control’ to reduce movement and camera shake.
External flash	X		I used an external flash when I did my photo shoot for my final project. There were 2 external flashes either side of my models so that I could create shadows etc…
Self timer facility	X		Haven’t used this on the media course, but I have used it on my own camera from home when I took a group shot because there was no extra person who wasn’t in the photo who could take it.
Light meter		X
Composition grids		X

Photoshop Skills

Which of the following features of Photoshop have you used before:

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Have you ever used Photoshop before?	X		Used Photoshop during media lessons, when I created my induction project, my magazine mock-up and my final project front cover.
Text control	X		I used text control to add enigmas/masthead/sell-lines etc to the front covers of my induction project, magazine mock-up and final project.
Filters		X
Brushes	X		I completed this skill during a media practical; I downloaded and used brushes from ‘Brusheezy’ for the front cover of my magazine mock up.
Layers	X		I used layers when I created my induction project, magazine mock-up and final project front covers. Layers make Photoshop easier to use and reduce your chances of making mistakes, because if something goes wrong and you can’t undo the things you have just done, then you can just delete that layer and start again. Whereas if everything was on one layer, you wouldn’t be able to do that- and it would be much more difficult to use.
Opacity control	X		I used opacity control on my induction project, magazine mock-up, and the front cover of my final project. On my final project I made some of the text on the front cover have different opacities so that the colours weren’t really heavy and solid, that way I could direct attention to the important parts of the front cover by making them stand out more.
Shape creation	X		I used the rectangular shape on Photoshop to create the long slanted banner at the bottom of my front cover final project which holds a sell-line and image, and also to create the skyline above the masthead.
Brightness and contrast control	X		I selected the light bulb on my front cover for final project with the magnetic lasso tool and then used the brightness slider to up the brightness of the light bulb, that way I made it look like it was turned on and it made the front cover more exciting.
Gradients		X
Load selection features		X
Feathering		X
Colour curves adjustment	X		Used to make the colours in the photos of the faces in my double page spread better, and also used to make the image on my front covers look more exciting and brighter to attract an audience.
Resolution setting control		X
Magnetic lasso, polygon lasso tool	X		Used to select the outline of my light bulb in order to enhance the brightness. Also used in my induction project to select parts of the text and make them different opacities/delete sections etc to make it look like it was worn and damaged.
Cropping tool	X		Used to make the photo on the banner at the bottom of my front cover for final project smaller. Also used to reduce the size of the barcode on the front cover, and to make the faces on my double page spread larger. (Cropped in smaller so the proportions of the faces were bigger, and they were all equal distance away into the depth of the page.)
Clone tool	X		Used on my front cover for final project, because my model had things written on his arm in pen, so I used the clone tool to select the pen marks and merge them with the natural skin colour so that they didn’t ruin the picture.
Retouch tool	X		(Also used for the same reasons above.)