Until November 2010, most of the pictures were taken
with a Nikon Coolpix 995 digital camera and cropped, resized and
digitally enhanced, where appropriate, using Paint
Shop Pro 7 (or later, version 8). The term
'selective sharpening' means that
the main subject in the picture has been 'selected' and
a measure of unsharp mask has been applied to the selection,
leaving the background unaffected. 'One step photofix' is
a facility provided in PSP8 which carries out, at a single click,
the processes: Auto colour balance, Auto contrast
enhancement, Clarify, Automatic saturation enhancement,
Edge preserving smooth and Sharpen .
Each of the steps uses preset values for various
parameters. I have used the term 'Manual photofix' for a
similar set of processes carried out individually
and with individually appropriate parameters. In general
I have preferred 'Unsharp mask' to 'Sharpen' in the final
stage.
From November 2010 until April 2012 photographs
were taken on a Panasonic TZ8 but, when this was damaged
it was replaced by a Panasonic TZ30. From May 2013 my Samsung
Galaxy Tab 2 7 was used occasionally when the TZ30 was not
available.
In May 2018 I acquired a Canon EOS 700D with two zoom lenses:
18 - 55 mm and 75 - 300 mm, primarily with the aim of macro-photography. To this end I added a Canon 60 mm macro lens and a ring illumination system.
Some much earlier photographs were taken on a Braun
1A 35mm camera and developed as positive transparencies. Some
of these have been scanned, colour corrected and 'hung' in a
separate 'wing'.
From time to time I return to my collection of transparencies made
from about 1956 on, when I bought my first new camera, a Braun 1a
35 mm. It was not particularly good and many of the pictures
are not very sharp. Mostly I used Kodak Ektachrome film although the
earlier pictures taken in Oxford probably used Ilford film. These
transparencies have been scanned and digitally manipulated with varying
degrees of success.
In 2014 a box of mainly black and white prints and negatives was unearthed from the loft and scanned. They date from school and college days. These are, for the most part, taken on a Kodak 127 folding camera, although some earlier ones were taken on a box camera. Some pictures are 'imported', e.g. studio photographs, prints that Ann Allnutt (née Nickolds) made and picture postcards.
From about June 2014 the gallery was moved from Petro (Windows XP) to Titus (Windows 7). At the same time PaintShop Pro was upgraded to version X6. Later I upgraded further to version X8. This proved unsatisfactory in that it didn't recognise my scanner and I reverted to the use of X6. More recently still my X6 version crashed and I was forced to 'upgrade' to version 2019. In fact I find the new version slightly less comfortable and a little unstable.
A portable copy of the gallery is available on a 16GB Sandisk Flash drive stick.