Passion for Printing

Visiting speaker Derek Doar has been involved in photography for over 35 years, printing both Black & White and Colour. He explained to the club how he watched with interest the introduction of both Digital film scanners and Digital cameras, and decided that this could be the way forward, investing in a Nikon Digital Scanner and Epson A3 inkjet printer. Still not won over by digital cameras however, Derek carried on with film cameras until he eventually invested in the Canon Eos 1D MarkII.

On first starting out in with Digital Photography, Derek encountered two main problems, a true black was difficult to attain when printing, and highlights were often burnt out.  This spurred Derek on in pursuit of his first goal, which was to print a good quality A3 size print. 

Digital printing is now capable of printing various depths of black.  All the images Derek presented this evening required a lot of black, and he had printed them on his favourite paper -  Fotospeed Platinum. For less depth of black, Derek recommended Fotospeed Smooth. 

Stunning winter snow scenes prints also proved that burnt out highlights were no longer a problem and Derek proved he had reached his first goal.

Derek currently uses a Canon Eos 1Ds Mark II buy he also had his Canon Eos 1D Mark II converted to Infra-Red – another of Derek’s great loves.  The club were shown lots of images taken in Derbyshire, and the Isle of Harris. The majority of which were colour that had been converted to black/white and duo tone.

Derek developed an original way of converting a colour image to black and white, Using an image of peppers as an example, he demonstrated how to use Channel Mixer to edit tones. He then changed the colour on the fruit by using a hue & saturation layer, keeping the monotone conversion on top.

Another top tip from Derek was how to add contrast to mid tones, to give black and white prints that extra bit of punch. Adding contrast usually affects most of the colours, but modifying the black channel only isolates the mid-tones.

Although he inspired the members with his wealth of knowledge acquired on his digital journey. Derek’s key priority was attention to detail. He urged members to get it right in the camera, using correct camera technique & exposure. 

Club member Richard Senior congratulated Derek on an excellent evening.  We had enjoyed seeing excellent landscapes, which were the results of three of Derek’s qualities: enthusiasm, a sense of humour, and an attention to detail at all stages. Taking pains to get it right in the camera really had paid dividends.