Last night I spoke about Digital Photography at the Manly Warringah Radio Society, a club for ham radio operators. I decided to structure the talk in such a way that it drew parallels between digital photography and ham radio.
First I compare a digital camera to a ham radio station based on a software defined radio (SDR). Just like we use radio antennas to collect ravio waves, a camera lens collects light waves. Both digital cameras and SDRs contain an analogue-to-digital converter to convert waves into a digital signal. They also have digital processors to convert the received signals into a form perceivable by human ears and eyes
I talked about photography’s _exposure triangle_, and linked it back to techniques we use in ham radio when dealing with weak signals. We covered typical camera settings such as focal length, aperture and shutter speed, and discussed some of the trade-offs and special effects they can produce.
Finally, I talked about using a raw file editor to provide a photographer with more freedom in processing an image, and briefly introduced the open source darktable project as an example of such an editor.
A recording of the talk will be available on the MWRS YouTube channel in due course. The presentation slides I used may be found here:
photography_for_hams