Quandrary!

Oh Fuji, what have you done???

Thrown a spanner in my works, that’s for sure *sigh*

I was almost settled on the S5600 over the S5700 when I found that there was a brand new S5XXX camera just released – the Fujifilm Finepix S5800 which is SOOOO tempting! It’s supposed to be available from October 2007 but the first ones are now appearing on Ebay and a seller has it for sale on Amazon as well.

It’s around the £150 mark at the moment but I’m waiting to see what price it will be from Amazon itself a/. because it will be post free and b/. I do value Amazon’s customer service. I bought an Archos Gmini MP3 player last year and it went wrong within a week – I was able to print out a personalised returns label from the Amazon site, send the faulty player back and subsequently received a brand new one in less than ten days.

So, not surprisingly, I’ve put my new camera plans on hold for a little while so I can save up the extra cash to get the S5800

Not feeling QUITE so down :-)

My disappointment at my T189 marks is now mellowing and it’s certainly NOT going to stop me taking photographs! *lol*

Having a Fuji camera, I signed up with the MyFuji website and registered my camera. They send monthly emails and stuff, run competitions and forums, have useful Photography tips etc. Recently I received an email offering a 15% discount on Fuji refurbished cameras It’s valid to the end of the month and I have some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket so what to buy? I think a bridge camera would be the best option and, hopefully, nothing too bulky or heavy that would make it difficult to carry around. So …

Fuji Finepix S5600 Zoom

OR

Fuji Finepix S5700 Zoom

(Sorry Georgy, I really can’t afford a proper DSLR – in fact, I think it would be wasted on me to be honest!)

Decisions …. decisions …. decisions ….

Feeling a bit down …

I’ve had to think very long and hard about writing this blog post because I definitely have some conflicting feelings about my T189 results.

The OES (Overall Examinable Component) mark I received for the ECA was 70/100 which was rather disappointing because I was really hoping to get a mark between 75 and 85. From feedback received on OpenStudio and on Flickr, I got the impression that my images were good and some were very good so only to get ‘Achieved’ for the visual and technical marks on my ECA panel was a bit of a let-down

I know I didn’t master some of the more involved techniques in Elements 5 and that seems to have impacted on my Technical Awareness mark but I simply didn’t have the extra hours required to invest in such a complex program on top of the course work and the time for photo assignments. I also use a trackball due to RSI which is hardly an ideal tool for delicate image editing and I didn’t have spare cash to buy a graphics tablet

So here are my marks:

Part 1a – Visual Awareness – Achieved
Your images showed a satisfactory level of visual awareness. Your panel of images had one or two images with good visual impact and showed some evidence of imagination and creativity. Some of your images communicated their intention clearly and made use of ideas taught in the course about framing, lighting, and decisive moments. About half of the images in your panel could be improved upon and the best way to develop your visual awareness is to keep taking pictures and looking at them critically.

Part 1b – Technical Awareness – Achieved
Your panel of images demonstrates a reasonable level of technical skill. Several of your images are appropriately exposed and sharp, and demonstrate your control of the camera. If you have edited your images then your mark may reflect problems with the colour, pixelation, or other digital artefacts. A common problem for beginners to photography is the over-saturation and over-sharpening of images. The technical standard that you have reached is satisfactory and with practice your technical skill will improve. You may find it helpful to review the course and think about how your images could be improved from a technical point of view.

Part 2 – Written Component – Well Achieved
Your answers to the written component of the ECA show a sound understanding of photographic techniques and aesthetic considerations. You have written appropriately about your images and used some of the terms introduced in the course, and demonstrated a developing understanding.

Since my next course is about to start and my course materials will probably be arriving tomorrow, I’m going to put T189 away for now and just continue snapping away with my little compact camera. I’m not even sure if it’s worth investing in a new camera so I may put that idea on the back burner for a while. I did enjoy T189 and I did enjoy taking photographs for the assignments and ECA, I did get a pass after all and it’s not a bad one, but somehow I feel rather flat and disillusioned today … sorry, but that is honestly how I feel right now. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow – it is my birthday after all

Goodnight folks.

Moving onwards and upwards

Today, we got up at the unearthly hour of 5.15am on the final leg of our journey home, having delivered daughter safely to college up in Leicestershire over the weekend, and arrived back safely just before lunch. Hubby fired up the computer to do some printing and then I downloaded all the (mostly) junk emails before checking in on my OU First Class desktop. I have to admit that it came as a bit of a shock when I double clicked on T189 Feedback which sported a red flag only to be told that I’m not allowed to perform that function

So I dashed over to my StudentHome page to see if any results were there … it appeared not. I’m not exactly sure when the T189 results will be released but it’s possible that the OU is being extra-scrupulous with the marking since it is the first presentation of the course and they want to set an effective benchmark for future presentations. However, on checking a little later, I found the following announcement on my T189 course details page:

Your course result should be available by Thursday 13 September 2007

So it’s not long to wait now for students of the first presentation of T189!

I confess I’ve not taken that many photographs this summer, apart from ones of our daughter, so I really need to get going again now that autumn is here. There’s that faint bonfire-smoky tang to the air that heralds the ’season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ and the spiders are out in force, spinning their webs across anything available. It also heralds the fast approaching excitement of my next course – A215: Creative Writing, a sixty point Level Two course, and a fascinating challenge.

So good luck to all T189-ers for fantastic results

The End is Near

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

As the title of this blogpost says, it’s nearly all over now for the first presentation of T189

The announcement has appeared on my StudentHome page saying that the course website will be closing on August 31st and I imagine that we will lose access to OpenStudio at around the same time. So I went into OS and systematically saved each ‘week’ page to ensure I would have a record of the images I submitted for each week. Then I deleted each week’s images one after the other so my section of OS is now empty.

After that I went to the T189 website and clicked the link which allows each student to save a webpage containing all the images they’ve submitted to OpenStudio together with the comments made by other students on each one. That was a nice feature introduced in response to student requests so the course team/web developer were obviously listening to us.

The folder I created containing the nine OpenStudio pages with their image thumbnails together with the ‘digest’ version which contains the images at full size (480 pixels was the largest dimension allowed) was a fraction over 4Mb in total so not a huge download. It also means I can keep a good record of my OS contributions and comments for future reference

At the beginning of next month, the OU’s housekeeping department will (metaphorically speaking) be moving into OpenStudio and the website, cleaning and dusting and tidying it up ready for the October intake of new students, all eager and excited at the prospect of studying digital photography for ten weeks Good luck to all of them!

Many ex-T189 students remarked that they are feeling a bit ‘lost’ now that the course has finished. It takes a degree of discipline and dedication to study an Open University course and T189, despite only being a 10 week course, is no exception. Some already have their next course lined up, some were doing other courses alongside T189 and are continuing to study, others (like me) are still undecided and have yet to commit themselves.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog and, if you decide to take T189, I promise you’ll find it interesting, challenging and inspiring

T189 Message Board open!

Why not visit the T189 Digital Photography Unofficial message board where past, present and prospective students can get together. Ask questions, answer questions, post links to useful or inspirational website or just chat

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

We’d love to see you!

Growing!

Well, it’s just over 24 hours since I last posted on this blog about the new board:

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

and the stats show that the board is definitely growing

Community Time: 17/07/07 16:46

Founded: 14/07/07

* 55 Avg visits per day
* 27 Posts per day
* 56 Posts in last 24 hours

* 217 Total visits
* 106 Total posts
* 28 Total topics
* 16 Total members

which is very gratifying

It’s probably the wrong time of year to launch a new board – summer is notoriously slow in messageboardland – and it may gain new members when the official T189 First Class forums close in about six to eight weeks time. Nevertheless, it’s there for any T189-ers who would like to keep in touch and anyone who is thinking of studying T189 in the future.

It’s also worth popping in to the Flickr group and checking out the discussions:

T189 OpenUni 2007

where students are posting links to their final ECA images. Those I’ve looked at have been fabulous

Now, if I can persuade my daughter that a walk would be a good idea, I hope to be going out in the slightly cooler late afternoon soon with my camera to hand. There’s no guarantee I’ll come back with any shots – she likes to keep moving – but you never know!

Is it inevitable?

I ask because I announced the new T189 message board on the First Class T189 Cafe forum at lunchtime and Yuku promptly keeled over

Well, not exactly keeled over but certainly started to run like treacle …

It’s a bit like watching paint dry as you wait for the board to FINALLY appear on your screen, threads aren’t being updated, replies are not appearing and I’m starting to feel very disheartened

But a search on the Yuku support board proved that it’s happened before and, if I know message boards, it will happen again. So I’m determined not to get too upset about it and it does seem to have improved a bit as the afternoon has passed.

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

Considering that I only created the board on Saturday, tinkered with it and got it set up yesterday, posted the link here on my blog and now the announcement is also in the Red Cafe forum on OU First Class, these aren’t bad stats

Founded: 14/07/07

• 32 Avg visits per day
• 18 Posts per day
• 41 Posts in last 24 hours

• 96 Total visits
• 52 Total posts
• 18 Total topics
• 8 Total members

 

Like Meldrewman says:
“I hope this forum goes from strength to strength – it’s entirely up to us – can’t blame the OU for this one!”

So why not come along and check it out?

When it’s all over …

… it’s not unusual to feel slightly down and loose-endish. I’ve come to expect this at the end of a course so I wasn’t surprised when today’s rather gloomy and damp weather seemed to mirror my mood. Sometimes there’s this odd aimlessness which follows the final exam or submission of an ECA and it might take a day or so to adjust to ‘normal living’ again

Many students will already have decided to continue with their Open University studies and might even have registered for their next course. Some, like me, might be taking the summer off because of family and work responsibilities with a view to possibly signing up again in the autumn. Others might just have done one single course and don’t intend to do any more. That’s one of the great things about being an OU student

One of the best things about studying with the Open University is the amazing sense of camaraderie and mutual inter-student help that marks many of the course conferences. Admittedly, some courses have very quiet conferences but some, like T189, are characterised by lively exchanges and extensive information sharing. Many strong friendships can be forged that transcend the course itself. So it’s hardly surprising that some students are now posting messages of thanks which include rather plaintive questions about how long the course conferences will be accessible on First Class. The usual time is six to eight weeks after the course finishes but I’ve noticed that the T189 conferences have become noticeably quieter towards the end of this week.

So I decided to create a message board which past T189 students can use after our course conferences are closed. It’s not restricted to those who have already studied T189 – everyone is welcome whether they’ve signed up for the second presentation in October or are thinking of taking the course at some time in the more distant future.

I’ve tried to cover all topics and I’ve added a Suggestion Box forum so that anything I’ve overlooked can be pointed out, discussed and (hopefully) implemented. There’s also an Informal Course Feedback forum where students who have taken part in the first time presentation (which wasn’t entirely trouble free …) can offer their suggestions for improvements and additions to the course team for future presentations. Please be courteous and constructive in your comments – this is not a place for disputes.

T189 Digital Photography Unofficial Forum

There are lots of free message board systems out there but I opted for Yuku which, although still in beta, does offer a lot of options. I’ve deliberately made the board open to everyone so you don’t have to register for a Yuku account to read and participate. Hopefully it will be easy to use …

Note that this is an UNOFFICIAL board which is not affiliated to the Open University in any way. Any views expressed within the forums are those of the original poster. Please treat others with respect and courtesy.

See you there

Success, frustrations and ideas

I’m writing this offline using Notepad because it’s been a MOST frustrating day. Since midmorning today, my ISP (Tiscali) has been repeatedly timing out, dropping my internet connection, suddenly dying but apparently not being disconnected, and returning ‘Remote server did not respond’ messages. I confess I muttered more thana few mild imprecations at the distant server (images of Dastardly and Muttley float into my mind here … ) The thought of these problems continuing through the weekend was not a pleasant prospect. I even resorted to my reserve 56k dialup connection to visit Tiscali’s homepage (oh, it’s so painfully slow after broadband …  ) and check on server status. This morning it admitted rather grudgingly to only 80% efficiency on its internet connection but by this evening it was claiming 100% …. yeah, right!

So, with only 72 hours until the T189 ECA deadline, I decided I had no choice but to get my skates on. Cue a frantic afternoon juggling images in slideshows, editing and polishing the written answers, converting my Works word processor document into the requisite .doc format which can be read by the Assessors, spellchecking and proofreading, formatting and zipping ……. finally, at exactly 21.23 this evening, I managed to submit the T189 End of Course Assessment. It took me two reboots and many attempts to connect but eventually Tiscali obliged by squeezing out ten minutes online for me … before dying again I printed out a hardcopy of the written part of the ECA then also backed the whole lot up to a CD AND Goliath, our external hard disk, just because I’m paranoid.

One unfortunate student reported on the T189 conferences this week that her laptop had been stolen and she hadn’t backed up for three weeks So she’d lost the bulk of the work she’d done on her ECA together with all those irreplaceable images taken over these three important weeks of the course. It is a painful but salutory lesson – not only to suffer the indignity and trauma of someone breaking into your house but also the loss of property that holds data far more valuable than the thieves could have imagined. Fortunately it looks like she will get an extension for submitting her ECA due to exceptional circumstances. She’s also had her laptop replaced and is now gearing up to tackle the final stretch.

Now I can’t get a squeak out of Tiscali so I’m giving up until later…..

Just one final quick footnote: I’ve just registered the domain name www.t189digitalphotography.co.uk and I was thinking of creating a simple ‘portal’ website where information, links, useful resources, websites, blogs etc can be collected together for the purpose of helping future T189 students. I also thought a message board might be a good idea so T189 -07E students can keep in touch and give help and advice to folks thinking of taking the course. What do you think? Any ideas … suggestions … brickbats …. I need some feedback here