JISC Digital Media Blog Archive
February 2012

Podcasting and principles of narrative – a case study

Posted by Zak Mensah on Monday 13 February 2012 at 9:48am
Tags: audio | podcasts |

Once you make a few recordings, you generally wish to improve 'how' you go about producing further recordings. I think Paul covers many interesting elements here and I'll be seeing how I can interpret some of this for my own recordings.

Read Podcasting and principles of narrative – a case study, Paul Bradshaw 2012

Our Apprentice – Amy’s Hired

Posted by Zak Mensah on Monday 06 February 2012 at 3:31pm
Tags: news |

Amy provides administrative support to the JISC Digital Media team, her responsibilities ranging from maintaining the 'helpdesk' service, booking travel and accommodation, purchasing equipment to organising training; taking delegate bookings, ordering catering, printing course materials, invoicing and sending joining information to delegates.

Working alongside her colleagues Amy is not only benefiting from their experience, gaining job specific skills, but she is also attending college on a weekly basis where she is undertaking a Level 3 NVQ in Business Administration.

Amy Bryant - the JISC Digital Media Apprentice

Amy said "the team have been welcoming from the start of my Apprenticeship… they are happy to share their experiences and knowledge which I really appreciate, I feel as though I've learnt quite a lot!  When I first started with the team, words such as 'metadata' and 'screencast' didn't mean anything to me but they do now!"

"I've been given the chance to use equipment and 'have a go' at things that I've never done before.  The experience I will have gained by the end of my year with JISC Digital Media will be invaluable and I believe having this Apprenticeship on my CV will certainly impress any future employer.  I'm really enjoying my time here and I'm glad I've had the chance to get to know the team; I have a lot of respect for them.

And what is the best part of working with the JISC Digital Media team?  "No day is the same – I love the variety of work I am doing and have really enjoyed getting to know the team…oh and Monday tends to be 'cake' day!"

JISC Digital Media Director, Karla Youngs says, "Amy, has rapidly gained a good understanding of our service and provided a great deal of support to both myself and the team, she has in the words of the Apprenticeships organisation been 'good for our business.'"  

Exposure compensation - making your snow white

Posted by Nigel Goldsmith on Monday 06 February 2012 at 8:31am
Tags: cameras | photography |

In a 'typical' scene containing a range of tones from bright highlights through to dark shadows, the camera averages out the tones in the scene and selects a shutter speed and aperture to produce an acceptable image containing a good tonal range.

When pictures are taken of very light subjects, such as our seasonal snowman picture, or very dark subjects the camera's built in light meter may be confused and produce images with anaemic blacks or insipid whites. The photographer can avoid this by dialling in an exposure compensation value. To lighten whites the exposure may be increased (+ value) while dark subjects often benefit from underexposure (- values).
Professional photographers often take a number of images of the same subject with slightly different exposure settings and then select the best exposed image. This is known as exposure bracketing.
Illustration of image with normal exposure on left and with +1stop exposure compensation on right

Image by DCMatt used under the terms of the Creative Commons licence