The redesign of the Flickr website includes a new layout for the photostream with a greater space and focus on images, as well as a new Activity Feed, showing users’ activity and recent uploads by friends.

Flickr is not only popular for individuals wishing to upload, store and share photos and video, but it is also a great place to find images and video for you to use in your own projects. We suggest you search for media using the advanced search options for finding only Creative Commons licensed media. This will let you explore millions of photos and video that you can use.

Our Image for Internet Image Searching tutorial will help to get you started with using third-party media and provides guidance on the legal use of materials.

The response from our Twitter followers (you can follow us at @jiscdigital) has been cautiously optimistic with concerns around usability. Once the dust has settled it will be interesting to see if the teething problems and changes make for an improved service.

1. To get the most out of your camera you should familiarise yourself with its controls and features and take a series of test shots to establish the optimum capture settings for each project.
2. If your camera moves while taking a photo the subject may be slightly blurred, this is known as ‘camera shake’. If you need to hand hold your camera or don’t have access to a tripod or copy stand, you can reduce shake by using shutter speeds slower than the value of the focal length of the lens being used. For example, with a 50mm lens, the slowest shutter speed you should use is 1/50th second.
3. The ‘auto focus’ (AF) function on your camera works best with defined textures and contrast. If your main subject lacks texture your camera may struggle to find focus. If there is an area of detail close to the main subject you can use it to check focus before the image is re-composed and the picture is taken.  With static set-ups (e.g. using a tripod) an object with high contrast texture such as a printed page can be placed on the subject to check focus before the picture is taken.
4. If a large aperture is used the depth of field is shallow and accurate focus is critical, with a smaller aperture the depth of field is greater and more of the image appears sharp. If overall image sharpness is important or focus errors are common try manually selecting smaller apertures - between f8 and f16. This short video explains the role of the aperture in altering the depth of field
5. Most digital SLR cameras have a physical dial or a software menu option to select different focus settings. The ‘M’ setting lets you take full control of focusing. ‘S’ locks the focus when the shutter button is partly depressed or a dedicated AF button is pressed. ‘C’ locks focus to an object selected by partly depressing the shutter release, the camera then tracks the focus as the subject moves.

   

6. Image noise is a random camera-generated texture not present in the original scene. It normally becomes apparent as the ISO (the camera’s sensitivity to light) increases or the shutter speeds get longer. Image noise can normally be eliminated by increasing the light levels and reducing the camera’s ISO setting.
7. If you use your camera to digitise objects, try to make full use of the camera’s sensor by ‘filling the frame’. If the object is framed tightly, more of the photo sites on the camera’s sensor will be used to record detail. However, care should be taken with lenses that introduce image distortions (e.g. wide angle lenses). Zoom lenses can help to frame an image in the viewfinder, on a copy stand the framing can be adjusted by raising or lowering the camera.
8. White balance’ is a digital correction for the colour bias produced under different light sources.  Each light source has its own unique colour quality (colour temperature), video and stills cameras can identify and neutralise (white balance) this colour bias to produce a ‘neutral’ image. Cameras offer settings for familiar light types such as incandescent, flash, daylight, cloud, shade, and fluorescent, and the default auto white balance (AWB) , some cameras can also measure the colour temperature manually using a white or grey reference.  An incorrect white balance setting can result in an ugly colour cast over the image which can be hard to remove.
9. The most commonly used artificial photographic light sources are: flash, tungsten and fluorescent. Side lighting can emphasise the texture of an object and give character to a picture. If your subject is glossy and flat the reflections should not be seen at the camera position. Reflectors can be used to ‘bounce’ light into shadow areas; these can be purchased from photographic suppliers or readily improvised from pieces of white card or paper.

   Image on left taken under bright sunlight, image on right taken under bright sunlight with collapsible reflector on shaded side to 'fill' shadows.

10. If the camera is being used as part of a digitisation project the optimum capture settings should be recorded in the ‘good practice manual’.

Further resources

• Light Sources for Still and Moving Images
• Taking Pictures under Available Light

Because there is now wide enough support to use SVG, it is now mainstream and is being more widely used.

The benefits of SVG are:

• Scalable - as SVG is vector based, it can change size and scale from very small to large without a loss in quality
• Interactive - individual parts of an SVG image file can be selected or react to an input including hyperlinks
• Animations - in conjunction with interactions, the SVG can animate in various ways
• Metadata - major search engines now support the use of SVG metadata allowing more contextual use of images and potentially improved accessibility

The key features of SVG listed above should give you an idea of why SVG is pretty exciting. I recently worked on a project where I wanted to show a surgeon at an operating table and allow the student to press parts of the image to find out more about the scenario. I had to use a combination of PNG image graphics and jquery to provide the interactions - this is slow and limited to one size fits all. Using SVG I could reap the advantages of scalability to work on ANY device, animate parts of the image, reduce file size, make it easy to update and improve accessibility with the metadata features. Other uses of SVG that I have recently seen include drawing logos and graphics such as social media icons.

For people wanting to produce interactive resources I think SVG has the potential to become part of your toolkit.

Css-tricks have produced a step-by-step introductory guide ‘Using SVG’ that will walk you through creating your very own interactive SVG image.

You can have a play with an online SVG editor hosed on Google code called svg-edit.

If you create an SVG project please share with us either in the comments or email zak.mensah@bristol.ac.uk as i’d love to see your projects in action.

Further resources

• SVG entry on wikipedia
• Using SVG For Flexible, Scalable, and Fun Backgrounds, Part I
• Mathletics - Maths examples
• Demos using raphael js

Upon arrival I nervously navigated the car down a rather steep, snow covered driveway with Steve’s assistance and once inside, I helped to set up the lighting, camera and tripods. It was interesting to learn about lighting when filming indoors and to see how much small details such as a glass picture frame can affect the quality of the recording. My experiences of filming had involved slightly smaller, more basic versions of the equipment used at JISC Digital Media so it was interesting to see a more professional setup. I was also keen to see how filming for this purpose works, as the majority of my experience in filmmaking was using the style of broadcast news when studying for my Journalism degree.

A group of three women arrived and two began practising lines, one who was not actually an actress but a lecturer playing the interviewer and the other a trained actress, playing a parent who had recently taken her child to be vaccinated against the MMR virus. The other woman I assumed to be from the university faculty and was mostly directing and involved in discussions about filming. The interview techniques to be filmed primarily involved how the interviewer should behave, the depth of questions being asked and how they should respond to an irritable interviewee who may then react negatively to a particular question.

As filming got underway, the two feline residents of the house had decided that now was the time for their close up, quite literally in one case. After one cat had decided to jump through the scene into the window behind the sofa, in the next take the other had decided to cause even more of a stir and place itself directly in between the two actresses, proceeding to then turn around and present its rear end to the camera. Naturally filming then came to a temporary halt as it became quite difficult to film an interview about child vaccinations at this time, due to the new star of the show.

After managing to compose ourselves, filming continued although admittedly I was still chuckling quietly to myself. My role had been mainly assisting Steve with setting up and moving equipment for different angles when filming noddies (a camera shot technique involving someone purposely nodding, which is often used to convey emotion) and any other required shots. Filming then moved on to the bad interviewing techniques after a tea break. These scenarios took less time to film as the point was for the interviewer to remain rather strict and not allow the interviewee’s responses to overrun.

Filming finished at around half past one and after packing up the equipment, it was then time to attempt to get the car out of the driveway. The experience as a whole was interesting and also productive as it provided me with practical, hands-on experience with professional filming equipment and a real scenario solving a real problem/client need. It was also certainly worthwhile to get an insight into a different type of filming which seems to be potentially very beneficial for students and staff. It provides a real life visual guide for both what to do and what not to do, demonstrating typical body language and different reactions to questions that the student might not necessarily foresee. However unfortunately for the cats, I don’t think that their somewhat avant garde performances will make the final cut.

Sophie Allen