Equipment Table

What equipment have you used over the past year?	Advantages	Disadvantages	What did I create with it? What features did I use? How effectively did I use it?
Photoshop	·         The Flexibility of using a professional photo editing package, more advanced features and tools available, able to create work to a professional standard making the quality of all of my work increase. ·         Layers allow me to work on different levels of my work and break my work down and built it up in multiple different ways. The layers allow me to make these separations and stage my work so that any work that may not fit can be changed or deleted with ease. ·         The range of tools available allows me to change my work in ways that simply would not be possible on a basic pain package. Able to made tiny adjustments to things such as lighting, or even refine this down to a selected area make Photoshop a vital tool in media production. ·         Photoshop has a very wide range of text-manipulation tools, allowing me to change fonts, then customise it to have a bevel, a shadow or any other variation added onto it, all of which can be tweaked to suit my needs, this makes text very versatile and can be used in almost any piece of work. Also fonts can be downloaded from the internet and imported into Photoshop allowing me to use specific styles that the package may not originally offer. ·         Photoshop also allows me to save my work in a wide range of different formats that can be used in different situations.	·         The learning curve for using Photoshop is very steep, with no actual explanation for any of the tools actually within the program and the effects of not knowing what exactly what everything does can give horrible effects on work produced within Photoshop. ·         The package itself is anything from £100-500 with the newer packages being release around once every 6 months to a year between each other, purchasing this package for use at home can be far too expensive for one person to afford.	I used Photoshop to design my front cover design for my final product. I believe that I used Photoshop effectively using a wide range of different tools and I made use of additional features such as downloaded fonts and brushes to raise the standard of my work, I made sure to effectively use photo shops different save file types so that I could save my work to a file type that allowed me to keep my layers so that I could edit my work repeatedly over a long period of time.
In Design	The main advantage of using In Design is that it has a massively wide range of different text manipulation options, allowing me to add in things such as drop caps and I can change the spacing between paragraphs, lines and change the indentation distance on all text. These additional features allow me to place in my article into my double page spread and move the entire article to fit into the spread as I want it. In Design uses a unique method of everything within it, to be placed within “frames” This allows work from other programs to be imported into the frames making organising materials easy.	The learning curve for this program can be ridiculous, with few labelling on almost all tools and no actual explanation for 50% of the options available, it seems that most learning done on this program comes from trial and error. When saving work, you can save it as an in design project, but to actually save the file as a more commonly use document type, you must choose to export instead of save. This can cause a lot of confusion.	I have used adobe In Design to create my double page spread for my final project, the program allowed me to import a word document I had wrote, which contained my article and then manipulate the text to different placing and fonts to fit in with the also imported Photoshop design I had made to be placed in the top section of the double page spread. I feel I have made effective use of the tools available in Design, but I feel that I am still not comfortable with the program in general, as there were a large amount of tools that I just had no idea how to use or what they did.
Cannon E350D	The camera can had a wide range of different settings, allowing me to take photos in rapid succession or have the camera auto-steady or auto-focus for me. The camera allowed me to turn off the automatic functions and take photo’s with me controlling things such as the shutter speed and the focus. I could also take advantage of its versatility to take images at any angle and in a wide range of lighting conditions made it a useful tool. High quality images can be taken and can be transferred quickly to a computer.	I had very little experience using a professional standard camera like this one, so my ability to use the functions to their full capacity was difficult. The camera is quite large in comparison to commercial cameras and is also considerably heavier.	I used the Cannon E350D to take almost every photo I have taken during the course, I chose to do this on purpose so that I could increase my experience and use of the camera, learning more about it’s different settings and how they can be used to take different kinds of images. I believe that I have effectively made use of this camera and taken a good range of different images to a high standard.
Soft Box with Flash Kit	In a studio environment a soft box helps soften the light on a model, this means you can get a good soft spread light effect on your model, and not add too strong shadows or edges to the images you take Flash kit allows me to add in a good fill light to my work without making the lighting too harsh	Setting the lighting up in a way in which I was happy with was time consuming and the equipment is heavy, this made moving things around to get the right effect difficult.	I believe I made good use of the lighting by setting things up how i wanted them making a soft light fill almost all darkened areas of my area so that i could get a clear image with no harsh shadows or
Back Drop	The main advantage of using a backdrop is that I could use it to contrast with the chosen apparel of my models, or it could be used to set a blank canvas in the background. Either of those advantages allowed me to cut out my models more easily on Photoshop without parts of a detailed background being kept around the edge of the image The backdrop can be set to any colour of my own choice for example I chose to use a black background to contrast the white of my models clothing.	A backdrop cannot be easily used in for example a small space. And they require a rigging to have then propped up. Making them not very easily transported or moved.	I purposely chose to make a more effective use of my backdrop by using the black backdrop so that it would contrast with the white clothing of my models, this made cutting out the images I wanted of my models on Photoshop a lot easier and less time consuming.
Tri-pod.	This steady’s the camera and makes it easier to get a level picture or take a picture at a set angle.	They are portable but can be difficult to setup in some situations such as being on very uneven ground.	I have used a tri-pod to take my side lighting, shutter speed and camera focus images. I believe made effective use of these opportunities to use a tripod so that i now have the experience to properly setup one myself on use it effectively.

Print Skills final audit

Photographic Skills

Which of the following photographic features/equipment have you used on a camera before?

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Manual Focus features	/		Used for taking photos for my final production and used when I was learning how to use manual focus in practice, to A level standard.
Shutter Speed	/		A level standard for blog on shutter speed.
Aperture control	/		A level standard for blog post.
ISO Control	/		Used for a blog post on the camera’s sensitivity to light.
A tripod	/		Used for all of my different blog photo shoots so that I could get a flat angled shot. Used to an A level standard.
External flash	/		Used in a photographic studio to an A level standard to produce my final photo’s.
Self timer facility	/		Used in GCSE Graphics so that I could setup and time photo sequences.
Light meter	/		Used in GCSE Graphics to take photographs that are not over-exposed.
Composition grids	/		Used in GCSE Graphics to layout work in an organised style

Photoshop Skills

Which of the following features of Photoshop have you used before?

Feature	Yes	No	Comments if yes – where have you completed this skills and to what level
Have you aver used Photoshop ever before?	/		Used Photoshop to a high standard to work on all of my pieces, used to a GCSE and A level standard, used in GCSE Graphics.
Text control	/		Used heavily in GCSE graphics to an A* standard.
Filters	/		Used heavily in GCSE graphics to an A* standard.
Brushes	/		Used heavily in GCSE graphics to an A* standard and to an A level standard when creating my front cover design.
Layers	/		GCSE & A level standard.
Opacity control	/		Used in my final design to an A level standard.
Shape creation	/		Used to make a template for text boxed areas on both in design and Photoshop to an A level standard.
Brightness and contrast control	/		Used to edit my photo’s in both GCSE graphics and to an A level standard
Gradients	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics
Load selection features	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics
Feathering	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics
Colour curves adjustment	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics
Resolution setting control	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics
Magnetic lasso, polygon lasso tool	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics
Cropping tool	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics
Clone tool	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics
Retouch tool	/		GCSE Level In GCSE graphics