Cafe culture goes way upmarket

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Low-light photography offers a whole suite of challenges in either optical or digital, and your solutions to these tests might be different on different days (or shoots). It all depends what results you want: the pro might want a tack-sharp image without grain, because s/he is more than likely shooting for a brochure. The amateur will want a good, clear shot, and can afford to live with a little grain, since the image isn't going to be published, much less at large size. Either way, your choices (your solutions to the challenges) will define this project: stop the action, or "correctly expose" the background, produce fantastic depth-of-field with blurred figures, or accept a little grain in the shot...? It's all about film speed, aperture, and shutter speed. Here's a few ground rules to help you make the decision: high shutter speeds will stop the action (no blurry figures), but you'll need either (or both) bigger apertures or faster film speed to get those fast shutter speeds. Big apertures cost you depth of field, and fast film speeds give you grainy images. Long shutter speeds give you blurry figures (anything that might be moving), plus the probability that you'll get "camera shake" during the exposure, which means the whole shot is blurry. Somewhere among all those "downsides" is a happy medium, and depending on what you need or want out of the finished shot, you'll make your decision. Photo by Mel, 2009. (The National Wine Centre, Adelaide, South Australia.)

The tall ship with the terrific menu

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You're driving down the beautiful road leading along the bank of the Patawalonga River, which flows out into the Gulf St. Vincent via the marina and "millionaire country" just to the north of Jetty Road, Glenelg ... and suddenly you see a tallship. A three-master, a square-rigger, parked on "the Pat" at Glenelg --? You pull over quickly and grab the camera, and you experience an "aha" moment. It's a replica of the HMS Buffalo, the ship which brought the colonists to South Australia in 1836. Treat yourself to lunch or dinner -- aboard, she's fantastic. As absolutely perfect replica of the original ship ... which is also a restaurant serving very good food at surprisingly good prices. The restuarant caters to the whole family, too, and (trust me on this!) their forte is the desserts. This is a scan of a shot I took back in the 1980s; I don't even recall when. I haven't been back to Glenelg is years now, since moving away. I always liked this picture, and since the print has started to fade with age, it was recently scanned in and enhanced. The camera was the Olympus OM-10, and I always shot on Kodak Gold in those days. Photo by Jade, about 1984.