It's really all in your eye! Your camera is simply a tool to record what your eye sees.

Having just come back from a lovely five weeks in the South Island, plus another two weeks in the North Island, we are having to spend hours and hours on the computer sorting and saving the best images for future enjoyment. In the course of this, I received a letter from one of our members commenting on my mention of the use of my little compact Mju Olympus for much of our trip south.

Certainly, when you are tramping the Milford track (4 days) or the Greenstone/Caples (5 days), there was no way I was going to carry a large multi lens, super megapixel digital SLR with me. Not at my age eh!

Before we went south we tramped over the Tongariro crossing. Lovely weather and I used the Olympus Mju 4 megapixels. The results are stunning. Superb pictures, provided I treat them carefully in the computer and printing process. One of these was accepted in the National Salon under Nature Projected Images. No-one, but no-one, could tell if the image was made from a compact camera or a top class SLR with umpteen megapixels.

Well, we were home from our trip and had to go to Chartwell to get some printer ink. There I met Rhys Palmer, a professional photographer and past press photographer for the Waikato Times. We got to talking and Rhys was very interested in our trip. I told him I had mainly used the Mju and his comment was along the lines "That's all you need John. I see Pro's doing weddings with cameras of twelve megapixels and more and all they are doing is filling up cards unnecessarily."

A four megapixel camera will produce an A3 (12"x18" at Harvey Norman's), that you cannot tell was done on digital. The prints are crisp, sharp and sparkling. So why do we keep trying to outdo each other in getting bigger and better cameras?

I actually think it is partly a "blame the camera, not the photographer" syndrome, for images that do not come out the way we would like them to! Provided you have a camera that has a good quality lens, the execution of a good photograph is a combination of "seeing what you want" and then being familiar enough with your gear to be able to record that image the way you want it to turn out.

We need to be thoroughly familiar with out camera, lens, etc. We need to understand the difference and relationship between Aperture and Shutter speed, we need to know when to turn off that confounded auto focus and use manual focus to get exactly the result we have visualised.

In many ways the advent of auto focus and auto exposure cameras has been a curse as well as a blessing. One of my daughters many years ago joined the club and I gave her a little 4x4 cm twin lens reflex camera and an exposure metre. A totally manual camera. In a twin lens, the image is back to front so you need to really think about your composition. She did and the results spoke for themselves. The only advantage she had over other C Grade (Novice now) photographers was that she had a father that told her "it's not good enough - do it again" and I suppose I was paying for her film and processing. Well, she went from C Grade to B Grade to A Grade in just over twelve months. Unfortunately she met a young man, got married and moved away, otherwise she would be giving all of you a run for your money in the competitions.

On the 19th June, the digital group will be talking about cameras. Make sure you get there and learn about aperture, shutter speed, depth of field, and how to access the wonderful menus that modern cameras have. You will not regret it.