Dorchester — Dec 9th 2025

At the annual general meeting, Mick talked about falling numbers since Covid and, in part due to ageing, he encouraged members to try to persuade friends, who are Apple users, to join us.

David Parnell then gave us a fascinating talk on the amazing technology and computing power behind Apple’s iPhone. While his presentation focused on the very latest iPhone 17 Pro, most of the more sophisticated features were introduced with the iPhone 14. His opening slide introduced us to the idea of a fusion camera, which basically boils down to various different technical features being carried out simultaneously as the photo is taken, which are then processed by software to optimise the photo quality whilst allowing for a wide range of settings which can be varied both before and after the photo has been taken. An amazing feature is Lidar, which basically shoots out photons at the object of the photo and measures the time taken to return, thereby building up a virtual 3D image, even allowing for the user to retrospectively change the point of focus. For serious photographers, Apple ProRAW, allowing for the processing of the image in specialist software such as Photoshop and Affinity, is an option.

With opening and closing slides of mince pies and Christmas greetings, Euan gave us a very brief explanation as to why sometimes people find their externally printed PDFs are poor quality. This is because there are many different types of PDF format, and sending the PDF to be printed by an agency, making sure that the PDF is set to print quality, is essential. There are even various options on formats for print quality, but for the basic society newsletter, PDF for print will suffice.

We ended the evening with piping hot mince pies and general lively discussion, a good way to end the year.

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