Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2, 2013 i Amateur Photographer

WHILE the technologies that surround digital imaging spring and leap like a fearful gazelle into the future at break-neck speed, and digital camera performance is now unrecognisable from that which we expected and were served just ten years ago, there is one element of the way digital images are made that has hardly changed. We now have batteries that last 500 shots instead of just ten, processors that can move a picture to the memory card in a split second instead of ten, and sensors that sport 24 million pixels instead of 2. But the 2x2 tiling pattern of red, green and blue pixel filters that was first used in the mid-1970s has hardly ever been challenged. Of course, Fovean has used its deep silicon filtering method, but Fujifilm has…

The latest photography books, exhibitions and websites. Shades of Nature By Heinrich van den Berg HPH Publishing, £37, hardback, 136 pages, ISBN 978-0-620-46310-2 THIS book by Heinrich van den Berg is a different slant on nature and wildlife photography. It is a follow up to his Art of Nature, a volume that garnered much acclaim among wildlife photography enthusiasts. It is clearly a very personal project for the author, which is something that is evident from the genuine passion behind its words and images. Van den Berg’s studies of animals resemble fine-art pictorialism rather than traditional nature or documentary photography – his close-ups of eyes, teeth and skin textures, for example, lend the book an almost abstract quality. The images are accompanied by van den Berg’s quasi-poetic captions, and how…

AP reader Steve Smith laments the transfer of services from the high street retailer to online I FULLY concur with AP Editor Damien Demolder’s hopes that being able to buy photographic equipment solely online never comes to pass (AP 9 February). The thrill of reading an AP review of a particular camera or piece of equipment, then racing to your local photo dealer to check it out, is unique and such a change from the rather automated and cold method of buying online. This process brings with it dashed hopes should the camera/equipment disappoint, plus the sheer inconvenience of packing it up and returning it. I bought a bridge camera online from a London company last year. Selling at £65 cheaper than the nearest photo dealer, it seemed like a…

IN A CREATIVE landscape crowded with photography festivals and exhibitions, how do you stand out? It’s not easy. A photography festival – in fact, a festival of any kind – needs to establish its own identity, offering something that little bit different. In just eight years since its inception, the Derby-based biennial Format Photography Festival, in association with arts-based charity Quad, can count itself as one of the UK’s leading international contemporary festivals of photography. It is assuredly one of the freshest and most dynamic events in the photographic calendar. The programme of events and exhibitions offers itself up as a platform for national and international photographers, all of whom can exhibit, offer advice, swap skills and engage with the audience. With that in mind, perhaps the thing that separates…

THE IDEA of adding colour to a monochrome image by hand goes right back to the beginning of photography. This was the only way to get a colour photograph, even though colour photography using the three-colour process was put forward just short of 20 years after the first photograph by Nicéphore Niépce. It was, in its early years, expensive and difficult to produce a colour image, so hand colouring became a practical way to give the impression of colour. Everything from daguerreotypes, salt prints and lantern slides were used to make these kind of images. Colouring photographs continued until the Second World War, by which time it was superseded by the new Kodachrome, but various kits were still being marketed up to the 1950s. It was very popular in Japan,…

MANY of the images shot by Dennis Stock in his long career are internationally famous. His early portraits of film stars, singers and musicians bolstered their fame and, in James Dean’s case, helped establish him as an icon of his generation. Nevertheless, three years after his death, Stock, who remains widely admired by other photographers, is largely unknown to the public. This lack of recognition is partly due to the way Stock chose to work. Throughout his life, he diligently pursued a succession of stories that interested him and gave him a sense of fulfilment as an artist, although they brought him relatively little personal attention. Even as a key member of the Magnum agency for more than 50 years, he stood slightly apart from the other members. ‘I’m not…

MOST people are surprised to learn that camera manufacturers place something in front of a sensor that actually blurs their images, but that is exactly what an anti-aliasing filter does. Anti-aliasing filters are a necessary evil of digital photography. While they blur the image slightly as it reaches the sensor, they also help to reduce moiré patterning. Without an anti-aliasing filter, this patterning would be evident in images where dense lines, such as those seen on fabrics, clash with the uniform pattern of a digital camera’s sensor. While there is more chance of images suffering from moiré patterning by removing the anti-aliasing filter, the sharpness of images can be increased significantly. Leica has chosen not to use anti-aliasing filters in its digital rangefinder cameras since the launch of the M8…

MANY of us know that it is possible to remove the infrared blocking filter from a DSLR’s sensor to convert a camera for infrared use, but few people realise that the same process is also used to remove the anti-aliasing filter. Often the anti-aliasing filter is seated with, or even bonded to, the infrared filter, so the process of removing it is roughly the same as removing an infrared filter. Specialist camera repair companies that offer the removal of an infrared filter may also offer the service of removing the anti-aliasing filter, and will install a replacement infrared blocking filter in its place so the camera is once again only sensitive to the visible light spectrum. Protech Repairs (www.protechrepairs.co.uk) has just started to offer the service with the cost of…

Tamron’s Adaptall lens system originated with the Adapt-A-Matic range in the late 1960s, which evolved into the Adaptall range (1973) and then the Adaptall-2 range (1979). The premise of each of these was simple: every lens in the system could be used on a different camera mount simply by changing an adapter that connected the two. In this way, a 135mm f/2.8 Adaptall lens could be fitted to a Nikon F camera one minute, a Pentax SLR the next and an Olympus OM body after that, simply by changing the Adaptall mount. This made Tamron’s Adaptall system a highly popular choice among amateur photographers in the ’80s, as it meant that changing allegiance from one camera manufacturer to another didn’t mean changing all their lenses, just the adapters. Tamron’s SP…

REGULAR readers will know that, as a camera collector, I’m more interested in quirky and offbeat designs than I am in homing-in on a particular manufacturer or camera type. So when I saw this Mercury on eBay about three years ago, I was intrigued by its unusual appearance and decided to buy it. Dating from 1945, the Mercury is a peculiarlooking beast, with its domed top and wealth of dials and curved scales. At first glance this could be an old-fashioned parking meter rather than a camera. I don’t remember exactly what I paid for the Mercury, but it was certainly less than £50. They appear from time to time on the UK eBay site, but seem to be much more common in the US, perhaps not surprisingly as that’s…

• Chain leaves £80m debt trail • Over £1m owed to customers JESSOPS: FULL FINANCIAL HORROR IS REVEALED JESSOPS owed thousands of customers more than £1 million when it collapsed, and Canon and Nikon around £20m – with just £3.4m of assets available to preferential creditors. AP can reveal the full scale of Jessops’ financial troubles and the amount the firm owed its key suppliers. In total, Jessops owed around £80m, including £42.6m to listed creditors. More than £200,000 was owed to customers who had made deposits and not yet received goods, who had returned goods and not received repayment, or who were due compensation. Unredeemed customer gift cards totalled £869,000 and Jessops owed the taxman more than £1.3m. Around 2,000 customers who had signed up for Jessops Academy Courses,…

● 101 TOP TIPS FOR BLACK & WHITE DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY by John Beardsworth, £14.99 Starting with in-camera adjustments and going right up to choosing printer paper, John Beardsworth covers the entire process of black & white digital photography. The book is only let down by some awkward sentences and phrases that really should have been ironed out before publication. ● SEA OTTER by Suzi Eszterhas, £10.99 This ultra-slim hardback is one of the latest in a series of children’s books by wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas, chronicling the first year in the life of a baby sea otter. Although the nature of the sea otter’s life and habitat makes the photography a little repetitive, the images are frequently charming and the text should be lively enough to keep any child’s interest.…

LIKE many of the shots that I’ve written about in Photo Insight, this image of an oryx was taken while I was on assignment for National Geographic magazine. The difference with this one is that I wasn’t sent there to take this picture – I was there to produce a culture story about Namibia or, more specifically, the war that was taking place there at the time. In that period, Namibia was fighting for its independence from South Africa, so this would have been before 1990, when the country finally gained its independence. There was a lot of terrorist activity and plenty of landmines on the road back then. I spent many of those nights listening to the sounds of gunfire and bombs going off in the distance. Yet despite…

Round 2 of this year’s Amateur Photographer of the Year competition, sponsored by Panasonic, is Life in Motion (long exposures/frozen action). Action shots utilise one of the most basic components of your camera: the shutter speed. The shutter opens, the action unfolds, the shutter closes. But is it quite as simple as that? For this round we want you to explore the ways that action can be represented in your images. You can either choose to freeze the action using a fast shutter speed or send in your shots of motion blur, achieved with a slow shutter speed. Turn to page 27 for some advice and ideas on what to look out for. We have thousands of pounds’ worth of fantastic camera equipment up for grabs, as well as the…

WHETHER you have a scan of an old family photo or simply want to recreate a handcoloured effect on one of your own black & white images, it is possible to recreate this process using most image-editing software. One of the advantages is that the digital process is a lot more forgiving, meaning that if you make a mistake it is easy to rectify. You can simply go to Edit>Undo or use the Erase tool. However, while the process is straightforward, perfecting the technique can be just as difficult as it is doing it by hand. It is best to start with simple subjects, where colour can be applied in blocks in a similar way to a painting-by-numbers image. Fine lines are difficult and time consuming, so avoid these to…

‘The problem is there is so much of the picture that she is not in’ Anil Joshi Looking up! Canon EOS 7D, 18mm, 1/100sec at f/11, ISO 100 THIS is a striking image that has hints of a horror movie, what with that haunting mass of twisted branches against the sky and the girl looking up into them. I don’t know if this was the intention, but the picture frightens me. The trees are the dominant factor in the frame and some viewers may even miss the fact there is a person in the shot at all, as she is very small and dropped into the bottom of the frame as well as being hidden by her physical connection to the tree trunk. The problem is there is so much…

BEFORE we go into detail about the quality of the images that each camera produces, it is important to understand a little about each of the sensors. The 16.3-million-pixel, APS-C-sized, CMOS sensor of the Pentax K-5 IIs is, in fact, the well-regarded Sony IMX071 unit, which has been used in numerous Sony Alpha and NEX cameras, as well as in the Nikon D7000 and the original Pentax K-5. The sensor has a high quantum efficiency of around 46% (according to www.sensorgen.info), which means that 46% of the light photons that reach the sensor can be converted into an electrical signal so the camera has a high dynamic range and produces less noise. What this means in practice is that images produced by the Pentax K-5 IIs can be underexposed and…

BEST FOR HD VIDEO Q What is the best DSLR camera and lens for professional HD video recording? I have a budget of £2,000. Billionaire Bobbi, via Twitter A Canon’s EOS 5D Mark III is widely regarded as ‘the best’ current DSLR for shooting video. With a 24-105mm f/4 IS USM lens, which is a great all rounder, it would set you back closer to £3,000 – and that’s some way beyond your £2,000 budget. However, two alternatives spring to mind: the Canon EOS 7D and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II, both of which would come in on or under your budget. In terms of video quality the two are very similar, with the EOS 5D Mark II having a proven history in broadcast television (it’s been used to…

ON TEST TELEPHOTO ZOOM LENSES We test and compare five premium 70-200mm f/2.8 telephoto zoom lenses from Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Sony and Tamron TECHNIQUE MASTERCLASS Four readers join AP photographer Andrew Sydenham to explore the art of studio still life GET CREATIVE WITH LIGHTING GELS We explain how to create fantastic effects using lighting gels and a single flash TOUGHING IT OUT Find out how to take stunning photos in rain, humidity and dusty conditions PREPARATION SIX OF THE BEST We put six of the best single shoulder-sling camera straps through their paces…

Wednesday 27 February EXHIBITION Somalia – A Humanitarian Story, until 15 March at the Royal Geographical Society, London SW7 2AR. Tel: 0207 591 3000. Visit www.rgs.org. EXHIBITION Lucky Photojournalism in 20th Century America, until 13 April at Daniel Blau, London N1 6PB. Tel: 0207 831 7998. Visit www.danielblau.com. Thursday 28 February EXHIBITION East End Faces, by David Bailey, until 26 May at William Morris Gallery, London E17 4PP. Tel: 0208 496 4390. Visit www.wmgallery.org.uk. EXHIBITION A Woman’s Place… (photos of British Army women during the Second World War) by Alison Baskerville, until 13 April at Firepower, The Royal Artillery Museum, London SE18 6ST. Tel: 0208 855 7755. Visit www.firepower.org.uk. Friday 1 March EXHIBITION Herbert Ponting, Captain Scott’s Antarctic Expedition, 1910-1913, until 23 March at Chris Beetles Fine Photographs, London W1B…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Wins a 20-roll pack of 36-exposure Fujifilm Superia ISO 200 35mm film or a Fujifilm 4GB media card* STILL GOING STRONG So long as wonderful old cameras like the Olympus Trip get a mention in AP, then I’m the proverbial happy bunny (Letters, AP 9 February). I bought a Trip many years ago when the late (and extremely posh) Patrick Lichfield fronted those TV ads in which he described the Trip as having a ‘farst’ Zuiko lens. What it also had was a solid metal body, gorgeous looks and zone focusing, which in those preautofocus days made life so simple. It also fitted into the pocket of my jeans, so it went absolutely everywhere with me. When I eventually bought a 35mm SLR (a Pentax ME…

LAB COLOR is a device-independent colour space that is able to describe more colours than the eye can see or that any device can reproduce. Inside Photoshop, Lab Color often plays a key, hidden role as an interchange space when making colour-profile conversions, such as RGB to CMYK. In the early days of digital imaging, there were a number of repro techniques that made use of the Lab Color mode. For example, you can edit in Lab Color mode to keep the luminance separated in the Luminance ‘L’ channel. Also, when colour-correcting Caucasian skin tones, these should have fairly even ‘a’ and ‘b’ channel values. Photoshop has advanced a lot since the early days of digital imaging. The introduction of layers and the Luminosity blend mode mean that it’s no…

What is there to say about your camera’s shutter speed that hasn’t been said before? Short shutter speeds freeze the action and long shutter speeds blur the action. It’s as simple as that… or is it? Gone are the days when motion blur was seen as a mistake. The fact is, motion blur, as long as it is deliberate, has become an acceptable creative tool for photographers. Take a look back through some of our previous APOY entries for some fine examples. As the advances in digital technology surge ahead, motion blur and camera shake are no longer inevitable flaws dictated by ISO settings and camera capability. Now photographers are free to use their shutter speed consciously and creatively. It used to be the case that there was an agreed…

The Editor’s Choice wins a Vanguard GH-100 3-in-1 pistol grip ball head worth £129.99* Combining the smooth precision of a ball head with the impressive ergonomic control of a pistol grip, the award-winning GH-100 enables you to position your camera exactly where you want it. The ball head has an anodized centre ball and friction-control switch, while the pistol grip enables you to position your camera or spotting scope effortlessly. The GH-100 also has 360° of panning movement, with 72 clicks of 5°. www.vanguardworld.co.uk How to submit your images Please see the ‘Send us your pictures’ section on page 3 for details or visit www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/spotlight Michel Hersen USA Given the quality of his images, it is unsurprising that landscape enthusiast Michel has been featured in AP’s Reader Spotlight pages on…

Joby GripTight range £25 GorillaPod, £25 Micro stand, £13 mount only www.daymen.co.uk. Tel: 0845 250 0790 JOBY’S GripTight range of supports for smartphone photographers comprises two stands (GorillaPod and Micro) with an attachable mount for stability and positioning. The price of each includes the mount, which can also be bought separately. The GripTight mount screws onto either of the stands and uses a spring-based system to lock the phone in place, being compatible with phones 54-72mm wide. The key to this product is a secure hold and I found the mount excellent – I never worried for the safety of my Samsung Galaxy, even when hanging it from door handles. The GorillaPod’s flexible, gripping legs (see right) allow it to be balanced on uneven terrain or hung from awkward surfaces.…

ONE ISSUE of concern is the processing of Fujifilm X-Pro1 raw images in Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom. These two programs are the most popular raw-conversion software packages, and thankfully the X-Pro1 raw files are supported by Camera Raw 7.3 and Lightroom 4.3. However, it would seem that the Camera Raw processing engine has some difficulty coping with the arrangement of the X-Trans sensor. Fujifilm RAF raw images produced by the X-Pro1 look extremely smooth, almost as if luminance reduction has been applied to them (see image, right). Even reducing all the noise-reduction sliders to 0 and increasing the sharpening slightly from the default settings does virtually nothing to help. It would seem that Adobe hasn’t quite mastered the demosaicing algorithm that is required when converting images from the unique…

Pixels aplenty Craig20264 asks I know this has probably been done to death, but please bear with me. As predicted by my good lady, my purchase of a bridge camera was ‘never going to be enough’ upon my return to photography, and consequently I am now looking to buy an entry-level DSLR. My old SLR was a Pentax K1000, so I am used to doing everything in manual. I am not gadget driven, have no wish to make videos and probably won’t ever print anything larger than A4. I can get a Nikon D3100 for £110 less than a D3200, and the only real difference I can see is 14.2 million pixels against 24.2 million pixels, which is a big difference, but only if it matters in real terms. I…

Deputy technical editor JUST six months after the launch of the Nikon 1 J2, the J3 has arrived featuring a number of improvements. The J3 is no longer the entry-level model in the Nikon 1 compact system camera line-up, as this place has now been taken by the S1, which was announced at the same time as the J3 and which we will be testing in AP 16 March. Consequently, Nikon has included some of the features from the top-of-the-range Nikon 1 V2 into the J3 to differentiate it from the new entry-level model. On the face of it, then, the J3 offers the same sensor and advanced shooting modes as the V2, but it is packed into a compact and simple body similar to the J2. FEATURES All the…