Innholdsfortegnelse for June 1, 2013 i Amateur Photographer

IN AP 11 MAY WE ASKED… Would you consider buying a used DSLR? I SUPPOSE throughout photographic history there have been particular techniques and practices that have caused controversy. They would be the sort taken up with rabid enthusiasm by some and detested with equal passion by others. In my youth it was the use of Cokin effects filters that could render a rainbow in any conditions or prism a face seven times in a single frame. Perhaps earlier it would have been creating single images from individual glass plates, or perhaps the use of hand colouring small areas of a b&w print. And let’s not forget hot spoons on the back of a developing Polaroid. These days the technique that gets us most collectively excited, in both directions, is…

● THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN PICTURES EDITED by Ian Petherby and George Lewis, £7.99 Some slightly slapdash text editing lets down this collection but the British spirit of endurance through trying times is really evident in these images – when ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ wasn’t just something to slap on a vaguely ironic T-shirt. ● COVENT GARDEN THEN & NOW by Clive Boursnell, £14.99 The ‘Then & Now’ of this book’s title turns out to be really quite literal, as Clive Boursnell returns to the subjects of photos he took of Covent Garden throughout the 1960s and ’70s to make side-byside comparisons. As it transpires, one of the few things that hasn’t changed about the area through the years is how photogenic it remains. ● GEORG BASELITZ AT…

ANDREW SANDERSON A renowned photographer, tutor, author and Ilford Master Printer, Andrew Sanderson offers practical tips on working with film and traditional darkroom techniques If you would like to read more about paper negatives, Andrew’s book Paper Negative Photography is available from www.blurb.com, price £15 I’LL START off by saying that, technically, this is not one of my best shots. It has a touch of underexposure and suffers from a bit of camera shake, too. Yet even so, it is still one of my own favourite photographs. The photograph is one of a cow in a clearing, shot through the woods. The trees form a natural frame around the beast, which sits proudly in the centre, a little way off and slightly shrouded by the fading light. The woods where…

1 Import the raw files into Lightroom. Pick one of the five bracketed shots that has captured a balanced amount of light. This is usually, although not always, the default (0) exposure. Export this into Photoshop by right-clicking and choosing Edit In and then Photoshop. If you own another program besides Photoshop, choose accordingly. The important feature that you’ll need with your program is the ability to have multiple layers and be able to apply ‘masks’ to those layers. 2 Once loaded in Photoshop, look at the image and determine what parts you’d like to work on. For example, is the sky blown out? Are there objects in the foreground that are too dark? Make a choice as to what problem you’d like to clean up first and then go…

THE PRINCIPLES OF PORTRAITURE While this round focuses on the genre of still life, it’s perhaps important to familiarise yourself with another key term and the principles that surround it: portraiture. We all know what portraiture is, but it’s crucial to understand that portraiture is a word that can happily find a home under various guises. The function of portraiture is to at once accurately represent a subject as well as bring out those qualities that may otherwise remain hidden. This happens through the application of lighting, colour, framing and composition. Flowers and plants, much like people, have characters and covert elements that can be drawn out through this careful and considered art of photography. Treat your subject in the same way you would a person. Think of them as…

Office building Ian Grainger Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1, 20mm, 1/250sec at f/5, ISO 200 AT A GLANCE, it’s obvious that the repeat pattern of the windows in this building are what drew Ian to create this ‘abstract’ image. However, when you rely so heavily on a pattern like this, it needs to be flawless, as the slightest break in the repeat motif is all that it takes for the viewer’s eye to wander. In this instance we have several such distractions: the branches creeping into the left edge of the shot; the lamp-post in the lower-right corner; and the small patch of brickwork in the upper-right corner. Ian may well have seen all of these things when he composed the shot, but with a fixed focal length (and possibly a restricted…

THE GF series is Panasonic’s newest entry-level compact system camera. It’s the smallest and lightest offering from the company, with a simple design that compact camera users are likely to feel at home with, and unlikely to be intimidated by. The GF6 is the fifth iteration of the model, yet it hints at a departure, being bigger than the preceeding Lumix DMCGF5. It is also the first in the line to have a shooting-mode dial, which is a welcome addition. In fact, although the GF6 still looks very similar to its predecessor, it bears more than a passing resemblance to the more sophisticated, metal-bodied Lumix DMC-GX1, although its body is still made from plastic. It’s not just the body that is being transformed. Until now, a 12-millionpixel sensor (approx) has…

Q I’m planning a trip to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and have been looking on the internet to insure my camera while abroad. I use a Canon EOS 7D and a handful of lenses, but all the insurance companies that I’ve come across won’t insure my camera because of its value. Do you have any recommendations and information about taking gear abroad and how to insure it? Lorne Cooper A I’m not that surprised that you haven’t found anyone willing to insure your camera gear based on value if you’ve been looking at general travel insurance, because that’s really designed for holidaymakers, not photographers. To start with, check your current home contents insurance policy. Most include a certain level of ‘contents away from home’ cover, or give the…

PERHAPS it’s because I live in one of the UK’s most landlocked cities, but scuba diving has never really appealed to me. However, my eye was caught by this chunky, bright yellow amphibious camera in the ‘£10 box’ during a local camera shop’s annual clearout sale. We’re not short of wet weather in Sheffield, so I thought, if nothing else, I could use it during one of the city’s outdoor events this year. The Motormarine II was introduced in 1989 and originally retailed for £299. Like so many film cameras, it has now been rendered obsolete by digital technology, and even speaking as a lover of film cameras I would have to say that if underwater photography did ever tempt me, I’d go for a digital model. There were no…

News Analysis Comment PhotoDiary 1/6/13 “Blurry, unfocused images of Red Square” Pics by chimp go on sale, page 6 • 1.4x extender built into telephoto • Boosts zoom to 560mm CANON 1.4X EXTENDER LENS SURFACES CANON is due to debut its 200-400mm lens with on-board 1.4x extender, more than two years after a prototype first went on show in Japan. The EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Extender 1.4x was first shown at the CP+ show in Tokyo in February 2011. The L-series newcomer, priced £11,999.99, is the first commercially available lens to feature a built-in 1.4x extender, which bolsters focal length to 280mm-560mm. The lens boasts a 4-stop image stabiliser and is primarily aimed at professional sports and wildlife photographers. Among the first to try out the lens was AP’s…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Wins a 20-roll pack of 36-exposure Fujifilm Superia ISO 200 35mm film or a Fujifilm 8GB media card* A PHOTOGRAPHIC CHALLENGE This year I decided to make a conscious effort to get creative with my cameras, by setting myself the challenge of taking a photograph rather than a snap every week of the year. AP’s issue of 11 May was particularly pertinent to me as virtually every item on the cover had me in mind: ● Second-hand bargain bodies: I recently retired my trusty Nikon D50 (now my daughter’s camera). Most of my lenses were carried over from my film bodies and, as they depended on the camera to drive the autofocus, if I were to buy a new Nikon body I’d also need to replace…

TURNING a colour image into one that’s black & white is rarely a matter of simply clicking a button to ‘make black & white’. Whenever you carry out a colour to black & white conversion you ideally want to be able to manage the process and use the controls at your disposal in Photoshop (as well as in Camera Raw and Lightroom) to apply the most appropriate kind of conversion. This is why it’s also never a good idea to shoot using the black & white mode in-camera. Always shoot in colour and do the conversion later. In this example I wanted to show the steps I used to apply a monochrome conversion to a colour studio portrait. I was happy enough with the colour version I began with, but…

Round five ENTER TODAY! Round 5 of this year’s Amateur Photographer of the Year competition is Floral Still Life (flower and plant portraits). Flowers and plants have always been a key focus for image makers through the ages, and in this round of APOY we want you to try your hand at capturing the natural beauty of these vibrant subjects. There are no strict rules here. Your subject can be indoors or out, and shot under either artificial or natural illumination. The trick is to try to bring out and emphasise its inherent quality. Turn to page 29 for some tips and tricks on how to best capture these natural beauties. We have thousands of pounds’ worth of fantastic camera equipment up for grabs, as well as the chance to…

IF YOUR PICTURES ARE FEATURED YOU’LL RECEIVE… ∊50 PLUS 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 Rui Pereira Portgual Rui, 41, has been taking photographs since he was 14 years old, and…

Olloclip 3-in-1 iPhone Lens £69.95 www.olloclip.com WHILE lens accessories for the iPhone are plentiful, they generally require the use of additional cases and attachments in order to affix them to the phone’s camera. The 3-in-1 from Olloclip differs in that it can be connected directly to the body of an iPhone. It also provides considerable shooting options for phone photographers. Three lenses are housed in the product’s impressively compact body: fisheye, macro and wideangle. On one side is the fisheye, which captures a 180° field of view with just a little vignetting at the edges. Removing the cap on the reverse side unveils the macro lens – an impressive bit of kit for its size, which allows for focus within 12-15mm of the subject. Remove this lens and beneath it…

WHILE the GF6 does not have a port for connecting a cable release, the fact that the camera is Wi-Fi-enabled means that remote shooting and live view are possible via a smartphone or tablet. Not only are they possible, but through the Panasonic Image app (downloadable for free from the Apple and Android stores), there is wide range of shooting controls available via a smart device. The range of exposure settings that can be adjusted remotely include AF mode, white balance, touch shutter, touch AF, colour modes, picture effects and even the drive mode. There is no manual override of the shooting mode dial, so one must select the shooting mode wisely if the camera is being placed at a distance. Thankfully, the camera’s response to remote changes is near…

Shooting in aperture priority Sheencrofter asks I am practising shooting in aperture priority and find that my indoor shots appear quite dark. I don’t understand this as I thought the shutter speed was compensated for automatically when in this mode? PeteRob replies Your understanding is correct: the camera will compensate to maintain an overall exposure value. The range of exposure times that a camera has available is also quite large. The more usual problem is that you get camera shake. The possibilities are that you have exposure compensation set to a negative value so the camera is underexposing; that you have hit the camera limit on shutter speed (unlikely unless you are using a tripod); that the scene is actually dark and you are comparing it with something brighter; or…

New England By Chris Porsz Chris Porsz (self-published), £17.99, hardback, 133 pages, ISBN 978-0-9574329-0-1 IF CHRIS Porsz’s excellent images seem at all familiar, it may be because he has graced the pages of AP’s Reader Spotlight twice in the past year. Whether you caught those issues or not, this selfpublished book of his work throughout the decades is worth your time. Spending hours at a time hitting the pavement for great street photographs, Porsz’s lens captured many of the little absurdities of British life and culture throughout the 1980s. While he’s clearly not above setting up a shot (and says as much in his introduction), he has a splendid eye for a quick moment or a visual pun and it makes for some really memorable images. Deft, surprising and impeccably…

WHAT would happen today if I put on an old mackintosh, wandered down to the local school at a time when pupils as young as four or five were arriving, and invited them to sit on the wall and have their photos taken? And then asked for their home addresses? It must have been in 1949 or 1950, at the age of four or five, that I walked the couple of hundred yards to Ferndale Road School in Swindon, probably with some boys from our road and certainly with no adult supervision. At the gates we were approached by a man in just such a mackintosh. I sat on the wall as requested and grinned at his camera. He must have asked me for my address, for a few days…

WHEN you look at the world around you, your eyes are presented with a very wide range of light’s brightness. For example, if you were watching the sunset while walking along the beach, you would be able to view the beautiful red and orange glows that spread out from the sun as it begins to dip below the horizon. At the same time, you would also be able to see the highlights of the tips of the crashing waves as they gently roll over your bare feet. Cameras, on the other hand, have a hard time picking up the entire range of brightness with just a single shot. Most of us have a collection of pictures we’ve taken of a sunset, where the only thing you really can see is…

Flick through any photography magazine (the name of which should feature the words ‘Amateur’ and ‘Photographer’ in that order) and no doubt you’ll see that flowers and plants are a prominent feature. There’s a good reason for that. Flora is a subject so full of vibrancy that anyone with a tendency to glue their eye to a viewfinder will find it impossible to resist capturing the colours, shapes and textures. The variety of species on offer is mind-boggling and each one has its own unique characteristics. How you capture them is up to you. You can shoot them indoors or outdoors using either natural or artificial light. However, as flowers and plants are a common theme, it can be easy to treat them as simple subjects. While the beauty of…

IN A CAREER spanning 60 years, Andreas Feininger constantly experimented with photographic technique while creating new ways to communicate his wonder at the world around us. In his quest to create fresh and original images he pioneered the use of telephoto lenses to photograph city scenes and macro lenses to show the intricate details of natural objects. ‘To me, a photograph that only shows me something that I’ve seen before is a boring picture,’ he said in a 1983 BBC documentary. ‘If I’ve seen it before, why should I look at it again? I demand from any photograph that it speaks to me, that it tells me something. And I try to give that in all of my pictures, something that’s a little bit new to the person who looks…

MANY readers will have a collection of negatives, prints and slides that could be easily digitised with a scanner. Here, we are taking a look at the Canon CanoScan 9000F Mark II flatbed scanner, which can also scan 35mm and medium-format film. The 9000F features both film and reflective scanning, a CCD 12-line colour scanning element using a white LED, an optical resolution of 9600dpi for film and 4800 for photo and documents, 48-bit scanning input with 24-bit output, Canon FARE for automatic dust removal on film scans, an A4 maximum document size, seven EZ scan buttons, a fast preview scan speed (three seconds) and is said to take seven seconds to scan a full A4 document. The 9000F is supplied with a power cord, USB cable, a quick-start manual,…

RRP £493.99 (body only) Sensor 16-million-effective-pixel Live MOS Output size 4592 x 3448 pixels (15.8 million pixels) Focal length mag 2x Lens mount Micro four thirds File format JPEG, RW2 (raw), raw + JPEG, MPO (when attaching 3D lens in micro four thirds-system standard), AVCHD, MPEG-4 Compression 2-stage JPEG Colour space Adobe RGB, sRGB Shutter type Focal-plane shutter Shutter speeds 60-1/4000sec, bulb Max flash sync 1/160sec ISO 160-25,600 Exposure modes Program, aperture priority, shutter priority, manual, iA+, 24 scene modes Metering system 1728-zone, multi-pattern sensing system with options for intelligent multiple, centerweighted, spot Exposure comp ±3EV in 1/3 steps White balance Auto, 5 presets, 2 custom, Kelvin, all with fine-tuning White balance bracket 3 frames Drive mode 20fps at 4-million-pixel resolution, 4.2fps with AF, 3fps with live view, 7 continuous…

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve spent a few hundred pounds on a camera, or a few thousand – monitor calibration is essential. This is the process where you set the contrast, brightness, gamma and white point of your screen so that your images are displayed correctly. Consequently, your greens will appear green (and reds red and blues blue), your greys will be neutral and you should be seeing a full range of tones from black to white. The actual act of calibrating a monitor is very straightforward, but it does require a specialist calibration device combining hardware and software elements. In the simplest sense, the software displays a series of coloured patches, which are read by a hardware device positioned on the front of the computer monitor. Because the software…