Innholdsfortegnelse for July 27, 2013 i Amateur Photographer

THE IDEA of working without an anti-aliasing (AA) filter seems really quite appealing. When we buy cameras and lenses, and use shooting techniques, to achieve as much resolution as we can, avoiding a filter that effectively blurs our images seems like the perfect plan. I am a fan, myself, of the principle of gathering as much detail at the shooting stage as possible, and then deciding if it is all needed when processing the image. What I haven’t captured can never be used, but not all of what I record has to feature in the final image. It is important to remember, though, that an AA, or ‘low pass’, filter is there for a reason - namely to adapt passing light to suit the limitations of the sensor. Without this…

THE SEARCH for outstanding British photographers is underway as the UK Picture Editors’ Guild Awards opens entries for 2013. From this month, professiona photographers can start submitting their best images of everything that’s happened in the past year, in a bid to win the coveted title of SABMiller Photographer of the Year. UK Picture Editors’ Guild chairman Alan Sparrow said: ‘The past year has produced a wealth of stores at home and abroad -from sporting feats at Wimbledon to legendary performances at Glastonbury. We’ve witnessed uprisings in Egypt, a new Pope in Rome and there’s a Royal baby on the way too. With such rich content to capture, we anticipate another highly competitive year.’ Categories include News, Business, Fashion, and Sports photography, as wel as videography and photo essays. From…

BARRY CAMERA CLUB The club Is organising a meet on 26 July, from 6pm-8pm, at Porthkerry Park for anyone interested in starting out in photography. Meets take place at the first car park on the right before the bridge. Tel: 029 2070 0960 for details. STAFFORD CAMERA CLUB Stafford Camera Club (formerly St Leonards) is holding an exhibition at Stone Library, Market Square, Stone, Staffs ST15 8AT until July 27. To find out more about the club, visit www.staffordcameraclub.co.uk.…

THE SENSOR of the Canon EOS 70D isn’t the only new feature. The viewfinder has a 98% field of view and it uses the same intelligent display technology that is found in the EOS 7D. New graphics have been added to the optica viewfinder overlay to improve the electronic level feature. The new level graphic sits below the AF arrangement at the bottom of the viewfinder. Previously, the AF points themselves were used to indicate whether the camera was level or not. Now the dedicated electronic level graphic makes it even easier to see if the camera is perfectly straight. Also improved is the way the AF mode can be selected. There is now a dedicated AF mode button between the control dia and the shutter button on the EOS…

LETTERS OF THE WEEK USE YOUR RIGHTS It seems that both Amateur Photographer and David Watts have forgotten the provisions of the Sale of Goods Acts in their various iterations. No court in the land would consider 1,900 shutter actuations to constitute a camera ‘of merchantable quality’, particularly when companies like Nikon talk of 100,000 to 150,000 actuations as being reliably achieved. Mr Watts should get his useless camera back from Leica, take it back to the shop from which he purchased it, and demand a replacement or his money back, as Leica, the manufacturer, says it cannot repair its own product. The law provides that an article bought should perform for a reasonable length of time, and as others are still using Leicas that are 50 or more years…

MOST people have either tried pinhole photography and love it, or know nothing about it. So if you fall in the latter category, why should you give it a go? Pinhole photography is lens-less photography. A tiny hole replaces the lens. Light passes through the hole and an image is formed in the camera. And it’s this simplicity that appeals to those who create pinhole photos. The photograph is no longer about the fancy wizardry of a camera. It’s about the scene, the composition and the excitement of a new way of capturing it. Anyone can make a pinhole camera. A body-cap pinhole is about as simple as you can get, and it doesn’t mean mutilating your camera, carving a wooden box or anything more complex than drilling a small…

1 The take-up spool is where your exposed pinhole pictures will be kept when they’ve been shot. To make a take-up spool, you’ll need a spare roll of film that you don’t mind wasting. The reason it’s going to be ‘wasted’ is because the first step is to pull all the film out of the cassette, which will expose it to light. Cut the film off about 4in (10cm) from the end, so you’re left with a short ‘tail’ hanging out of the cassette. 2 Carefully cut off the top turning knob. This is tough, so be very careful. Removing the knob means your camera will sit flat when you’re taking pictures. 3 Position your usable roll of film on the right and Othe take-up spool upside down on the…

BRITISH pop music in the early 1970s was dominated by the glitzy and extravagant fashions of Glam Rock. Performers including David Bowie and Elton John, and bands such as T. Rex, Sweet and Roxy Music adopted its style, wearing outlandish costumes, colourful make-up and ubiquitous platform boots. One of the main photographers chronicling the rise of the Glam era was Mick Rock. Born in West London and christened Michael David Rock, he had studied modern languages at Cambridge, but took up photography in 1969. He met David Bowie in 1972 and captured the rise of his Ziggy Stardust persona in dynamic performance shots. Mick had what he’s described as ‘an instinct for the colourful and decadent’. His subsequent friendship with Bowie and later Lou Reed made him a Glam Rock…

HOW MANY times have you heard someone say, ‘You don’t need filters with a digital camera. Anything they can do, Photoshop can do better.’ I’ve heard this old chestnut more times than I care to remember, but if it’s true, why do all the top landscape photographers in the business still use them? And why, if filter use is declining, has Lee Filters - makers of some of the best filters in the business - had to take on more staff, install a new plant and start a night shift to cope with the backlog of orders for its products? The answer is simple - landscape photographers need filters now, in this digital age, as much as they ever did. It’s true that Photoshop can do the job of some…

When did you first become interested in photography? I have been interested in photography ever since I saw my first digital camera. It was a Kodak model that took about 16 so-called high-resolution photographs that were, in fact, less than 1 million pixels each. You could transfer the photos over by USB cable to a computer, and I saw in it the potential for photographing my own images for my Photoshop work. What do you enjoy most about photography? I enjoy trying to capture the world from an unusual angle and seeing the world in a different way to the normal everyday view of the world around us. What are you hoping to achieve with your photography in the future? I just want to be a better A photographer. l…

Looking for a travel camera AWM asks My background is in video, but I take stills with my Nikon D200. I think it’s time to move on from that camera now, so I can shoot both still photography and video with one camera. The last time I looked into this was a few years ago, when everyone was raving about the Canon EOS 5D and EOS 7D, and my intention was to buy one of these when I had the money. Now I’m ready to buy as I have a budget of £5,000, allowing for insurance and decent lenses. My intentions are to find a practical camera with an interchangeable lens that is realistically portable, and able to take decent stills and shoot professional video. I’ve lost touch with the…

“News I Analysis I Comment I PhotoDiary 27/7/13 We’ll be looking for images that tell a story or capture a moment in time, in a way words sometimes cannot Picture Editors’ Guild Awards open, page 6” Metadata removal is ‘civil infringement’ • Copyright ‘automatic’ GOVERNMENT RESPONDS TO COPYRIGHT FEARS THE GOVERNMENT has responded to photographers’ fears that images stripped of their metadata will leave them open to online copyright abuse under new laws. Earlier this year, photographers including legend David Bailey blasted the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act’s anticipated treatment of ‘orphan works’, where copyright owners cannot be identified or traced. Campaigners voiced concern that any identifying metadata is often routinely removed before images are published. They argued that the controversial law would permit such works to be used without…

NOKIA has unveiled the Lumia 1020, as the battle for supremacy in the increasingly cut-throat smartphone photography arena intensifies. Nokia’s latest PureView creation carries a six-element Zeiss f/2.2 lens (including one glass element), and a 41-million-pixel, 1/1.5in-type, back- illuminated imaging sensor The lens module contains more than 100 parts. The glass element is of a ‘very high index’ to help minimise the height of the phone, said Eero Salmelin, head of Imaging for Nokia Smart Devices, who added that the Lumia 1020 delivers the 35mm viewing-angle equivalent of a 25mm lens. The Lumia 1020 is designed to capture 34-million-pixel and 38-million-pixel files in 16x9 or 4x3 formats, plus a 5-million-pixe image at the same time. It uses m| Nokia’s existing ‘oversampling’ technology to combine 7 pixels into a single ‘superpixel’.…

THREE Italian photographers beat more than 1,200 entrants to take the top awards at the 2013 RPS International Print Exhibition. Antonio Busiello won Gold, Mattia Vacca took Silver and Michele Palazzi took the Under-30s Award. Anthony Holland Parkin, director of editorial content at Getty Images and one of the judges, said the winning image (right) struck a chord with a number of the judges. entries will be held at Shire Hall Gallery, Market Square, Stafford ST16 2LD unti 8 September 2013. He added: ‘In a world obsessed with retouched perfection, Antonio’s honest image of a man proudly displaying his huge calluses challenges the viewer, and raises valid and contemporary questions about body image.’ An exhibition of the best entries will be held at Shire Hall Gallery, Market Square, Stafford ST16…

Serpentine By Mark Laita, Abrams, £30, hardback, 200 pages, ISBN 978-1-4197-0630-1 OPHIDIOPHOBIA is the fear of snakes, and if you’re a sufferer it would probably be best to steer clear of this book as Mark Laita’s Serpentine is pretty much nothing but images of snakes. The unafflicted should find this stylishly simple book a delight. By exclusively employing black backdrops, Laita accentuates the colours and patterns of serpent skin. The coloured coils are almost hypnotic, and their separation from their natural context gives a heightened sense of unreality. Snakes have been a symbol of evil in human culture since biblical days, and Laita’s photography helps us be objective in exploring why. www.cambridgeincolour.com THIS is an impressive learning environment. Running since 2005, Cambridge in Colour has a slick design that easily…

THE WORLD’S gone mad again. Here I am sitting shocked at the latest shenanigans in the world of photographic art. And once again, big money is involved. First, we had the recent news item in AP 1 June that photos of Red Square taken by a Russian monkey were expected to fetch £50,000-£70,000 at auction. And now, the winners of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize have won without taking a single photograph! Apparently, a spokesman for the Photographer’s Gallery, which organises the annual competition, said, ‘Sifting through the internet for low-resolution screengrabs and mobile-phone images, the artists then combined them to resonate with Brecht’s poems.’ So the judges didn’t want anything too original then. Just grab a few bits from the internet. It makes me weep. And the winners scooped…

AS MENTIONED earlier, there are lots of options when it comes to choosing a pinhole camera, from a simple body-cap pinhole on your digital camera, to making your own from a template and cardboard (see pages 26-27), to buying one ready to shoot. Pinhole cameras can be large or small, made from cans or cardboard boxes, or crafted from the finest-quality wood. Basically, a pinhole camera is a light-tight box with a tiny hole in one end and film or photographic paper in the other. AP Photo Insight contributor Andrew Sanderson says: ‘I’m currently using the new Ilford/Harman Obscura 5x4in camera and the Walker Titan 5x4in pinhole camera. Previously, I have used a homemade super-wide 10x8in camera and an assortment of homemade cameras, from a 12.5x3.25in curved-back panoramic to a…

Floral Still Life We had some stunning entries for round 5 of APOY 2013, as we reveal the top 30 photographs from our Floral Still Life round James Eldridge, of Folkestone in Kent, is the winner of our Floral Still Life round of APOY 2013. James will receive a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G5 with Lumix G Vario 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6 Asph Power OIS and Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 Asph Mega OIS lenses, worth a total of £1,579.98. The G5 is a digital single-lens mirrorless camera with a 16.05-million-pixel, four thirds, Live MOS sensor. It has 6fps high¬speed continuous shooting, a 3in, 920,000-dot articulated LCD touchscreen and a 1.44-million-dot EVF. The Leica 45mm lens has a bright f/2.8 maximum aperture designed to produce minimum distortion and soft focus. Our second-placed winner is…

Riverscape Michael Williams Nikon EM, 50mm, f/5.6, Kodak BW400CN WHEN I first saw Michael’s riverscape, I wasn’t entirely sure what it was that I was looking at: was it a Polaroid emulsion transfer, perhaps? Maybe a tinted print from a paper negative? Or simply a shot taken with a low-resolution smartphone? Either way, I was drawn to the impressionistic scene with its muted blue-grey palette, gentle contrast and subtle vignette. It transpires that the shot’s origins were not as expected, as it was taken on Kodak BW400CN film using an all-manual Nikon EM 35mm SLR and standard 50mm lens. Kodak BW400CN is a chromogenic black & white film, which is processed using standard C-41 (colour negative) chemistry. The negatives can then be printed onto colour paper, although rather than achieving…

IT IS possible to replicate the effects of some filters in Photoshop. The most obvious one is the ND grad, which is mainly used to prevent the sky from being overexposed. ND grads aren’t precise and can leave telltale signs on uneven horizons, so some landscape photographers prefer to take two shots of the same scene - one with the sky well exposed (landscape too dark) and the other with the landscape well exposed (sky overexposed). The two shots are then combined in Layers and, using a Layer Mask and the Eraser tool, the overexposed sky is ‘rubbed out’ to reveal the well-exposed sky in the layer beneath. This can be time-consuming when the horizon is broken by features such as buildings, but it is more precise than using an…

Technical editor ANNOUNCED just a few weeks a g o , ‘ the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R seems to be the perfect union between two of the biggest trends in digital camera technology. Based upon the original RX1 released last year, the RX1R is a compact camera with a DSLR-sized sensor, but with no anti-aliasing (AA) filter. As these features are two of the biggest talking points of the past few years, the RXIR look to be an intriguing camera. One of the most interesting things about the RX1R is that Sony has said it will cost the same as the standard RX1: £2, 599. Most other manufacturers charge a premium for a version of a camera without an anti-alising filter, with pentax being a good example offering the K-5 II…

PROCESSOR: Also referred to as the CPU (Central Processing Unit), the computer’s processor is its ‘brain’, which is where any and all calculations take place. In digital photography, the faster the processor is, the quicker the computer will be able to perform editing tasks on your images. Fast processors are most useful when it comes to ‘intensive’ tasks such as handling multiple images for the Brenizer Method (see AP 20 July), as a slow processor may simply be unable to perform the task. The measurement of a processor’s speed is given in GHz (gigahertz) and the higher the number, the faster the processor. RAM: Random Access Memory is where the programs on your computer store data temporarily so it can be worked on. For example, if you want to edit…

Wednesday 24 July EXHIBITION Domus by Giorgio Casali, until 22 September at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London N1 2AN. Tel: 0207 704 9522. Visit www.estorickcollection.com. EXHIBITION Short Breaths by Miles Aldridge, until 28 September at Brancolini Grimaldi, London WIS 4JJ. Tel: 0207 493 5721. Visit www.brancolinigrimaldi.com. Thursday 25 July EXHIBITION Prefabs -Palaces for the People by Elisabeth Blanchet, until 2 August at Photofusion, London SW9 8LA. Tel: 0 20 7 73 8 5 7 74. Visit www.photofusion.org. EXHIBITION Jesse Alexander: The Golden Age of Motorsport, until 24 August at Chris Beetles Fine Photographs, London W1B 4DE. Tel: 0207 434 4319. Visit www.chrisbeetlesfinephotographs.com. Friday 26 July EXHIBITION Trailblazers by Anita Corbin, until 29 September at the Discovery Museum, Tyne & Wear NE1 4JA. Tel: 0191 232 6789. Visit…

‘You’d be surprised how many times I’m criticised because I just do landscapes,’ said the legendary Ansel Adams in George Hughes’ two-page interview in AP 27 July 1977. ‘“The world is going to pieces and all Ansel Adams photographs is rocks“,’ is how he summarised the view of his critics. Adams was 75 at the time of the interview, and spoke candidly about his spates of bad-picture days. ‘It’s easy to force myself to go out with the will to make pictures. But too often when I look at the ground glass I realise I’ve done it before and done it better,’ he said.…

RELEASED in 2010, the Canon EOS 60D became one of the company’s most popular DSLRs. Now, almost three years later, it is to be replaced with the Canon EOS 70D. While the new camera inherits its predecessor’s polycarbonate body, it also has also seem some significant improvements made to its autofocus system. The EOS 70D has 19 AF points, all of which are cross-type points, like the more advanced EOS 7D. The new camera also has built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. However, of all the new features added by Canon, it is the EOS 70D’s sensor design that is by far the most interesting. NEW SENSOR TECHNOLOGY The key new feature of the Canon EOS 70D is its unique and intriguing sensor It follows in the wake of recent cameras we have…

• THE COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY FIELD GUIDE by Michael Freeman, £8.99 Michael Freeman takes a pocket-sized bite at exploring the use of colour in photography with this handy little guide. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so the text is densely packed. You do wonder if the book really needed to be compact, as it feels more like an in-depth read than a quick-to-hand reference book. It’s full of golden tips and info, though, as well as some exploration of colour’s history in art and imaging. • IPAD FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS by Ben Harvell and Rachael D’Cruze, £9.99 An iPad isn’t exactly the ‘catch up or get left behind’ must-have tool for photographers that the blurb of this book would have you believe, but it can be a useful way to…

THIS photograph was taken at Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park while I was on a trip to Tasmania, to the south of mainland Australia, last November. Cradle Mountain has some of the best-preserved upland habitats on the island. It’s full of the country’s typical vegetation, which looks very strange to somebody coming from the northern hemisphere. It has a kind of primeval feel to it, which is not surprising since an awful lot of the plant life is made up of very ancient species. You get huge tree ferns, some as tall as 15 metres. (49ft), and one of these odd plants is the pandani, the subject of this photograph. This particular stretch was next to Boardwalk in Cradle Mountain, and on every single plant all the ends of…

WE’VE taken excerpts from Justin Quinnell’s book Build Your Own Pinhole Cameras (see competition, right), so you can build your own Like-A paper pinhole camera. Justin’s book contains lots of camera designs and is packed with advice on how to get the best from your pinhole camera. Use the template (below), follow the instructions and join in the fun of taking pictures with your pinhole camera. Pinhole lens To create sharp images, your pinhole lens needs to be made out of metal - and an empty aluminium drinks can is ideal. To make the pinhole lens, cut one end off the can using heavy-duty scissors (be very careful as the metal edges are razor-sharp) and then cut down the length. Cut off the other end of the can so you…

THERE’S something magical about the stately and graceful flight of hot-air balloons as they sail across the sky. Landscape photographer Clive Minnitt says he’s smitten with shooting them. ‘Balloons are an extremely photogenic form of air trave and look wonderful,’ he says. ‘Also, I love photographing colour, and hot-air balloons are extremely colourful. Personally, I can’t think of a better subject.’ Clive has been professional for 16 years. He gave up his job as a computer systems analyst in 1997 after taking part in a Light & Land photographic holiday as a client. He has subsequently become a Light & Land tutor himself and has led more than 50 tours and workshops in the UK and abroad. PERSONAL PROJECTS When not leading Light & Land trips, Clive gives talks, writes…

Image-editing apps Callum Mclnerney-Riley tests a range of the best Android and iOS apps available for on-the-go image editing Snapseed Free www.snapseed.com Developed by the renowned Nik Software, Snapseed is a powerful image-editing app that is easy to use. On-screen tips explain how to use swipe gestures to control different adjustments, which is very helpful. Cropping, frames, focus and tilt-shift effects, filters, sharpening and basic adjustments can all be carried out using this app. The best feature, however, is the selective adjust, which allows localised adjustments of contrast, saturation and brightness. Simply and effectively, this tool can really enhance an image. The new added Retrolux filters are among the best filters I’ve seen, giving a very pleasing vintage feel to the image. Adobe Photoshop Touch From £2.99 www.adobe.com/uk Adobe has…

Technical writer SONY announced its Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 II alongside the Cyber-shot DSC-RX1R (see test on pages 57-59) on 27 June this year. As the name makes clear, the RX100 II is an upgraded version of the original Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 that impressed us greatly when we tested it in AP 14 July 2012. It was part of the recent wave of advanced compact cameras and, for its size, it was top of the class for image quality. Since the RX100’s release, competitors such as the Fujifilm X100S and X20 have turned up, as well as the Nikon Coolpix A. However, only the Fujifilm X20 is comparable in size to the RX100 II. While much of the core design remains the same as the original RX100, Sony has listened to customer feedback…

DARK PRINTS My prints are darker than the image I see on the screen. As my Canon • 4VJ Pixma iX5000 inkjet printer (pictured above) has only four different inks, I have in the past sent my images off to be printed by professionals. The results were also rather disappointing and much darker than the image I saw on-screen. Getting the colour right is critical and I can’t afford to experiment with large prints made by professionals. This really put me off for a couple of years. Recently, I had my monitor calibrated. As my own printer isn’t really up to the job, I thought that if I calibrate my monitor then at least the prints I get back from a professional lab will be the same as I see…

CONSIDER pleasure and enjoyment. The two are not quite the same, but they are close enough for the purposes of the forthcoming argument. There are at least three kinds of both. There are things that are enjoyable at the time, such as eating a good meal. There are things that give only indirect pleasure, the pleasure of results. Consider, for example, tidying the garage, or working at a tedious job in order to earn money. A third form of pleasure, albeit more disputable, inheres in things that are not at all enjoyable at the time, but enjoyable in retrospect: things where we say, as we have all said, ‘I didn’t enjoy it at the time and I don’t think I’d do it again, but I’m glad to have done it.’…