Innholdsfortegnelse for September 21, 2013 i Amateur Photographer

RECENTLY, I was shown a range of lab-produced photo books by a nice man who was trying to sell me the idea of reviewing the service for the magazine. I admired the different sizes and forms the books took, and considered whether I preferred the gloss or the matt finish and whether they really delivered respectable value for money. I have to say I was quite taken by them and, as well as determining how they might suit you, dear readers, I have to admit I imagined some of my own pictures printed on the not-too-stippled matt-finished pages. Afterwards, I discussed my ambitions with my wife. She laughed, and asked when I was going to print the pictures from last year’s holiday. And those from this summer, our sons’ birthdays,…

André Kertész: Paris, Autumn 1963 By André Kertész. Flammarion, £24.95, hardback, 80 pages, ISBN 978-2-0802-0155-3 FOLLOWING his return to Paris in 1963, André Kertész produced more than 1,500 negatives and 313 colour slides, from which he selected 59 of the best and crafted them into a blueprint for a book. This volume is that book, released for the first time as he originally intended. The 59 superb street shots are an absolute pleasure. Kertész had a peerless eye, and a city like Paris was the perfect canvas and playground. This is what’s most pleasing about the images – the balance struck between their technical proficiency and the sense of playfulness. An image of two near-symmetrically dressed couples caught kissing on benches along a path lined with gnarled trees (above) is…

LIKE many, I’m totally against police intrusion into innocent hobby photography. So I sympathise with the two young male AP readers who were stopped by police officers for photographing their patrol car while it was on the move (News, AP 17 August). The officers didn’t specify under which law or act they were questioning the lads, but did trot out the clichéd excuse ‘In this day and age you can’t be too sure’. Too sure of what, exactly? Whether or not two photographers using seriouslooking DSLRs – rather than smartphones or ‘snapshot’ cameras – were up to no good? You have to wonder just how many terrorists or paedophiles using camera phones are wandering about unhindered while photographing possible targets or victims under the eyes of the law, which is…

THE INTERNET has had some bad press recently, with people voicing their concerns over the easy availability of sites and material unsuitable for children. However, it’s not a total nest of vipers as there are many areas where the web has revolutionised how we achieve our goals. Kickstarter, a website aimed at creative people from all walks of life, is one such oasis. Never heard of Kickstarter? Then prepare to be impressed by the positive power of the web and start thinking how you could get in on the crowd-funding act. Kickstarter is a New York-based business that has a fairly simple model at its heart. You think of a creative project, budget for it, present your business plan and, if accepted, this is put on the Kickstarter website in…

Sunset at the Tufas 1 A 3-stop ND filter gave Michel some control over this scene. The rocks and colour give it an alien feel Nikon D7100, 18-200mm, 1.3secs at f/18, ISO 100, ND fi lter, tripod Moonrise over the Sierra Nevada 2 Michel took this image at Yosemite National Park, California Nikon D7100, 18-200mm, 1/6sec at f/18, ISO 100, ND filter, tripod Shooting through the rainbow 3 This is a spectacular moment that Michel has captured with care and delicacy Nikon D7100, 18-200mm, 1/20sec at f/18, ISO 100, polariser, tripod Michel Hersen USA Michel has been producing fantastic landscapes with such regularity that he has appeared in Reader Spotlight many times. These latest images come from California, taking in the eastern Sierra Nevada, Kings Canyon National Park, Yosemite and other…

PORTABLE projectors are lightweight units that are small enough to fit in a satchel or even a shirt pocket, and can be used anywhere to instantly display your photographs and movie files. As with most photographic equipment, the lens quality has to be good. The pocket projector’s lens will probably be a fixed focal length, which means you have to move the projector either closer or further away from the screen to reduce or enlarge the projected image. Generally, the optimum viewing distance is 2-3 metres (6-9ft), which should produce an image size of 0.25-1.5m (10-60in). Bigger projectors usually incorporate a zoom lens, which enables the user to enlarge or decrease the image size without moving the projector. Focusing is accomplished manually using a small wheel located near the lens.…

THE TERM ‘alternative process’ covers a number of picture-making methods. Most are printing processes, but not all, and are actually antique processes, which have been given a contemporary slant by presenting them as ‘alternative’. The most common is cyanotype, and its popularity is probably down to the ease of use and the relatively harmless chemicals involved (all chemicals should be treated with care and sensible safety guidelines should be adhered to). Other printing processes include: salt printing; argyrotype; albumen printing, gum printing; platinum printing; carbon printing; Van Dyke Brown and a few more specialised processes such as dromoil, wet plate and daguerrotype. Most of these give a monochrome image, but gum and carbon can be used to create full-colour pictures, although this is a very specialised and difficult way to…

ARE ALL photographers narcissists, or are we just hoarders? I ask this genuinely. It may seem like I’m being provocative, but I believe the paradox stands. We photographers have always been a rather obnoxious sort. Incessantly lagging behind groups, annoying people at parties who are just trying to chat – always sticking our nose in other people’s business. Our endless search for life’s small details has always been tolerated because everyone likes a good story – particularly about themselves. But nowadays there are too many storytellers. My moment of clarity happened recently at a concert in the park. It was a gaudy fusion of strings and guitars, but even if I had enjoyed the sounds they were making I was too distracted by the rising tide of smartphones to fully…

“The financial impact of this prosecution is unclear” Olympus scandal reignited, page 7 • E-M1 designed for CSC and DSLR lenses • No DSLR on horizon HAS OLYMPUS E-M1 ENDED FIRM’S DSLR HISTORY? OLYMPUS’S DSLR days may be over as the firm unveils the OM-D E-M1, a compact system camera designed to optimise AF for micro four thirds and four thirds lenses. Developed as a successor to the Olympus E-5 DSLR, the E-M1 (pictured) is designed for use with four thirds lenses via a £179 adapter, which Olympus has pledged to give away free to existing E-system camera owners. The E-M1 is compatible with 63 existing Olympus lenses (the current E-M5 will continue). The move comes a year after Olympus said it was working on a body to ‘fully utilise’…

● LES TORTURES VOLONTAIRES by Annette Messager, £45 Annette Messager’s 1972 series focused on the phrase ‘Beauty knows no pain’. It’s got plenty of unpleasant ramifications when you stop to think about it, and these are precisely what Messager goes for. She re-imagines popular beauty and health treatments in the context of torture devices, creating images that are simultaneously black, disturbing and almost absurdly comic. Messager drops into this edition to provide a little commentary on her series, and you can’t help but wish she’d say a little more. ● BURMESE LIGHT by Hans Kemp and Tom Vater, £22 Burma may not get the kind of press many tourist spots do, but it’s a beautiful place with a rich history. The travels of photographer Hans Kemp and writer Tom Vater…

I HAVE talked before about my white wolf project (see AP 23 March), and these images are often referred to when discussing my career. This isn’t a comment about me, but more about the importance of the period and the project it produced. I took the wolf photographs over three years while on assignment for National Geographic in the high Arctic, specifically on Ellesmere Island, which is the top island in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of the Canadian territory of Nunavut. It’s just before the North Pole. I was in the region covering a dog-sled trip. If I’m honest, the whole trip for me was a bit of a ruse – a chance to get close to the white wolves I knew lived in the area. I knew there was a…

MAKING your own photography book is not a new idea, although you could be forgiven for assuming they are. In the past few years these do-it-yourself treasures have become all the rage in photographic circles. As home-based publishing software becomes more affordable and user-friendly, many photographers are taking matters into their own hands and producing beautifully crafted volumes. While this is a relatively new movement in the UK, there is a long tradition of self-published photo books in Japan. Last year, The Photographers’ Gallery in London held an exhibition where visitors were free to handle some of the most significant photo books from Japan’s notable photographers. Around the same time, London’s Tate Modern held an exhibition of Daido Moriyama’s work, a photographer who has produced some of today’s most sought-after…

TERMS like orphan works and extended collective licensing (ECL) have been in the news a lot recently. But why are they so important? Since 2010, Paul Ellis, founder of the website Stop 43, and several concerned parties, have been fighting in vain to prevent them from entering government legislation. Now, as a result of these impending changes, individual photographers will suffer as they could have their work used without their knowledge and, potentially, without payment. ORPHAN WORKS First, let’s take a look at what we mean by the term ‘orphan works’. ‘An orphan work is an copyrighted work, such as a photograph, the owner of which is unknown,’ says Paul. ‘Basically, a corporation may wish to use an image it has found online or in an archive, but cannot establish…

ALTHOUGH there are lots of companies that allow you to upload your images and print your own photo book, it is possible to a make and print a book yourself. You can control the size, the paper you use and how you want the cover to look. A handmade photo book can be a nice memento of an event and make a great personalised gift. You might think that making a professional-looking book would be impossible without certain tools and skills, but the basic premise is straightforward, although it may take a few attempts to get exactly what you want. With this in mind, it is always best to make a few test books. PRINTING YOUR PAGES In this example, I have kept the process as simple as possible to…

FINE LINE Q I use Olympus OM-1 and OM-2SP cameras, but when I get the film developed I find there is a line through the negatives. What am I doing wrong? ‘Bootsy’ A Without seeing an example of how this line manifests itself it’s hard to say for sure what’s causing it, but I’m hard-pressed to think of anything that would apply equally to more than one camera. If it is happening to films from both, then I would suggest that it’s probably not the cameras that are at fault. To start with, it may be worth testing them both with clearly identifiable films to see if you can find which of them is the culprit. Then, depending on the nature of the line, you should be able to determine…

A DIGITAL camera that comes without any way of composing or reviewing images may seem like an illogical concept, but the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-QX10 and DSCQX100 instead rely on the high-resolution LCD screens that many of us now carry in our pockets. By way of a Wi-Fi connection, both QX cameras are able to link directly to a smartphone or tablet running the Sony PlayMemories Mobile app. Using this app, which is available for Apple iOS and Android devices, a live view of the scene can be displayed on the phone’s screen, as well as menus for changing various shooting and exposure settings. In effect, the QX camera module and smartphone combine to become a compact camera. FEATURES Before we examine the details of the QX10 and QX100, it is…

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 CORNUCOPIA OF CAMERAS I have been reading a lot of letters about brand loyalty recently and have decided to stick my oar in. I am a Canon man. I love Canon, from my Canonettes to my EFs, FTs, A-series and T-series cameras, my EOS 3, D60 and 7D, my BL and FD lenses – yes, I’m a real Canon man! But hang on a minute, I’m a Minolta man. I love Minolta, from my SRs and SRTs to my Hi-matics, XM and my XE, my Dynax and SI-series cameras – yes, I’m a real Minolta man! But what about my Mamiya, Nikon and Olympus cameras, or my…

SELECTIVE BLURRING THE MINIATURISATION effect has proved very popular in recent years and can be achieved in a number of ways. You can apply the effect in-camera by photographing using a Lensbaby lens. This will allow you to apply the desired amount of tilt distortion as you shoot. This can work very well, but of course you have to get it just right in-camera at the time you take the photograph. The other option is to do this at the post-processing stage. For example, it is possible to use localised adjustment tools in Camera Raw or Lightroom to apply negative sharpening effects, but you are restricted in the amount of blurring you can apply using this method. Photoshop CS6 saw the introduction of Blur Gallery filters, which include Field, Iris…

MANY of us now share our images online. With the advent of digital photography a new and exciting phase began, with hundreds or even thousands of photographs being taken, whereas in the past just 24 or 36 may have sufficed. Alongside the explosion of digital photography has come the desire to share our photos with a wider community than was previously possible. Flickr, Facebook, Instagram and other such sites have experienced unheard of growth in the past few years. Recent figures state that nearly 30,000 photographs are uploaded to Instagram and more than 200,000 images are uploaded to Facebook every minute. However, with millions of photographs being uploaded to various sites every day, how can you use the web to get your images seen by those who matter, and to…

City street Debashis Mukherjee Canon EOS 400D, 18-55mm, 1/160sec at f/14, ISO 200 THERE’S a certain charm to Debashis’s Indian street shot, and I particularly like the figure at the bottom right. It’s definitely a very unusual place to position someone in the frame, but in this shot it gives us a sense of scale and provides a splash of human interest in what might have otherwise been a fairly bland photograph of a building. Of course, it may well be that the girl just happened to be there while Debashis was taking a shot of the façade, so her appearance is more accidental than intentional, but either way it works. The same can’t be said for the figures at the left of the image, who are clearly unintentional visitors…

MOST photographers who put their images online do so in an attempt to gain some exposure and recognition for their work. A few ‘likes’ and positive comments are a nice way to get feedback and to share a passion for photography. However, a common problem people encounter is that, on-screen, their images look fantastic, but once uploaded to websites such as Flickr, 500px, Twitter or Facebook, they look very different. The screen image doesn’t match the uploaded picture. Often, colours appear flatter, focus is not as sharp, and occasionally the appearance of compression artefacts become an issue. This can cause great, fantastically composed images to become lost online as they fail to stand out. Here, I will outline a few ways to prepare images specifically for the web, and provide…

FOR MANY lovers of the fine folding cameras of the 1950s, nothing can equal the great coupled-rangefinder rollfilm designs of the period – the Voigtländer Bessa II (AP 31 August), the British Ensign Autorange and the various Zeiss Ikon Super Ikontas. For them, the rollfilm Ikonta M, with an uncoupled rangefinder, is second rate. That is entirely understandable, since the specifications of the great coupled-rangefinder rollfilm cameras are magnificent, and their performance, when in good condition, is difficult to equal among cameras of similar age, except by 6x9cm technical cameras, such as the Linhof or Horseman designs. However, with the complexity that makes it possible to have a coupled rangefinder in a large folding camera comes the likelihood of wear and consequent inaccuracy developing over the years. Even in their…