Innholdsfortegnelse for September 28, 2013 i Amateur Photographer

THE RISE of the camera phone appears to have been the beginning of the end for General Imaging Europe, which has confirmed that it has ceased trading after six years of operation in the UK. It has also shut down its offices in Germany.. General Imaging Europe, part of industry giant General Electric, focused on consumer-level compact digital cameras – a market badly hit by smartphones. Six staff in the UK and six in Germany have lost their jobs as a result of the closures. ‘We have ceased European operations. Cameras will no longer be imported into Europe,’ said Gary Banks, commercial director for European operations at General Imaging Europe. ‘We are no longer supplying products and any pending orders will be cancelled.’ Speaking to AP, Banks spelled out the…

NIKON D5200: THE EXPANDED GUIDE by Jon Sparks, £14.99 This is another quality effort in the Expanded Guide of books. The Nikon D5200 was launch this year to enthusiastic reviews as an affordable upgrade to the beginnerfriendly around the £575 mark if you’re thinking of purchasing one. If you do, a book like this is well worth your time as a digestible way to familiarise yourself with what the camera can do. MOTHER by Elinor Carucci, £29.99 Noted Jewish-American photographer Elinor Carucci takes motherhood as the subject of her new book, with a series that unfolds over nine years, detailing the pregnancy and birth that resulted in her twin children, as well as the beginnings of their maturation. Moments that will doubtless be infinitely familiar to parents abound throughout the…

Officially I’m a diver and a marine ecologist, which means I often travel around the world working with different academics and universities. I sometimes work as an ‘embedded photographer’, which involves being on expeditions so I can help to document and raise awareness of the ecology the groups discover on their journey. This image was taken during an expedition to Sula Sgeir, which is a small uninhabited island 45 miles north of Lewis in the North Atlantic. There are probably 10,000- 15,000 gannets that nest on the island. The purpose of the trip was to go out ther with a small group of marine biologists, ecologists and keen amateurs to study the marine life in the area. The diving was exceptional on this particular day. The visibility was truly amazing…

THE STRANGE, barren and austerely beautiful landscape of Dead Vlei can be found in a remote part of Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia. The area, the name of which means dead marsh or lake, is a white clay pan scattered with the skeletal remains of dead camel thorn trees. The trees, scorched and dried out by the intense heat, are believed to be more than 900 years old and died when the area’s water supply was cut off due to climate change. The clay pan is surrounded by some of the world’s biggest sand dunes, some of which reach up to around 400 metres high. The stark shapes of the trees, set against the cracked white floor of the clay pan, the burnt-orange-coloured dunes and the usually cloudless blue sky,…

Photo Ferret app £9.99 www.tommackie.com THE BRAINCHILD of AP contributor Tom Mackie, Photo Ferret provides more than 180 locations to photograph in the UK. Each country is divided into regions, with each region showing a thumbnail selection of Tom Mackie’s images taken there. Clicking on a thumbnail shows a higher-resolution image, with the option to display information about each location and how the image was taken. Tom describes where the image was captured, how to get to the location and how the image was created. There is also a Best Time To Go section, describing exactly when to capture the scene at its best, as well as a glossary to explain some of the terms used in the description. Most useful is the option to open the location in Google…

Viewfinder The EOS 70D has a bright 98% coverage with a 0.95x magnification Flash The built-in pop-up flash has a guide number of 12m @ ISO 100, with a sync speed of 1/250sec Quick menu A press of this button displays the shooting and image settings shown in the screen image below. These can be changed using the touchscreen or the directional control on the rear of the camera In-camera correction Those who shoot JPEGs can take advantage of the fact that vignetting and chromatic aberrations can be corrected in-camera Image rating In the image playback menu, it is possible to rate images out of five stars. This information is saved to the image metadata and can be read by editing and catalogue software, such as Adobe Lightroom or Bridge,…

MOTORCYCLISTS – the ones who stick at it, not the ones who ride for a few years in their teens and early 20s – have a wonderfully dismissive name for a certain kind of motorcycle. They call it an ‘appliance’. In other words, it’s like a washing machine, a refrigerator or a toaster. It demands little or no maintenance, and whatever it does demand, you won’t be able to do yourself. It is extremely reliable until it breaks, at which point it may well be irreparable, either because parts aren’t available or because the cost of labour is astronomical. ‘Appliances’ are contrasted with ‘real’ motorcycles. The best-known example in current production is probably Harley-Davidson, although a far better example (and in most ways a far better motorcycle) is the Royal…

The replacement for the Olympus E-5 has been rumoured for some time, with much speculation as to the exact form the camera would take. Some thought it would be a four thirds system camera, either without a mirror or with a pellicle one. Others believed it would be a micro four thirds system camera, with a clever new adapter to allow the use of four thirds lenses, and possibly with a pellicle mirror to allow phase detection – like the Sony Alpha to NEX-mount adapter. The reality is that the new OM-D E-M1 is rather more conventional. It is, in fact, a micro four thirds system camera that relies on the existing MMF-3 four thirds to micro four thirds mount adapter to mount four thirds lenses. The issue with this…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Wins a 20-roll pack of 36-exposure Fujifilm Superia ISO 200 35mm film or a Fujifilm 8GB media card* EXCEPTIONAL SHOTS I never expect to see outstanding shots in the Masterclass articles, firstbecause the students are under the stress of the occasion, and second, because they are using unfamiliar techniques and equipment. The Masterclass in AP 14 September on using flash outdoors was the exception, though. Danielle Kalinovskis managed not only to put the model totally at ease, but also posed and shot her in a way that brought out the best in her – to the extent that the possible problems in posing and framing simply added to the believability of the situation. If the purpose of using off-camera flash is not to draw attention to…

Many wildlife photographers see their work as recording the natural world as they find it. However, for Spanish photographer Marina Cano, creativity is the key and the appearance of the final image is all that matters. ‘I understand photography as art, not as document,’ she says. ‘We have eyes for being true to life. I don’t want to capture real life, I want to wait for rare moments, extraordinary weather conditions, to explore new angles and capture intimacy. Afterwards, I work on the images with my computer to finish what I started in nature.’ Although a good proportion of her portfolio images are straight shots with little post-capture work, many are artworks created using two or more images. Nevertheless, whether they are made with or without the aid of Photoshop,…

Tunnel Conrad Lewis Nikon F3, 35mm, 2secs at f/5.6 AlThough Conrad doesn’t say, this looks very much like the foot tunnel under the River Thames linking Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs in East London. If it is, then it’s a location I have photographed several times myself, so I know what Conrad was up against because the tunnel is incredibly dark, despite the harsh overhead lighting. Unfortunately, even a 2sec exposure wasn’t long enough in this instance, with a histogram that’s shifted heavily to the left indicating quite severe underexposure. It’s most likely that this was caused by the small but bright lights overhead fooling the camera’s meter into thinking the scene was far brighter than it actually was. Of course, with no LCD screen to check it would…

WHEN I tested the Canon EOS 60D three years ago in AP 23 August 2010, I thought it was quite a significant camera for the company. The market for middle to high-end enthusiast DSLRs has always been very competitive, so when Canon introduced the EOS 60D it had some small, but important changes. These new features would pave the way for the EOS 70D, which was released earlier this year. The EOS 60D retained the 18-millionpixel-resolution, APS-C-sized CMOS sensor of its predecessor, the EOS 50D, but what turned heads was the inclusion of an articulated screen – at the time, such a feature was associated with compact and entry-level DSLRs, not serious cameras costing large amounts of money. Similarly, the polycarbonate build of the EOS 60D was a departure from…

FLASH ADVICE Q I have some work lined up at a charity event and plan to use my Olympus E-500. As I will be shooting indoors, I need a flashgun for the camera. What would you recommend? Sam Russell A There aren’t that many flashes available for Olympus E-system cameras, at least not compared to some other makes, so narrowing the options is fairly straightforward. If you are looking for something that will give you TTL control, coupled with a reasonable output and a bounce-and-tilt head, my firstchoice would be the Olympus FL-36. With a guide number of 36m _ ISO 100 with a 42mm focal length, it’s a good all-rounder and the preferred choice of many E-500 users. Although it’s been superceded by the FL-36R, your E-500 doesn’t support…

British Wildlife Photography Awards Collection 4 AA Publishing, £25, hardback, 224 pages, ISBN 978-0-7495-7479-6 ANOTHER successful year of the British Wildlife Photography Awards has produced a superb crop of images. George Krabus deservedly triumphed with his image of a playful surfing bottlenose dolphin near Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland (top left), but his image is just the beginning of a fantastic journey. A host of categories awaits, featuring some eye-popping imagery. The ‘Urban Wildlife’ entries are especially good this year, with a some impressively challenging night shoots, and the up-close ‘Natural Details’ provide a different, more abstract take on wildlife photography. One quibble: it would have been nice to see exposure details for the images, especially to be able to unpick some of the more challenging ones. Still, a stunning…

YOU DON’T own an expensive watch just by sticking a Cartier badge on a £9.99 timepiece from Argos. You don’t own a Fender by sticking its logo on a guitar made by an unknown manufacturer. You can’t turn an Avensis into a Lexus by changining the badges. So what are Leica and Hasselblad up to? Both names have traditionally been associated with expense, yes, but expense with desirability and quality. Part status symbol, part of the elite, part of another world. Something the beginner can aspire to own. Something that, when finally possessed, can be fully appreciated. Now both Leica and Hasselblad have sold themselves down the river. Hasselblad seems determined to demean the brand name by its ridiculous tampering with Sony cameras. First we had the Lunar, based on…

Black & White World We had some excellent entries for round 7 of APOY 2013, as we reveal the top 30 photographs from our Black & White World round Chris Bennett, of Kenilworth in Warwickshire, is the winner of our Black & White World round of APOY 2013. Chris will receive a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G6 with Lumix G Vario 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Asph Mega OIS lens, plus Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 Asph and Lumix G 14mm f/2.5 Asph pancake lenses, worth a total of £1,329.97. The G6 is a digital single-lens mirrorless camera with a 16.05-million-pixel, micro four thirds, Live MOS sensor. The Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 Asph and Lumix G 14mm f/2.5 Asph are compact and lightweight pancake lenses that are suitable for a wide variety of occasions, with both…

SIX YEARS ago, AP reader John Arnison decided to embark on a photographic project – to shoot waterfalls across Yorkshire at night! Aided and abetted by his friend Lee, John goes out after the sun sets to capture his fantastic long-exposure landscapes. It’s a dangerous business, though, with the locations often remote, pitch black and sometimes requiring the pair to abseil into position. Trying to find a new angle in photography is not exactly an easy task, but the quest to discover a style all his own provided an irresistible challenge to John. ‘I had the idea to try to combine my love of walking with my passion for photography,’ says John. ‘The subject of waterfalls came from my liking for portraits taken using torches. From the start I knew…

THE STANDOUT feature of the Canon EOS 70D is the unique Dual Pixel CMOS AF system built into its 20.2-million-pixel sensor. This technology is Canon’s method for performing on-sensor phasedetection focusing. Each of the 20.2 million pixels that make up the images are produced from two photodiodes on the sensor. The reason for having pairs of photodiodes is that any difference in the electrical readout between the pair will indicate that the image is not in focus. Depending on the exact difference between the readout of the photodiodes, the camera’s processing system can calculate how much the focus of the lens needs to shift to make each readout match. When this is achieved, the image is in focus. As the signal from these photodiodes is used to create a single…

PAINTSHOP Pro started life as a raster graphics editor in 1990, and since being bought by Corel in 2004 there have been six new versions of PaintShop Pro X. The Windows-based photo-editing software is designed to rival programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Elements. PaintShop Pro has many of the same tools and functions that are offered by Photoshop and Elements. These include cloning, selections, layers, colour adjustments, tonal adjustments, sharpening, blurring, brush tools and filter applications. The new addition to the Corel software family is PaintShop Pro X6, which now supports 64-bit for the firsttime and benefits from a boost in speed and performance. The interface has undergone a few design changes, the usability in general has been improved and a few new tools have been added. FEATURES…