Innholdsfortegnelse for December 14, 2013 i Amateur Photographer

MANUFACTURERS have been on a mission to reduce the size and weight of their cameras, while simultaneously adding new features to them. This desire to miniaturise was the raison d’être behind the invention of the compact system camera, when Panasonic demonstrated just how much bulk could be saved by replacing the DSLR’s mirror and prism assembly with an EVF. Others followed suit, some employing ever smaller sensors in order to claim the ‘smallest’ and ‘lightest’ epithets. This year, Canon started from scratch to make its EOS 100 25% smaller than its previous DSLRs, and Panasonic’s Lumix DMC-GM1 CSC is so small it could be mistaken for a compact. Until now, however, the full-frame sector has remained untouched by this desire to shrink – perhaps because it was considered that its…

● THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S GUIDE TO THE LAKE DISTRICT by E Bowness, £12.95 It can often be overwhelming to travel to wellregarded photographic locations – the feeling that you need to do, see and photograph everything can leave you running around in a blind panic. A guide like this is an excellent tool for planning a trip, and if you’re heading off to the Lake District you’d do well to pick it up. Location by location, it takes you through the sights and sounds of one of our best-loved natural beauties, helping you decide what you need to see and what you can afford to miss. ● THE ILEX INTRODUCTION TO PHOTOGRAPHY by Haje Jan Kamps, £14.99 Certain names on photographic books assure you that you’re in good hands, one of…

THIS photograph, which I took early last year at Aberystwyth Pier in Ceredigion, won the Urban Wildlife category of the 2012 British Wildlife Photography Awards. The starlings roost under the pier every year, usually arriving in late October/early November and leaving in spring, and I have photographed them many times. The classic starling shot is of a cloud of birds wheeling over the land in various organic shapes, and I have certainly got a few shots like that, but I try to look for different compositions to show the birds in a new way. I have photographed them backlit by the setting sun, with a wideangle lens, with a fisheye lens and from the pier itself. This shot was planned inasmuch as I knew the birds would start to roost…

Mike Shields Conwy Mike says he loves everything about photography. ‘I love the capture and the editing,’ he says. ‘I love looking for and finding a scene to capture for ever. I love viewing the images on the computer and realising I’ve caught a beautiful moment in time.’ Mike was a film photographer many years ago, and rediscovered the bug in 2011 when he bought a Nikon D3100. His favourite subjects are landscapes, seascapes and long exposures. To see more of his images, visit www.mikeshieldsphotography.com. Two cottages 1 Mike used five bracketed exposures to create this dramatic HDR image Nikon D7100, 18-200mm, 1/500sec at f/8, ISO 250, tripod Vertigo 2 The leading lines of the columns and stairway draw the viewer into this dizzying shot Nikon D5100, 10-20mm, 1/8sec at…

Mini ball heads From lightweight DSLRs to smartphones, more and more imaging devices can get by on smaller supports. Jon Stapley and Callum McInerney-Riley check out six of the best miniature ball heads Cullman Cross CB2.7 Around ￡22 www.cullmann.de One important thing to note about the Cullman Cross CB2.7 is that it does not fit a standard tripod thread. It is designed to fit a 1/4-20 UNC screw thread, and does not come with a standard adapter. If this suits your needs, it’s a great little product. It has one particularly interesting feature that’s unique among these ball heads – the removable top-plate comes with a hotshoe on its reverse side. This lends the Cross CB2.7 a degree of versatility, allowing it to be used not only as a camera…

Sony, The Heights, Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey KT13 0XW. Tel: 01932 816 000. Website: www.sony.co.uk RESOLUTION & NOISE These images show 72ppi (100% on a computer screen) sections of images of a resolution chart, captured using the Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 lens set to f/5.6. We show the section of the resolution chart where the camera starts to fail to reproduce the lines separately. The higher the number visible in these images, the better the camera’s detail resolution is at the specified sensitivity setting. FOCAL POINTS Wi-Firemote control Remote control of the camera is possible via one of the Sony Play Memories camera apps, which is tucked away in the Application menu. However, it is possible to add a shortcut to the application menu via a custom button. Battery The Alpha…

IN AP 9 November, I looked at how magnification is split between ‘optical’ magnification, which occurs between the subject and sensor image, and is produced by the lens, and ‘digital’ magnification, which is achieved by the electronic signal processing applied after the image had been digitised. Here, we’ll discuss another replacement of optical effect with a digital one – the correction of lens aberrations. LENSES AND IMAGE PROCESSING A large part of the art of optical design is balancing aberrations against one another. Lens designers think in ‘degrees of freedom’ – factors in the design that can be altered to change the balance between the different lens aberrations. By using additional elements, ‘rare-earth’ glasses or aspheric surfaces, the number of degrees of freedom can be increased and a lens design…

• ‘Historic’ camera fetches twice estimate • $1.8m raised APPLE-DESIGNED LEICA MAKES A MILLION A LEICA camera codesigned by Apple’s Jonathan Ive has sold for nearly two million dollars – more than double its estimated value. The one-off Leica digital rangefinder camera went under the hammer as part of the (RED) Auction at Sotheby’s in New York. The camera fetched $1.8m (£1.1m), having been expected to raise $500,000-$750,000. Jonathan Ive is Apple’s senior vice-president of design. More than 500 models of the full-frame Leica Digital Rangefinder Camera (pictured) were made, involving the manufacture of almost 1,000 prototype parts over the 85 days it took to create. On the British Photographic History blog page, Royal Photographic Society director general Michael Pritchard writes: ‘The sale shows the importance of a designer’s name,…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Wins a 20-roll pack of 36-exposure Fujifilm Superia ISO 200 35mm film or a Fujifilm 8GB media card* DON’T GET STUCK IN THE ONE-WAY SYSTEM The letter from Brian Browne titled Please please me in AP 30 November really resonated with me. Like Brian, I started learning from my father in the attic in 1959. Unlike him, I now have 15 years’ experience with digital cameras and it has liberated me from the tyranny of judges and their idiosyncratic judgements. No longer do I have to look for ‘approval’ as there is no ‘right way’ to emulate. I walked the aisles of Paris Photo last week, as I do every year, with its endless displays of mediocrity concealing occasional ‘pearls’ that shine like a beacon in…

Tom Mackie shows five AP readers how to make the most of autumn colours in Cheshire’s splendid Tatton Park Gardens. Gill Mullins reports on the day IT MAY have been late, but it has been the most visually glorious autumn for decades, so what better theme for our landscape Masterclass than capturing autumn hues in one of England’s most beautiful gardens, at the heart of historic Tatton Park in Cheshire. Nestled within Tatton’s 1,000-acre deer park, the 50-acre landscaped gardens surrounding the neoclassical Mansion House include extensive – and still productive – kitchen gardens, a breathtaking arboretum and a remarkable series of glasshouses. When we arrive we breathe a sigh of relief that the St Jude’s Day storm three days earlier has, fortunately, caused little damage this far north, and…

Busker Matt Wilkes Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 24-105mm at 24mm, 1/60sec at f/4, ISO 1250 IT WOULD be easy to walk past the subject of this shot, so the fact that Matt has chosen to take a photograph shows a certain degree of bravery. It’s certainly paid off, as this shot of a busker in an underpass is full of atmosphere and deserves to be picture of the week. Compositionally, it works really well. I particularly like the diagonal lines that converge at the right. There really is no substitute for strong diagonal lines in an image if you want to direct the viewer’s gaze. In this shot, the lines of the tunnel wall and floor effectively act like giant arrows, drawing the eye across the image, and Matt’s…

I FIRST heard speculation that Sony was planning a full-frame compact system camera at the photokina trade show back in 2010. However, it was really only after the release earlier this year of the Cyber-shot DSC-RX1– the world’s first digital compact camera with a full 35mm-sized sensor – that the talk really started to hot up. In its RX series, Sony has created a strong line-up of cameras that have exploited a gap in the market – and it is this philosophy of identifying niches that lies behind the Alpha 7 and 7R. By placing a 35mm full-frame CMOS sensor in a mirrorless compact system camera, Sony has created another world first. Of course, Leica has used full-frame sensors in its digital rangefinder cameras for some years, but the high…

WHEN the D5300 was launched in October, Nikon was keen to stress that it was not a replacement for the Nikon D5200 or D5100. Rather, it was a continuation of the D5000 series, so neither the D5200 nor the D5100 would be discontinued. This new camera therefore expands Nikon’s range of ‘entry-level’ DSLRs, sitting at the top of the line-up as a ‘high-end’ model. With a variety of special effects modes, it ticks all the right boxes for the creative enthusiast photographer and boasts some impressive specifications. Also, thanks to the fact there’s no anti-aliasing filter, and that it has similarly high-resolution DX-format sensor as the D5200, the D5300 has the potential to produce fantastically detailed images. In addition, the D5300 has built-in Wi-Fi, GPS and features a new Expeed…

RITUAL serves many purposes. The first is familiarity. If we are brought up with a ritual, then it is comforting to see the old ways maintained. This is probably true even if the ritual itself is actually deeply unpleasant, such as human sacrifice or teaching classical economics, so long as you’re not the victim. Second, paradoxically in light of the first, it is not exactly everyday: it is something outside our workaday life. Ritual is rarely purely functional. It is a sign that we have (or should have) something beyond the mere daily grind of existence. Third, it marks something out as important. It is something we are supposed to do properly, in a particular way. Fourth, it serves to separate participants in the ritual from outsiders. Most people welcome…

Four Seasons of Travel Foreword by Andrew Evans. National Geographic, £30, hardback, 320 pages, ISBN 978-1-426-21167-6 THE WRITERS and photographers of National Geographic put their thoroughly stamped passports to good use with this coffee-table book of 400 of the world’s most tempting destinations. Season by season, the contributors take you through some of the most unforgettable experiences and sights our world has to offer, with first-hand recollections that give a glimpse into the feel of the experiences. The photography is absolutely gorgeous. The resplendent cherry blossoms of springtime Kyoto, the autumn foliage of New York – all of it is captured with impeccable National Geographic perfectionism. With a copy of this, you’ll never need another guide book. More By Rankin. teNeues, £70, hardback, 368 pages, ISBN 978-3-83279-708-9 WHETHER you truly…

THE TRIANGLE formed between Bristol, Exeter and Bournemouth contains a wealth of ‘art’. There are frame makers, galleries, glass workers, printers, ceramic crafts, workshops, theatres, musicians and sculptors. There’s an Arts by the Sea festival, Somerset Arts Week and Dorset Arts Week, among others. So you’d think there would be more outlets for photographers. Photography doesn’t seem to be regarded as an art form. Why is this, when it’s a way of painting with light, of recording shapes and patterns? Surely every press of a camera’s shutter button is recording something an artist wants us to see. I think one problem is that in its pure form, a photograph is too real, and we perceive ‘art’ as coming from the imagination. Why is a painting in the shape of Durdle…

JANUARY Chinese New Year START your photographic year off with a bang by visiting your local Chinese New Year celebrations. If you’re lucky enough to be within travelling distance of London, the city claims it has the largest Chinese New Year celebrations outside of Asia, so Chinatown is well worth a visit. Taking place on 31 January 2014, the celebrations include music, Chinese dragons, lion dances, acrobatics and firecrackers. Although the celebrations usually begin in Trafalgar Square, Chinatown will be crowded with food stalls and cultural displays to photograph, too. Festivities begin at 10am with a parade that starts at Duncannon Street, moving along Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. An official opening ceremony then takes place in Trafalgar Square, followed by dragon dancing, music and performances. With so much…

GPS FAILURE Q On a recent trip to China, I took two cameras with me – my Nikon D5000 with the GP-1 GPS device and a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ30. It was rather annoying that the Lumix announced that ‘GPS functionality is not available in this region,’ but the Nikon was fine. I thought that the ‘G’ in GPS meant ‘Global’, but clearly this isn’t the case. Why does the GP-1 work fine and the Lumix not? I’m looking to upgrade to the new Nikon D5300, but will its built-in GPS be as good as the GP-1? Is this one of those situations where I just have to buy it first and find out for myself? Richard Patrick A In fairness to Panasonic, the company states on several of its websites…

ALTHOUGH the Alpha 7R is compatible with all existing Sony E-mount lenses, these lenses are designed for APS-C-sized sensors and have a smaller imaging circle. As such, the Alpha 7R will automatically crop the image to a lower 16-million-pixel resolution when they are used, in much the same way that APS-C-format DSLR lenses are cropped when used on a full-frame model. With such a short back-focus distance, theoretically nearly all 35mm SLR lenses can be fitted to and used on the camera via an appropriate mount adapter. During my test I used a standard third-party E-mount adapter by SRB Griturn (www.srb-griturn.co.uk) to use a manual-focus Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens on the Alpha 7R and found that it worked very well. With focus peaking and manual focus area magnification, it was…

Nikon, 380 Richmond Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT2 5PR. Tel: 0330 123 0932. Website: www.europe-nikon.com/en_GB RESOLUTION AND NOISE CONTROL These images show 72ppi (100% on a computer screen) sections of images of a resolution chart, captured using the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens. We show the section of the resolution chart where the camera starts to fail to reproduce the lines separately. The higher the number visible in these images, the better the camera’s detail resolution at the specified sensitivity setting.…