Innholdsfortegnelse for December 21, 2013 i Amateur Photographer

January • Fuji questioned the worthiness of full-frame, saying its X-Trans imaging sensor was performing ‘not far off’ the larger format • In the wake of the scandal over topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge, the RPS said courts should levy high fines to make editors ‘think twice’ before publication February • Speculation that HMV stores were to house mini Jessops outlets proved misplaced, as interest in buying the Jessops brand name gained momentum following closure of the chain’s 187 branches (see pages 8-9) • Pentax went retro with its £400, 12-million-pixel MX-1 compact camera, featuring a 28-218mm f/1.8 lens March • The opening of Media Space, a new gallery at the Science Museum, was delayed after the project manager left. It opened six months later • Alan Jessop…

AS WE gear up for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in the USA in early January, it seems likely that the big camera launches will be reserved for later in the year. Japan’s CP+ Camera & Photo Imaging Show takes place in February, and 2014 is the year of the biennial September photokina event in Cologne, Germany. We were expecting Nikon to launch a top-end professional camera at the end of this year, and there is still no sign of a D400. Instead, Nikon revamped its D600, to include a faster frame rate, in the form of the D610, having revealed the 24.1-million-pixel D7100 in February. It will also be interesting to see if a new Nikon flagship APS-C DSLR is in the offing – a rival to the Canon…

IF YOU’RE planning to send your digital images to a picture library or publication for editorial use in a magazine or brochure, there are a few points you may wish to bear in mind. A good place to start is to look at existing publications and images. What sort of images are being used and how are they used? Next, follow any guidelines on submissions. Is there a requirement for a specific file format or a certain resolution? As a rule, an image of 2551x3579 pixels will be large enough to print up to A4 size on a commercial press. Remember: bigger is better. It may appear obvious, but consider the content of the image. While the subject matter might be highly amusing or relevant to you, will it appeal…

THIS photograph was taken at Greenwich Park on the cross-country day of the equestrian event during the London 2012 Olympic Games. I arrived at the park very early, and as I knew what I had to photograph for the majority of the race I positioned myself at the start of the course and worked my way along, ending up at the water jump, where I remained for most of the day. I photographed each rider coming through the water jump, and although it was a nice picture with Greenwich Observatory in the background, after doing the same shot over and over again for 30-40 riders I thought I had to move on, so I went further down the course. By then it was about 4pm and I made my way…

DESPITE landscape photographers having an abundance of subject matter, it can often seem like all the angles, methodologies and approaches have been done before. The photography of Liam Frankland shows that presumption to be far from accurate. Photographing up and down the coast of his native Suffolk, he brings new perspectives to a familiar landscape. ‘I’m constantly experimenting with ideas, techniques and ways to present the final images regardless of the place featured,’ says Liam. ‘My landscape photography isn’t exactly about the place or the landmark in the landscape: I try to think of it as a different place, a world that is slightly different to reality. The photos I take are my personal world, my daydreams, the place where I’m finding harmony and freedom from everyday life.’ Composition and…

PHOTOGRAPHIC competitions can be quite divisive. There are those people who enter them, and those who don’t. There are those who agree with the winners, and those who don’t. There are those who enter many and never win, and those who enter just one and triumph. Yet most photographers would agree that receiving an accolade from a photographic competition is a massive achievement. Enter AP reader and full-time mechanical fitter/turner Scott Robertson. Regular AP forum members will know Scott, and even those who don’t will probably recognise at least one of his images – the one that earned him a commendation and a place in the portfolio book from the Take a view Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards 2013. ‘I haven’t really entered any competitions before, apart from the…

FREELENSING 1 MOST new cameras have a ‘miniature’ mode, and most image-editing software now offers a tilt/shift filter that will help give the impression that you are Gulliver looking down on Lilliput. However, these options typically work by blurring the top and bottom of the frame, whereas a genuine tilt-andshift lens actually shifts the plane of focus. ‘Freelensing’ bridges the gap between these two options by allowing you to change the plane of focus but without paying for a tilt/shift lens. The principle is simple: set your camera to manual and hold your lens in front of the lens mount, rather than attaching it to the camera. Turning and tilting the lens will allow you to shift the plane of focus (and focus the lens), giving you the shifted plane…

LENS CHOICE Q My Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens has stopped focusing and I have got to have a lens for a photo shoot. Is it really worth the extra money to get the STM lens, or should I go for the 18-55mm Mark II? I’m planning to buy a new Canon camera next year, so an STM lens will come with that. Simon Clarke A If you’re planning to buy a new camera next year with an STM lens, then it makes little sense to buy one now. Even if you opt for the cheaper non-STM option, you don’t really want (or need) two virtually identical kit lenses in your bag when you get your new camera. Besides, the fact that you intend to buy a new camera to start…

OUR FORUM competition has been host to some truly imaginative images in 2013. Each month AP readers must interpret the theme set by the judge and send in a single image they feel best represents that theme. The winner receives a Manfrotto National Geographic camera bag, while second and third take home a much-coveted AP mug. December 2012 Where Has The Colour Gone? Winter Swan JaySteel I LOVE fairy tales. As a child, I wasted many an evening devouring the stories of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. It’s diffcult not to look at this image (left) and feel like a child again. The image is saturated in atmosphere. I love the mist, the swan, the hazy sun and the trees that look like twisted hands. It’s only when…

LOVE them or hate them, camera phones have had the biggest impact on photography in recent years, so it would be wise to consider where they will go in the future. Apple has a huge grip on the photo industry via the iPhone, and it is certainly possible that the company could develop its own camera. The three most popular cameras on Flickr are the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. In fact, Apple is the second most popular camera brand on Flickr after Canon, with Nikon and Sony coming third and fourth respectively. Rumours of an Apple digital camera have been circulating for a few years now, but whether or not the company will want to take on the compact-camera market when it already has such a popular…

CAMERA makers’ nostalgic thirst for all things retro surged in 2013 as Fujifilm and Olympus launched models that, to the untrained eye, may not have looked out of place in a classic-camera museum. Samsung had already primed its retro-style APS-C-format, 20.3MP NX300 at the start of 2013, while Nikon predicted further growth in the CSC arena – launching the diminutive Nikon 1 S1 along with the Nikon 1 J3. But the first evidence emerged that the honeymoon period may soon be over in a CSC market whose rate of growth appeared to slow. In 2012, interchangeable-lens camera production rose 34% and Japanese lens shipments broke through the 30 million units mark. However, in the same week, AP reported that Nikon expected to sell 100,000 fewer system cameras than it had…

• French freelance photographer Olivier Voisin, 35, who died of shrapnel wounds sustained while covering the conflict in Syria • Italian photographer Willy Rizzo, 84, famed for portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot • Former Scotsman newspaper photographer Gordon Rule, 81 • Jacob Cockle, 28, a photographer from Penzance who was reported to have died while swimming in Cornwall • Sweden-born photographer Sussie Ahlburg, 50, whose work was published in newspapers, including The Times, was found dead in a bathing pond on Hampstead Heath, London • Wayne Miller, 94, pioneering US street photographer and former Magnum Photos president • Self-taught US photographer Bert Stern, 83, probably best known for his portraits of Marilyn Monroe • Mike Williams, 66, a respected UK national parks author and photographer…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Wins a 20-roll pack of 36-exposure Fujifilm Superia ISO 200 35mm film or a Fujifilm 8GB media card* SUPERB FIRST CAMERA I much enjoyed Ivor Matanle’s Icons of Photography series, in particular the one on the Voigtländer Superb in AP 30 November. In 1947, when I was 12 years old, I traded in my ancient Agfa Karat for a late 1930s Superb – my first ‘real’ camera – I immediately went into the garden and photographed my father. The negatives have long gone, but I have scanned that first photograph (see above left). The other photograph, taken soon after with that same camera (left), was an early attempt to take a ‘professional’ subject. I wish I’d had a wideangle lens, but even as it is, it…

AS WINTER beckons, I thought I would dig out an appropriately snowy scene to illustrate a white Christmas. The combined steps I applied to this image brought about some rather subtle changes. Image editing is not always about making radical transformations, and with a picture like this it was particularly important to preserve the fine highlight detail on the snow-covered branches. In one of the steps I applied a split-tone effect to colourise the highlights and you will notice how I set the Balance slider to -81. I did this to offset the split-tone effect more towards the highlight end, so only the extreme highlights received the warm-tone adjustment and the bluish colours in the rest of the scene were preserved. In another of the steps, I applied an Effects…

Under the Weather We had some stunning entries for round 10 of APOY 2013, as we reveal the top 30 photographs from our Under the Weather round as well the winning Amateur Photographer of the Year 2013 Arthur Asyanin, from Samara in Russia, is the winner of our Under the Weather round of APOY 2013. Arthur will receive a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G6 with Lumix G Vario 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Asph Mega OIS and Lumix G Vario 100-300mm f/4-5.6 Mega OIS lenses, worth a total of £1,179.98. The G6 is a digital single-lens mirrorless camera with a 16.05-million-pixel, micro four thirds, Live MOS sensor. Our second-placed winner is Piotr Belcyr, from Szczecin in Poland, who will receive a Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF6 with Lumix G Vario 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 Asph Mega OIS lens, worth…

Crossbost sheep complex Tim Riches Canon EOS 40D, 70-30mm at 220mm, 1/250sec at f/6.7, ISO 800 HAND-COLOURING black & white photographs has seen a resurgence in popularity as digital-editing software has made the process much easier. However, rather than fully coloured images, a lot of retouched photographs employ ‘colour popping’. This is a process whereby a small area of an otherwise monochrome image is given a splash of colour to draw attention to a particular part of the frame. In the case of Tim’s rural study, it would appear that the photographer wants to draw our attention to the farmers’ gloves, which is an unusual choice. I will deal with that in a moment. First, let’s look at the subject of the shot. Tim has done a great job of…

REMAINING as cool as a cucumber is perhaps the most important aspect of being a portrait photographer, as Gregory Heisler’s book 50 Portraits illustrates. When you’ve had to show the President of the United States exactly how to put his hand in his pocket, then it’s unlikely that anything much is going to surprise you. Gregory has photographed a stellar cast of global celebrities during his career, including more than 70 covers for Time magazine. His cast of A-listers from flm, sport and politics include Muhammad Ali, OJ Simpson, Danny DeVito, George W Bush, Bruce Springsteen and Tim Burton. ‘You have to be confdent,’ says Gregory. ‘If a doctor is confdent, then people are put at their ease.’ The slight crackle of a transatlantic phone connection isn’t enough to mask…

I HAVE been shouting at television sets and arousing the ‘Shush!’ refex in cinemas for decades when actors use cameras on screen. The more I shout (at home) or mutter disgustedly (in public), and the more I talk about the daft ways in which photography is depicted, the more I realise that countless other photographers are similarly irritated. About 24 years ago, with my late friend Colin Glanfeld, who ran a large commercial photographic studio in London, I progressed a long way with planning a business that was to advise producers and directors on choices of equipment and photographic practicalities, and to train actors in basic photographic skills. In the end, though, we abandoned the idea, simply because producers and directors, of whom Colin knew many and I knew a…

‘Resident Evil’ by Alf Bailey ‘Path to the Top (part deux)’ by Mattwebuk ‘Blue tit’ by Badgerman ‘Albert Dock’ by Stephen McNally ‘Heart Shattering Beauty’ by George aka Fuzzypiggy ‘Bailey’ by Kotoman ‘Cloudy Panning’ by Chris Whitelaw ‘A Piece of the Puzzle’ by Mark Cornick ‘Loch Leven’ by Kenwil…

WITH Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, NFC and USB 3.0 all having found their way into cameras, there seems to be little on the horizon in terms of how cameras can be connected to computers or smart devices. As we move on, the speed and ease of connecting devices will obviously become faster, but it will be interesting to see just how manufacturers continue to develop extended functionality. Nikon’s Coolpix S800c was the first camera with an Android operating system, but the Samsung Galaxy NX, also with an Android system, has interchangeable lenses. However, the S800c’s screen is too small to use the operating system well, while the giant screen of the Galaxy NX dominates the camera so much that the resulting lack of buttons means it is slow to operate. So…

THE BIGGEST photographic news story to break during the annual CES electronics fest in the United States was not happening in Las Vegas, but thousands of miles away back in the UK. A Vegas hotel room was converted into a pop-up AP newsroom as confirmation came from accountants in London that Britain’s biggest photo chain had hit the buffers, after its bank finally pulled the plug and camera makers tightened credit terms. Seemingly unaware of the impending crisis, some key Jessops staff were at CES, while other industry bosses were force to cancel their travel plans at the last minute. Around 1,500 staff were to lose their jobs and 187 stores close as administrators moved in. Thousands of customers were owed more than £1 million and faced the prospect of…

IF YOU’RE anything like me, Christmas creeps up on you. You either plan months in advance or run the risk of finding yourself searching for that last-minute gift in a petrol station on Christmas Eve. Pine-tree air-freshener assortment, anyone? Occasionally, it can be a last-minute thing when it comes to the AP Christmas cover image. More often than not, a suitable image will emerge from within the issue’s contents, but sometimes it doesn’t. This year, to avoid such a potential dilemma, AP held a competition. The rules were simple: submit a portrait-format image that represented the festive season. Unlike a normal photographic competition, however, the winning image would also need to meet the special requirements of a magazine cover. The winner would get a £200 cash prize plus a Camlink…

DAMIEN Demolder’s remarks about buying Christmas gifts for photographers (AP 23 November) brought back a rather embarrassing memory. Christmas 1978 was to be an exciting and eventful one for me because, as far as I was concerned, a gleaming new Olympus OM-1 would be gift-wrapped and waiting for me on Christmas morning. My girlfriend Mandy had mentioned that she wanted to get me a combined Christmas and 21st birthday present, as my birthday falls on 25 December. She knew my old Pentax SP1000 was a goner because I had accidentally dropped it in the sea at Morecambe a couple of months earlier. Anyway, while we were in our local Dixons store I asked to check out an Olympus OM-1. While doing so, I made sure to let out the occasional…

Many people like photographing their gardens in spring, summer and autumn, but then they often put away their cameras when winter arrives. In many ways this is understandable. It’s easy to be discouraged by the cold, inclement weather and the bleak, bare appearance of many gardens at this time of year. However, I think winter is a great time for garden photography, whether you’re shooting close-ups or wider scenes. You just have to be more selective about the times you go out and the subjects you choose. I target the days to shoot after looking at the weather forecast on either www.metcheck.com or www.bbc.co.uk/weather. I aim for high-pressure days with little cloud and check that the wind isn’t going to be too strong. Weather conditions such as frost, snow, mist…

Roger Bannister Breaking the Four-Minute Mile Norman Potter’s perfectly timed image captures one of the world’s greatest sporting achievements, writes David Clark IN THE early 1950s, the most sought-after achievement in athletics was to run a mile in under four minutes. Although the top middle-distance runners of the era were getting increasingly close to this sporting milestone, it remained frustratingly elusive. During the months leading up to May 1954, runners including Australia’s John Landy, America’s Wesley Santee and Britain’s Gordon Pirie were contenders to be the first to achieve the first sub-four-minute mile. One of the photographers attending races in the UK, hoping to capture the moment when it happened, was Norman Potter. Potter, then aged 22, was one of Fleet Street’s younger photographers. He had begun his career as…

IT SEEMS that awareness of the Amateur Photographer of the Year competition is building. This year saw some of the strongest entries we’ve ever had in APOY, which is perhaps a result of the fact that the competition is on the radar of photographers both at home and abroad. In 2013, we saw a number of entries appear from across the world to slog it out against our very own home-grown talent. While Dusica Parpapovic of Bosnia and Herzegovina has taken this year’s coveted top spot and £5,000 worth of Panasonic prizes (see our interview with her in AP 4 January 2014), it was 2012’s victor Dan Deakin of Bristol who took a very respectable second place. In fact, it’s so respectable that there was only one point between him…

CAN YOU tell your compacts from your full-frame cameras? Why not test yourself in our quiz, in which we’ve compiled a list of cameras from wellknown classics to the latest releases. Can you identify them using as few clues as possible? Then have a go at our fiendish photographic wordsearch – the are 11 photography-related words of five letters or more to find. The answers will appear in News, AP 4 January 2014. Camera 1 1 It can’t shoot video… 2 Nor does it have built-in Wi-Fi… 3 But it’s got a 16-million-pixel, full-frame CMOS sensor… 4 And a 39-point AF system… 5 And you can use it with practically all Nikon F-mount lenses, even pre-Ai standard from the 1960s. Camera 2 1 This digital compact was inspired by a…

EARLIER this year Nikon opened its Nikon School, a new venue for photographic training that aims to educate and inspire photographers. The school, which is based at the Nikon Centre of Excellence in central London, offers a variety of courses aimed at the beginner to the advanced photographer, as well as specific training. For the beginner, there are entrylevel courses on the basics of DSLR photography, plus specialist workshops, such as macro and filmmaking, that will help photographers expand their knowledge in a new field. Intermediate workshops take the learning process one stage further, with courses on subjects such as getting creative with your D800. For those who are comfortable with the basics, there are courses that cover subjects such as mastering the complexities of lighting, composition and image manipulation.…

WRITING this annual article on what new features and technology we might see in the near future gets more difficult with each passing year. It wasn’t too long ago that we were predicting things like built-in GPS and Wi-Fi connectivity in a DSLR, although these were fairly obvious. Even the leap of faith that was the addition of 3G connectivity has now happened with the Samsung Galaxy cameras. We’ve also seen Wi-Fi-connected lighting that can be controlled via smartphone apps, such as the Elinchrom EL-Skyport WiFi and the Rotolight Anova LED foodlights. Surely now it is only a matter of time before we see cameras connecting directly to off-camera flash units via an ad hoc Wi-Fi connection. Reading last year’s article (AP 22-29 December 2012), there are things that haven’t…

MY DAUGHTER recently sent me some family photographs she had taken professionally. I guess it was either an early Christmas present or a very late birthday gift, but for whatever reason she was thinking of me, a handful of prints arrived – which is a rare thing to receive in the post nowadays. I was chuffed to see the prints spill out of the envelope. I appreciate all the updates I can get on her young family. And I love their rare visits even more, but on this occasion I must admit I was quite glad they weren’t here to see me as I flipped through their photographs. I suspect if the swearing didn’t offend them, they would certainly have been appalled when I threw the photographs in the bin…