Innholdsfortegnelse for 15-feb-2014 i Amateur Photographer

WHEN Sony revealed its Alpha 7R, with its 36-megapixel full-frame sensor, it raised the obvious question of how the image quality compares with the only other 36-megapixel full-frame camera on the market, the Nikon D800/D800E. This week we answer that question (see pages 49-54). The Nikon also uses a Sony sensor, probably even the same one. (It’s curious how the economics of the industry make it more profitable to sell your best sensor to a competitor before you can use it yourself, but that’s another story). To many readers, this contest will be of purely academic interest, like pitting the fastest Ferrari against the fastest Lamborghini to see which wins. Few of us are going to buy either, and in truth, few us need 36 megapixels of image-capturing power. For…

A PHOTOGRAPHER says he is being sued for more than $1m over an image of a barebreasted woman at the top of the Empire State Building in New York. Fashion photographer and filmmaker Allen Henson says he has received a $1.1m lawsuit from management of the popular tourist attraction, who reportedly claim that the photo damaged the landmark’s ‘reputation as a safe and secure family friendly tourist attraction’. It appears management filed the lawsuit after the image - one of a series Henson took using a mobile phone - was uploaded to a social media website. Henson insists that he was not staging a shoot for commercial reasons, but was taking pictures of a friend on the 86thfloor observation deck of the building on 9 August last year. In a…

HANDS-ON FUJIFILM X-T1 We test Fuji’s new 16.3-millionpixel CSC, which initiates a new line in the X series TRAVEL THE STORYTELLER Travel Photographer of the Year Timothy Allen on his win and how his pictures tell stories SONY ALPHA 5000 ON TEST We put the 20.1MP, ‘smallest and lightest’ Wi-Fienabled CSC through its paces PANASINIC 42.5MM F/1.2 LENS ON TEST We test the firm’s new ultra-fast Leica DG Nocticron lens and assess its quality TECHNIQUE FREELENSING Create creamy defocused effects without a tilt-and-shift lens or Photoshop…

● MASTERING PHOTOSHOP LAYERS by Juergen Gulbins, £34.50 It’s a testament to the depth and potential of Photoshop that a single one of its features can warrant an entire book detailing how to use it. Juergen Gulbins’ guide, which nears 300 pages, offers all the detail you could want and then some. With helpful diagrams and specific example images to illustrate exactly how layers were used to create individual effects, the book manages to do a credible job of making it all look easy. ● MASTERING THE NIKON D7100 by Darrell Young, £30.99 The successor to the Nikon D7000 proved extremely popular on release, thanks in no small part to its excellent image quality and (relatively) competitive price. It’s a well-featured enthusiast DSLR, and as such you could argue that…

THE IMAGE was taken on 24 April 2013 at Royal Air Force (RAF) Coningsby in Lincolnshire. All display teams undergo an annual ‘Public Display Authority’ (PDA) in front of the Air Officer Commanding (AOC) to ensure their displays are up to par and, most importantly, that they are safe. This one was for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, which was (unusually) taking place late in the day. All the pilots fly their respective aircraft type and are signed off by the AOC once they have passed. For this particular shot I was standing on the grass behind the Spitfire. As RAF photographers, when we’re on a station like this we’re fairly privileged to be able to move freely around the aircraft, usually under the watchful eye of the technicians…

IF YOUR PICTURES ARE FEATURED YOU’LL RECEIVE… £50 PLUS The winner of the Editor’s Choice picture of the week will receive a HelloCanvas 16x24in canvas print (including shipping) worth £36.95 The Editor’s Choice will be printed onto a high-quality canvas with UV-resistant inks and mounted onto a sturdy wooden frame 1.2in thick. For HelloCanvas ‘each happiness of yesterday is a memory for tomorrow’, and we think your best beloved pictures deserve the best service. Our dedicated team is renowned for its attention to detail. www.hellocanvas.co.uk How to submit your images Please see the ‘Send us your pictures’ section on page 3 for details or visit www.amateurphotographer. co.uk/spotlight John Earnshaw West Yorkshire Having been interested in photography since 1965, John has accrued an extensive array of film and digital kit, including…

‘THIS image was taken in the Outer Hebrides in March 2012,’ says David. ‘During my previous trip there in February 2008, I had taken mostly long-exposure shots, as around this time there was a trend among landscape photographers to shoot in black & white with a 10-stop filter. But during my trip in March, I didn’t make a single longexposure shot. Feeling a little unsettled, I started taking shots during the closing days of the trip to capture the sea’s power in a way I had not undertaken before, this time using a slightly faster shutter speed. ‘The first image, “Hebridean Sea III”, was uploaded to my photoblog in late April 2012 and that was that. This image kick-started the “Sea Fever” series and I have since taken images to…

Benro CoolWalker Messenger bag M100N £82.20 RRP www.kenro.co.uk WITH its smart design features, quick-access pocket and quality materials, the Benro CoolWalker M100N Messenger Bag is an ideal travel companion. Its understated all-black design will appeal to those who prefer an inconspicuous camera bag, while sturdy zips and a double-buckle system provide added security The reinforced base of the CoolWalker is shockproof and abrasion-resistant, and the rear is padded for comfort with an opening that allows it to be attached to the handle of a suitcase. Despite this being the smaller of the two Messengers in this range, measuring 36.5x34x19cm, I managed to fit a 13in laptop, a DSLR, a 24-70mm f/2.8, a 50mm f/1.4, a 100mm f/2.8 macro and a flashgun into the M100N. A built-in cover provides protection from…

OUR DYNAMIC range test shows that the sensors of the Sony Alpha 7R and Nikon D800E are very similar. Generally, the D800E has the slightly better performance of the two at the most commonly used sensitivities (ISO 50-800), but as the graph (right) shows, there is generally less than 0.3EV difference across the entire sensitivity range. At ISO 50, the 13.24EV range of the Alpha 7R and the 13.29EV range of the Nikon D800E make them virtually indistinguishable from each other, and the differences at other sensitivity settings can be put largely down to the difference in how each camera processes its images. Out of our studio lab environment, the real-world raw images we took on each camera revealed that a high level of detail can be retained from bright…

OLDER DSLRs in good condition can be acquired, if you look hard enough, for as little as £100 complete with a kit zoom lens. That might already be most, or even all, of an aspiring beginner’s budget. Although £100 could secure a used compact camera with decent specifications, or even a bridge camera, would you be better off investing in an older DSLR? Maybe you already have that older camera but, tempted by newer hardware, it has lain unused for too long. Could improvements in image processing software made over the past few years breathe new life into older cameras? Before I started this article, I had a hunch that the steady development of post-processing software, particularly in raw-file conversion, would actually deliver improvements in image quality today that the…

A PRESS photographer has landed in hot water after admitting to digitally removing a fellow journalist’s video camera from an image of the Syrian war that he sent to a global news agency. The Associated Press (AP) said it has ‘severed ties’ with Narciso Contreras, who captured the image of a Syrian opposition fighter taking cover from government forces in a mountain-top village on 29 September 2013. The agency explained that using software to remove the journalist’s video camera in the left corner of the frame - by cloning other pieces of the background and pasting them over the camera – ‘violated its ethical standards’. Contreras told the agency he believed the video camera might ‘distract viewers’, and this was a single case that probably happened at one ‘very stressed…

A BRITISH street photographer has triumphed in the RHS Garden Photographer of the Year competition. Heather Buckley, who is based in Brighton, eclipsed thousands of entries worldwide with a ‘striking image’ of foxgloves in gardens at Great Dixter House in Rye, East Sussex. It turns out that the winning image was captured by Heather during an Amateur Photographer Masterclass hosted by landscape photographer Tom Mackie, for five AP readers, last year. Heather, who describes herself as a ‘street and people photographer’, said the £1,000 win was a ‘great honour’ and that she is thrilled with the chance to show her work to a wider audience. The photographer explained that she chose to shoot the flower image in her usual ‘street style’, rather than as a close-up picture. ‘Using my wideangle…

FOLLOWING the success of the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and E-M5, it was no surprise when Olympus launched its 16-million-pixel OM-D E-M10 at the Consumer Electronics Show in the USA. Although the new camera is less expensive than the previous two models in the OM-D range, it has all the features you would expect of an Olympus micro four thirds system camera, including high-quality construction. With the entry-level market particularly difficult to crack, Olympus isn’t aiming the OM-D E-M10 at first-time users. Instead, the new camera will be in direct competition with the Canon EOS 700D and Nikon D5300 DSLRs. The reason for this, according to Olympus, is that around 90% of entry-level DSLR users never upgrade from their initial camera or lens, compared with 50% of advanced entry-level users who…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Wins a great shockproof, waterproof and dustproof 5-Proof Technology 16GB Samsung SDHC Plus memory card offering up to 48MB/sec transfer speed. www.samsung.com/memorycard THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP When I read Tom Dalzell’s experiences with his fi rst real camera (Letters, AP 21-28 December 2013), it brought back many memories of my own. It was in 1949, when I was 12 years old and a keen photographer with my newly acquired Agfa box camera, that I was poking about in my old aunt’s spare bedroom and came across a Rodenstock f/4.5 Prontor 11, complete with tripod. I told my mother of my fi nd, and she asked her sister about it. She was told that Ted, my aunt’s husband, brought it back from Germany after the war.…

IN THE course of my work I am often asked to change the hair colour of a model. I adopted the following colouring technique after watching a seminar demonstration by Jim Divitale, where he showed how using three colouring layers, each using a different blend mode, allows you to fine-tune the colouring effect by adjusting the opacities of the individual layers. In the example shown here, you can see that by step 5, using the Color blend mode achieved a pretty good result. In a lot of instances the Color blend mode on its own is all you really need. However, if you compare the result at step 5 with the finished result, the addition of extra colouring layers allowed me to produce a more richer-looking colour effect on the…

Monkey Face Matt Craven Nikon Coolpix 8800, 350mm, 1/110sec at f/6.6, ISO 50 PHOTOGRAPHING animals in captivity is less difficult than photographing them in the wild, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. You may know where your subject can be found in a zoo or a wildlife park, but even if it is confined to a certain area that’s not the same as having it pose for you - it’s going to move around or, worse, be sleeping in a dark, unviewable position. Even if you can see it clearly, there will be barriers between you and your subject, whether it’s the bars of a cage, wire mesh or, as here, a heavy plastic window with scratches, marks and reflections. With this in mind, Matt has done a superb job…

ASK… Be it about modern technology, vintage equipment, photographic science or help with technique, here at AP we have the team that can help you. Simply email your questions to: apanswers@ipcmedia.com, via twitter@ap_answers or by post to: Ask AP, Amateur Photographer Magazine, IPC Media, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SE1 0SU. SLOPING HORIZONS Q I have posted a couple of pictures on the AP Forum and people have said that the horizons are not straight. I have noticed this myself, so I set up my camera on a tripod at home recently and made sure it was level before I took some pictures. However, the horizons are still sloping down to the right, so could this be a problem with my camera? It’s a Nikon D3100, and when…

Deputy technical editor WHEN Nikon announced the launch of the D800 alongside the D800E in early 2012, it was hard to believe that behind the F-mount lay a 36.3-million-pixel sensor – the highest resolution of any DSLR at the time of its launch, and a claim that still holds true today. With both cameras becoming the hot topic of conversation among photographers, the photo press and the trade alike, it sparked a number of questions about whether such a high resolution was needed, how the enormous file sizes would be handled, and perhaps more fundamentally, who Nikon were trying to target as their audience with these high-resolution beasts. Two years on, and we’re left questioning why we ever doubted the D800/D800E’s existence. Both have won an endless list of accolades,…

THE NIKON D800E is supported by a vast range of full-frame optics, although the same can’t be said at present for the Sony Alpha 7R. While an adapter can be used to attach Sony’s A-mount or other fullframe lenses, it adds bulk and goes against the principle of the Alpha 7R being a small and light full-frame camera. At present, there are only four optics that match the quality of what the Alpha 7R’s sensor is able to deliver - the 35mm f/2.8 as used in this test, a Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA, a FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS and a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* FE 24-70mm f/4 ZA OSS. An FE 70-200mm f/4 G OSS will be arriving later this year, and up to 10 dedicated…

I also did some back-to-back comparisons with today’s entry-level Pentax DSLR, the 16.28-million-pixel K-500. This camera’s Sony-sourced CMOS sensor is highly regarded, but it was interesting to see that the old *ist DL wasn’t necessarily blown away by its distant descendant. Thanks to modern rawconversion software, and as long as the exposure was good and lighting wasn’t challenging, even A3 prints from each camera were not easy to tell apart at normal viewing distances. I published images from each camera online at web resolution (900 pixels in width) and there was no certainty from any viewer about which camera took which shot. Where the K-500 does knock out the *ist DL is in its ability to shoot way beyond ISO 3200 and, when needed, to withstand severe cropping. On paper,…

This week in 1896 AP broached the subject of decorative photography, more specifically ‘photographic impressions on unprepared wood’, learning lessons from a photo club in Paris. ‘From this authority we learn that photographic decorations are now made by simply exposing white wood – pine wood, for example – under a negative to the sun for a fortnight and varnishing the darkened image which results. The image has a pleasant yellowish-brown tint, and from what is said we conjecture that the varnish must in some way prevent the further action of light, as our contemporary asserts that impressions two years old show no sign of change.’…

PORTRAITS highlighting the problems Yemeni girls face when accessing higher education have won this year’s Terry O’Neill Award. Palestinian freelance photographer Laura Boushnak triumphed in the annual contest with a series of photos of women who were the first in their families to consider higher education. Laura’s project, which won the Portraiture category, was entitled: ‘I Read I Write: Yemen-Access to Education’. Commenting on the images, Laura, who was born in Kuwait, said: ‘They spoke about their achievements, challenges and dreams, in an ultraconservative society where many believe that women are destined for marriage to protect their chastity and their role is solely in the home.’ Javier Arcenillas, who topped the reportage category, was named overall runner-up. Award judge Lord Puttnam, said: ‘I love the images we chose and I…

Facing Africa By John Kenny. 5 Continents, £30, hardback, 113 pages, ISBN 978-8-874-39636-8 BRITISH photographer John Kenny documents the indigenous cultures of Sub-Saharan Africa in a series of 45 stylised portraits. Photography buffs will have a fine time mulling over the particulars of Kenny’s lighting set-up, which appears to create a central channel of strong light that gives his portraits their distinctive look. Interestingly, the photographer and/or set-up are reflected in the pupils of most subjects, and once you notice it’s hard not to dwell on it. However, it’s worth taking a step back to absorb the whole of each portrait, with the traditional African dress, body art and jewellery unique facets of cultures that may face extinction in an uncertain future. Amateur Photographer 4.0/5.0 Game Changers: The Evolution of…

HOW DO you react to the recurring lure of the latest new cameras? No sooner have we settled into a period of equilibrium than some manufacturer launches yet another new model. Photographic magazines unavoidably promote this scenario by their very reporting and testing of the best new kit. However, time was that the life of a camera was measured in years rather than months. The highly popular Leica M6 rangefinder, for example, was produced for 18 years (1984-2002) with only modest improvements during that long production run. Compare that with its digital counterparts. The M8 and M9 each lasted years before new technology saw their demise and replacement with later-generation sensors and seductive newer functions, such as high-definition video recording. And so we get swept along. I recently reflected on…

AMATEUR Photographer of the Year can be a gruelling process. Ten months of intense photographic competition is not for the faint-hearted, and it’s easy to lose your motivation to try your hardest when a few consecutive months of nul points sees you slipping further and further away from the coveted leader board. Might as well pack it in as you’ll never catch up now. Maybe next year, right? Frankly, it’s a good thing Aaron Yeoman didn’t think like this hypothetical defeatist. Aaron made a hugely promising start in 2013’s competition, with three high-scoring rounds. However, summer saw the points begin to dry up. Although Aaron diligently submitted every month, luck didn’t seem to be on his side and he slipped away from the competition. That was until November when a…

DAVID Baker’s extraordinarily beautiful images of seascapes and landscapes may look like Photoshop trickery, but his methodology for echoing perfectly the textures, sounds and raw energy of the natural environment has nothing to do with post-processing. Instead, be it in his ‘Sea Fever’ series of seascapes or his ‘Ridge Trees’ documentation of the New Forest (close to his home town of Southampton in Hampshire), David’s painterly and ethereal images are the result of a fine understanding and appreciation of light and atmospheric conditions. ‘My images are heavily dependent on the right weather and light,’ says David. ‘Wind, cloud and mist are important elements. It’s also about shooting at the right time of day, which for me is at the crack of dawn, or sometimes very close to darkness.’ Occasionally, the…

In this week’s Ask AP, Stephen Shaw (below) comments on the importance of dynamic range, which is often discussed by photographers in relation to cameras, but rarely given as a measured figure by the manufacturers. In terms of a camera’s sensor, dynamic range indicates the range from light to dark that can be recorded in a single exposure without the lightest area ‘burning out’ (turning pure white) or the darkest area ‘blocking up’ (turning pure black). This range is most usefully expressed as a number of stops, and Stephen writes that his current camera has a dynamic range of 10.5 stops, while the camera he is considering upgrading to has a dynamic range of 12.5 stops. What this tells us is that if the difference between the brightest and darkest…

THE D800E hasn’t dropped far from its launch price and costs only £50 less today than it did two years ago. At around £2,350 body only, the D800E is Nikon’s third most expensive DSLR behind the pro-spec Nikon D4 and the retro Df. While I am smitten by every area of its performance and handling, there’s no doubt that the D800E is expensive when compared to the Alpha 7R, which costs around £650 less at £1,690. Sony’s aspiration seems to have been to deliver the best full-frame quality at a more realistic price - something the firm has achieved with both the Alpha 7R and Alpha 7 - without having to cut corners in terms of build quality. The Alpha 7R has become a standout product in the Alpha line…

ALTHOUGH the Nikon D800E and Sony Alpha 7R are very different in terms of their build and handling, the fact that they have the same resolution sensor means they are also remarkably similar. The incredible level of detail recorded by the 36-million-pixel sensors reveals virtually no difference in the level of detail that’s recorded when subjected to a series of tests using the same lens. However, the different image processing applied by the two manufacturers does mean there are some subtle differences when examining the JPEG files from each camera. The D800E’s JPEGs receive less sharpening, but also display a slightly cooler auto white balance. The Alpha 7R offers a lot in a body of its size. To fit a fullframe sensor behind the E mount in a body a…

MY 2013 came to a rather unceremonious end, as I unashamedly shared with all of you. Except I was ashamed. Not for falling down drunk, but for having got through another year - at my age - without doing anything meaningful with my photography. And it’s not like I can even say I tried and failed. I just failed. The morning after my New Year’s misadventure I sat on my sofa eating cold nachos and coffee, searching my soul for reasons why I keep coming up with excuses - still, at my age - to not take pictures and, worse, not do anything with the ones I have taken. Photography is one of my greatest passions, so why don’t I do it? I met Eli later that day, the 1st,…