Innholdsfortegnelse for 12-jul-2014 i Amateur Photographer

Once, a camera was just for still photographs. To shoot a video you needed a camcorder. Your phone, meanwhile, was attached to the wall and not much use for either activity. Now almost every camera, and most phones, can shoot stills and video. While some traditionalists are appalled that a video button even exists on their cameras, others are embracing this new multimedia world with gusto, especially the younger generation, who are happy to flit seamlessly between the two mediums, using multiple devices. Many more people are somewhere in between – interested in having a go at video but intimidated by how much there is to learn. We met many such readers on our first DSLR Video Masterclass at Pinewood recently, which was so successful that we’re planning more. If…

The winners of 2014’s EPOTY sponsored by Ciwem and Atkins have been revealed. The winner of this year’s Cityscape category award is Faisal Azim of Bangledesh with his image Life in the Circle. Faisal created his beautifully composed and moving image in order to highlight the latest government report stating that the number of beggars, or vagabonds, across Bangladesh is now more than 900,000. Faisal’s shot was just one of 10,000 submissions that were sent into the competition, one that aims to celebrate the best in environmental photography and film. To see more and find out how you can enter EPOTY 2015, visit www.ciwem.org. Words & numbersI am a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocationElliott Erwitt Photographer…

The Chilterns One of the first places in the UK to reintroduce red kites. You’re now incredibly unlucky if you don’t see one there. Ibstone, Buckinghamshire This small villiage sees red kites fed in neighbouring gardens, while there are some nice valleys around to get those blurred backgrounds. www.ibstone.org.uk Chris’ Café, Buckinghamshire The owners of this little café feed the kites daily in their car park between noon and 1pm. Photograph the kites while feasting on a bacon sarnie! www.chrissmotel.co.uk Red Kite Trail, County Durham This 11-mile circular walk will hopefully give you plenty of opportunities to photograph kites. www.gateshead.gov.uk Gigrin Farm, Wales The most well-known destination for red kite photography. www.gigrin.co.uk Argaty, Scotland Open all year round, this is another feeding site for red kites, with daily ranger-led visits…

SOUND quality is vital to good video. It is often said that you can get away with poor-quality images if the sound is good but it doesn’t work the other way around. Not matter how good the visuals, poor sound will make it look amateurish. The mic built into the camera is puny and no match for an external microphone, so if you want to get serious about video you’ll need to invest in one. Here are the main options: Hotshoe mic INEXPENSIVE microphones that sit on your camera’s hotshoe are fine for interviews and recordings where the subject is within a metre of the camera, but not if they are further away. Lavalier, or lapel mic THIS attaches via a clip to an interviewee’s clothing and is the most…

Reflections Robert Pyne Canon EOS 7D, 70-300mm, 1/50sec at f/8, ISO 100 I THINK we have all had that experience where we see something that looks amazing, we photograph it and, on getting home, re-inspect the pictures to find the magic we encountered is missing on the screen. In Robert’s case, I suspect the fault was not paying enough attention to what it was that caught his eye. This is a beautiful scene, but the way Robert has shot it forces us to concentrate on its weakest elements, instead of its strengths. Diagonal lines in an image are powerful compositional tools, and lines that lead us from a corner or an edge into the frame are hard to resist. Here, Robert has engaged the strength of a number of leading…

LensPen Elite •£12 •www.lenspen.com THE LensPen system has been around for many years and it has become the preferred optical cleaning solution of many photographers. This is because it is a quick, effective and hassle-free way to get rid of grease and oil from lenses and LCD screens without using any liquids, sprays or cloths. The newly released LensPen Elite uses a dry, carbon-based compound on a soft microfibre cleaning tip. This compound is specifically designed to absorb the grease and oil on glass surfaces, which is great for removing those stray fingerprints that may blight your lens. The unique feature of the Elite model is that the carbon is invisible. Previous versions have used black carbon that, when touched to a porous surface, would leave a small amount of…

Nikon D70 • £50-£80 body only IT MAY only have a 6-million-pixel sensor, a 1.8in,180,000-dot LCD screen and a maximum sensitivity of ISO 1600, but the D70 is an absolute bargain and can be found for well under £100. You can make good A4 prints from it and it is, of course, backed-up by a huge range of Nikon F-mount lenses. It has proved to be a popular camera for those wanting to convert a DSLR for infrared use, as it is easy to take apart to remove the hot mirror filter. Also look out for the D70S, which has a slightly improved screen. Canon EOS 450D • £200 body only LAUNCHED at the beginning of 2008, the EOS 450D has a 12.2-million-pixel sensor and a 3in, 230,000-dot screen. Its…

WHAT YOU NEED Black card, scissors, craft knife AS WE all know, when shooting with a very shallow depth of field, the out-of-focus areas take on the shape of the aperture blades. For example, if you take an out-of-focus photograph of a candle using a lens with octagonal aperture blades, the flame will take on a slightly octagonal shape. But by placing a small bokeh filter in front of the lens, and shooting with the aperture wide open, you can change the shape of these out-of-focus areas. We’ll show you how. How to… Creating the filter is very simple. All you need to do is create a circular disc from a black piece of card. The disc must be the same diameter as the filter thread of the lens, this…

Tamron zoom lens Tamron’s new 14-150mm zoom for micro four thirds cameras is set to debut this month, priced £389.99. The 14-150mm f/3.5-5.8 Di III, the development of which was announced last year, features a stepping motor that is optimised to provide a ‘seamless, fluid autofocusing action when shooting video’. The 17-elements-in-13-groups lens weighs 285g and is available in black and silver colour options. It delivers a focal length of 28-300mm in 35mm terms. Visit www.tamron.co.uk. Cloud storage Canon has released the final version of its cloud-based image management platform, called ‘irista’. It was first launched as a ‘beta’ version in 2012, known as Project1709. irista is designed for users to manage photo libraries in one place. Visit www.irista.com. ‘Shoot, speak, share’ A free app that allows people to add…

At a glance • 36.3-million-pixel, full-frame-sized CMOS sensor• 2.36-million-dot OLED viewfinder with 0.77x magnification• Highlight priority metering• New Kevlar shutter• New raw S file• ISO 35-51,200 (expanded)• 1.23-million-dot LCD screen• RRP £2,699.99 body only HERALDED by Nikon as providing the ‘highest image quality in Nikon history’, the new Nikon D810 is a refinement of the excellent D800 and D800E DSLRs it replaces. Like its predecessors, the D810 is made from magnesium alloy and is fully weather-sealed. Although the body remains largely the same, there have been some tweaks. A slightly larger handgrip has been added, and new locations found for the bracketing buttons to make them easier to access. New features Although the 36.3-million-pixel sensor of the Nikon D800 and D800E remains, the core sensor is in fact new. Unlike the D800E, the D810 has no anti-aliasing filter…

Virtually every digital camera produced today comes with the ability to shoot HD video, but a surprising number of people have never dared touch that red button. And many of those who have had a go have discovered that there’s an entirely new set of rules and techniques to get to grips with compared to shooting stills, and that the learning curve is a steep one. That’s why we decided to team up with Tiffen UK to dedicate one of our masterclass sessions to the topic at its Pinewood Studios HQ. Tiffen leads the world in filters for the movie industry and is also the home of the ubiquitous Steadicam, as well as more recognisable photo brands such as Domke. We couldn’t have chosen a better location. Pinewood is the…

UNLIKE stills photography, where a photo is either in focus or it isn’t, in video, which records time and motion, focusing is a lot more complex. That’s why in the movie industry there are people called focus pullers whose sole job is to focus the camera lenses. Autofocus should be avoided because it looks amateurish. Often it hunts, drifting in and out of focus (especially if there is movement in the scene) and the sudden, lurching way that it focuses is jarring to video viewers. Manual focus is the way to go, but mastering it while trying to operate the camera at the same time is a skill that takes practice. Pre-focus on static subjects With the camera’s live view switched on, press the zoom view button to go into…

The two Reader Portfolio winners chosen every week will receive a SmugMug Power account, worth £35 each, on which to host their images SmugMug is the world’s leading independent cloud-based photo website for a new generation of photographers. SmugMug Power account gives you a fully hosted, customisable website where you will receive unlimited photo uploads and gorgeous full-screen galleries. Visit www.smugmug.com Patrick Dinneen, Ireland Patrick, 38, received his first camera as a birthday present when he was a child and since then has been hooked on creating images. He has exhibited at the Galway Fringe Festival in Ireland and says the highlight of his photography journey so far was when one of his images was featured in the Los Angeles Times. Patrick is currently producing a project photographing empty sports…

LAUNCHED 2009 PRICE AT LAUNCH £1,200 GUIDE PRICE TODAY £350 FIVE years ago the14.6-million-pixel K-7 was the Pentax flagship. Though the K-7 was without the ambitions of Nikon’s and Canon’s top models, it was an attractive enthusiast DSLR offering a robust alloy body, dust and moisture sealing and an ergonomic design. Perhaps best of all was compatibility with a huge range of K-mount lenses going back to the 1970s. What’s good The K-7 felt good to hold and was smaller and lighter than average. It sported a good viewfinder with100% frame coverage. The bundled 18-55mm kit lens was also a decent performer, as well as being dust and moisture-sealed. The K-7’s sensor-shift image stabilisation system was also very effective. Image quality at lower ISO settings was very good and you…

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Conversely, a few words can multiply the impact of a picture a thousandfold. If this were a movie still, it might be mildly interesting. But from the caption on the Magnum website, we know that at least some of the people in this picture are prepared to kill or be killed: ‘Civilian “patriots” in cooperation with Algeria’s anti-terrorist elite forces (GIS) patrol at night, protecting the village from terrorist attacks of the GIA – the Armed Islamic Group.’ Suddenly we are aware of the shadows, alive to any unexpected movement. Every sense is strained. We do not know what is happening, what is going to happen next: we are at the limits of our understanding, our experience, maybe even our beliefs.…

A SMALL portable LED light is an invaluable tool for situations where either the light level is too low for filming, or you want some direct light on the subject. The best ones have a dimmer to adjust the brightness level, and come with clip-on filters and diffusers to provide more options. They don’t have to be attached to the camera – try placing them off to the side, or behind the subject for creative lighting effects. A trick that Victoria uses to great effect is to shine the light through a plant or other irregular-shaped object to throw a pattern of dappled light on the subject. To learn more about the issues and products discussed here, visit the following websites: Victoria Grech: www.victoriagrech.com and www.fusionphotographytraining.com; Tiffen: www.tiffen.com; Canon: www.canon.co.uk;…

Resolution By photographing a resolution chart of converging lines, we can test the resolving power of a camera. We mark the point where the camera can still resolve all the lines of the chart. The value given is in lp/ph (line pairs per picture height). Dynamic range To test the dynamic range, we photograph a backlit chart consisting of a series of semi-opaque, neutral patches. Software then reveals precise dynamic range at each ISO sensitivity, based on how many of the patches can be seen. Noise To study the noise produced, we set the camera’s metering to spot and photograph a grey card. Shooting the range of ISO settings reveals how noise is handled for both in-camera JPEG and raw files. Images are shown at 300dpi at 100% magnification. Amateur…