Innholdsfortegnelse for 22-nov-2014 i Amateur Photographer

A week in photography DRONES have been around for many years, but 2014 will go down as the year that they I broke out from their niche as militarised tools of warfare and surveillance to become affordable toys for the masses. Photographers and filmmakers have seized upon their potential and are exploiting the many commercial opportunities they open up. Even wedding photographers are using them now. This surge of interest is due in no small part to the inexpensive DJI Phantom, which can now be found on the high street for the groundbreaking price of under ￡400 - with an HD camera. But technology moves a lot faster than the lawmakers; there's now a huge grey area over the rules and etiquette that need to be established, and concerns over…

Sometimes the best way to inspire creativity is through limitation. It forces you to look at a scene in a new light, presents new challenges and ultimately enhances your ability to overcome these obstacles. A great example is setting yourself the task of choosing one lens from your kit bag and sticking to it for the entire weekend. Selecting a prime lens for this project would be best, as it will constrain you to a single focal length. We’d recommend using either a 50mm for full-frame users, or 35mm for APS-C DSLRs, as these generally provide a happy medium between wide and tele. Ultimately, though, it’s your choice, so select a lens that will force you to rethink your compositions. 1 Being limited to a single focal length doesn’t mean…

LONDON Nikon dealer ' Grays of Westminster has been granted a coat of arms, stating it is the first camera shop in the world to be awarded the honour. Grays of Westminster boasts more 47,000 customers worldwide. Its clients include Lord Snowdon and the actor David Suchet. The store wanted a coat of arms that would 'visually identify' its role in the photographic industry. A lion depicts the store's founder Gray Levett 'amicably communing with the [national] bird of Japan, the green pheasant'. There are no fixed criteria of eligibility for a grant of arms. A fee of ￡16,400 is payable once a grant of arms and crest are awarded to a commercial company.…

The Photographers 2014 This collaboration between two galleries offers an exhibition that charts photography's history from the 19th century to the present day. Cartier-Bresson, Lange, Horst, Evans, Beaton, Brassai', Brandt, Abbott, Bourke White and new unseen shots by the recently discovered Vivian Maier - what more could you want? 20 November-23 December www.beetlesandhuxley.com, www.osbornesamuel.com Calumet Open Days Calumet is inviting photographers to its locations around the country. Get a free sensor clean, enter a draw to win a Canon PowerShot G7 X or learn something at a mini seminar. See the website for dates and location details. Every Thursday until 4 December www.calphoto.co.uk/opendays Coastline The St Andrews Photographers presents an exhibition on the Fife and Angus coastline in a variety of photographic styles. This week is your last chance to…

Landscape Photographer of the Year 2014 To capture his winning shot, Mark got up 1.30am to drive to Glencoe. Following torrential rain, water levels were the highest he'd ever seen. It was while wandering around looking for gaps in the weather that Mark spotted this stream forming on Gearr Aonach. When the light became more diffuse, he took a quick handheld shot due to the sideways rain, raising the ISO to 800 and opting for a relatively large aperture of f/5.6. With competition as strong as ever, the winners of Take a view Landscape Photographer of the Year 2014 have been announced. Here are our favourites Take a view Landscape Photographer of the Year, one of the most eagerly anticipated competitions, returns for its eighth year. It is a major…

Above towns and cities this winter, starling flocks will twist and pulse like giant amoebas in the sky. At Terminal 5 of London's Heathrow Airport, as people scurry across departure halls and up and down escalators, outside in the gathering gloom, pied wagtails will descend in their hundreds to a few dimly lit trees below a multi-storey car park. In contrast, on wild windswept coasts, geese in their thousands will fill the sky as they arrive at their safe overnight roost sites. These are just a few examples of avian gatherings that serve up great photography. The spectacle is the flock and, as flocks can be vast, a short focal length lens can often be more use than a telephoto. When half a million starlings are murmurating above Gretna Green…

How did you get into drone photography? I've always been really interested in technology and drones fascinate me. I've had mine for around six months. I initially started flying it around the suburbs of Philadelphia taking aerial videos. Eventually, I decided it would be really great to have a place to showcase my images, as they offered a unique vantage for the city and the surrounding area. That's why I started Philly By Air. It's had a really good reception. What makes drone photography so different from other aerial photography? It's a lot more accessible and you have a lot more flexibility. When you're flying a helicopter, you can't go any lower than 400-500ft. With a drone, you're able to manoeuvre it into tight spaces, or at least places that…

Adding dramatic contrast THIS photograph from Colin Howard comes from a Kodak Tri-X negative, with a scan then made from a black & white print. The scanner has captured a wide range of tones, although the highlights were most likely burnt out in the original print. However, the sharpness falls off from the foreground onwards and I can see halos around the people. These were probably caused at the scanning stage. This is a photograph that needs more contrast in order to convey the dramatic contrast of the original scene and give photo the photo the appearance of having extra sharpness. 1 Basic panel adjustments opened the original TIFF scan in Camera Raw. In the Basic panel I carried out a few tone edits. I decreased the Exposure, but boosted…

At a glance ● Space for two DSLRs, a 15in laptop, up to seven lenses and a tripod ● Removable four-wheel system with smooth rolling action ● Rapid-access side pocket ● Meets most aeroplane carry-on limitations Think Tank Photo Airport Roller Derby ● Around £305 ● www.thinktankphoto.com The Airport Roller Derby is an ideal case for the frequent flyer. Jon Devo tries it out MADE from high-quality nylon that’s coated in durable water-repellent fabric and measuring 35.6 x 55.9 x 22.9cm, the Airport Roller Derby case is a premium option for the frequent flyer. Spacious and well designed, the Airport Roller Derby from Think Tank Photo has capacity for two DSLRs, up to seven lenses (depending on size), a 15in laptop, accessories such as chargers and some carry-on essentials. Depending…

Of course, there's not a lot of point in shooting Lytro's Living Images if you can't do anything with them, and this is where the Lytro Desktop software comes in. It imports the camera's huge LFR raw files - 55MB a shot - and converts them to something that can be viewed and shared. The software has conventional processing controls such as exposure, white balance, and shadow and highlight adjustments. But crucially, it also offers refocusing and depth of field controls. You can focus on any subject in the frame simply by clicking on it, and move an aperture slider from f/1 tof/16, watching more and more of the scene come into focus as you do so. It's even possible to emulate the effects of a tilt lens, making a…

THE OLYMPUS Pen E-PL7 is a repackaged Olympus OM-D E-Ml 0, and for that reason alone it enters the lower end of the enthusiast market from a great vantage point. It is capable of producing some superb images and its video is respectable for a camera of its price, although it is limited to full HD movies at 29. 97fps - even some smartphones are capable of 6 0 p video. That said, I don't expect people interested in the E-PL7 to be too concerned by its video limitations. I want to like this camera more than Olympus's marketing tactics have allowed me to. The Pen series has struggled in comparison to the OM-D line, despite being fundamentally good cameras, and I feel as though the E-PL7 has what it…

The advent of video on DSLRs has fostered a small revolution in _ the video-production industry. However, as video cameras, DSLRs are quite crude, lacking refinements such as autofocus during video. This doesn't bother professional film crews so much, because they always employ a 'focus puller', a member of the team whose role is solely to adjust the manual focus. However, for those working without a camera team, autofocus would be a major boon. Until now, contrast-detection autofocus has been problematic for video cameras. It relies on the contrast of an in-focus image being higher than an out-of-focus image. Thus, the camera adjusts the focus back and forth until the highest contrast setting is found, inevitably 'hunting' before it finds sharp focus, which can be visible in video footage. Phase-detect…

Canon EOS 5DMark III, 24-105mm, 1/25sec at f/8, ISO 125 ‘I TOOK this photograph while shooting the annual deer rut at Bushy Park in south-west London, says Duncan Herring. ‘I’d arrived at the park for sunrise and had already been following various stags around for an hour, trying to capture them in the magical golden light and heavy mist. I had previously noticed the dew-laden webs. However, out of the corner of my eye I saw the figure of another photographer strolling off after the deer. I just had time to crouch down, frame the shot and release the shutter.’ If you would like to be in with a chance of seeing your image in our Online Picture of the Week, upload your favourite shots to our Flickr, Facebook or…

You may recognise the name Antonio Olmos. He is an internationally renowned documentary photographer who has shot in areas such as Afghanistan, Angola, Palestine and Nicaragua. However, last month Antonio returned to the land of his birth for the first project in the ‘Sony RX Celebrate the Streets’ series. Mexico’s Day of the Dead festival is a spectacularly vibrant and colourful festival that sees people of all classes and backgrounds come together to honour their deceased loved ones by lighting candles, incense and decorating the graves. While it is of course a time of sorrow, it is also one marked by the joy and celebration of life, and as a result is becoming an increasingly popular festival throughout the world. Words & numbers To consult the rules of composition before…

A TV SERIES dramatising the life and work of the photographers who launched Magnum Photos in 1947 is being developed by Carnival Films, producer of Downton Abbey. The series, to be called Magnum, is set to focus on the agency's founders Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David 'Chim' Seymour. On its website, Magnum says: 'With cameras in hand and private lives often in turmoil, Magnum's photographers sacrificed everything to capture history through the lens. 'Magnum will tell of the human stories of love, honour, laughter, betrayal and heartbreak that existed at the agency's Paris HQ, while capturing the action and danger the photographers experienced travelling the world's hotspots in the second half of the 20th century' Gareth Neame, managing director of Carnival Films, added: 'We can get right…

In AP 7 June, I wrote about the Minolta Vectis S-100 - a fully featured SLR that uses the now obsolete APS film format. I lamented the fact that with a dwindling supply of now expired film, any APS cameras in my collection were unlikely to get an outing. So it was a pleasant surprise to find a package containing 15 unused APS films handed to me by the postman. An AP reader had seen my column and sent them to me. The Minolta was one of the most sophisticated APS models, so I decided to go to the other end of the range. The Fujifilm Nexia Ql (below) is a shiny silver disc with a built-in cord, and as I hung it round my neck I felt like a…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Film fan's views I was interested to read David Chalwood's letter in AP 2 5 October and understand his sentiments. There is nothing around these days for us film fans. On the other hand, I can appreciate the views expressed by the editor. Although we are in a minority, I feel that this minority is a large one. I wonder if there would be any scope for a 'supplement' or sister publication to AP just for us? Peter Flower's letter in the same issue was also of interest. How much 'innovation' is really needed? Perhaps not by the top-level professional photographers but us amateurs? Which brings me to Dave Kai Piper's Viewpoint column. How many of us consider what we need before we part with our…

Drones are big news right now. The sprightly, unmanned devices have been used for many things, such as ferrying wedding rings to happy couples - during the ceremony - and could one day be called upon to deliver pizzas to guests at the reception afterwards, if required. Business is brisk, for one manufacturer at least. This is not surprising, perhaps, when you can pick up a basic AA batterypowered model for less than ￡350, with a GoPro camera mount, plus spare propellers. Photographic drone maker DJI Innovations says its sales have grown as much as five times year-on-year since 2009. Customers include the BBC, which used one of its Hexacopter models to garner footage of Brazil ahead of the World Cup, explains DJI spokesman Michael Perry, adding that enthusiasts make…

In the years between the First and Second World Wars, Britain's appetite for _ photography grew rapidly. Cameras became smaller and photography became more accessible to those who wanted to take up the pastime. With this increase in popularity came a growth in the number products available, and the number of shops and services looking to satisfy the demands of photographers. The amount of advertising in Amateur Photographer increased as a result, and as would be the case for many years, photographers bought AP as much to find out the latest prices and stockists for products as they did for advice and commentary on their pastime. The outbreak of war In 1939, everything was to change. When Germany invaded Poland, just over 20 years since the end of the First…

IVOR Levy’s raw image has been carefully exposed to preserve the detail in the bright highlights where the sun is clipping the man. However, when shooting in raw mode there is usually room for manoeuvre at the post-production stage, where one can adjust things like the Exposure setting to achieve the desired overall brightness. Because this image was captured using a good-quality DSLR and a good lens, using a fast shutter speed, there was plenty of sharp detail and tonal information. I opted for a delicate tone output, in which the subtleties of the shadow tones were brought out and balanced with the highlight detail in the clouds. 1 Exposure lightening The first step was to open the raw image via Camera Raw and lighten it using the Exposure slider…

Triggertrap Mobile App 3.0 • Free (iOS - requires additional hardware) • www.triggertrap.com TRIGGERTRAP Mobile is an app that allows you to release your camera's shutter using a smartphone or tablet. While it's capable of being a simple cable release, it also offers multiple time-lapse options and sensor modes that use your device's camera, microphone or accelerometer to fire the shutter. The app is free, but it requires a dongle that plugs into your smart device's headphone socket and a connector cable for your camera. A kit with both costs ￡22.99, and additional cables for other types of camera are ￡6.99 each. Alternatively, a ￡19.99 adapter allows the app to trigger flash units for high-speed photography. Version 3.0 is available for Apple users, and besides being optimised for iOS 8…

ISO The Ilium is ultimately a camera, which means we have to assess its image quality. Below we're showing examples printed at 300ppi, equivalent to an 8.2 x 5.5in print. Even at low ISOs there's not a lot of fine detail, and the image can show strange jaggies along straight edges. Noise is becoming quite visible at ISO 800, and shadow detail starts to disappear at ISO 1600. The ISO 3200 setting really isn't very good at all. Focus The Lytro Desktop software allows you to refocus the image, simply by clicking on any area of the scene you want to appear sharp. In the example below, I've developed three still images from a single raw file, each of which is focused at different depths within the scene. The image…

Email your questions to: apanswers@timeinc.com, via Twitter @AP_Magazine and #AskAR or Facebook. Or write to Technical Support, Amateur Photographer Magazine, Time Ine (UK), Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London SEI OSU Setting the standard Q I have always wondered what the acronym ISO stands for and how it relates to photography. Is it a Latin phrase? Steve Lynham A The term ISO has been used since 1980 to i describe the sensitivity of films, and, later, digital camera sensors. The ISO speed is derived from standards set by the International Organization for Standardization. To avoid different acronyms being used for the company in different languages, the organisation adopted the name ISO, which is derived from the Greek word isos, meaning equal The organisation was founded a few years after…

TO CELEBRATE AP's 130th anniversary, we are giving you the chance to win a Leica M, along with a Leica Summarit-M 50mm f/2.5 lens. To enter the Amateur Photographer/Lecia prize draw, collect six differently numbered tokens and fill in one of the forms published in either AP 11 October (includes token 1 ) or AP 18 October (includes token 2). It can also be downloaded online at www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/apis130. Token 7 is published here and token 8 will be published in AP 29 November. Send your completed coupon and six tokens in an envelope to: Amateur Photographer/Lecia Competition, 9th Floor, Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark Street, London, SEI OSU. The closing date for receipt of the completed form is Friday 5 December 2014.…

‘Best’ online store Camera retailer Wex Photographic has won the title ‘best online shop’ in a survey of more than 10,000 people by Which?. Wex achieved a customer score of 91%, beating well-known brands such as John Lewis, Amazon and Sainsbury’s in the survey of nearly 100 retailers. Almost one in four customers praised Wex for its range of products. First in space A camera that was reportedly the first Hasselblad in space in 1962 is due to go on sale at RR Auction in Boston, US. Camera enthusiast and astronaut Wally Schirra bought the 500C at a camera shop in Houston, Texas, in 1962, complete with an 80mm Zeiss Planar f/2.8 lens. History uncovered Over 350 previously unpublished Victorian portraits by an amateur photographer were due to be auctioned…

A LEICA camera believed to have been used to take an iconic photograph that marked the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War is to be auctioned on 29 November. Yevgeny Khaldei captured the famous image of Russian soldiers hoisting the Soviet . ag over the Reichstag in Berlin, Germany, in May 1945. Khaldei used a Leica III, and Bonhams will auction the camera in Hong Kong where it is expected to fetch at least £230,000. Khaldei, who worked for Soviet news agency TASS, restaged the moment when Red Army fighters had first . own the flag over the Reichstag building two days earlier, before the Germans dislodged them. The soldiers in Khaldei’s photograph are not the original men and the image ‘has been altered to add…

JESSOPS has opened its 'next-generation' flagship store, at a shopping centre in Reading, Berkshire. The two-level store includes a Jessops Academy training room, offering a variety of photography courses, plus a gallery. Jessops' chief operating officer Neil Old claimed: 'With its innovative design and state-of-the-art equipment, coupled with services such as printing, camera trade-in, equipment rental and a wide range of photography courses - all delivered by our expert, friendly staff - we are able to offer everything our customers could possibly need, in a completely unique and exciting environment.'…

Marching to the Freedom Dream By Dan Budnik, Trolley Books, ￡50, hardback, 300 pages, ISBN 978-1 -90711 -247-8 THIS book has been a long time coming. Marching to the Freedom Dream was the result of a Kickstarter campaign back in 2013. The project smashed the ceiling of its intended monetary goal and managed to raise over ￡5,000 more than was needed. It's not difficult to see why. Dan Budnik's historic photographs cover the seminal marches of the Civil Rights Movement from 1958-1965 and the book is being published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the momentous passing of the Civil Rights Act. Luckily, Budnik's images were recently rediscovered by Time magazine and it soon became clear that the photographer was perhaps one of America's best-kept secrets. Everything you would…

To celebrate AP's 130th birthday, we've teamed up with some of the world's leading photographers, the NSPCC and PhotoBox to offer you the chance to win one of 130 signed prints. We have limited-edition prints from the likes of Gered Mankowitz, Art Wolfe, Steve McCurry, Charlie Waite, Steve Bloom, Tom Stoddart, Joe Cornish and Clive Nichols, and many more, and you could own one simply by supporting our campaign. All of the photographers have kindly donated their photos to help raise money for the NSPCC. PhotoBox, our print partner, will send you an A3 print of your winning image*. PhotoBox is a print company with a twist - it's personal. PhotoBox takes your photographs and prints them onto books, framed prints and canvases from small to large sizes (to name…

What led you to set up Dronestagram? Last year, I attended a conference trip in St Petersburg in Russia. At the end of the event, we had a group picture. A drone came up from the sky, hovered over the field near the group, and took pictures and videos for the event website. I asked myself, 'Where can I see the pictures? Is there a platform that gathers pictures made with drones?' The answer was no and the idea was born! I decided to create Dronestagram. What makes drone photography so different from other forms of aerial photography? It is a kind of new visual language, a bird's-eye view, something we've never seen before. We had satellite view, airplane view and Street View. Now there's a new layer: the drone…

THERE was obviously a demand for photographic equipment from the military, which needed cameras, enlargers and lenses for a variety of different purposes - the RAF demanded cameras for reconnaissance, for example. Interestingly, German cameras were still on sale, and Wallace Heaton even posted adverts saying: 'The RAF needs your Leica or Contax now!' (above). Another advert stated: 'In order to win the war quickly, everyone must make their maximum effort now. And there is a part - a very important part - which every photographer can play; it is to see that your apparatus is doing a WAR JOB. Cameras, accessories, projectors, micro-apparatus are all wanted for work of the highest importance' Prices of goods, new or second-hand, were subject to price controls, to prevent rises in inflation and…

One of the advantages of shooting in raw mode is that the only thing you have to get right is the ISO and exposure settings. When processing a raw image using a program like Camera Raw, you can set the white balance later. Having said that, I find it saves time if I set the white balance setting on the camera to auto. but you can change this easily later if you need to. Shown here is the Camera Raw White Balance menu, which lists a number of useful presets. Among them is an Auto option, whereby Camera Raw carries out its own auto-analysis of the image and selects a white balance setting. There are also the Temperature and Tint sliders, where you can adjust the white balance manually, and…

Back in October 2011, Lytro announced its intention to transform photography with its first Light Field camera. By measuring the angle at which light rays hit the sensor, as well as their intensity, the company promised the ability to refocus images after shooting. The company coined the term living Images' to describe this ability to explore depth and focus. Unfortunately, the first Lytro camera looked more like a toy than a tool, and at ￡400 it was pretty expensive for a product that promised to solve the 'problem' of focusing for consumers - especially as even the cheapest digital compact cameras have pretty sophisticated and accurate autofocus systems anyway. Its image quality wasn't up to much, either, so the camera garnered little interest among buyers, despite its undoubted technical cleverness.…

Now in its sixth generation, the latest addition to the Pen Lite family, the E-PL7, continues Olympus's efforts to reach out to those photographers who apparently appreciate the smaller more refined design of the rangefinder style. This is in contrast to the intentionally chunkier and retro DSLR-styled OM-D cameras that have pretty much stolen the show at Olympus in recent times. This latest offering from Olympus features the 16.1 -million-pixel sensor that has proved popular in the OM-D E-M5, but as well as the sensor, the E-PL7 shares many of the features of the OM-D E-M10, minus a viewfinder and built-in flash. Based on those features alone, if there are any enthusiasts in the market for a compact system camera but who as yet haven't been tempted by the OM-D…

THE SEITZ Roundshot panoramic camera is a beautiful piece of engineering, but beyond my means. However, it seems that the basic principle behind swing-lens cameras is not too complex. It is based on the fact that if you rotate a lens about its node point, then the image will not move (or not much). I made a simple 'optical bench' (two pieces of wood and a piece of ground glass) to investigate this problem. Once you have found the node, you can also measure the node-to-focal-point distance. Now, make a cylinder whose diameter equals the focal length of the lens, and place the lens in the centre of a rotating cylinder. You then have a swing-lens camera. The Roundshot is motor-driven, but it is easy to obtain evenly exposed shots…

‘Still Life with Pears’ by Cristina Cassinelli A peculiarly repulsive philosophy – shortsighted, philistine and disgustingly materialistic – is summed up in the phrase, ‘Beauty lies in the eye of the cheque-book holder’. It is wrong on so many levels that it is hard to know where to begin. Does it mean, for example, that unless we pay for something, we are not entitled to find it beautiful? That leaves out art galleries, unless we pay to get in, or unless they pay to have the pictures on their walls. Does it mean that until a picture is bought, it is not beautiful? Hardly. Vincent van Gogh was not exactly raking in the money. Does it mean that money is all that matters? Well, if you think it is, I…