Innholdsfortegnelse for 29-mar-2014 i Amateur Photographer

ONE OF the most interesting trends in digital camera design in recent years has been the rush to retro. First we had cameras inspired by Leica M-series rangefinders, best exemplified by the Fujifilm X100. Then came the Olympus OM-D, based on the company’s OM SLRs of the 1970s. That decade may be synonymous with bad taste, but for many of us who came to photography in that era, camera aesthetics never got any better. Perhaps it’s just misplaced nostalgia for a time when photography itself was more cool in the public’s mind, and cameras were simple and uncomplicated for those of us who knew the secrets of how to use them. As cameras became more sophisticated, more electronic, then fully digital, they got better but lost a little of their…

‘THE COMPACT system camera is now returning to a period of growth that is really pleasing…’ enthuses Panasonic’s Barnaby Sykes. Likewise, Fujifilm and Olympus will have welcomed figures suggesting that the Fuji X-E2 and flagship Olympus OM-D E-M1 each played a key role in reviving the firms’ respective camera divisions – cutting losses by 60% in each case. ‘Our research tells us that 48% of consumers who bought a DSLR in the past two years… would now consider a Lumix G,’ adds Sykes. But GfK’s Richard Gregory cautions: ‘We saw Jessops go out of business at the beginning of 2013… it’s going to be a few weeks before we can see that there’s been an uplift.’ Park Cameras’ Pete Sharpe remains guarded, however. ‘From my experience, we are still selling…

On sale Tuesday 1 April LIGHTROOM 5 VS DXO OPTICS PRO 9 Michael Topham takes a look at the differences between two leading raw conversion software packages SOME LIKED IT HOT To coincide with a new retrospective of Bob Carlos Clarke’s work, Andrew James takes a look back at the photographer’s controversial but highly creative career THIS SPORTING LIFE Award-winning sports photographer Mark Pain with tips on how to take great sports shots ROUND 2 We’ve prizes worth more than £2,000 in the Animal Planet round…

● QUIET NEW YORK by Siobhan Wall, £12.99 New York is not often described as a region of quietude. In fact, the city that really should get some sleep is more akin to a cacophonous hellzone. However, that hasn’t stopped Siobhan Wall seeking out a few Zen-like spaces of tranquillity. Covering all five boroughs, Wall offers a guide to 150 spaces to meet, eat and drink that will not require the purchase of earplugs. The photographs are a little uninspiring, but it’s not really about that. It’s a more akin to a silent tour of the city where the hell of other people need not be an issue. ● THE NEW YORK DOG by Rachael Hale McKenna, £18.99 Sticking with the New York theme, Rachael Hale McKenna (one of the…

TONY BURNS Tony Burns is a freelance editorial and travel photographer from the UK based in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He received an honourable mention from Travel Photographer of the Year in 2013 and was shortlisted in 2009 and 2011. His images are represented by Getty and Wonderful Machine, and have appeared in publications such as the Lonely Planet travel guides and The Sunday Times Travel. I HAD seen a picture of Thor’s Well about a year ago and was instantly fascinated by it. Thor’s Well is basically a deep hole in the rocks off a rough stretch of the Oregon coastline in the US. As the waves crash in, it fills up, spouts water up to six metres in the air and overflows, before sucking the water back in…

FOR MANY scenes, stacking your photographs in Photoshop or specialist software such as Helicon Focus (helicon.dstudiosoft.com) is very easy. Once images have been aligned (the focus also slightly alters the focal length), you can work with masks in Photoshop or let Helicon Focus stack your pictures automatically to produce a final stacked image. Problems arise, however, if you have moving elements in the scene, especially in the foreground. Then the stacking can become a real pain and will require a certain amount of retouching in order to fit everything together perfectly. Try experimenting with different ISO settings to freeze motion as much as possible, and you’ll also need to limit the time between exposures. However, if there’s a lot of movement it will be difficult to get a convincing result,…

ALLAN thinks for a moment, then says: ‘They’re basically a pain in the arse.’ There’s a pause, then he adds: ‘They really, really are.’ As assessments of lenticular lenses go, this is certainly succinct. A lenticular lens is an array of small magnifying lenses set at different angles. It is designed to produce images that give the impression of motion when viewed at different angles. In skilled hands, a lenticular lens can produce fascinating illusions of depth or make dead subjects appear vibrant and alive. They are also, apparently, a pain in the posterior. This is just one of the techniques that Scottish artist Allan Forsyth delved into for his exhibition Pride & Glory now on show in London. An enormously diverse body of work taking plants and animals as…

THIS is not a straight X vs Y head-to-head contest between the Fujifilm X-T1 and the Nikon Df. Both of these cameras have already been tested (in AP 15 March and 18 January respectively) and each scored highly, producing excellent images. Both models also have their own quirks when it comes to how they handle. What is more interesting is that Fujifilm and Nikon have created cameras to meet the demand for a digital model that handles like a film SLR. Both have a different answer to the same question, with each a pastiche of a 1970s film SLR. On the one side is a retro-looking DSLR with a full-frame sensor and a large optical viewfinder, and on the other is a smaller and lighter CSC with an APS-C-sized sensor…

Rapid Electronics, the UK distributors of the Bigshot camera, has been kind enough to offer us five DIY camera kits to give away. If you would like the chance to get your hands on one and beat my incredibly fast build time of 34mins, head on over to www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/bigshotcompetition and answer the following question correctly: Which celebrity photographer is known for being a fan of the Polaroid Big Shot Camera released in 1971? Bryan Adams B. Helena Christensen C. Andy Warhol The competition will close on 25 April 2014 and the winner will be contacted via email within six weeks of the closing date.…

IF YOU compare the Samsung NX30 with its stablemates, you will see they share many characteristics – the once class-leading 20.3-million-pixel resolution, among others. However, this resolution is being encroached upon by many compact system cameras, such as the similarly DSLR-styled Sony Alpha 3000 and the Olympus OM-D range. However, the NX30 is fighting its corner with a class-leading LCD, an electronic viewfinder and a host of advanced connectivity features. FEATURES The Samsung NX30 has an APS-C-sized CMOS sensor, measuring 23.5x15.7mm, with a resolution of 20.3 million pixels. This is the same resolution sensor that is used inside many Samsung NX compact system cameras, including the Galaxy NX and the NX300. Thanks to the next-generation DRIMe IV processor, a speed of 9fps in full-resolution JPEG or raw format is possible…

WITH stunning scenery easily accessible to most people in the UK, it’s no surprise that landscape photography is an incredibly popular photographic subject. While much has been written on the basics of successful landscape photography, from using a tripod and a low ISO to the rule of thirds, the aim of this guide is to provide you with a much more insightful and immersive understanding of landscape photography. There’s advice on planning and preparation that will ensure you’re ready even before you get to your location, and we look at the less obvious but no less important bits of kit you’ll need to shoot stunning vistas. As well as essential advice on capturing a scene and how to get the best out of your fi les once you’re back home,…

VISUALISE THE IMAGE Simon Butterworth Winner, Landscape Photographer of the Year 2012 TO MAKE an image on the camera, you are attempting to pull off a serious optical illusion by trying to represent a scene using only two dimensions instead of three. To help overcome this basic photographic problem, I try to visualise how the image will look on a flat piece of paper and how I can arrange the various available elements to give the impression of depth. The most obvious way is to include lines receding into the distance. This could range from railway tracks to much more subtle implied lines, such as two or three trees gradually getting smaller. Another effective method is to show objects becoming less clear as they recede into the distance, such as…

SOME 35 years ago, when I first made an image of the landscape, my intention was to illustrate what I saw. I loved walking in the hills or exploring Britain’s shoreline, and I wanted to document and celebrate that experience through photography. I know from workshop participants that this desire to show our love for the great outdoors in a straightforward way is a very common trait, but a few decades later I find myself with a very different agenda. By the late 1990s, I had set aside my desire to document and had begun to strive for images that transcended their subject matter. I realised something that other visual artists had long taken for granted – that we humans need to be intrigued by what we see in order…

• 18.4 million pixels • Vari-angle monitor • 20fps • £730 body only “We are a country of traditionalists” FOR THE first time, Nikon has installed a tilting touchscreen on a Nikon 1 system camera. The Nikon 1 V3 features an 18.4-millionpixel imaging sensor with no optical low-pass filter, to help improve image quality. The vari-angle 3in LCD screen carries a resolution of 1.037 million dots, designed to enable the user to focus, trigger the shutter release, adjust settings and preview creative modes. The newcomer introduces Nikon’s Auto Image Capture, which analyses every frame and automatically takes photos ‘when conditions are best’. Thuan Bui, a Nikon 1 product manager, claimed: ‘The super-responsive Nikon 1 V3 is a high-performance camera that meets the needs of the most demanding photographers… ‘Whether shooting…

PHOTO enthusiast Paul Dowker bought a CSC to complement his ageing DSLR. ‘I’ll take my compact system camera out shooting because it’s new and has more megapixels… but it is also so much easier to use,’ he says. Paul believes the term ‘CSC’ is confusing to people new to photography. This may be a prime reason for slumping sales. ‘When I first started, a “compact camera” was a small point and shoot model,’ he says. ‘Now you have the “compact system”. I think people get confused over what is a digital compact pocket camera and a decent semi-pro piece of kit.’ This view is echoed by Pete Sharpe of Park Cameras: ‘I think everybody knows what a DSLR is – it’s a catch-all term for digital SLRs. But CSC cameras…

IN ADDITION to the launch of the EOS 1200D, Canon’s successor to the PowerShot G1 X has arrived, in the form of the PowerShot G1 X Mark II. Incorporating the same 1.5in-type (18.7x14mm) CMOS sensor as its predecessor, the G1 X Mark II has an effective resolution of 12.8 million pixels in the default 3:2 aspect ratio, or an alternative 13.1-million-pixel resolution in its 4:3 aspect. The surface area of the sensor is more than twice as large as the conventional 1in-type (12.8x9.6mm) sensor found in competitor models, and is approximately 20% smaller than APS-C-sized (23.6x15.6mm) units. In front of the new sensor sits the G1 X Mark II’s standout feature: its new 5x optical zoom lens. Equivalent to 24-120mm in 35mm terms, and providing a variable aperture of f/2-3.9,…

LETTER OF THE WEEK STELLAR SHOT I saw reports that Jupiter would be visible with the Moon in the night sky recently, so I popped out into the back garden at 10.23pm on the Sunday and shot a few handheld pictures with a 70-300mm lens on a Nikon D4. I picked two shots – one of Jupiter (1/20sec, f/5.6, ISO 6400) and the other of the Moon (1/800sec, f/5.6, ISO 1250) – and combined them to replicate a single shot of both celestial bodies. If you zoom into Jupiter, I think you can see some moons, which really shocked me! I thought you might be interested to see the results. Paul King, via email Great shot, Paul, and all the more impressive for being handheld – Nigel Atherton, Group Editor…

ONE OF the first things we learn in photography is the relationship between aperture and depth of field. In landscape photography, selecting a smaller aperture results in a larger depth of field. If you want to take a photograph that contains elements in the near foreground, with a detailed landscape in the middle and background, the obvious formula would be to select as small an aperture as possible to get everything sharp in the frame. However, it’s not that simple. Most camera and lens combinations result in a decrease in sharpness for apertures smaller than f/11. While this can vary, what always happens is that as the aperture gets smaller, the light reaching the camera sensor is more and more diffracted at the edges of the aperture blades. This diffraction…

1 Start by setting your camera up on a tripod to avoid misaligned shots later in Photoshop. Set the exposure to manual, as this will allow you to maintain the same exposure should the light subtly change while you focus on different points of the frame. It’s also a good idea to shoot in raw, as this will make life a lot easier in post-production and give you much greater control. 2 Frame your image and dial in the required exposure for the scene – in this instance, 1/100sec at f/8. Once you’re happy with the composition, set your lens/camera body to manual focus and then switch to live view. This will allow you to assess focus much more effectively compared to peering through your viewfinder. Zoom in on the…

‘There’s no escaping the heightened contrast, which puts the “graphic” into photographic’ Ploughing a rice field Noy Saylakham Canon EOS 6D, 60mm, 1/200sec at f/5.6, ISO 320 WE DON’T have many details about Noy Saylakham’s monochrome photograph of a farmer ploughing a rice field in Laos, so it’s hard to determine precisely what’s gone on here or what hewas hoping to achieve. Starting with the positives, the photographer has framed the shot really well. Positioning his subject off centre – both vertically and horizontally – avoids a bland composition and there’s ‘nose space’ in front of the farmer and his beast for them to move into. The diagonal direction of their implied movement also prevents the image from appearing too static. What is equally noteworthy is the effect created by…

NOT TO be confused with Andy Warhol’s beloved Polaroid Big Shot camera released in 1971, the similarly inexpensive Bigshot camera from Kimera LLC is a digital camera you can buy and build for the price of a West End theatre ticket. Costing just under £70, the Bigshot is the brainchild of Computer Science Professor Shree Nayar, who developed it in conjunction with a group of gifted Columbia University students in the USA. Their shared goals were simple: to educate young people and photography enthusiasts, as well as challenging them to look at their kit and the world around them in a different way. The box states that the Bigshot is appropriate for ages 8-108 years, so it’s clearly not just for children. The fact is, regardless of how experienced you…

USING AN OLD FLASH HEAD ON A DSLR QI have three rather elderly Bowens 400D Mono heads and have recently bought a Canon EOS 50D. I remember plugging the sync lead of these units into the co-axial flash socket on older film cameras and using the Bowens infrared transmitter to fire the other heads remotely. Would it be OK to plug this older type of flash head into the EOS 50D via the co-axial flash socket on the camera, or would this result in damage to the camera? I have heard that the voltage involved with these old heads is too powerful and could result in repair bills. If it is a problem, could you advise any available devices that would trigger these old units? Peter Davis AI would always…

RRP £899.99 Sensor 20.3-million-effective-pixel CMOS Output size 5472 x 3648 pixels Focal length mag 1.5x Lens mount Samsung NX File format JPEG, SRW (raw), MP4 Compression 3-stage JPEG, 1-stage raw Colour space Adobe RGB, sRGB Shutter type Focal-plane shutter Shutter speeds 30-1/8000sec + bulb (max 4mins) Max flash sync 1/200sec ISO 100-25,600 Exposure modes PASM, lens priority, smart auto, 16 scene modes, 10 smart filters Metering system 221-block segment TTL metering, with multi, centreweighted and spot Exposure comp 3EV White balance Auto, 7 presets, custom and manual, with fine-tuning White balance bracket Yes Drive mode 9fps LCD 3in, 1,037,000-dot Super AMOLED Viewfinder type 2,359,000-dot tiltable EVF with proximity sensor Field of view 100% Dioptre adjustment Yes Focusing modes Single AF, continuous AF, MF, touch AF and shutter AF points 105…

Essential clothing Make sure you wear appropriate clothing and footwear so you can keep warm and dry while out on a shoot. Walking boots are usually the preferred choice for mountainous shoots, but for coastal venues and other watery locations you can’t beat a good pair of wellies. A decent waterproof jacket is also a good idea if you’re going to be shooting out in changeable conditions, while also think about some active-wear trousers, with some offering a water-repellent finish and a plethora of pockets to tuck bits of kit into. A Berghaus Stormcloud waterproof jacket (£75, pictured) and pair of Navigator Cargo trousers (£45) is a great starting point. Headlamp If you’re getting to your location in anticipation of sunrise or returning to your car postsunset, then an LED…

CLASSIC landscape photography has often involved a lot of post-processing work. In this respect, editing your photographs on a computer is similar to dodging and burning in the darkroom, except that there are a lot more techniques you can use to produce landscape images that are fully optimised for tone, colour and sharpness. Here are some top tips for processing landscape photographs in Photoshop and Lightroom. THE PHOTOMERGE feature in Photoshop is useful for stitching photographs to create panorama images. This is useful for those occasions when you don’t have a lens wide enough to capture an entire scene. In such situations, you can capture a series of shots where, provided you have a sufficient amount of overlap between exposures, you can merge these in Photoshop. One way to do…

DO YOU constantly question yourself? Do you suffer from angst, insecurity, turmoil and indecision? Do you ask yourself whether your images good enough? Are you developing your own style or are your images just the same as everyone else’s? If you had more expensive or different gear, would your images be better? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then join the club. Most photographers struggle with at least some of these issues on a more or less constant basis. So how do we get past this and stop such worries paralysing our creativity? I decided a long time ago to try to stop worrying about what others thought of my images and to make pictures that pleased me. It’s easier said than done, I readily admit,…

AMID great fanfare, the first compact system camera (CSC) was born in 2008. The micro four thirds Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 ignited a fierce turf war with the traditional DSLR, and we have recently seen the first full-frame CSC – the Alpha 7 – join a growing army of technology-laden upstarts. CSCs – aka ‘mirrorless cameras’ among a host of other names they have assumed since – were heralded as easier to use and, with the absence of an SLR mirror-box, less bulky than a DSLR. Yet more than four times as many DSLRs were sold in the UK last year than CSCs, with CSCs notching up sales of just 100,000 units – 46,000 fewer than the year before, according to figures released by market research firm GfK. CSC VS DSLR…

VINTAGE photographs of life in the trenches have gone on show 100 years after the outbreak of the First World War. The images, exploring the lives of people from north-west England, are on display at Imperial War Museum North’s exhibition called From Street to Trench: The World War that Shaped a Region. Many of the exhibits have never before been shown publicly. Graham Boxer, Director of IWM North in Manchester, said: ‘One hundred years on, the objects we display highlight the poignancy and courage of people who shaped and were shaped by this first global conflict. ‘Even a century later there are stories untold, experiences undiscovered and tales that will surprise.’ The photos include shots of infantry battalions from Preston and Manchester, as well as images of women workers on…

View from Inside: Contemporary Arab Photography, Video and Mixed Media Art Schilt Publishing, £45, hardback, 304 pages, 978-9-053-30825-7 ART IS one of the most universal languages. Powerful images can communicate in a way that transcends dialects and cultural boundaries. Even in their most abstract and experimental forms, images can pass on ideas and observations that can perhaps become lost in words. The Middle East and North Africa are regions most of us are familiar with. Sadly, this familiarity is often born of caricature, mysterious exoticism and reactionary media coverage. However, in this wonderful book we see the view from inside. The collection of photographers and artists reflect the fact that art is a crucial form of visual expression that can deal with a broad range of issues. This is the…

THAT’S the good thing about global warming. One minute I’m out in heavy rain, sporting a waterproof compact camera to record buildings being demolished, and the next I’m elsewhere sporting a bridge camera with the sun warming my back as I photograph nature. Although there are plenty of puddles still around from a few showers, there are signs of spring: lots of fresh budding in the hedgerows, birds singing, and the gorse is coming out. A couple of passers-by saw me taking a photograph and said, ‘When the gorse fails to flower, that’s when the kissing ends.’ I had to look that one up. They’d paraphrased a 19th century saying: When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing’s out of fashion. The idea is that gorse is always in flower…

WHILE it might sound complicated, in reality focus stacking is very simple, with practice key to mastering the technique. For focus stacking to work, it is important to use a tripod and not change the composition or focal length between the different photographs. To be able to set the focus precisely, live view is an invaluable tool on modern DSLRs. You can zoom in 5x or 10x on the point where you want to focus and then manually turn the focus wheel. Using apertures between f/8 and f/11 will deliver a good compromise between overall sharpness and depth of field. You will need fewer photos for stacking at these apertures than with f/5.6, for example, although this might be the ‘sweet spot’ for some lenses. As you start taking photographs…

Helen Holt Manchester Helen is, in her own words, ‘a serious amateur’ when it comes to photography. Having retired eight years ago, she now has more time to spend taking her beloved close-up shots of flowers and insects. What she loves about photography is ‘the challenge of trying to take a shot much better than the last and to always push myself further in an effort to achieve photos with plenty of impact’. Helen hopes to have as many of her images published as she can, ideally on magazine covers. Helenium 1 The beautiful bokeh accentuates the contrasting colours of this vibrant flower Canon EOS 50D, 60mm, 1/500sec at f/2.8, ISO 1250 Astrantia 2 Another triumph of selective focus, the details of this flower image seem to burst right out…

PKParis K’1 USB 3.0 32GB Key £36.49 www.pkparis.com WE’VE tested tiny USB keys in the past, but the PK Paris K’1 is the first we have tested that is USB 3.0 compatible. Measuring just 5mm in depth, the 32GB key neatly slots into a USB port on your computer and is barely noticeable jutting out from the side. MacBook owners will love the fact that the aluminium body of the K’1 matches the finish of the metal Apple laptop computers. Available in 32GB and 64GB (£63.89) sizes, the key offers useful extra storage for those whose internal hard drives are getting full. For photographers, the real benefit is in the performance of the 32GB key. As it is so small, it can be easily left in the side of a…

1I carefully laid out all the camera parts onto a clear desk, trying to mirror the layout as it appeared on the box. Doing so made it significantly easier to identify each piece. 2 The Bigshot can only be constructed in one specific sequence, so following the instruction manual provided is vital. You begin by constructing the gear unit and crank that powers the camera’s dynamo, which can be quite fiddly as it involves small moving parts. 3With the dynamo and gears secured in position, I gave the hand crank a spin to see if everything was moving smoothly. All appeared to be working fine. The shutter button is next and simply twists into position, followed by the sensor and LCD, all housed on a single printed circuit board (PCB).…

One of the fundamental exposure controls is the aperture in a lens, and the first thing many of us learn is ‘big number, small hole’. Attached to this is depth of field, at which point we get to grips with the idea that bigger numbers (f/22 and f/32, for example) produce a greater depth of field. However, what isn’t always clear is that using the smallest aperture settings on your lens can soften your images. This is due to diffraction, which is caused as the light passes through the aperture in the lens. If you’re using a wide aperture, the light can pass straight through, but as the aperture is reduced, the light spreads out as it passes the aperture blades – and the smaller the aperture, the greater the…

PHOTOGRAPHY is a very broad church: high art; low kitsch; scientific recording; insightful portraits; achingly evocative landscapes; slick advertising; heartbreaking reportage; holiday snaps; records of heroic deeds – all this and more. There are countless techniques to embrace, too: wafer-thin planes of focus or deep field; sharpness or softness; shutter speeds that freeze motion or record a barely recognisable blur; colour or black & white, with innumerable variations such as posterisation, Mackie lines, lith, bas-relief, plus all the effects that are achievable with Adobe Photoshop ‘filters’, alone or in combination; different formats, from tiny digital sensors to huge sheets of cut film; ultra-wide lenses, fisheye and extreme telephotos; and astrophotography. That’s before we even think about presenting the pictures. Big prints? Huge prints? Tiny prints? Albums? The ubiquitous computer screen?…

SOME of us visit a location and find a scene to photograph, while others find a scene in a book, magazine or on a website and then decide to visit the area. If you’re in the latter group and are aiming to shoot during the golden hour (the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset), when colours are at their most intense and warm, you don’t want to be watching it through a car window as you rush to find your location. If you can, try to check out the location beforehand in good light. This will give you a good understanding of how long it will take to get there and an idea of the surrounding area. However, if this isn’t possible, using Google Maps in satellite mode…

OVER recent years, I have become interested in the impulses and compulsions that exist within many of us to make images. Despite all the lofty and sometimes analytical statements from many photographers past and present (including me), as to what a photograph should or should not be, my initial conclusion is: a photograph should simply please ourselves. I have also been preoccupied with the criteria that we use to define, comprehend and ultimately measure our objectives. ‘Attend’ and ‘intend’ are my current buzzwords. However, for all that investment of deciphering and untangling, and the fact I still find landscape photography perplexing, tantalising and just plain difficult, I always emerge from the process enriched and sometimes rewarded with an image that has parity with my previsualisation. I am sure that I…