Innholdsfortegnelse for 22-mar-2014 i Amateur Photographer

I AM WRITING this on the day of the 25th anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web. My kids are convinced that life must have been unimaginably awful before it came along and, while I’m sure I can remember having some fairly pleasant days before Sir Tim Berners-Lee had his brainwave in 1989, I do see their point. The web has changed our lives in unimaginable ways. It has made the world a much smaller place, enabling us to connect with like-minded people all over the world, to share each other’s pictures and experiences, and to learn from each other. It has caused a revolution in the way we shop, the way that we’re informed and entertained, and inspired political revolutions in many countries. For photographers it has…

A CAMERA shop believed by Its owner to be 'probably the world's oldest firm with photographic connections' has closed Its doors for the last time. GL Robertson, a family-run store in Lancaster, shut down following the retirement of Its owner Reg Stoddon after more than 50 years. The family has decided not to continue the business. The store - which counted the comedian Eric Morecambe among its high-profile customers - originally traded under the name Vince & Co and had roots dating back to 1796, before the dawn of photography. Among its more recent customers was Scott Lord, who sees the closure of 'Robertsons' as 'perhaps a sad reflection of the changing face of business away from local shops towards online shopping - cheaper but no personal touch'. However, Reg…

GIOTTOS has unveiled a new range of travel tripods, designed to be 'superightweight and über compact'. There are four tripods in the Air range, two aluminium and two carbon fibre, each featuring four-section legs and a Y-shaped centre column, plus collar-leg locks and twin spirit levels. The cheapest, priced £180, is the aluminium Air Kit 17, which has a maximum height of 135cm and folds down to 41cm. It weighs 1.2kg and supports up to 4kg of gear, according to Giottos. Top of the range is the Air Kit 20 (£334), a carbon-fibre model with a detachable leg that doubles as a monopod. The Air Kit 20 is built to carry up to 6kg. The tripods - each of which comes with a case - got their first airing at…

SIGMA and Amateur Photographer have joined forces to give you the chance to win a fantastic ultra-telephoto lens. The Sigma APO 150-500mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM covers a telephoto range up to 500mm and allows photographers to bring the subject close with short perspective. Three SLD (Special Low Dispersion) glass elements provide correction for chromatic aberration, while the rear focus system minimises fluctuation of aberration caused by focusing. HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor) is incorporated for quiet and high-speed AF plus full-time manual focusing. The Sigma APO 150-500mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM is available in Canon, Nikon, Sigma, Sony and Pentaxfit. ABOUT SIGMA Founded in 1961, the Sigma Corporation is a Japanese company that manufactures cameras, lenses, flashes and other photographic accessories. All Sigma products are produced in the company's own…

THESE images were taken while on a ten-day visit to Yellowstone National Park in the USA, where I had headed with the intention of photographing wolves, along with doing some more general wildlife photography. I didn't actually see any wolves in the end, but I managed to come away with these images thanks to being in the right place at the right time. I was sitting in the car along with a fellow photographer when we spotted a fox out in the distance in one of the fields. It was hunting for mice by listening for them beneath the snow, then jumping up high to get enough force to dive deep into the snow to catch its prey. It was quite a way in the distance, and even with my…

If you need a lesson in how a simple and single-minded approach can work wonders, then look no further than Jonathan Chritchley. This hugely successful English photographer has a style that is instantly recognisable, serene and artistic. Struck by an urge to capture the sea in a way that expressed his feelings as a teenager, he has been doing just that ever since. With his fine-art prints and workshops in big demand, Jonathan has carved a niche for himself within the cut-throat world of professional photography, and it’s all been down to a chance viewing of The Big Blue – a 1988 film by French director Luc Besson. ‘The first 20 minutes of the film are in black & white,’ explains Jonathan. ‘The way it was shot bowled me over…

Brick factory Partha Mondal Nikon D60, 44mm (66mm equivalent in 35mm), 1/3200sec at f/8, ISO 800 PARTHA’S candid shot of women at the Kharibari brick factory, near Kolkata in India, has a lot of potential. There’s fantastic eye contact from the girl in pink, which gives us a great sense of connection with the subject, but it’s a shame Partha didn’t get her all in shot. Zooming out slightly, tilting the camera down or taking a few steps back would have helped prevent her being cut off at the ankles. This is one of those instances, as with any decisive moment-style shot, where framing more and possibly cropping postcapture is preferable to shooting too tightly. The already tight crop also doesn't help with my next suggestion: to crop and rotate…

In the next few weeks AP hopes to run the following equipment through the most rigorous testing procedures in the industry... Fujifilm X-T1 and Nikon Df Both the Fujifilm X-T1 16.3-millionpixel compact system camera and Nikon's 16.2-millionpixelDfDSLR look like retro film cameras, but which offers the closest experience to shooting on film? AP 29 March Samsung NX30 We test Samsung's DSLR-styled 20.3-millionpixel APS-C compact system camera. AP 29 March Adobe Lightroom5vs DxO Optics Pro Two popular raw imageprocessing software packages go head to head. AP5April Nikon M S With enhanced autofocus, faster performance, and betterquality still images and video, we test Nikon's D4S. AP 12 April SIX OF THE BEST We review six of the best LED light panels for stills and video. AP 12 April…

RRP £529.99 (body only) Sensor 16.1-million-effective-pixel Live MOS (17.3x13mm) Output size 4608 x 3456 pixels Lens mount Micro four thirds File format JPEG, raw (ORF), JPEG + raw, AVI (motion JPEG) Compression 2-stage JPEG Colour space Adobe RGB, sRGB Shutter type Computerised focal-plane shutter Shutter speeds 60-1/4000sec + bulb up to 30mins Max flash sync Built-in sync 1/250sec, external flash X-sync 1/250sec and 1/4000sec (Super FP Mode) ISO Low (approximately ISO 100)-25,600 Exposure modes PASM, iAuto, 24 scene modes, 11 art filters Metering system 324-zone multi-pattern TTL digital ESP, spot, centreweighted, highlight, shadow Exposure comp 3EV White balance Auto, 7 presets, manual, 2 custom modes White balance bracket Yes Drive mode Up to 8fps, or 3.5fps with continuous AF LCD 3in, 1,037,000-dot touchscreen Viewfinder type Electronic, with 1.44 million dots…

BEING lightweight and portable while also offering an extensive optical zoom range are a few of the key criteria of a travel compact camera. With this sector of the market being particularly competitive, companies need to give their new cameras more advanced features to stay ahead of the competition. Panasonic announced the launch of the Lumix DMC-TZ60 alongside the DMC-TZ55 at CES in the USA earlier this year. The TZ60 is the successor to the very popular Lumix DMC-TZ40, which impressed us when we tested it in AP 23 March 2013 Now featuring an increased 30x óptica zoom, raw image capture, comprehensive Wi-Fi/NFC connectivity and an electronic viewfinder, Panasonic has certainly stepped up to the mark with the TZ60. AT A GLANCE ● 18.1-million-pixel, 1/2.3in-type zsensor ● Leica DC Vario-Elmar…

PHOTOGRAPHERS have hit out at picture agency giant Getty Images after it legalised the free use of tens of millions of images from its archives, for non-commercial use online. PHOTOGRAPHERS have hit out at picture agency giant Getty Images after it legalised the free use of tens of millions of images from its archives, for non-commercial use online. The move aims to give people a legal way to access image . les from Getty’s massive picture library – without breaching copyright – to share on sites such as Twitter and WordPress. Embedded images will include photographer attribution and, when clicked, will link back to www.gettyimages.com, where the image can be licensed for commercial use. Lisa Willmer, senior director at Getty Images’ corporate counsel unit, said the ‘sheer proliferation of content…

TONBRIDGE CAMERA CLUB The club holds its 48th annual exhibition from 14-21 March. It takes place in the Council Chamber, Tonbridge Castle, Castle Street, Tonbridge, Kent TN9 1BG. Entry is free. For details call 01892 836 892 or visit www.tonbridgecameraclub.org.uk. CAMERA KEY TO NEW SAMSUNG PHONE SAMSUNG has unveiled a new smartphone, the Galaxy S5, carrying a 16-million-pixel camera that can autofocus in 0.3sec and refocus post-capture. The S5 is also equipped with HDR. Selective focus is designed to allow users to focus on a specific area while blurring out the background at the same time, to simulate shallow depth of field. The camera shoots two images using different focal points. It works by positioning the lens both in the near and far field, and then 'composes the two into…

Philippe Halsman: Astonish Me! By Sam Stourdzé and Anne Lacoste Prestel, £40, hardback, 320 pages, ISBN 978-3-791-34907-7 IF YOU'RE into portraiture, you’re bound to have experienced the moment when a portrait stops you in your tracks. It’s generally something to do with the eyes. You catch the eyes of the subject, in the manner that you might catch the eyes of an old friend on a crowded street, and stop. There doesn’t have to be any great epiphany or moment of understanding, but something about that portrait, that subject, just arrests you. This is one of the things that makes exceptional portraiture so hard to do, and Philippe Halsman had an excellent line in it. His images from throughout the 20th century comprise famous and forgotten subjects alike. This collection…

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 ALBUMS FOR ARCHIVING In AP 4 January, Bob Rowles wrote of his difficulty in finding a traditional, affordable photo album. I too have struggled to find a good album for my purposes, at least a decent-sized one I wanted pages of around A3, so made my own. It wasn't cheap, but it was much more satisfying in the end, and l got what l wanted. I went to the local art store and bought six or seven Reeves 'black' art pads (A3, acid-free) on special offer. A local book publishing firm punched three holes in the pages, and cut and punched some pages into…

MOST people would tell you, if asked, that it is not really acceptable as an adult to be jealous of a 12-year-old. Then again, those people probably haven't had their best photographic efforts trumped by someone who is barely out of their GCSEs. So really what do they know? Such is the experience of viewing the winning images from the RSPCA Young Photographer Awards. Running for more than 20 years, thereby making it older than all its entrants, the RSPCA YPA recognises and celebrates the absolutely stellar photography that young people are producing of the natural world. The competition's categories are divided by both age and theme. There are sections for 16-18 years, 12-15 years and, incredibly, Under-12s. Seeing a superb competition-winning image taken by a nine-year-old (page 24) is…

IMAGINE a dream where you find yourself in a familiar place. You know where you are, but something about it just isn’t quite right. Something has changed. The atmosphere seems somehow off-kilter, tension-laden and oppressive. The environment is recognisable, but also oddly alien. Italian-born Giacomo Brunelli understands this feeling well. For the past two years he has been walking the streets of London, photographing familiar landmarks. The result is the project Eternal London, a commission from the print sales wing of The Photographer’s Gallery in London. The project is also featured in the book, Eternal London, published by Dewi Lewis. Following on from his equally brilliant series The Animals (see right), Giacomo has succeeded in creating an uneasy urban narrative. Eternal London is the city Giacomo discovered on his journey.…

FOR MOST of his professional life, Edward Chambré Hardman specialised in portraiture, theatre photography and commercial work. His main personal interest, however, was landscape photography and he had a life-long love of photographing both rural and urban scenes. Most of Hardman's urban images were shot around Merseyside' and his work, taken over several decades, now provides a fascinating record of the region's past. His most famous photograph, The Birth of the Ark Royal', is now recognised as one of the great pictures of Britain's industrial heyday. When the photograph was taken, in April 1950, Hardman (pictured right) had been established as a professional photographer in Liverpool for 27 years. Born in 1898 in Dublin, Ireland, he had initially envisaged a career in the army and became an officer at the…

HOW DO you follow-up the awardwinning OM-D E-M1 and E-M5? With a more affordable offering that retains the quality construction and classic design of its predecessors, naturally. Olympus is bolstering its position in the compact system camera market with this latest release - which balances the OM-D line-up - and is now offering a model at every price point. Yet given the popularity of the OM-D series, the E-M10 has a lot of expectation riding on it, especially in the competitive CSC arena. The company has been smart by creating a model that will appeal not only to CSC newcomers, but also to 'advanced beginners' who might be considering the Nikon D5300 or the 18-million-pixe Canon EOS 700D DSLRs. As many on the forums predicted, to keep the cost down…

POOR SERVICE PROBLEM Q At the end of February 2013, sent a Nikon 70-300mm zoom lens to a company for a repair estimate. It was a lens I rarely used, so I didn't chase up the repair until the summer, when I was advised they were waiting to hear from Nikon regarding availability and price of spares. I contacted the company again at the start of October, to be told they had sourced spares, it wasn't an expensive job and they would start the repair. Three times during October and November I was told my repaired lens would be 'sent out today'. I am still waiting to receive it1 When I contacted them a couple of weeks before Christmas, I was told the lens 'had left the building'. I contacted…

RRP £349.99 Sensor 1/2.3in (6.17 x 4.55mm) CMOS sensor with 18.1 million effective pixels Output size 4896 x 3672 pixels Lens Leica DC Vario-Elmar 24-720mm (equivalent) f/3.3-6.4 File format Still: JPEG, raw. Video: MPEG, AVCHD Sensitivity Auto, ISO 100-3200 extendable to ISO 6400 Colour space sRGB Shutter speeds 4-1/2000sec, 15secs or 30secs in starry sky mode Metering system TTL intelligent multiple, centreweighted, spot White balance Automatic, 4 presets, two custom Exposure modes PASM, 18 scene modes, 15 filters in creative control and panorama Drive mode Single, 5fps with continuous AF, 10fps in single AF, 40fps or 60fps at 5MP and 2.5MP respectively, self-timer AF modes Face, AF tracking, 23-area, 1-area (flexible/scalable) LCD monitor 3in, approx 920,000-dot TFT LCD Interface Micro HDMI, AV output (PAL/NTSC), USB (AV/USB multi) Storage media SD,…

It was one in the eye for medium format this week in 1947, when the 35mm film format won the day. AP recounted the experiences of a '"Thirty-fiver" who sold his 35mm outfit because he failed to get exhibition quality when producing 16x20in prints'. The story had a happy ending: 'He has just heard that two of his large prints from 35mm negatives have been awarded "Gold Stars" at a London exhibition, whilst a similar print from a 2V2Ìn sq. negative received only an H.M... it certainly gives all "Thirty-fivers" a chance to stand on chairs and cheer heartily our friend's success.'…

THE RACE is on to raise £200,000 to save more than 100 negatives captured by famed Antarctic explorer Captain Scott in 1911, during his last expedition. If campaigners fail to raise the cash by 25 March, the 'recently rediscovered' negatives - previously thought to have been lost -will be sold at auction and could end up overseas, meaning they may not be available for future research and exhibitions in the UK. Explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes is leading the appeal to save the photos for the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. If the appeal is successful 'they will be in the public domain', confirmed Bridget Cusack, the Institute's museum development coordinator. 'They will all be available for the public to come and visit,' she told AP. Captain Scott shot the…

• SOCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY by Daniela Bowker, £9.99 The equivalent of one photo for every human being on the planet is uploaded to Facebook every month. Given that context, Daniela Bowker's guide to making your photos stand out on social networks looks a lot more appealing. There's a fair bit of good advice, although if you don't need to have the difference between a Facebook Newsfeed and Timeline explained then you might want to skip the first chapter • DIGITAL SNAPS: THE NEW FACE OF PHOTOGRAPHY, edited by Jonas Larsen and Mette Sandbye, £16.99 Contemporary voices assess the role of photography in the post-revolution digital era in this book, exploring the changing mores of photographers and how social practices have been altered by photography's relationship with social networks. Examining, among others,…

A PERSONAL style will evolve with time, but that might be a lifetime. That could be a long wait. It would be nice to speed up the process. I had been working through a monograph of Cartier-Bresson's work, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modem Century by Peter Galassi, when one or two things came together and the penny dropped. I realised the bleedin' obvious - that a distinctive style doesn't come from the casting of some magic spell, but rather the regular use of a unique set of techniques. Many people will recognise an Ansel Adams image. Two of his distinctive techniques were to use the full range of tones, including pure black and pure white, and to use a small enough aperture to achieve front-to-back sharpness (it wasn't for nothing that…

Graham Hobbs Dorset When Graham visited South Africa in 1989, he realised through his frustration with his camera equipment that he wanted to take better pictures. 'I decided that the next time he travelled, it would be with a decent telephoto lens,' he says. While wildlife and travel photography in the game parks were his first loves, Graham has now moved towards landscapes. No matter what the subject, though, the thrill of knowing that he has a good photo in the bag never leaves. To see more, find Graham on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/73U6629iaN02. Lurking assassin 1 Working without a tripod, 1/60sec was about as low as Graham dared go for this shot Pentax K10D, 18-55mm, 1/60sec at f/13, ISO 125 Tretower tower 2 Graham used the widest angle possible on…

THE ANIMALS came about due to my upbringing in the countryside. Where I lived, I was surrounded by animals. I used to spend days chasing lizards and various other animals. When I found my father’s camera, I wanted to do a project for myself – something that was quite personal. I felt like I knew the animals. The project was an idea that grew within me. The way I shot them unveiled a level of primitiveness – the darker side of the animal kingdom. Again, we get the idea of suspense and tension. We’re not used to seeing animals in these grainy black & white tones. What I set out to achieve in the project is exactly what I got. Most of the shots were taken at the closest point…

Hard cases Andrew Sydenham and Jon Stapley look at a selection of cases for the ultimate protection of your gear on location and in the hold of a plane Calumet WT6M0 Watertight Rolling hard case Price £299 www.calumetphoto.co.uk The Calumet WT6840 Watertight Rolling hard case measures 86cm (w) x 56cm (h) x 33cm (d) and is around one-third bigger than the WT3434 (top right). There is room to transport a three-head lighting kit with shapers, stands and triggers or several wide-aperture telephoto sports lenses. The case weighs 11.3kg and has a diced foam insert, but the optional adjustable divider padded inserts may be more suitable for large items. The substantial retractable handle and wheels are essentia features, because when fully loaded with gear this case would require two people to…

TO KEEP the size of the E-M10 down, Olympus has omitted horizontal and vertical shift axes, limiting the stabilisation system to just three (see diagram, right): yaw (x), pitch (y) and roll (z). Where this reduced stabilisation is most noticeable is in macro photography, stills with shutter speeds slower than 1/15sec and video. Using the E-M10’s M.Zuiko Digital 14-42mm kit lens and the 25mm f/1.8 macro lens, I tested the 3-axis system by taking images handheld at 1sec, 1/1.6sec, 1/2sec, 1/8sec, 1/10sec and 1/15sec. At 1sec, the E-M10 showed significant shake and of six attempts I only managed to capture one image that was remotely stable. As I increased the shutter speed to 1/8sec, the sharpness improved enough that I was able to capture an almost shake-free image without having…

In computing, a 'plug-in' is a piece of software that adds a feature to an existing program, thus expanding the original program's capabilities. The idea is that this optional functionality allows you to customise a program to your specific ways of working, rather than having you start out with a bloated piece of software that has dozens of features you will never use (but take up hard-drive space and increase the memory requirements needed to run the program). Plug-ins are quite commonly encountered with image-editing software: some are installed with the program itself, such as file format plug-ins that allow a program to open different file types, while others can be downloaded separately. The latter category can cover a wide range of applications, from relatively simple and free plug-ins through…

WHAT would you do if you were unbelievably rich? It's an idle fantasy that most of us must have indulged in at one time or another. Sometimes find it quite a handy way of getting to sleep, even if financial worries are what is keeping me awake. Let's start with the nice round sum of £1 billion You would have to try quite hard to spend money as fast as the interest accrued. At 3% per annum, you would get £30 million a year, or more than £500,000 a week. That's without working. Just put the money in treasury bonds or some such. It is worth pointing this out because it's an interesting reminder of what 'billionaire' means. Obviously, there are endless calls on a billionaire's money, although tax appears…