Innholdsfortegnelse for 07-mar-15 i Amateur Photographer

WHEN I read the article in this issue about 25 years of Adobe Photoshop (pages 18-22), I realised my image-editing skills have improved just as much as the software. My first encounter with Photoshop was version 4, when I was designing a poster for a media studies A-level project. Once the poster was done, I scanned and edited some of the photos for my photography exam. I was blown away by the various posterisation, solarisation and colour replace effects, not to mention the Clone tool. Of course, my editing was appalling. I’m sure we are all guilty, at some point, of going over the top with our image editing. But the important thing is that it allows us to learn how the software works, and it gives a measure of…

NIKON has continued to put its faith in the future of compact cameras by announcing ten new models. The new additions include a trio of ‘super-zoom' bridge cameras – an area of the market Nikon says it wants to focus on this year. The 16-million-pixel Coolpix P610 (pictured above), priced £339.99, sports a 60x zoom (24-1,440mm equivalent) and a 921,000-dot, vari-angle LCD screen. It boasts improved battery life – offering 400 shots compared to 300 on previous models. Features also include built-in Wi-Fi and GPS, and Dual Detect Optical VR to help combat camera shake. Also new are the 16MP Coolpix L840 (£209.99) – with a 38x zoom – and Coolpix L340, sporting a 20MP sensor and a 28x lens (22.5-630mm). The latter is only on sale at Argos. Nikon…

Spot lamp Even a ‘2,000,000 Candle Power!’ torch doesn’t reach very far outdoors if it doesn’t focus the light, so it’s better to invest in a proper spot, such as the Deben Sport Light 140, with 12V 8Ah power pack. Head torch An LED head torch is a must for operating in the dark – as well as getting yourself safely to and from your vehicle. LED Lenser makes some excellent powerful models. High-vis vest A high-visibility vest is useful if you’re working around other people. If you’re by yourself, put it on the tripod so you don’t kick it as you move around in the dark. Timer release There are lots of ways to trigger the camera, but I use a simple Nikon MC-30A remote cord, which can be…

£10,000 IN PRIZES TO BE WON Over the years, AP readers have sent us some incredible images, so 18 years ago we decided to launch the Amateur Photographer of the Year competition in its present format to showcase all their hard work. Since then, APOY has received thousands of entries, with many of them taking the judges' breath away. APOY 2015 follows a different format to last year, with eight monthly rounds from March until October (for details of the rounds, see page 35). The competition is open to all amateur photographers, but please note that those entrants who live outside the UK who win a prize will be liable for any local customs charges. After the closing date of each round, the entries are narrowed down to a shortlist…

To enter via email, follow the link at the bottom of page 35. We need to know where and how you took your image, plus the camera and lens used with aperture and focal length details. Remember to include a telephone number and your postal address so we can contact you if you win. To enter by post, send a covering letter with your image, including the information mentioned above, letting us know if you would like your entry returned to you after judging (please enclose an SAE). Entries should be sent to APOY, Amateur Photographer, 9th floor, Time Inc (UK), Blue Fin Building,110 Southwark Street, London SE10SU.…

Graeme Youngson, Aberdeen The images you see here are part of a project Graeme has been working on for the past 21 ×2 years. This coincided with Graeme joining a camera club, something he says has rekindled his interest in photography. Since then, he has carried a camera with him everywhere he goes. Having grown up in the 1950s and '60s, Graeme is much more at home shooting black & white and says he finds it easier to compose pictures that have impact without the distraction that colour can bring. 1 Glasgow Jogger Graeme has zoomed in on the subject while the shutter is open to achieve this effect. Otherwise known as the zoom burst effect, Graeme has used it here to convey the speed and urgency of the runner…

Lexar Professional Workflow HR2 £200 www.lexar.com TO KEEP up with the increasing speed requirements of professionals, Lexar has introduced the Workflow HR2 station. The modular-based system has four slots that can be configured to contain a combination of SD, Compact Flash and Micro SDHC/Micro SDXC card readers, as well as high-speed storage drives to suit your individual workflow. This upgrade to the original Workflow is now compatible with Thunderbolt 2 and high-speed USB 3.0. Our benchmark testing indicated that the HR2 could generate write speeds as fast as 222.1MB/s and read speeds of 354.5MB/s when combined with the Workflow disk drives, which is great for mass transfers One of the best things about the Workflow is that it can back up and transfer image or video data to multiple memory…

Amateur Photographer Our cameras and lenses are tested using the industry-standard Image Engineering IQ-Analyser software. Visit www.image-engineering.de for more details THE Leica X uses a16.2-million-pixel, APS-C CMOS sensor, most likely a version of the stalwart Sony design that's been used for more than three years. This is in no way a bad thing, as it's still a very good sensor. It may look dated in comparison to newer 24-million-pixel designs, but the X's excellent lens makes the most of the pixels, giving sharp images across the frame. To get the most from the camera, though, you need to shoot raw and process yourself, which will reveal more detail than Leica's somewhat unrefined JPEG processing. Few modern cameras show such a large disparity between JPEG and raw. Dynamic range Our dynamic…

Bag supplier Q I have been looking out for a suitable shoulder bag to complement the classic styling of my Fujifilm X-T1 for some time. After reading your review of the Fivedotsix Model 2 bag (AP 7 February), I visited Fivedotsix's website, only to find the site difficult to navigate because it is in Swedish. Where can I buy one of these bags? Howard Jenkins A The website address we linked to from the review was to www.fivedotsix.com, which you rightly point out was in Swedish, but a link has since been added to the homepage to direct you through to the UK website (www.fivedotsix.co.uk), which is easier to navigate and clearly illustrates all the current premium bags in the line-up. As things stand, you won’t find Fivedotsix bags distributed…

It may now be slower than digital photography at providing immediate gratification, but ‘instant' film photography is still alive and well. Both Fujifilm and the Impossible Project, which famously took over one of Polaroid's old factories, make a selection of films. However, the one thing that has long puzzled me about the medium is, why are the commonly available cameras so basic? It wasn't always so. Back in the 1950s and '60s, Polaroid's camera for enthusiasts, the Pathfinder, boasted ultra-sharp lenses, manual focus with a rangefinder, full manual control of aperture and shutter speed, rugged construction and a self-timer. Yet by the time I bought my first instant film camera, a Polaroid 635 in 1986, they'd become almost totally point-and-shoot models. It was as if Polaroid were trying to compensate…

Among the features on show were the Sony PlayMemories camera apps. These apps can be downloaded to compatible cameras to add a number of new features – for example, the Sync to Smartphone app automatically uploads the images from a camera to a smartphone or tablet when the camera is turned off. Other apps add new features or modes, such as time-lapse movies or live view grading, to edit the colour of video footage you have shot. For a full list of the apps see www. playmemoriescameraapps.com…

You answered… A No, I have no interest in portraits 25% B I shoot portraits but use natural light 25% C Yes, I have lights and a lot of reflectors and light modifiers 19% D Yes, I have a basic lighting kit 19% E No, but I hope to get some soon 8% F I have some studio lights, but don’t take portraits 4% What you said ‘When I used black & white film I had a full set of lights and I loved them. With the advent of digital, colour and flashguns instead of flash bulbs, they were of no use’ ‘I don’t have much interest in portraiture, but I do occasionally have a go when friends ask me. However, these are usually environmental portraits, done by available light,…

IN A WORLD awash with photos shared on social media, the potential for a Photoshopped image to misrepresent real life to a massive audience is greater than ever. To maintain integrity, news organisations have to police their own photographers, as well as authenticate pictures they source from the public. Using Photoshop to fake elements of an image can cost a news photographer their job, as freelancer Adnan Hajj found out in 2006 when Reuters discovered he had artificially exaggerated the dark smoke created by an Israeli air strike on Beirut, Lebanon. More recently, Associated Press severed ties with Narciso Contreras, who had captured an image of a Syrian opposition fighter taking cover from government forces in a mountaintop village in 2013. The Mexican had used software to remove a journalist's…

I always wanted to be a photographer, so that was that. I’m a photographer first and a traveller second. I entered the Travel Photographer of the Year competition with two sets of four images: the first shows Namibia’s Himba tribe and the second shows rock churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia. The Namibia set was shot as a photo essay, but the individual images can stand on their own, too, the idea being that they needed to be beautiful but also informative. The collection came about when I was doing a story about the deserts of northern Namibia for Condé Nast Traveller . I’d been photographing desert elephants, lions and safari lodges, but part of that experience is to see people who live, and have always lived, in this very harsh environment.…

SIGMA’S mission is to provide exceptional products at an affordable price. All Sigma products are manufactured exclusively by Sigma in the company’s own dedicated factory in Aizu, Japan. Sigma’s reputation for advanced cutting-edge lens design is demonstrated by its series of lenses, ranging from 4.5mm to 800mm. These lenses are designed for enthusiast and professional photographers alike, and all are backed by a three-year UK warranty when imported by Sigma Imaging (UK) Ltd. Sigma’s new Global Vision range of cameras and lenses incorporates the very latest in optical technology, with unique innovations such as the ultra-fast 18-35mm f/1.8 Art lens and USB Dock that allow unrivalled customisation of Global Vision lenses by the photographer using Sigma Optimization Pro specialist software. This ground-breaking new range is winning praise and awards for…

THE SIGMA 35mm f/1.4 lens is part of the company's Art line, which offers ‘sophisticated optical performance and abundant expressive power'. This lens can achieve the highest level of brightness with an attractive blur for wideangle images. The fast f/1.4 aperture enables pictures to be captured in a variety of scenes, such as evening views and indoor handheld portraits. The Sigma EF-610 DG Super flashgun has a guide number (GN) of 61m › ISO100 and is designed to work with the latest TTL auto-exposure systems of all popular manufacturers' digital and film SLRs. The autozoom function automatically sets the optimum illumination angle in accordance with the lens' focal length in a range from 24mm to 105mm. The Sigma USB Dock enables photographers to update firmware and customise features of the…

Skaters Herbert Freedom and Adrian Sadlier Nikon D70, 55-200mm, 1/80sec at f/20, ISO 200 (above); Nikon D7000, 18-50mm, 1/60sec at f/10, ISO 200 (below) THE TWO images here are both about motion. I have chosen to compare them with each other, as they both demonstrate common problems in a complementary way. Several pointers are worth bearing in mind when it comes to photographing people or objects in motion. Both photographers have composed in a way that gives their subjects space to move into. The figures are off-centre and travelling towards the middle of the frame. This allows us to see where they are going and what might happen next. It is the conventional method of framing, and it works very well. As viewers, we enjoy the sense that the action…

Manfrotto SpeedBox 54 softbox £125 www.manfrotto.co.uk Callum McInerney-Riley tries out this versatile softbox At a glance Highly versatile light modifier Designed for shooting flash off-camera Great build quality Carry case Included with the SpeedBox is a carry case, which allows the softbox to be packed down and transported. Bracket The SpeedBox 54 features a durable but very lightweight bracket that is among the best we have seen. Diffusion panel The front diffusion panel of the softbox is removable to allow users to quickly add in a harder light if it is needed. MANFROTTO may be best known for its tripods, but it also makes other accessories including bags, lighting kit and smartphone add-ons. Its latest light modifier, the SpeedBox 54 gains its name from the fact it has width and…

Pentax flash Ricoh has announced a new ‘weather-resistant’ flashgun for Pentax DSLRs. Containing 18 seals, the AF201FG flash has a guide number of 20m @ ISO 100. The built-in wideangle panel slides out to cover a 35mm viewing angle equivalent to 20mm. The AF201FG costs £129.99. Canon G3 X plan Canon has confirmed plans to launch a large-sensor compact called the PowerShot G3 X, featuring a 25x zoom. In a ‘tech announcement’, Canon would only say that G3 X will feature a 1in-type imaging sensor and deliver the 35mm equivalent of a 24-600mm zoom. Drones join MFT An interchangeable-lens drone may be on the horizon after drone-maker DJI confirmed it has joined the Micro Four Thirds standard. Speculation is that Olympus’s Air A01 ‘open-platform’ interchangeable-lens camera module may play a…

THE SETTING sun provided an atmospheric backdrop to the winning photo in the Dog Photographer of the Year 2014 contest. It was captured by Australian amateur photographer Steph Gibson, beating pros to the top spot. Gibson triumphed over nearly 13,000 entries – a record for the competition – to claim the title in the annual Kennel Club showdown. Meanwhile,16-year-old Abbie Lee from Bristol scooped the 18-and-under category with a photo of her Airedale terrier. Two others from the UK were also awarded honours: Art Burasz and Cat Race. The overall winner will be awarded a Samsung Galaxy NX camera and granted VIP access to photograph the 2015 Crufts Best in Show winner. Gibson said afterwards: ‘I started dog training and photography before the age of ten and both have been…

1985 by Bill Henson, Stanley/Barker, £35, paperback, 146 pages, ISBN 978-0-95699-222-2 Australian contemporary art photographer Bill Henson is one of those photographers whose work can somehow get beneath your skin and lodge itself in the darkest recesses of your subconscious. His images have much in common with Gregory Crewdson and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, in that the pose, lighting and action (if you can call it that) of the scenes seem to be fragments of a dream that have somehow escaped onto the page. In 1985 , we see a series of images shot at dawn and dusk in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, and the deserts of Egypt. The images are, quite literally, the dream of suburbia. Seeing these pictures placed side-by-side with the deserts and pyramids of Egypt succeeds in…

I had a commission from the Woodland Trust Scotland last summer that involved photographing ten trees across the country. Each had been nominated by local communities for the title ‘Scottish Tree of the Year. The challenge was to create eye-catching pictures in a very limited time, in the middle of summer, with typically mixed Scottish weather. To complicate matters further, a number of the specimens grew among other trees and needed to be separated from them somehow. There was one obvious solution: provide the lighting myself and decide just where I wanted it to fall. It was time to dig out the old spot lamp. Light painting with a spot lamp has a lot in common with scraperboard art, where a layer of black ink is scraped away to reveal…

IT'S BEST to set up your shot in daylight so you can easily check the focus and clear the path of any obstacles around the subject. Try not to be too ambitious in terms of depth of field. If you are having to close the aperture down to f/11 or f/16, you are going to have some spectacularly long exposures, so back off a bit from the foreground. I'd recommend switching off the camera's long-exposure noise reduction: for every second the shutter is open, you have to wait the same again before you can make the next exposure, and that will drive you nuts. Any problems there might be with noise are better sorted at the post-production stage than in-camera. If your camera has an eyepiece blind, use it to…

Win! Every week we post an old AP cover on our Facebook page and all you have to do is guess the issue date (day/month/year). The person who is closest to the exact date wins a year’s digital subscription to AP, worth £79.99. To guess the date of this cover (above), head over to www.facebook.com/ Amateur.photographer.magazine. Forum members can also enter via the Forum. The 14 February issue’s cover was from 3 July 1935. The winner is John Palmer from Somerset, whose was the first correct entry drawn at random.…

IN THE world of beauty, fashion and celebrity photography, Photoshop occupies a curious and unique dual space, where it seems to be both a ubiquitous presence and a dirty word. Retouching photos is nothing new: indeed, the common description of glamour Photoshopping as ‘airbrushing' is a hangover from the days when a physical tool was used. With the advent of digital it has just become more efficient, more widespread and more accessible. For some, it's as much a part of the glamour photo shoot process as make-up, posing or lighting, while for others it's a symptom of celebrity culture, an aggressive normalising of beauty standards and harmful body image, especially for women. It has become popular for celebrities and publications to declare themselves anti-retouching – when actress Cate Blanchett appeared…

YOU HAVE to be very self-critical and second best isn’t good enough, so you have to push yourself. You have to aim high and compete with the best. If you look at enough good work, eventually some of that will rub off on you. Also, I think it’s important not to see yourself as a travel photographer. I’m a location photographer: I’ve never just travelled for the sake of travelling, I travel to get the images. I also try to blend genres, so for example I might take a lighting technique used in fashion and beauty, and use it in travel. So my images of the Himba woman has a fashion aspect to it, whereas the Lalibela series is more documentary. The way to do it is to look at…

Light painting LIGHT painting is one of the most fun things you can do in night photography. Just set your camera to a long exposure and paint a picture with a torch, sparkler or any other source of illumination you can get your hands on. One tip to remember is that once you know the exact spot you're going to shoot, put an object such as a bag in the area in which your painting will appear. Use a torch to illuminate the bag, set your camera lens to autofocus and then focus on it. Once the focus is correct, switch your camera lens to manual. It's important to do this because if you leave the lens on autofocus it will keep adjusting in the dark as it will not…

Profoto Softbox RFi 60 x 60cm £156 www.profoto.com With its high-grade materials the Profoto RFi range offers great durability for those who need it, although an adapter is needed to work with a flashgun. Lastolite Ezybox 54 x 54cm £105 www.lastolite.com In design, the Lastolite softbox is very similar to the Manfrotto SpeedBox 54. It is lightweight and delivers a good quality of light. Interfit Strobies Speedlight Softbox 40 x 40cm £39 www.interfitphotographic.com Although a bit smaller, this softbox has a bracket and is a particularly good budget option for the off-camera flash beginner.…

Digiscope connector Unscrewing a metal ring at the front of the lens reveals an outer 58mm thread, which is designed to allow attachment to Leica’s APO-Televid spotting scopes. Battery The BP-DC8 battery is rated for 350 shots per charge, and is replenished using the supplied AC charger. Hotshoe The hotshoe accepts Leica flash units and the Visoflex (Type 020) electronic viewfinder, and is protected by a slide-on cover. Top-plate dials The aperture can be set in1/3-stop increments, and the shutter speed in whole stops. In the 1+ position, it runs from 1-30secs in 1/3-stop steps. Connectors A door on the camera’s side opens to reveal standard mini USB and mini-HDMI ports for connection to computers and TVs.…

Resolution Our MTF tests reveal fairly typical behaviour for a fast prime lens. At f/1.8 the centre of the frame is quite sharp, but the edges are noticeably soft. Stop down to the lens’s optimum aperture of around f/5.6 to f/8, though, and the lens performs very well. Smaller apertures will result in diffraction blurring. Shading As usual for a fast prime lens, shading is quite pronounced at maximum aperture, but our graph reveals a gradual fall-off profile across the frame that’s unlikely to be visually objectionable in most circumstances. Stopping down reduces the effect considerably, with only very low levels of vignetting at apertures of f/4 or smaller. Curvilinear distortion One big advantage of prime lenses over zooms tends to be better control over distortion, and that’s evident with…

LAUNCHED August 2011 PRICE £1,149 (body only) GUIDE PRICE TODAY £495 (body only) THE ALPHA 77 was an impressive push by Sony into the semi-professional DSLR market, bravely innovating with a fixed semi-silvered mirror that allows a very fast shooting rate of up to 12fps, plus phase-detection AF uninterrupted by a conventional mirror flapping up and down. At £495, it's a lot of camera for a very reasonable price. What’s good A lot: a solid, sealed magnesium-alloy body; an excellent 921,000-dot rear screen; full-time AF; 12fps shooting; video modes supporting full HD 50/60p frame rates; a 2.4-million-dot OLED electronic viewfinder; a 24-million-pixel APS-C Exmor sensor; and great ergonomics. Plus, the Alpha 77's16-50mm (24-75mm equivalent) f/2.8 kit lens is a fine performer. What’s bad Sony probably felt the Alpha 77 had…

Baron (Sterling Henry Nahum, 1906-1956) was one of the most renowned ballet photographers of all time. He was also noted for his portraiture of prominent figures in the arts, ‘society’, and various politicians and business leaders. His books Baron at the Ballet (1950), Baron Encore (1952) and Baron’s Ballet Finale (1958) are invaluable reference books for students of dance. As photographs, on the other hand, maybe half are superb, but the remainder are about as interesting to non-ballet enthusiasts as are pictures of caterpillars to non-entomologists. However, this is one of my favourites. It has an almost hallucinatory quality, as if it were a collage of ballet fantasies: the formality and repetition of the three figures centre left, the poses of the two on the right, the barres, the tutus,…