Innholdsfortegnelse for 12-sep-15 i Amateur Photographer

I once had a conversation with someone who compared architectural photography to ‘turning up to an art gallery and photographing the exhibits’. His point was that a building is someone else’s work of art, and all that photographers were doing was taking record shots of that. To some extent he had a point. We’re all guilty of standing in front of a building and snapping a photo. However, the key to taking a good architectural photograph is to make that artwork your own. To do this you need to approach your subject as you would a landscape. You may not have created the lakes and mountains, but you can wait for the right light, choose the right exposure, look for the best angle, and use filters and editing to adjust…

LEICA has launched a new version of its professional medium-format camera, the Leica S, adding a new imaging sensor, processor and 4K video (in Super 35 format). The Leica S (Typ 007) boasts a burst rate of up to 3.5 frames per second and ‘exceptional image quality at all ISO settings'. The Leica S – a prototype of which was first unveiled at the Photokina photography fair in 2014 – also features a 2GB buffer memory and faster AF for moving subjects, according to Leica. Other features include built-in Wi-Fi, GPS and a 3in, 921,600-dot display offering increased contrast and brightness. The Leica S houses a 30x45mm Leica Pro Format imaging sensor, a Maestro II image processor and is due out now, priced £12,900. Subscribe to Amateur Photographer SAVE 36%…

PAUL SANDERS FINE-ART LANDSCAPES Paul left his role as Picture Editor of The Times in 2012 to pursue his passion for fine-art landscape photography Shoot for yourself Take the pictures that please you. If you start worrying about what other people want or like, you won't shoot pictures that you're happy with. It's quality time by yourself, so invest it in something you enjoy. Don't chase the light Go out when you least expect to get a great picture. Go out when the weather is bad. Don't always look for that fabulous, wonderful light, because from my experience, it rarely happens. It may mean always standing in the rain, but you'll get completely different pictures to other people – most are fair-weather photographers. Challenge yourself One thing I enjoy doing…

As a Micro Four Thirds user, I read with interest your review of the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX8 and its host of new features (AP 22 August). One feature really caught my eye: the 4K pre-burst, which gives 30 frames in the second before I press the shutter. Great, now I can emulate all those odd frames of Kodachrome that I captured when rushing to change the film and fired off a couple of shots as I wound the film on. And at least now, my feet – the usual subject of these shots – will be sharp thanks to autofocus! Martin O’Keeffe, Shropshire You may mock, sir, but I can assure you it is a useful, and fun, feature to have. I used it recently when photographing a model…

Intensifying the colour I HAVE absolutely no idea what the symbolism of the two performers in this photograph represents, but it livens up this wedding shot. Wedding photographers are always faced with the problem of how to balance the exposure of a white dress with dark suits, so it's odd that they've been more resistant than most to the benefits of shooting raw and the ability to recover fine detail in the shadows and highlights. This image was shot by Jevgenijs Scolokovs as a JPEG using fill-in flash to soften the scenic contrast. However, it's still not possible to retrieve any of the fine detail in the bride's dress, but we can do something about the shadows. The original Jevgenijs sent us was converted to black & white, but I…

Phottix Odin TTL Flash trigger set £240, www.phottix.com This trigger set allows users to run multiple off-camera flashes on different groups and channels. The system can be used in manual or with TTL metering. The transmitter also lets users individually configure the lighting set-up, including adjusting exposure compensation for TTL flashguns. PocketWizard Mini Flex and AC3 kit Price £450, www.pocketwizard.com Often the flash trigger of choice for many professional photographers, the PocketWizard kit works manually or TTL, with the option to adjust ±3EV using the AC3 accessory. However, it comes at a steep price. Cactus V6 Transceiver and Receiver £50 each, www.cactus-image.com Although these triggers don’t feature TTL metering, the Cactus V6 can be used to fire off-camera flashes and change the power setting from another V6 unit. As an…

£10,000 IN PRIZES TO BE WON Your chance to enter the UK’s newest competition for budding amateur filmmakers To coincide with the launch of The Video Mode website, we’re pleased to announce our new Amateur Filmmaker of the Year (AFOY) competition. AFOY challenges you to get creative with your filmmaking, and gives you the opportunity to win some fantastic prizes worth £10,000 in total. The competition is split into three rounds, each with its unique theme: Nature, Time and Love (see below). For your chance to win some fantastic prizes worth more than £10,000, and details of how to enter, visit www.thevideomode.com/afoy…

1 Canon PowerShot SX700 I really don’t know the technical aspects of photography, so I keep my Canon PowerShot SX700 HS always on automatic. Just pointing and shooting allows me to be more creative behind the lens. Creating realistic scenes using die-cast car models, along with mostly hand-built buildings and details, has been my passion for more than 10 years. It really is still a hobby for me, though. 2 Odds and ends Because I am totally low tech, I’ll use anything I can find to enhance the scene. I use everything, from vacuum-cleaner dirt, baking soda and found objects, to lighting the set with a 40-watt incandescent light bulb, an orange 5-watt Christmas tree bulb and cheap battery-powered LED lights. By mixing the LEDs with the incandescent bulbs, I…

A friend recently told me that he's thinking of buying a Leica Q (see right) as a birthday present to himself. ‘Of course,' he said, ‘it's a ridiculous camera, but I just want one. The Leica Q is a 35mm, fixed-lens, full-frame compact. In most ways one can think of, it isn't a ridiculous camera at all. Its fixed 28mm f/1.7 lens can be relied upon to be very good indeed, and it uses a 24-million-pixel, full-frame sensor that should provide very good image quality – although this is not the same sensor as that used in the Leica M. With10 frames per second capability and all the expected up-to-date features, such as high-definition video, autofocus and a built-in eye-level electronic viewfinder, the Q is a very capable camera. I…

IMAGES that have never been seen before from Agatha Christie's private collection, which include the famous author surfing, have been revealed to mark the 125th anniversary of the ‘Queen of Crime'. The pictures will be exhibited at Torre Abbey in Torquay, Devon, from 11-20 September as part of the International Agatha Christie Festival. It has taken four years to sort through the author's archive, which had lain in various boxes and cupboards, according to Agatha Christie's grandson Mathew Prichard. The exhibition, called Agatha Christie: Unfinished Portrait, feature images of Agatha. However, speaking to AP, Prichard explained that his grandmother was a keen photographer herself who had enrolled on a photography course in London. She also acted as the official photographer on archaeological excavations in Syria and Iraq undertaken by her…

The rise of the smartphone as the world's most popular camera has not only led to countless camera and image editing apps, but also the development of a sizeable hardware accessory industry. Over the years we've seen all sorts of products, which, we're promised, will boost our smartphone photography. There are attachable lights and flash units, teleconversion lenses, fisheyes, macros and wideangles, microphones for better video and, of course, the infamous selfie-stick. You can buy entire rigs with tripod adapters that other accessories can connect to and we've even seen a viewfinder that attaches to the iPhone screen via a suction-cup. Recently I received a press release about a wireless flash trigger for the iPhone, allowing you to use high-end flash guns and studio strobes with your Apple device. With…

Janie Airey Janie is a London-based architectural, lifestyle and portrait photographer who has been shooting commercially for 16 years. In 2012 she was commissioned by the Olympic Delivery Authority to shoot the venues for the Olympic Games. She also works for design agencies and a range of prestigious publications. www.janie-airey.com 1 Be creative with composition I often use a long lens when shooting architecture and try to create good, simple graphic shots, where I can be more playful with the forms. I've illustrated this with a few of the shots from the Olympic Stadium just before the 2012 Games. It's important to think about the space before you start shooting – try to keep it quite simple. Space within a two-dimensional image is important to me, so you have an…

You answered… A No, I feel nervous and awkward taking photos of strangers. I’d do it more if I were more confident 35% B No, but I still take many street photos as I’ve learnt to shoot well within my comfort zone 19% C I don’t take street photography, as it’s of no interest to me 18% D Yes, it’s never been a problem 16% E Yes, but I haven’t always been. It’s taken time to grow in confidence 12% What you said ‘Not only do I feel awkward about taking photographs in the street, but the authorities have also managed to create paranoia about being photographed by strangers – no matter how public the area may be’ ‘I won’t take street photos any more as I’ve been called all…

CAMERA Raw has an HSL/ Grayscale panel, while in Lightroom it's called the HSL/Color/B&W panel. Despite the different naming, both offer identical controls for editing the hue, saturation and luminance of a colour scene, and provide Grayscale Mix/Black & White Mix controls for adjusting the tonal brightness of the original colours in a scene when applying a black & white conversion. These sliders give you a lot of control over the appearance of the final black & white image. Once you appreciate the power of these sliders for manipulating the tonal mix from a colour original, you'll appreciate how useful it is to capture all your originals in colour, rather than shoot black & white in JPEG mode, or use a camera that has a fixed monochrome sensor.…

Panasonic Image App The FZ330 comes with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity that enables it to be paired with a smartphone or tablet via Panasonic’s Image App (free in Google Play and the Apple App Store). The app can also be used to control the camera remotely. AF macro/focus The FZ330 comes with some pretty impressive macro abilities. This includes a minimum focus distance of 1cm in regular macro mode, along with the ability to use the zoom for extreme close-ups in macro zoom mode. Lens While the 25-600mm (35mm equivalent) lens of the FZ330 isn’t the widest focal range on the market, the constant f/2.8 aperture is a big plus as it allows more light into the camera. This in turn allows the use of faster shutter speeds in low light.…

LAUNCHED 1958 PRICE WHEN NEW £58 with 50mm f/2.8 Schneider Xenar in 1958 GUIDE PRICE TODAY £50-£75 THE SUPER Paxette IIBL was a late model in the long series of Paxette 35mm cameras made by Braun of Nuremburg, Germany, during the1950s and early '60s. It had interchangeable lenses (39mm Leica thread, but not Leica register), a coupled rangefinder, a multi-brightline viewfinder, a selenium-cell exposure meter and a Prontor SVS shutter (to1/300sec in early models, to1/500sec later). My example (above and below) has a top-of the-range 50mm f/2.8 four-element Xenar lens. This is a really nice camera to use, although the coupled 35mm-135mm lenses are hard to find and expensive to buy when you do. What’s good The camera is compact, has a high build quality, an excellent coincident-image rangefinder, a…

An old saying among press photographers is ‘1/50 at f/8 and be there’. All right, we can argue about the ideal shutter speed for freezing movement and the ideal aperture for adequate depth of field, but the point is that ‘being there’ matters more than absolute precision in exposure, aperture or ISO, or choice of camera and focal length. This is as true for weddings as for war photography, but the difficulty of ‘being there’ varies widely. At a wedding you may, at worst, have to persuade someone that you are more help than hindrance. Things are a lot more serious when you are risking not just your own life, limb and liberty, but also that of others’ who are probably better trained and more experienced than you. If you’re…

Lomo instant-print camera launched The new Lomo’Instant Montenegro Edition camera delivers credit-card-sized instant prints and is compatible with Fujifilm Instax Mini film. It boasts a built-in lens designed to deliver the 35mm viewing angle of a 27mm optic and is priced £139. Visit www.shop.lomography.com/gb/ lomo-instant-montenegro. Funny photo quest Entries are open for the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, for images that combine technical excellence with amusing content and captions. First prize is a photographic safari to Tanzania, plus a Nikon D750 DSLR kit. Visit www.comedywildlifephoto.com. Carnival boycott As we went to press, photographers were set to boycott this year’s Notting Hill Carnival in protest of the newly introduced £100 accreditation fee (see News, AP 5 September). Instead, they planned to cover the event from public areas. Roger Tooth, head of Photography…

CANON has revealed a new version of its 35mm f/1.4L reportage lens, an optic it applauds for achieving ‘legendary' status. The new EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM is the first lens to incorporate Blue Spectrum Refractive optics – technology featuring an ‘organic optical material'. This aims to significantly reduce chromatic aberration and deliver sharper images by the refraction of blue light, according to Canon. The nine-blade-aperture lens includes a full-time manual-focusing ring and a ring-type ultrasonic motor for ‘extremely quick and near-silent autofocus'. Canon says the lens is the ultimate choice for photojournalists, sports and wedding photographers. The weather-sealed newcomer, which has been designed following feedback from professional photographers, is due out in October, priced £1,799.99. For the latest news visit www.amateurphotographer.co.uk…

Family is a theme we can all relate to. In fact, it’s probably the most universal theme we have. It’s with that in mind that the EISA Maestro competition 2015 asked photographers to submit five to eight images exploring the idea of family and what it means to them. The results of the international competition are now in and we can reveal the top three. Each of the finalists’ projects dealt with the idea of family in unique and intensely personal ways. Tatiana Antonuk from Russia came out on top and takes home E 1,500 and the EISA Photo Maestro 2015 trophy. In second place we have Marrku Pajunen from Finland who wins E 1,000 and the trophy, and finally Bertil van Beek from the Netherlands takes third place and…

Resolution Our resolution chart results reveal that the FZ330 resolves 2,400l/ph at ISO 100, dropping to 2,200l/ph at ISO 800. These resolution figures are fairly low, but they’re in keeping with the level of detail we’d expect to be recorded by a 1/2.3in sensor. At ISO 1,600 the sensor resolves 2,000l/ph, but there’s another drop at ISO 6,400 where 1,800l/ph is recorded. Dynamic range The FZ330 is let down a little by its dynamic range performance. The 10.5EV readout at ISO 100 is no match for the 12.2EV result recorded by the Lumix FZ1000 – a model that benefits from a larger 1in sensor – although it’s reasonable enough for a 1/2.3in sensor. Pushing to ISO 3,200 and ISO 6,400 sees the figure drop to 6.8EV and 6EV respectively. Noise…

Developing Kodachrome 25 slide film Q Some time ago I found a single roll of unexposed Kodachrome 25 slide film. It has been extremely difficult to trace any information about it, but I reckon it must be 40-50 years old. Where can I get this film developed? I have made numerous enquiries, including Kodak, but to no avail. Does anyone at AP know of a company that will develop this film? Eivind Morten Kjos, Norway A Unfortunately, Kodachrome film is one of the most high-profile casualties of the digital revolution. Unlike conventional E-6 slide or C-41 negative films, it didn’t include the dye couplers used to form a colour image into the emulsion itself. Instead, they were added during the development of the film. Its problem was that this required…