Innholdsfortegnelse for 02-Aug-2014 i Amateur Photographer

They called it the war to end all wars. It turned out that it wasn’t. Indeed, there are dozens of other armed conflicts going on right now all over the world. But one thing that has changed is the way that they are documented. Although the First World War was far from being the first war to be photographed, it was among the first to be depicted so graphically, and on such a large scale, by the soldiers themselves, thanks to recent developments in pocketable rollfilm cameras. Their legacy has enabled us to get a stronger sense of the horror of that war, and greater empathy with its participants, than previous conflicts where no such photographic archive exists. This week, on the eve of the centenary of its outbreak, we…

‘Having already photographed a storm and lightning the night before, I had previsualised this shot in the event that there was more lightning so I had my camera all set up, ready to run out,’ says Max. ‘Shooting repeated bulb exposures, and adjusting my aperture and ISO between shots according to the intensity of the lightning, allowed me to keep the lightning and surrounding area from blowing out. I left the shutter open long enough to allow the ambient light to balance with the lightning strikes, much as you would when shooting with a flashgun. The most challenging aspect of creating the image was dealing with the drunk people wandering around mushing their faces on the lens.’ Visit www.maxlangranphotography.com. 100,000 The number of images amassed by Some Cities, a project…

Camera As you will be stitching several frames together, a camera with 12-million-pixels upwards will be fine. Remember that the more pixels you shoot with, the bigger the file size, and you will soon find you are shifting huge amounts of data around with three or four frames per image. Filters The same rules apply whether you are shooting one frame or several – you have to stop the sky from overexposing by using a neutral density filter positioned on the front of the lens. Lee Filters may be more expensive than some, but they are pure quality. Tripod head My preference when shooting panoramas is for a ball-and-socket-type head, specifically with a double-pan facility as it allows you to level the camera and rotate it even if the tripod…

Iceland, for reasons that I’m sure many people have gathered from the various images produced there throughout the years, is a truly magical landscape. There’s a real sense of wilderness present, particularly due to the fact that the country has a fairly low population. There are no big towns, so people can get close to nature very quickly. It’s also a landscape with a great deal of character. However, despite it’s popularity, it’s an area that still holds a great many secrets. Iceland was a country that I had been planning to visit for around seven years. This particular image was taken in Gullfoss, a waterfall located in the canyon of the Hvítá river in south-west Iceland. The good thing about my visit was that it was during the low…

Applying a tight crop IN THIS image from Adrian Mills, I have applied a tighter crop to create a more balanced, symmetrical composition. Adrian shot the photograph at ISO 100 using an exposure setting of 1/40sec at f/10. I assume that he may have left his camera set to aperture priority mode. In a situation like this (and especially with such dull weather), it would have been better to set the aperture to a wider setting so that a faster shutter speed could have been used. With a wideangle view, 1/40sec is just about OK, but not if you have to crop the image tightly in order to magnify a close-up area of the picture. 1 Correcting the perspective With this particular photograph it made sense to start by correcting…

LUCAS describes himself as an action and adventure photographer and filmmaker, and is an ambassador for Nikon USA. Using a Nikon FM2 and then a N90 (D90), he has been a professional for over 15 years, having worked for the Denver Post while at college. Working all over the world, he shoots subjects ranging from kayaking to surfing and skiing, and has covered the Tour de France, the Kentucky Derby, Ironman, the NFL Playoffs and Open Water Swimming in Australia. Clients include National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, ESPN.com, Men’s Journal and Outside Magazine. His commercial clients include Manfrotto, Nikon, SanDisk, Land Rover, Red Bull, G-Technology, Garmin and Gore-Tex.…

Resolution At the 70mm focal length this lens is at its sharpest, with only a little drop off in quality in the centre when shooting at 135mm. At 200mm, when shooting at f/8, there is little difference in the resolution in the centre, but the edges are a lot softer. Shading Although at 70mm and f/4 the vignetting is quite harsh at the edges, by f/5.6 it is only the very corners that really suffer, and by f/8 it is virtually non-existent. At 200mm it is a very similar story, although the vignetting isn’t as severe when shooting wide open. 70mm f/4 200mm f/4 Curvilinear distortion At 70mm there is some barrel distortion visible, although with the distortion showing just a -0.8% shift at its worst it is barely noticeable.…

PANASONIC Pinpoint AF mode Lumix G cameras started off with relatively large AF points. This made it difficult for the camera to discriminate between the delicate details you want to focus on, such as tree branches, and strong background details. Pinpoint focus is the solution. This lets you adjust the size of the AF point using the touchscreen to a very small size. Available for the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH3 and later models. OLYMPUS Time-lapse settings If you’re not satisfied with the limit of 99 time-lapse shots in the Pen menus, use the ‘anti-shock’ function for unlimited inter-shot delays of up to 30secs. Use sequential shooting mode and you do need to keep the shutter pressed so a cable release (starting at around £5) will make things easier. CANON Custom modes…

The new Nikon D810 is a carefully specified update of the D800 with several small but interesting feature changes. One of the more obscure is the replacement of the 3.2in, 921,000-dot LCD on the D800 with a similarly sized one boasting 1.23 million dots on the D810, with the claim that the newer LCD renders the display brighter and more realistic. The two displays still have the same number of pixels (480x640), but the new display has four ‘dots’ within each pixel, while the old one had three. The extra dot is a ‘white’ one in addition to the traditional red, green and blue, and it is this extra dot that makes the difference. To understand why, we need to consider how a colour LCD interacts with human colour vision.…

Stock photo firm Dreamstime Dreamstime app has launched an app to allow photographers to upload and sell images from mobiles. Called Dreamstime Companion, it allows images of 3 million pixels-plus to be uploaded and licensed to the firm’s user base of eight million. Photographers can earn up to $12 per licence. Visit www.dreamstime.com/ stock-photo-mobile-app. New Reflecta gadgets Kenro has announced a Reflecta x9 film scanner and accessories for Reflecta Visilux Studio Flash Kits. The Reflecta x9, price £95.76, can scan negatives and slides in less than a second and can work independently from a computer, powered by a Li-Ion battery and saving images to an SD card. The Visilux accessories pair with Studio Flash Kits 180 and 300, and include silver and white umbrellas, wireless flash triggers and a snoot.…

1.  Shoot from left to right. The images will load into your browser in the order they were shot and it will be far easier to see which frames make up the panorama.2.  The camera must be level on both axes for a perfect distortion-free alignment.3.  After the final frame of each set of images, use a finger pointing from right to left to indicate that the previous images make a panorama. If you do not have an indicator or blank frame, you will lose track of where one panorama finishes and the next one starts, especially if you are shooting subjects such as pine forests!4.  Shoot with the white balance set manually and not on auto. For example, 5,500K is a good starting point.5.  Shoot with slightly more image…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Truly despicable I suffer from insomnia and your Leica anniversary issue (AP 19 July) hasn’t helped. Lying in bed in the wee small hours after reading it, I couldn’t get Tom Stoddart’s image of the wealthy Sudanese man stealing maize from the starving child out of my mind. I have some concerns as to the veracity of the image, but if true, it was a truly despicable act to have witnessed and will haunt me for weeks to come. A truly powerful image. Bill Winward, Wiltshire Sadly, Bill, it is true, but there's a positive side to the story. As a result of its publication in The Guardian , more than £100,000 was donated to Médecins Sans Frontières. The image, and the story…

AN AMBASSADOR for Nikon UK, John is a photographer, filmmaker and music producer. He started his photographic life with a Nikon FM2 when he moved from Glasgow to London to take a job with a picture agency that covered the royals. He went on to become the picture editor of the Daily Mail and the Express newspapers, but went back to taking pictures for a living in 2000 – when he bought his first digital camera. Now John is a portrait and fashion photographer working from Motel studio in East London’s Shoreditch. Celebrities he has photographed include Robbie Williams, Pet Shop Boys, Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, the stars of The Inbetweeners, Ricky Gervais, Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay, and clients include Louis Vuitton, Dior, Vanity Fair, Tatler, British GQ and…

Vest Pocket Kodak THE VEST Pocket Kodak, launched in 1912, was the camera for which 127 rollfilm was invented. Some 1.75 million VPKs in the three principal versions were manufactured from 1912-1935. Ensignette THE HOUGHTON Ensignette, the UK’s first effective miniature camera, was introduced in 1909. The Ensignette 1 made six exposures each 1.5x2.25in on a new size of paper-backed roll film, called E1. Ica Icarette THE ICARETTE was a small vertical-format folding camera, launched in 1912 in Germany by Ica producing 12 exposures on 120 film. Further versions were made by Ica, then by Zeiss Ikon after the 1926 merger. Contessa Nettel THIS simple 6.5x9cm Contessa Nettel camera dates from 1921, but is likely to be similar to the Contessa camera used by Walter Kleinfeldt on the Somme. It…

AT FIRST I was a little concerned about the size of the Sony FE 70-200mm f/4 G OSS lens, worrying that it would dwarf the Alpha 7R. However, while it certainly is not the smallest of lenses, it pairs well with the Alpha 7 cameras, offering a good compromise between size, weight and portability. Optically, it is difficult to find fault with the lens. It combines well with the resolution of the Alpha 7R, and the few flaws it does have should present photographers few issues in real-world situations. Although Sony is pitching the lens at wildlife and sports photographers, I actually think it will find as much of a home among travel and landscape photographers, particularly given the size and AF system of the Alpha 7 series. Data file…

Ivor Matanle recalls a 35mm SLR LAUNCHED 1971 PRICE WITH F/1.8 CANON FD IN 1972 £161.87 (RRP), £112.95 (discounted) GUIDE PRICE TODAY £35-£65 THE FTb was Canon’s first open-aperture TTL-metering fixed-prism SLR. As a reliable, lower-cost and effective alternative to the professional-market Canon F1, the FTb was extensively used by wedding photographers and enthusiastic amateurs. What’s good The solid feel and smoothness of operation, plus the warmth of Canon lenses’ colour rendition. Canon FTb SLRs were usually sold with a 50mm f/1.8 Canon FD, one of the great lenses, but are sometimes available secondhand with the 50mm f/1.4. The 35mm f/2, 100mm f/2 and 135mm f/2.8 Canon FD lenses are particularly recommended. Canon FTbs are usually mechanically reliable and optically excellent. What’s bad Watch for brown spots in the viewfinder…

Consumers’ thirst for action cameras is predicted to grow 80% to reach annual sales of nine million units worldwide by 2018. Almost five million action cameras were sold last year, which is 47% up on the previous year, according to Futuresource Consulting. The UK and USA accounted for nearly half (46%) of total demand. Market leader GoPro reportedly sold 3.8 million cameras in 2013. A Futuresource spokesman said: ‘The relative importance of outdoor pursuits, propensity to spend on emerging CE [consumer electronics] categories, and the use of social media, are some of the main drivers of demand.’ Uses range from cycling, skiing and surfing to television production.…

AN AMATEUR photographer’s image of a television presenter has been accepted by the National Portrait Gallery in London. James Robinson’s photograph of Lucy Worsley, a historian, has been added to the National Portrait Gallery collection. James, who is a member of the Royal Photographic Society, told The RPS Journal : ‘I approached Dr Worsley to see if she’d be willing to sit for a portrait. Luckily, she was kind enough to agree. ‘I got in touch with the National Portrait Gallery and the rest, as they say, is history.’…

Jeremy Walker Jeremy Walker is an award-winning professional photographer with many years’ experience specialising in high-quality landscape and location photography from around the world for use by advertising, design and corporate clients. A belief in ‘quality is everything’, a meticulous approach and a far-reaching vision and style serve Jeremy and his clients well. www.jeremywalker.co.uk I have to admit that I’m a bit of a panoramic junkie and I like to get my fix as often as I can. The vast majority of my landscapes are panoramic, but what do we mean by a ‘panoramic’ image ? We are all used to looking through the camera viewfinder, seeing and composing the image and then pressing the shutter button, but do you ever stop and consider how our view of the world…

1 Set-up If the point about which you rotate is not level, the final image will lose a great deal of information due to a ‘stepped’ effect that will need cropping. Rotate the camera and ensure everything you need to be in the final image is in each frame. Note the start and finish points. 2 Camera settings Set the white balance to manual to avoid a colour shift between shots, but shoot in raw so you can fine-tune later. It’s also a good idea to set the exposure manually, otherwise your image will be uneven, particularly in large areas of the same tone such as skies. 3 Shoot If using a ND grad filter, it must remain in the same position for each of the frames in your panorama…

The two Reader Portfolio winners chosen every week will receive a SmugMug Power account, worth £35 each, on which to host their images SmugMug is the world’s leading independent cloud-based photo website for a new generation of photographers. SmugMug Power account gives you a fully hosted, customisable website where you will receive unlimited photo uploads and gorgeous full-screen galleries. Visit www.smugmug.com Horia Bogdan, Romania Horia became interested in photography due to his fascination with nature. He is a biologist and throughout his college years he documented the subjects of his studies using his camera. Horia’s favourite subjects are landscapes, as he feels he can absorb the beauty of nature better that way. He is particularly fond of the amount of freedom photography offers, as well as the way it can…

NATALIE Dybisz, the photographer behind Miss Aniela – Aniela is her middle name – is Nikon Europe ambassador. She is a fine-art fashion photographer based in London, and began her career in 2006 as a self-portrait artist. She works with her partner on commercial assignments and the self-branded, large-scale production ‘The Fashion Shoot Experience’ in London, LA, New York, Europe & Iceland (www.fashionshoot experience.com). Miss Aniela’s work has been exhibited internationally and featured in numerous media, including NY Arts, El Pais, Alarm Chicago, Vogue Italia and the BBC. She is currently focusing on her fine-art series Surreal Fashion, which blurs the boundaries of art, photography and fashion, and has been exhibited by Vogue Italia in Milan and London’s Saatchi Gallery.…

IN CONTRAST to the British, who banned unofficial photography of the war, the Germans positively encouraged it. Consequently, there is a large number of candid images depicting the death and destruction it wrought. Among them is the extraordinary collection of images taken by Walter Kleinfeldt, who fought at the Battle of the Somme as part of a German gun crew at the age of just 16. His images, shot on his Contessa camera, were discovered by his son Volkmar three years ago, and featured in the recent BBC4 documentary Hidden Histories: WW1’s Forgotten Photographs. Other German photographers of note include Lieutenant Walter Koessler, whose images were found by his American great-grandson, Dean Putney; Walter Naumann from Bad Düben, in Saxony, a dispatch runner with an infantry regiment; and Erwin Biesenbach,…

Clive Nichols, 51, is one of the most successful garden and flower photographers working today, whose images have appeared in magazines, calendars and books worldwide. He is one of the main judges for the International Garden Photographer of the Year awards and regularly gives masterclasses for the Royal Horticultural Society. Visit www.clivenichols.com. 1981 Olympus OM-10 The Olympus OM-10 was my first camera, which I bought when I was at university in the early ’80s. It had a nice big viewfinder and was very easy to operate. It had aperture-priority automatic exposure, which I’ve always preferred using. I mainly used it when I started doing travel photography. I didn’t have much money for lenses, so only had a 24mm lens in addition to the standard 50mm. I didn’t have it for…

Two fundamental questions arise when you look at any photograph. First, what is the photograph for? Second, what makes it good (or bad)? The recent acquisition by the Museum of London of press pictures by Christina Broom, held up as Britain’s first woman press photographer (she started in 1903), demands answers more than most. In one sense, her pictures are mostly awful: stiff, dull, grievously over-posed. The example here is especially wooden, despite the subject’s attempts not to stand too firmly at ease and despite a passable pose of his hands. At best, it’s a man standing in front of some buildings. However, we can bring to it things the photographer could not. We know that the men in Broom’s Great War pictures might not have long to live. This…