Innholdsfortegnelse for 10-may-2014 i Amateur Photographer

“The broadcaster was after shallow depth of field AP behind scenes with Nikon D4 at TV station, page 7” TENS of thousands of historic images dating back to1861are at risk of being lost for ever, as an urgent campaign to preserve and digitise them gets under way. The collection of 60,000 pictures of Exeter in Devon – said to include precious photos of Second World War bombings – belongs to local author and photographer Peter Thomas, who acquired the archive from the Henry Wykes Studio in the city, which closed in1974. The archive, now called the Isca Historical Photographic Collection, includes 42,000 half-plate negatives, transparencies, albums and prints, 85% of which have never been seen in public before. ‘I am now in the unenviable position of facing the fact that…

SAMSUNG and Amateur Photographer have joined forces to offer one lucky AP reader the chance to win a Samsung NX300 (in brown) and 20-50mm f/3.5-5.6 lens worth £600. Winner of the best Compact System Camera award at the 2013-2014 EISA Awards, the Samsung NX300 compact system camera has a 20.3-million-pixel, APS-C-sized CMOS sensor, a wide ISO range of 100-25,600 and a hybrid AF system that delivers fast, accurate phase and contrast detection. Wi-Fiand NFC are included, enabling photos to be shared quickly and easily. Other features include a 3.3in rear tiltable AMOLED touchscreen, 8.6 frames per second continuous shooting and full HD1080p video. The NX300’s Smart Mode features four different settings to automatically adjust parameters such as aperture and shutter speed, as well as i-Depth – a simple way to…

IN OCTOBER last year, Olympus and the website Exhibtr put together a competition for students with the theme ‘People and Portraits’. I was the overall winner with this image I took in Ethiopia of two children drinking from a bottle of water. It’s called ‘Water of Life’. JASPER WILKINS Jasper Wilkins is originally from Birmingham, but currently living in Farnham, Surrey. His work revolves around equality, culture and communication. He started his photographic journey at the age of 16 with a compact digital camera and it has since developed into a desire to create positive media from an anthropological approach. Jasper is currently working on a project that helps progress creativity in developing countries and is keen to work with international development. I visited Ethiopia last year for three months…

Home ground The Allianz Park in North London is the new home of Saracens, with a capacity of 10,000. The club moved there from Vicarage Road in Watford, which it shared with Watford FC. History Based in London, Saracens was established in 1876 as the Saracens Football Club, with the name said to come from the ‘endurance, enthusiasm and perceived invincibility of Saladin’s desert warriors of the 12th century’. Interestingly, their closest rivals at the time were called the Crusaders. Trophies Playing at the top level of domestic rugby union in England, the Aviva Premiership, Saracens were crowned Premiership Champions in the 2010-11 season and, at the time of writing, are sitting at the top of the table this season, as well as securing a home semi-final spot in the…

John Taylor North Yorkshire Ever since an eight-year-old John was using liberal amounts of tape to wage war against light leaks in the seals of his Kodak Brownie, he has been hooked on photography. Landscapes are John’s favourite subject, as he’s been into long-distance walking since his teens. He loves how photography allows him to be in control of the entire process, from capture to print. ‘Nothing beats looking at a framed print that takes you back to that moment,’ he says. To see more of John’s images, visit www.trailclic.com. Isle of Barra 1 John took this image at sunset, when the light was stunning Nikon D100, 19-35mm, 1/30sec at f/14, ISO 200 West Burton 2 The elongated fall of the water gives this image a tranquil feel Nikon D3,…

FOR THOSE people who have set their sights on owning a Nikon DSLR, whether as a main camera or as a back-up body, there are no fewer than18 models to choose from in Nikon’s line-up. For the novice looking to buy his or her first DSLR, the Nikon D3300 comes highly recommended for the way it delivers an impressive specification at a price of around £500. Those who can stretch their budget by around £120 have the choice of the slightly more advanced D5300 – a model that looks virtually identical to the D3300 and shares the same 24.2-million-pixel resolution, but which benefits from a few more practical functions, such as built-in Wi-Fi. Then there is the D7100. Sitting above theD5300 and costing around £840, the D7100 is the most…

THE NIKON D3300, D5300 and D7100 are all 24-million-pixel DSLRs capable of delivering equally impressive levels of detail from their APS-C-sized sensors. Each model has an excellent set of features tailored for different photographers’ needs. For those who want a tilting screen and wireless connectivity, it’s the D5300 that gets the nod. It costs around £120 more than the D3300, but it’s worth paying for the more sophisticated autofocus system and larger screen, and is better tailored for novices wanting to enhance their photographic ability quickly. That said, it shouldn’t put off anyone fromconsidering the D3300. This is one of the best-specified DSLRs that £500 can buy, and it will satisfy casual photographers’ needs without committing them to the outlay required for more advanced features that may just get overlooked.…

ATA GLANCE ● 20.4-million-pixel 1/2.3in Exmor R CMOS sensor ● 50× optical zoom (35mm focal length equivalent of 24-1200mm) ● ISO 80-3200 (expandable to 12,800) ● 3in, 921,600-dot Xtra Fine TFT LCD ● Street price around £399 SONY’S Cyber-shot DSC-HX400 is the successor to the HX300, and with a very impressive 50x optical zoom that has a 35mm focal-length equivalent of 24-1200mm it is a true ‘super-zoom’. However, while the HX400 supersedes the HX300, the new model has relatively few improvements over its predecessor. Competition is strong in this sector of the market, and when compared with, for example, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ72, which was launched towards the end of last year, the FZ72 has a wider focal length than the HX400 at 20-1200mm and the same-sized sensor, while the…

AT A GLANCE ● 16-million-pixel ISOCELL rear camera, 2-million pixel front camera ● Consistent and pleasing autoexposure with touch focus ● Good colour reproduction in various lighting conditions, including with flash ● UHD 3840 x 2160 (4K) resolution video recording ● Fast 0.3sec autofocus ● Superb DSLR-like separation in selective focus mode ● RRP £579 SAMSUNG has made significant improvements to the Galaxy S5 over its previous flagship, the S4, in terms of resolution and processor. The S4’s 13-million-pixel camera has been replaced with a16-million-pixel ISOCELL1/2.6in sensor (5.56x4.16mm), and the new device is powered by Qualcomm’s most recent 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processing engine. The improvements mean that the S5 is capable of better low-light performance, greater colour depth, 4K (3840x2160) UHD video recording and an autofocus speed as fast…

DO WE value photographs too little? Have they become so common, so easy, that we take them for granted? A lot of people think so, even though exactly the same concerns were raised when 35mm supplanted rollfilm and when rollfilm supplanted glass plates. Increasingly, though, I suspect the exact opposite. We value them too much. Otherwise, we should not keep so many of them. Also, we value them the wrong way. Personal or family snapshots are seldom of interest to others, as demonstrated by slide shows of holiday snaps, or on-screen weddings, or interminable guided tours of stacks of photo albums. We need to look elsewhere for value. ‘If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t far enough away’ So what makes pictures valuable or valueless? Not necessarily financially, but…

Beyond the Border 1 July-27 September. Impressions Gallery, Centenary Square, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD1 1SD. Tel: 01274737843.Website: www.impressions-gallery.com.Open Tue-Thu 10am-6pm, Fri-Sat 10am-5pm.Admission free ON 18 SEPTEMBER, Scotland will vote on the question of its independence. As arguments for and against ripple across the pages of newspapers, Beyond the Border quietly steps into the spotlight. An exhibition of four Scottish photographers, Beyond the Border offers no definite answers for the independence question, but presents four distinctive views of the nation from the collective ‘Document Scotland’. Sophie Gerrard explores the role of women in shaping the rural landscape; Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert studies the Antonine Wall, a relic of the Roman Empire; Stephen McLaren meets Americans with Scottish ancestry; and Colin McPherson presents the results of a year spent on the border of England…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Wins a great shockproof, waterproof and dust proof 5-Proof Technology 16GB Samsung SDHC Plus memory card offering up to 48MB/sec transfer speed. www.samsung.com/memorycard NEW TRICKS Of all the excellent feature articles in AP, I particularly look forward to Martin Evening’s Retoucher’s Guide series. It was quite fortuitous, therefore, that his article on creating a nocturnal effect (AP1 March) coincided with an upcoming camera-club competition with the theme ‘Moonlight’. I decided to try my hand at modifying an image of a local churchyard and thought that you may be interested to see the result. Certainly the competition judge could not make up her mind whether the image was ‘real’ or not, but she awarded it first place anyway. Keep up the excellent work! Adam Kowalczyk, Gloucestershire Glad…

In front of a record crowd, five readers join Mark Pain pitch-side at Wembley to capture the drama of a top-flight Premiership rugby match. Phil Hall reports Shooting on the try line ‘Lots of rugby stadiums don’t have fantastic lighting in areas where much of the action takes place, such as at the try lines, which are often darkest,’ says Mark. ‘It may be 2 or 3 stops darker in the same lighting conditions because the corners of the pitch aren’t getting the same amount of light.’ IT MAY be the home of football, but for this afternoon Wembley Stadium opens its doors to rugby, hosting the Aviva Premiership Saracens vs Harlequins clash. Technically a home game for Saracens as their new stadium is a stone’s throw from Wembley, they…

THE FIRST thing people ask me about my project Found in Nature is whether I set out to try to communicate an environmental message. That wasn’t my intention at all. In fact, the whole thing started quite unintentionally. It had its genesis in another body of work entirely, one dealing specifically with botany called Lost in Nature. I was keen to engage in a project that took me outside of my old studio and I was particularly interested to test out my new camera, a Hasselblad Phase One P25 with a digital back. I work on a lot of commercial assignments and, as a result, I was looking for a project that took me outside of that. The plants that interested me particularly were weeds, the kind of botany you’ll…

Couple on a bench Helen Groumas Olympus E-5, 14-35mm, 1/160sec at f/4.5, ISO200 HELEN has spotted a wonderful scene, and although photographing people from behind is sometimes the soft option, here the angle works very well. There are some great connections within the picture: the browns of the couple’s clothes complement the rusts and yellows of the trees in the background, and we are being presented with a pair in the autumn of their years sitting amid an all-autumn environment. You could send it to Saga, Helen – it would make a great lifestyle advert. I understand why Helen has reduced the contrast of the scene – to soften everything and to induce a dreamy feel – but the haze and the lack of black leave our eyes with not…

PRIOR to testing dynamic range, we asked Nikon whether the sensor used in the D7100 is different from the one in the D3300 and D5300. While the company confirmed that the sensor is different, it was not willing to state whether the D3300 shares the same 24.2-million-pixel sensor as the D5300.We’re left to assume that they do, based on near-identical dynamic-range readouts. As the graph above shows, the dynamic range of all three cameras is similar, despite the fact the D3300 and D5300 feature a revised sensor to the D7100. At the lowest and highest sensitivities, the D7100 appears, on paper, to have the edge over theD3300 andD5300, although it is a very small margin. TheD5300 has the best performance between ISO 800 and ISO1600, but the figures at these…

SHOOTING MOTORSPORTS Q I have a Nikon D90 that I wish to use it for motorcycle racing shots. I have a Nikkor 70-300mm lens and went to a race meeting and took more than 400 shots. Some were taken in sport mode, some in auto, some in aperture priority and loads in manual. I had the ISO set to auto, and later at ISO 200 and then at ISO 800. I tried evaluative, centre weighted and spot metering, and I used a monopod. I took shots of bikes on a 50mph corner at1/500sec and also tried 1/1000sec and1/125sec, but all of my shots are blurred and I could not freeze the subject. I am not too clued up on the autofocus (my viewfinder has three or four rectangles all searching…

RRP £419 Sensor 1/2.3in Exmor R CMOS sensor with 20.4million effective pixels Output size 5184 × 3456 pixels Lens Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* 24-1200mm (equivalent) f/2.8-6.3 File format Still: JPEG. Video: AVCHD Sensitivity Auto ISO 80-3200 (expandable to 12,800) Colour space sRGB Shutter speeds 30-1/4000sec Metering system Multi-pattern, centreweighted, spot White balance Automatic, 7 presets, customand c temp Exposure modes PASM, 2 auto settings, panorama and 14 scene modes Drive mode 10fps, self-timer 10secs, 5secs, portrait 1, portrait 2 AF modes Single-shot AF, DMF, manual focus, continuous AF (advanced sports and movie only) LCD monitor 3in, 921,600-dot Xtra Fine TFT Interface USB 2.0 High-Speed, HDMI Storage media Memory Stick, SD, SDHC, SDXC Power Rechargeable NP-BX1 battery (approx 300 shots) Weight 660g (with battery and memory card) Dimensions 129.6 × 93.2…

THE SAMSUNG Galaxy S5 is a superior smartphone thanks to it running a snappy version of Android’s 4.4.2 KitKat operating system. It’s responsive, has great battery life and the 432ppi full HD screen is one of the best I’ve seen. However, its camera isn’t perfect. Images display some over sharpening halo artefacts when magnified, and noise reduction can be too aggressive on low-light images. But that said, many print-quality images can be captured with the S5. If you want a smart device with a fantastic camera, I would strongly recommend considering the Samsung Galaxy S5. It is easily one of the best options.…

A round-up of the latest photography books on the market ● ONE, NO ONE AND ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND by Nicholas Albrecht, £29.95 After spending time living in a motor home on the Salton Sea in California, Nicholas Albrecht uses photography to explore the question of his status as an ‘insider’ in that community. Desert life seems alien to those born and bred in Western culture; we aren’t built for those environments. Albrecht explores the nature of life for those who expertly inhabit such inhospitable spaces. What results is often strange, challenging and raises more questions than it does answers. It spurs you on to want greater understanding. ● PROBABLE CAUSE by Matt Gunther, £29.95 Matt Gunther spends ten years on the thin blue line of Newark, New Jersey, to document…

MY DAUGHTER and her family returned from holiday recently with hundreds of digital photos to show us. Great! What wasn’t so great was that theywere all on a memory stick and, frankly, were rather painful to flip through on my PC. How much easier would it have been sitting in comfy chairs browsing through sets of prints instead of crowded around the computer? As many photographers now know to their cost, storing images on your computer hard drive is a risky affair. And in terms of enjoyment, particularly for family-orientated photography, there is nothing to beat hard copies of your photos rather than staring endlessly at a computer screen. I bought my first DSLR last year and immediately fell for the charms of home printing. Initially, I experimented with PictBridge…

Kevin Diss Kevin has a passion for action photography that rveals images that cannot be seen in real time. He photographs a range of sports and combines this with his golf addiction to capture golf-course landscapes during visits as part of the Golf Monthly top 100 courses assessment panel Mike Groom Mike is a chartered engineer on weekdays and a photographer at all other times. Digital photography restarted his hobby and he now shoots mainly motorsports, events and travel. He enjoys sharing the results online and welcomes all feedback. Mark Payne Mark focuses mainly on landscape and wildlife images, as well as being an active member of the Nantwich Camera Club in Cheshire. Mark tries to encourage other photographers to think outside the box! Suzanne Tully Currently studying photography at…

WHEN the name Colin Prior pops up in conversation, it’s natural to immediately think of impressive panoramic photographs of the Scottish Highlands. After all, the Glasgow-born photographer has rather cornered this particular niche. Yet Colin’s body of work from a long career stretches far beyond the shores of his native country. During a frenzied few years of photography in which he was commissioned to shoot the British Airways calendar, he managed to set foot on no fewer than 40 different countries in his quest for spectacular landscapes. It was while on a trip for BA that he stumbled upon the Karakoram mountains – if you can stumble on an area that boasts the largest concentration of 8,000-metre-plus mountains, including its highest peak, K2, known to would-be adventurers as the world’s…

Cokin H250A Gradual ND Kit Around £44 (adapter ring not included) www.cokin.co.uk Cokin’s P-series filters are 84mmwide and suitable for full-frame DSLRs with focal lengths of 28mm upwards. This is a great value kit, with three graduated filters – ND2, ND4 and ND8 – that slot into a filter holder. An adapter ring is required for use, but these are dependent on which lens you are using and are available separately. The H250A kit offers a great entry-level solution into the wonderful world of landscape photography with acceptable durability and build quality, although regular heavy use will see them consigned to the bin in a fairly short time. The optical performance is impressive for the price, although stacking more than one filter in the holder does give a significant magenta…

INCLUDED on all three DSLRs is Active D-Lighting – a mode that can be used to brighten dark tones and darken the brightest areas in an image to ensure that more detail is visible across a broad tonal range. This mode comes into its own in high-contrast scenes at risk of blown-out highlights or a loss of detail in the darkest shadows. Active D-Lighting is found in the shooting menu, but whereas the D5300 and D7100 offer precise control with a selection of low, normal, high, extra high and auto settings, Active D-Lighting on the D3300 is much more basic, only allowing the feature to be turned on or off. As the human eye is capable of seeing more detail in the shadows than in the highlights, most dynamic range…

Panning is a technique more closely associated with shooting movies than still images, but for sports and wildlife photographers it is an essential skill. The premise is simple: rather than hold the camera steady while you take a shot, it is moved to track the subject. In terms of motorsport (as raised in this week’s From the forum question, it’s a good idea to aim the camera slightly ‘upstream’ of your chosen pre-focused target area. As your subject approaches, start to track it through the viewfinder, turning at the waist so you follow its movement smoothly. Trigger the shutter just before your subject reaches your focus point, shooting a burst of maybe two or three frames. By panning with the subject in this way, rather than keeping the camera rocksteady,…

IN GOOD light, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX400 produces images that are comparable to a mid-range compact camera but with the advantage of a super zoom. This zoom range is extensive enough for the majority of situations, and I found it was rare that I needed to push the zoomabove1000mm. The optical stabilisation does a very good job of minimising camera shake. For those who are sticklers for image quality, this camera is not ideal. In low light at high ISO sensitivities, detail in images appears smudgy due to the noise reduction. In bright light, images are not overly detailed but are still suitable for web use or small prints. However, this camera is suitable for those who simply want to document their travels or capture wildlife. The HX400 handles very…

THIS is the last article in my series on raw-file photography and how to manage exposure for it. In the last article (AP12 April), the main topic was how to expose for the highlights by adjusting the camera’s spot-meter function. In this article, we’ll discuss a more sophisticated way of checking highlight exposure, known as ‘expose to the right’ (ETTR). The ‘right’ referred to is the right-hand side of the camera’s histogram as displayed on the rear LCD screen. Essentially, exposure is selected so that the brightest part of the histogram is ‘to the right’. For instance, in Figures1-4, we can see four exposures. The one in Figure 2 is ‘to the right’ – the largest exposure (1/8000sec at f/2.8) that will not result in the brightest parts of the…