Innholdsfortegnelse for 21-Jan-2017 i Amateur Photographer

One of the biggest challenges in wildlife photography is finding good subjects to shoot, but with common or garden birds, it’s never an issue. Even if you don’t have a garden, there’s bound to be a park or even an RSPB nature reserve nearby. In this issue, we help you get the best possible shots of wild birds, with plenty of practical tips and money-saving advice. The good news is that you don’t need lots of expensive gear, or outlandish hides or ghillie suits that will worry the neighbours. Don’t miss our introductory guide to digiscoping, too – watching and photographing birds is a great way to pass the time. We’ve also got a fascinating profile of top skateboard photographer ‘French Fred’, and the definitive review of Olympus’s new flagship…

THERE are only a few weeks left to enter the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year competition 2017, one of the world's most prestigious celebrations about the vibrant world of food photography and film. Open to everyone, professional and amateur alike, in a number of categories, the Pink Lady competition receives entries from all over the world – and boasts a prize pool worth almost £20,000 in total, with £5,000 set aside for the overall winner. With an international judging panel, including AP's own Nigel Atherton, it's not one to miss if you think you've got a shot. Visit www.pinkladyfood photographeroftheyear.com to enter.…

I think it's high time all camera manufacturers enabled in-camera USB battery charging. I know Sony generally does, and Fujifilm is slowly coming round to the idea (the X100T supports the function though the X-Pro2 doesn't). But Canon, Nikon and others still require you to take the battery out of their more expensive cameras and use a dedicated charger. This means you can all too easily be stuck with a dead camera. It happened to me recently. I was looking forward to trying out the Leica Q that The Gadget Show office had borrowed for a programme on ultimate Christmas presents. I collected it one Friday evening, so I could familiarise myself with what promised to be a quite delightful piece of product design. A glorious late-autumn weekend awaited, and…

Tripod and head combination I try to previsualise where I want a bird to perch, and position my gear accordingly. Tweaks are often necessary, though, so I use a Gitzo tripod and Wimberley head to allow both flexibility and stability. Battery pack Being able to quickly switch to portrait format is extremely useful. Adding a battery pack to your camera will enable you to use a second shutter release button, making shooting in this way much easier. CamRanger Once you have birds coming to a table set-up regularly, setting up your camera and operating it remotely using a device like a CamRanger (operated from your tablet) opens up a whole new world of image opportunities. Man-made props Junkyards, car-boot sales and the like are great places to find agricultural props,…

You answered… A Air shows 8%B Motor sports 9%C Steam railway 16%D Carnivals or processions 5%E All of the above 10%F None of the above/I prefer not to plan shoots 52% What you said ‘I’ll be shooting the Great Dorset Steam Fair. I’m really looking forward to it and I have already booked the time off work.’ ‘I have no plans currently, but doubtless I will shoot some events – I usually do...’ ‘Photography festivals. As many as I can get to, but above all, the Rencontres d’Arles, the annual summer festival in Arles, France.’ Join the debate on the AP forum This week we ask Do you provide supplementary food for wildlife during winter to photograph them more easily? Vote online www.amateurphotographer.co.uk…

REGULAR black & white (grayscale) conversions are applied upstream of the Saturation, Vibrance and HSL colour sliders. This is a shame because the Saturation and Vibrance sliders can be used to produce more dramatic contrasty results. To get around this, instead of simply converting to Grayscale, you can go to the HSL panel and set all the Saturation sliders to zero. Next, adjust the HSL Luminance sliders, as you would when adjusting the Grayscale Mix sliders. You can also adjust the Vibrance and Saturation sliders in the Basic panel. This method works well when you want a black sky. Here, it's best to apply a combination of a negative Vibrance with a positive Saturation slider setting.…

Time to visit My favourite time of year for this location is winter mornings. First, it is quieter (although it is never especially busy on Great Intake); second, the sun rises at the perfect angle to provide low light over Little Langdale; third, first light on the Pikes, when they are covered with fresh snow, is a lovely sight. I tend not to use too wide an angle for these shots. There would be a temptation to cram too much into the frame, and lose focus. I usually go between 35mm and 135mm. That way you can be more specific with the way you arrange your composition. Shooting at first light will usually dictate that a tripod is a necessity, but I have been able to avoid using filters because…

THE Memento Smart Frame is no doubt a bit of a niche product and at approximately £720 for the 35in version and £480 for the smaller 25in variant (before even adding shipping and taxes) it's not cheap, either. However, neither are large-scale high-quality prints. So, if you like changing the photographs on display at your home or office on a regular basis, the Memento might be a sound investment. I wasn't too impressed by the handling of different aspect ratios, and the lack of a proper calibration feature means the Memento is probably not suitable for colour-critical applications. However, it's easy to set up and control, looks and feels like a real premium product, and the quality of the display and the way the backlighting is adjusted are excellent, making…

AN IMPRESSIVE shot of a fox sipping from a puddle under streetlights has managed to sweep the top spot in this year's RSPCA Young Photographer Awards. Budding photographers aged between nine and 18 were invited to capture the animal kingdom on camera, with the winning shot this year taken by 18-year-old Kyle Moore – beating thousands of other entries to victory. Titled ‘Park Life', Kyle took his image at dusk in a park in Ilford, London. He said: ‘I'm shocked to have won but very, very happy. It is all just sinking in. I love photography and have been doing it for about five years now. I would love to make it into a career.' The six winning category images were announced during an awards ceremony at the Tower of…

Published by Dewi Lewis Price £35 156 pages hardback ISBN 978-1-911306-06-1 Sometimes photographers find themselves in extraordinary political circumstances. It could well be they've sought them out, such as Mark Power when he travelled to Berlin in November1989 to document the elation of the crowds as they witnessed the fall of the wall that separated East from West. Or maybe a photographer is thrown unwittingly into a situation, a good example being Stuart Franklin, who was there to witness a defiant student stand his ground against a military tank in China's Tiananmen Square. These are examples of grandeur, of world-changing events. But sometimes the photographer finds himself or herself involved, through circumstance, in something small and intimate, but no less extraordinary. In the early 1990s, the mighty Soviet Union had…

Twitter Steve Palmer @SillyPigsPlay What may seem mundane at first can often offer a great deal of potential. This is a lovely example that utilises a variety of colours. Join the conversation @AP_Magazine Facebook Jorel Cuomo Jorel photographed this Barbary macaque in Morocco. It’s a great example of wildlife photography. The pose of the monkey is perfect and is surrounded by ample foliage, giving us a good insight into the monkey’s environmental context. Like us www.facebook.com/amateurphotographermagazine Flickr Stephen Gill Stephen has captured the rage of the earth in this incredible image of a lava tube flowing into the Hawaiian sea. Submit your photos apmag.co/flickr…

Understand bird behaviour Nuthatches are natural climbers, so placing some peanuts at the base of this carefully positioned log encouraged them to run down to collect some. It was then a question of waiting for the perfect time of day as far as the light was concerned. Set-up for early morning During winter, the first few hours of the day are among the busiest for birds, as they need to restore calories lost overnight. Having a set-up that catches the first sun of the day while also retaining the frost takes some planning, but it's rewarding when it works. Complement the background The background here was a distant oak tree. In the late afternoon light it had turned an intense yellowy-brown, and so a perch with yellow lichens on it…

Walk through any major city and the first thing that strikes you is the architecture. Buildings old and new, modern and postmodern stand side by side; some seemingly there for their aesthetic value alone, others purely functional. It can be dizzying trying to identify a theme in the overall plan, particularly when each building or landmark seems to have been created with only itself in mind. However, perhaps you’re just not seeing things from the right perspective. A small community of guerrilla athletes make it their business to occupy and use the pavements and concrete walkways of these chaotically designed cities. Every elevated plane, every set of steps, every length of concrete is a new challenge. Skateboarders are a familiar sight and, depending on the location, a welcome addition to…

The internet is a great source of inspiration for anyone interested in digiscoping. Here are a few of my favourite websites: YouTube ( www.youtube.com ). If you spend an hour watching some of the digiscoping videos here, you will gain a pretty good understanding of what's involved. You can save any good tutorials to your favourites. Facebook ( www.facebook.com ). You will find a few forums dedicated to digiscoping here, with lots of helpful people offering advice. Digiscoping, Worldwide, Facebook Digiscopers, and Phonescoping are among my favourites. The Yahoo Digiscoping group offers lots of technical advice, and is a good place to find some of the original digiscopers. Birdforum ( www.birdforum.net ) has a digiscoping section, which contains sub-forums full of archived information on…

Gareth Williams, Vale of Glamorgan Gareth first picked up a camera when he was in his teens after saving up some money to afford a compact model. A few years later he worked in a lab developing and printing colour and black & white prints before finding work at Jessops. It was here that he bought his first ‘real' camera – an Olympus OM10 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. As he lives on the South Wales coast, Gareth has developed a passion for capturing the beautiful landscapes and seascapes around the area. To see more of his images, visit www.facebook.com/cariadimages. Rhoose Point 1 Gareth wanted the rocks on the left and centre to make a triangle with the shore on the right of the image. This acts as a…

GREAT INTAKE is a comparatively small hill between Ambleside and Coniston, in the Lake District. It is probably best described as a subsidiary of Wetherlam, the most northerly of the Coniston Fells as it drops down towards Little Langdale. Access is fairly easy by car as far as Tilberthwaite. After that, it's a green lane that runs to Little Langdale. This is suitable only for properly adapted 4x4 vehicles, and there are various rules governing full vehicular access. There is ample parking short of Tilberthwaite Cottages. You will then be faced with a gentle walk of less than a mile to get to the recommended viewpoint. Walk towards Tilberthwaite Farm and then take the left fork at the farmyard. Follow this track for about 700m before taking the left fork…

External pockets As with most other bags, there are mesh pouches on either side for a water bottle, while a rear pocket is ideal for flat items or documents. Rain cover A pouched waterproof cover should keep your kit dry in a downpour. Tablet pocket A rear pouch is designed to hold a 10in tablet. However, I found it a perfect fit for my 12in MacBook, which is handy, as few bags fit this model so neatly. • £99 • www.tenba.com At a glance • Designed for a mirrorless camera with two or three lenses, plus a tablet • Choice of graphite, olive, cobalt and dark copper colours IT'S NOT every day that I find myself Googling ‘Military Grade Velcro', but the Tenba DNA 10 required just that. This small…

IT'S UNARGUABLE that the E-M1 Mark II is the best camera Olympus has ever made; indeed, it gives the impression of being the best camera the firm could possibly make given current technology. Impeccably built, with a control layout that makes it a pleasure to use, its continuous shooting and autofocus abilities are extraordinary, and its image stabilisation so effective that at times it feels more akin to witchcraft than mere technology. This also makes it a great choice for handheld video shooting, with superb Cinema 4K output. My biggest criticism, as usual, is with Olympus's incomprehensible menus, but mercifully you don't need to use them much. The problem facing Olympus, however, is whether this all gives a sufficiently coherent narrative for photographers to swallow the £1,849 body-only price. While…

Definition of definition Q After a long break, I have recently returned to photography and have a two-part question. First, when using image-editing software and I move a slider for, say, Color Contrast to the left or to the right, what exactly is the program doing to the file? Also, what are the trade-offs? In the simple Apple Photos app, for example, there is an adjustment for ‘definition'. How exactly does it increase this and what do they mean by ‘definition'? Why wouldn't I always turn it up? Frank H Wu A In digital imaging, everything is mathematically manipulated, pixel by pixel. We can visualise this through exposure histograms, tone curves, and so on, and use these visualisations as frameworks for adjusting tonal characteristics. Essentially, over many years, imaging experts…

‘A single fluorite element weighs less than the equivalent glass one’ The latest Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens is one of several new Nikon lenses containing a fluorite element. The company follows Canon's use of the mineral for optical use since the1970s. Canon's use sprang from its invention of a technique for growing perfect synthetic fluorite crystals in the1960s. Presumably, Nikon's recent fondness for the material is based on having secured a supply of optical-quality fluorite to produce the size and quantity of lens elements for its top-end optics. Nikon's publicity material is emphasising the potential of fluorite to make the large top-end lenses lighter than they would be otherwise. This may be a reason why the fluorite element in this lens is a large element towards the front of the…

First Scottish Portrait Awards underway The Scottish Portrait Awards is accepting entries until 31 May and is open to anyone aged 17 and above who lives, studies or was born in Scotland. The results will feature in a month-long exhibition and the winner will take away £2,000 in prize money. More info at www.scottishportraitawards.org. DJI debuts Osmo Mobile Silver at CES 2017 The prolific drone producer continues to introduce new products, showing off a new Osmo device for turning smartphones into smart motion cameras. By combining the selfie stick-esque Osmo and its DJI GO app, DJI claims users will be able to automatically track their subject, stabilise videos, capture timelapses and stream live easily. The Osmo Mobile Silver costs £319. Visit www.dji.com. Free update for DxO One DxO has announced…

This year sees one of the North of England's leading photography galleries, Liverpool's Open Eye Gallery, celebrating its 40th birthday with a host of new exhibitions focusing on its deep connection to its location – including the visual identity of the North, Liverpool's position as a site for global exchange, and the history and future of the region's people and communities. Open until 19 March, the first exhibition is titled ‘North: Identity, Photography and Fashion', in partnership with Adidas. The exhibition considers why the region has proved a steadfast inspiration to designers, artists and image-makers alike. First opened in 1977, the not-for-profit gallery champions itself on its commitment to promoting the enjoyment and understanding of photography as an art form. In 2011 the gallery migrated to a new, purpose-built location…

Scenario. You are at a celebration, you take several photos on your camera or phone, and they languish there for months. You show them to a few friends, who say, ‘Wow – nice picture of (insert subject).' I bet most people who have only a limited interest in photography will never print these images. Instead, the snaps will be almost forgotten, lying on old technology and lost forever. In the old days, we dropped off our film and a few days later picked up a packet of prints – hard copies that could last centuries. I have photos of my grandmother that were taken in 1906, and I still enjoy them. I am a digital convert by the way, but I try to print most of my images. When will…

Kowa 883 scope, 25-60 W/A zoom eyepiece, Panasonic GX8 with Kowa PA7 photo adapter, or Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens with Kowa DA10 adapter (or DIGIDAPTER), Manfrotto or Benro tripod with video head. Opticron MM3 50mm ED scope, zoom eyepiece 40936 SDL, with PhoneSkope or Opticron phone adapter, Manfrotto or Benro tripod with video head. Vortex Razor HD 85mm scope, 27-60 zoom eyepiece, Panasonic LX100 camera, Novagrade adapter, Manfrotto or Benro tripod with video head. Other models to consider include Zeiss Victory DiaScope 85mm with zoom eyepiece, Swarovski ATX 85/95mm with w/a zoom eyepiece, Leica APO Televid 82mm with zoom eyepiece.…

How to lighten an image CUBA has long been a favourite location for photographers and access has become easier for US citizens recently. For visitors, one of the most charming aspects of the country's life are the pre-1959 cars that have been skilfully maintained all these years. They'll probably begin to disappear over the coming years as Cuba relaxes its rules on new car imports, so if you want to photograph them, get over there while you can. This photograph by Howard Mason captures Cuban street life, with a close-up view of a glorious old Pontiac. 1 Lighten the Exposure For the first step I lightened the photograph by setting the Exposure slider to +1.10. I then applied a +100 Shadows adjustment to lighten the shadows, and set Clarity to…

Boots I strongly recommend a good pair of walking boots for exploring the Lakes. They will provide support and grip, and keep your feet warm and dry. I use Scarpa boots because they suit my feet perfectly and in any case, I am a fan of leather boots. Tripod Early morning shooting means lower shutter speeds. A tripod is a necessity. When walking, I take a lightweight model that won’t tire me out over longer distances. OS map You may only be enjoying a short walk along a clearly defined path, but I would always recommend taking the OS map for the area. It might be that you will want to explore a bit farther afield. Don’t be without a map when walking in this area.…

PC Sync A screw cover on the front conceals a PC sync connector for using studio flash. Battery The new BLH-1 battery promises 440 shots per charge, and should charge from empty in two hours. Flash hotshoe With no built-in flash, the E-M1 II relies on hotshoe-mounted units, with the tiny bounce and swivel FL-LM3 unit supplied in the box. Remote release Olympus’s usual USB connector has disappeared and the E-M1 II now sports a 2.5mm socket that works with Canon and Pentax-compatible electronic releases. Connectors On the side are USB C, Micro HDMI, microphone and headphone sockets. The latter in particular hinders free movement of the screen. Tripod socket This is placed in line with the lens axis but well towards the front of the body, to make space…

1 Nikon D800E I found the Nikon D800E to be a significant upgrade from the D100, D200 and D700 that I previously owned. It’s a full-frame, 36.3-million-pixel camera that’s highly reliable, and captures high-quality images. The dials and functions are also easy to access. 2 Really Right Stuff L bracket This bracket makes the transition from horizontal to vertical camera positioning seamless. It’s easy to attach to the Really Right Stuff release plate, and the construction is rugged. 3 B+W 10-stop ND filter I frequently use this B+W filter for creative effects while capturing images of waterfalls, ocean waves, and so on. I also use it to ‘remove’ people and vehicles while capturing urban architectural images. B+W filters are well constructed and reliable. 4 Nikon 24-120mm f/4 lens This Nikon…