Innholdsfortegnelse for 04-Mar-2017 i Amateur Photographer

Pets, like children, are always on the go and it can be tricky to get them to sit still for photos. Despite what many people think, you don’t need to splash out on expensive fast glass for great results. For instance, the image (right) was taken with a standard zoom kit lens with an aperture of f/5.6. The key to successful portraits is to make your subject stand out. A shallow depth of field isolates your subject from its surroundings, but this doesn’t mean just dialling in the maximum aperture available and firing the shutter. There are other things to consider, such as your position and focal length, and where your subject is in relation to the background. You also need to ensure you capture a pin-sharp shot, which is…

Street View The ever-present backdrop to our daily lives, the street has been a consistent feature in photography throughout the 20th century. Street View brings together work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Langdon Clay, Roger Mayne and more to explore how photographers have captured street life on camera. Until 11 March, www.museums-sheffield.org.uk Geoff Wedge Geoff Wedge began shooting the Welsh town of Colwyn Bay in 2006 while studying documentary photography at the University of Wales. This is the culmination of his project, a vast portrait of a town that has undergone ample change. Until 17 March, orielcolwyn. org/house-in-the-sun Filters workshop This day-long workshop, led by professional landscape photographer Jeremy Walker will start with theory and then go out into the field for practical tuition and image…

Find a shooting location where you have traffic, boats, fairground rides, trains or anything else that moves that has bright lights on it. Shoot at night when it is dark in shutter priority mode on the camera. Experiment with around 4-20 seconds. Either make sure that the camera is on a steady tripod and that it does not move during capture or move the camera completely. The resulting time-lapse will show blur, but in this case the blur is deliberate and adds more visual movement to the video. This will increase your overall shooting time, but the results are well worth it.…

THE primeval chorus of lusty frogs croaking from a pond is a spring call to all wildlife photographers. Frogs and toads have hibernated during the cold of winter and now, as the air warms, have returned to their breeding ponds. Frogs can be found in a wide range of ponds, from urban gardens and parks to farm and moorland pools. Toads are far fussier and stick to larger, more traditionally used ponds. Both species return to water to lay their spawn – frogs in the familiar jelly-like clumps, toads in long strings. Activity can become intense and competition between highly charged males can quickly run riot as they grapple with each other and try to grab a female. Mating balls of up to 10 males all fighting to muscle in…

Cameras Interchangeable-lens cameras come in two types: DSLRs with optical viewfinders, and mirrorless models with electronic viewing Controls Entry-level cameras tend to have simple, easy-to-understand controls, while more expensive models add lots of buttons and dials to give quick access to settings. Viewfinder The biggest difference between DSLRs and mirrorless cameras is that the latter use electronic, rather than optical viewfinders. They’re more power hungry, but can display more information and show exactly how your pictures will turn out. Size and weight Mirrorless models tend to be smaller and lighter than DSLRs, and not just the cameras themselves, but their lens systems, too. However there’s still a wider choice of lenses available for DSLRs. Handgrip DSLRs traditionally have relatively large handgrips, while many mirrorless models have much smaller grips to…

This image was uploaded to our Twitter stream by Steve Palmer and goes to show that not every winter scene has to consist of chilly tones and snowy hills. This is a great example of the light winter has to offer. The early-morning sun spills through the scene and diffuses in the mist to form an ethereal golden glow. ‘An early morning rewarded me with a beautiful misty scene of my local lake,' says Steve. ‘When the ducks came into view I couldn't resist taking some shots as they glided past me.' It's a shot that shows us that winter conditions are as diverse as any season. It's worth getting out early to see what you can find. Win! Each week we choose our favourite picture on Facebook, Instagram, Flickr,…

Not only is the UK a beautiful canvas of incredible landscapes and locations, it is also a hotbed of incredibly diverse wildlife, both big and small. For evidence of this, look no further than the British Wildlife Photography Awards. The 2017 competition is now open – with 15 categories including animal behaviour, urban wildlife, animal portraits and a special award for wildlife in HD Video. Two junior categories (for those aged under 12 and 12-18) are to encourage young people to connect with nature through photography. The overall winner will receive a cash prize of £5,000. This image of a sparrowhawk catching its prey by Michael Durham was highly commended in the Animal Behaviour category of last year's competition. Visit www.bwpawards.org. Words & numbers 33% The number of photography-based…

Terra Nostra by Mimi Mollica, Dewi Lewis, £35,128 pages, hardback, ISBN: 978-1-911306-11-5 THE Italian Mafia is an organisation that has entered into our cultural lexicon thanks in no small part to the relentless mythologising of Hollywood and television. When we think of the Mafia, we think of The Godfather and The Sopranos. However, to live side-by-side with the reality of organised crime, is anything but glamorous. Sicilian-born photographer Mimi Mollica uses this challenging and confrontational book to explore the effects of the Mafia on his homeland. What he finds is a system of grim fear and corruption, one that hides in plain sight. The stark black & white images, rather than offering us a safe haven of distance, draw us in to the world of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. It's…

With most DSLRs we are able to focus quickly and effectively in two ways. One is to look through the viewfinder to focus and the other is to use the camera in live view, using the back screen. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Remember, pre-focusing is where you focus before you shoot. Once you have focused, turn the focusing off while the camera is capturing the time-lapse video. The best way to do this is by using back-button focus on your DSLR. Viewfinder focusing Focusing through the viewfinder is not always practical. After a whole day of bending down to look through the camera's viewfinder your back will start to hurt, which makes this way of focusing only usable if you are shooting handheld, or on a tripod with the…

Neil Leifer grew up in the projects area of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York, and his interest in photography was sparked at the age of 13 by joining a camera club in one of the ‘settlement houses’, which provided education for low-income families. His big break came through sheer enterprise when, on his 16th birthday in December 1958, he volunteered to wheel a disabled person onto the field at the Baltimore Colts v New York Giants sudden-death championship game, which gave him field access. Leifer managed to capture the ‘sudden death’ match-winning touchdown, by the Colts’ Alan Ameche, with his Yashica Mat camera and the image was picked up by a publisher – he has never looked back since… Now, aged 74, he’s on the phone from…

• www.cooph.com • £58 IF YOU'RE like me and have a dog-eared wallet that needs replacing, you might find yourself looking for a new one that caters for both your day-to-day and photography needs. Apparel manufacturer Cooperative of Photography (COOPH) thinks it has come up with the perfect answer by creating the Card Holder Original – a slimline wallet made from Italian vegetable-tanned leather designed to keep your SD media and credit cards safe and secure. Available in black or tan, the card holder offers a pair of pockets that you can slip your credit cards into, behind which you'll find a larger pocket in which to slip in a few bank notes. It's not the type of wallet that's good for loose change though, as there's no zipped compartment…

Weather sealed As one might expect for a camera that costs £5,600 (body only), the M10 is weather-sealed and built to survive the rigors of outdoor use. The body has no plastic doors or flaps, and both the SD card slot and battery are protected by a bottom plate that’s made of metal and is milled from a solid brass block. ISO dial The M10’s new ISO dial is located in the same position you’d find the rewind lever on analog models like the Leica M7. By raising it you can take manual control of ISO across a 100-6400 sensitivity range. Alternatively, by rotating it to its ‘M’ setting you can take control across the full ISO 100-50,000 range from the ISO setup menu. Built-in Wi-Fi The M10 is the…

Magnum comes to Shrewsbury The work of some of Magnum Photos’ top photographers can currently be seen in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. The free outdoor show, a first of its kind for a UK town, is inspired by the theme of Evolution and celebrates the town of Charles Darwin’s birth. It runs from 12 February until 23 April. Portable light options from Elinchrom Swiss lighting-product manufacturer Elinchrom has introduced a new high-end portable battery pack for flashes. The ELB 1200 is compatible with all existing Elinchrom flash heads and has a redesigned shape, a simplified interface and weighs just 4.3kg. Available from May. Visit www.elinchrom.com. New Epson printers Epson has introduced the new SureColor SC-P5000 17in, 10-colour printer, to replace the Stylus Pro 4900. The printer features high-capacity 200ml cartridges, the advanced…

SIGMA has bolstered its line-up by launching four new Art and Contemporary lenses at the 2017 CP+ photo trade show in Japan. First to debut was the 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art, billed as the world's first f/1.8 aperture wideangle lens and featuring a large-diameter aspherical element as previously seen in the older 12-24mm f/4 Art. With what Sigma claims is the biggest glass mould in the industry (80mm), the 14mm f/1.8 is designed to minimise distortion, ghosting or flare effects, and comes with an updated autofocus system and minimum focus distance of 27cm. The 135mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art, meanwhile, enters the market as Sigma's new top-of-the-line mid-range telephoto prime. A new, faster hypersonic motor (HSM) should mean quicker AF, with the large f/1.8 aperture delivering pleasing bokeh and…

Time-lapse photography is a strong medium in its own right but time-lapse related functionality on your camera can be used to capture individual still photographs. If your subject, for example, is a train station and you want a good set of images to choose from, then rather than setting up the camera and taking one picture every so often manually, you could set the camera up to shoot full-resolution still photographs for time-lapse. This means you would not have to keep pressing the shutter release button on the camera. Sit back and let the camera do the work. If you are going to use a still from your time-lapse for a still photo, then make sure you are shooting at a higher resolution in order to serve poster prints and…

Vote film! I was excited to see the question this week was on the topic of film cameras; I own a number of film cameras (perhaps more than my wife really approves of) and would regard myself as being almost entirely film based. I do own a digital SLR, but it only sees occasional use, mainly when I'm trying out a new technique. Once I have this worked out, I translate it to film and put the digital away. I was a little disappointed to see that the only option for film users in the survey was ‘frequently', I suggest there should have been an ‘almost exclusively' or even ‘always' option. Wes Fraser, via email Sounds like you will be a happy bunny next week Wes, when our film special…

I set up the Scottish Landscape Photographer of the Year competition three years ago. I wanted it to be very much an ethical competition, where the aim was to plough everything back and really promote photographers, both through the book and by running multiple exhibitions across Scotland over the year. From this, the work of the winners would inspire others to seek out their own views, while raising awareness of conservation as well as promoting photo-tourism in Scotland. Scotland is immensely beautiful and incredibly diverse, so what we look for in a winning image is exactly the same. That could be an iconic view with a twist or a hidden gem off the beaten track. We especially want to see images of lesser known locations so they can serve as…

At a glance £5,550body only • 24-million-pixel full-frame CMOS sensor • ISO 100-50,000 • Leica Maestro-II processor • 5fps continuous shooting • 3in, 1.04k-dot fixed screen • Compatible with Leica Visoflex (Typ 020) EVF One of the many pressures on camera manufacturers today is the need to overload new models with all the latest technology to make them appeal to a mass-market audience. One camera that did just that was the Leica M (Typ 240). Successor to the iconic Leica M9, it aimed to update Leica's traditional and much-loved recipe with modern-day features such as live view, clip-on electronic viewfinder, USB interface and full HD video. Some of these features were genuinely useful, but if you asked any purist what they thought of the direction Leica was taking with its…

Andrew Ray Andrew is a landscape photographer based near Redruth in Cornwall. He leads a series of workshops to the area's most photogenic locations and has won various awards, as well as having been featured in a variety of publications and exhibitions. To find out more visit www.andrewrayphotography.com. 1998 Canon EOS 500N In the autumn of 1998 I enrolled on a City & Guilds Introduction to Photography course. This was after initially signing up for a nature conservation course, which was subsequently cancelled. Shortly afterwards, I bought the Canon EOS 500N 135mm SLR and it proved to be a very good choice. I passed the photography course with a distinction, and then continued to use the camera until switching to digital full time in 2008. 2000 Canon EOS 50E As…