Innholdsfortegnelse for 07-Oct-2017 i Amateur Photographer

US-based photographer Sanwal Deen, originally from Pakistan, is working on a series of images depicting careers around the world by shooting workspaces from above. To date, Deen has photographed 12 people, but his eventual aim is to shoot 100. He uses a Hasselblad X1D with a 45mm lens and says, ‘Typically it is shot with the camera attached to a boom tripod. The tripod is old and bulky, so I need to add counterweights on one end so it doesn't topple. I place two speedlights on either side of the workspace. The entire set-up process typically takes 15-45 minutes, depending on how big or small the space is, and how busy it is.' To see other interesting images from the series, visit sanwaldeen.com Words & numbers “In photography there is…

RARE examples of early Victorian photography will be the subject of a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery next spring. Rarely seen in public because of their fragility, exhibits will include portraits of Alice Liddell – the inspiration behind Alice in Wonderland – taken by the author, Lewis Carroll. Also on display at Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography will be images by Swedish photographer Oscar Rejlander. One of the early founders of art photography, Rejlander has been referred to as the Father of Photoshop'. One of his most well-known images, called ‘Two Ways of Life', is made up of 30 different negatives. Controversially, for the time of its creation, the photograph depicts some nudity and was eventually bought by Queen Victoria as a birthday gift for her…

Use bracketing for complex scenes This simple technique can be extremely useful when the light is challenging. As well as your standard shot, you can use bracketing to take two (or more) additional shots – one which is deliberately underexposed and one which deliberately overexposed. The amount of under or overexposure can be determined in increments, usually 1/3 of a stop. When you get home, you'll be able to choose the best photo from your three shots, or, if you prefer, blend the three photos together to create something which displays a high dynamic range. It's relatively easy to achieve this in Photoshop, and can be a good way to get landscape exposures right. Blinking shadows/ highlights When highlights become ‘blown out', it means the pixels are 100% white and…

Protection With glass filters being fragile items you’ll need a filter pouch or case, preferably with enough room to fit your holder. Filter slots Good filter holders come with more than one slot, allowing you to stack filters together. Three slots is the average for most holders. Keep it clean Dust and dirt can easily build up in the slots of a filter holder. Keep it clean and your filters will slide/fit into the holder effortlessly every time. Formatt-Hitech Firecrest 100mm Holder Kit • £129 • www.formatt-hitech.com Formatt-Hitech is a UK-based filter manufacturer offering a number of products for photographers. The Firecrest 100mm Holder Kit is pretty much everything you need in a filter holder. All you need to get shooting is an ND grad or an ND filter, so…

Colour-cast corrections Q I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1000 camera that I use for macro photography. At this time of the year my subjects are small fungi, usually found in woods and usually in badly lit or even dark places. This presents a problem. I find that on-board flash is too fierce and burns the image out, so I bought an LED torch. This does the job of illuminating the subject beautifully, but it casts a blue tint over everything. I am not a very technically minded person, and would like to know if there is a camera setting that would overcome this problem. I think it is possible to reduce the in-built flash power for macro, but I don't know how to achieve this. Is there some kind of…

A NEW version of the classic OneStep camera has been revealed by the new Polaroid Originals company. Forty years after the original Polaroid OneStep camera was announced in 1977, the OneStep 2, a follow-up described by its makers as an ‘instant camera for the modern era', has been launched. It features a raft of new, modern technology, and a clean, contemporary design. The original OneStep was designed to suit a mass audience and became one of the company's most popular and biggest selling models. The OneStep 2 is the first camera to be produced since Impossible Project acquired rights to use the Polaroid name. All of its products, including film, have now been rebranded as Polaroid Originals. Like the original OneStep, the OneStep 2 features a fixed focal length and…

No Sony delight I sent a 150-500mm Sigma HSM DG OS lens (Sony Alpha-fit) for valuation and they told me £320. However, I discovered on the quote that it said Canon-fit. I rang them and corrected this and for my honesty, they reduced the price to £290. Why? Are all Sony owners to be treated like second-class citizens? Des Boddington This isn't really about being first or second class; it's about the laws of supply and demand, which determine the price of virtually everything we buy. The higher the demand, relative to the supply, the higher the price will be. Demand for this lens in the Canon mount must be greater than for the Sony mount but it's a pity your honesty backfired! – Nigel Atherton, editor Rotolight riddle If…

Getting the right exposure is fundamental to photography and refers roughly to the amount of light reaching your camera’s sensor. You can have the best composition in the world, but if the exposure is even slightly off, it can ruin an otherwise fantastic image. Getting the correct exposure can be elusive for many different reasons – even the most sophisticated cameras on the market can be fooled. In this guide we’ll take a look at some of the most common exposure problems, with advice on how to overcome these issues to achieve the best results. We’ll be covering techniques for fixing exposure in-camera, as well as accessories you can use to help you get it right. We’ll also look at post-production techniques, which can help rescue shots that might have…

Land lovers With six rounds of APOY now under our belt it's time to turn our attention to capturing landscapes. In Round Seven, Land lovers, we are looking for landscapes that show Mother Nature at her finest, from dramatic waterfalls to a single shaft of light falling on a forest floor – pretty much anything goes. Whether you like to record flowing water as a milky blur, or carefully calculate the hyperfocal distance so everything is pin-sharp from front to back, all techniques and styles are welcome. Your pictures could be of a UK destination or further afield, the important thing is to think about what attracts you to a scene – the light, the shapes, the texture of grass, rocks etc – and communicate this in your pictures. Where…

On paper, this sounds like an ideal camera for the Instagram generation, kicking out cute, square-format prints while also enabling you to save the unedited JPEG images (1920 x 1920 pixels) to a micro SD card. In use, you soon realise the SQ10 is rather compromised as an everyday digital camera, and at more than £200 plus printing costs, is likely to face stiff competition from higher-res smartphone cameras and instant-printing booths. Once you accept the SQ10 for what it is, however, there is still a lot to like. Features Offering a hybrid digital/Polaroid-type camera is a logical step for Fujifilm. Its older Mini and Wide Instaxes proved popular, not only among the younger crowd, but also with travellers – history buffs may have seen historian Dr Sam Willis using…

World’s first multi-format Instax camera An add-on back will enable the Lomo’Instant Square camera, whose development was funded by Kickstarter finance, to shoot Instax Mini film, says Lomography. The back, which holds 10 shots of colour film, will be available for $15, on top of the camera’s $149 pre-order price, but will eventually be sold separately. Affinity Photo app updated for iOS 11 Affinity Photo, the popular editing app for iPad, has been updated to make the most of Apple’s new mobile operating system, iOS 11. Users can now drag and drop an image, or multiple images, to begin editing. The updated app makes Affinity more like editing on a desktop. Techart Canon-to-Fuji GFX adapter launched The world’s first autofocus adapter for using Canon EF lenses on the medium-format Fujifilm…

Mariposas Nocturnas: Moths of Central and South America by Emmet Gowin, Princeton, £41.95, 144 pages, hardback, 978-0-69117-689-5 HAVING been told that if he wanted to continue working at the Smithsonian he ought to find a project to pursue, Emmet Gowin rose to the challenge and spent the best part of 15 years photographing more than 1,000 species of nocturnal moths in Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, French Guiana and Panama. The results of this herculean task have been arranged in grids comprising 25 pictures, many of them representing a particular region and a relatively short window of time. Emmet did his best to photograph each of the moths alive, which is why the first five grids took him five years to complete. Each insect is captured in a natural position and posture,…

Shooting a backlit subject Your camera can be easily fooled when shooting a subject in front of bright light – whether artificial or the sun. The camera will take an average reading across the frame that can result in an underexposed main subject, and an overexposed background. One solution is to move closer to your subject so it fills the frame – your camera should meter off the subject alone, and not be thrown out by any strong back light. This works well with outdoor portraits, leaving you with a subtle rim light. If you want to keep the background in shot, try using fill-in flash to balance the shadows. This only works if you're in close-range to the subject – again, this can be very good for portraits but…

When summer turns to autumn, the shorter days cause leaves to turn rich shades of orange, yellow, brown and red. This natural spectacle presents photographers with plenty of opportunities for shooting close-up abstracts, grander vistas and pretty much everything in between. At this time of year gusty days and nights can strip the trees bare in a matter of hours, so don’t waste time waiting for precisely the ‘right’ conditions – just get out there and adapt your plans accordingly. 1 Use a lightbox If you still have a lightbox lying around, put it to good use by arranging leaves or other translucent objects on it. Select specimens with well-defined shapes and good venation. You might like to press them under a book for a few hours beforehand to prevent…

Not so long ago, when we talked about Sony's Alpha 7 full-frame mirrorless system, we had to start with the same caveat – the cameras were innovative and impressive, but the lens system lacked the depth to take best advantage. Now, though, four years after the launch of the Alpha 7, the situation has changed. Sony has most of the basics covered, with a full set of both f/4 and f/2.8 zooms, alongside a series of stellar f/1.4 primes backed up by more affordable, smaller aperture primes. Now, the company is looking to extend its FE lens line-up with some more extreme specialist optics. This accounts for the appearance of the Sony FE 12-24mm f/4 G. Launched in May alongside the faster FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM, this £1,700 lens expands…

Cameras Interchangeable-lens cameras come in two types: DSLRs with optical viewfinders, and mirrorless models with electronic viewing Handgrip DSLRs traditionally have relatively large handgrips, while many mirrorless models have much smaller grips to keep size down. However, some can accept accessory grips to improve handling with larger lenses. Lens mount Each camera brand uses its own lens mount, and mirrorless cameras use different lenses to DSLRs even from the same brand. However, mirrorless models can often use DSLR lenses via a mount adapter. 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…