Innholdsfortegnelse for 21-Oct-2017 i Amateur Photographer

We photographers tend to lead busy creative lives, and it’s easy to forget important dates. Did you realise time is running out to get shots of the Milky Way in landscapes, for example? It’s not possible once winter starts, which is why we got Andrew Fusek Peters, whose starry landscapes regularly appear in the national press, to write a hands-on guide for this issue. His feature also covers star trails, which can be taken any time of year (clear winter nights are particularly suitable). Talking of stars, Michael Topham is raving about the new Nikon D850 in his definitive review on page 38 – praise indeed from our notoriously fastidious testing team. It’s great news for the photographic industry that such a stonking SLR has been released this year, and…

ADOBE has announced the latest version of its entry-level photo-editing software. Photoshop Elements 2018 sees the company moving away from using version numbers – the previous iteration was called Elements 15. Instead, versions will be based on the year of its release. The software is generally geared towards those who need to perform basic edits, and unlike Adobe's flagship software, it's not necessary to pay a monthly subscription to use it. New features of the software include an Automatic Selection feature, which helps you to cut subjects away from a background with ease. The second feature, which may be particularly appealing to family photographers, is the ability to replace closed eyes in group shots. It does this by using another photo of the subject to blend them into your group…

Try star trails Once you have started to develop your night photography, take it one step further by trying to capture star trails. This is a great way of showing the movement of the stars over an hour or more in one single epic photo. Location, location, location It's all about location. You need a spot with minimal light pollution and an interesting foreground. This could be industrial, abandoned, natural. Think water, mountain, rock formation, radar station. Clear skies An ideal night is perfectly clear skies with no wind. If you want the stars to rotate around Polaris, you'll need to be facing north. To check the rotation, shoot one long exposure of 10 minutes to check star motion. Camera setup Buy a cheap interval timer, unless your camera has…

THE GREAT news for the Nikon faithful who've held out for the D850 is that it doesn't disappoint in the slightest and delivers impressive features by the truckload. Professionals, semi-professionals and serious enthusiasts who settle for it will be thunderstruck by the performance of the new high resolution sensor, particularly its low-light capabilities at high ISO. Nikon is well aware that a professional DSLR needs more than a high resolution and excellent noise response to satisfy photographers in their droves, and by successfully marrying high resolution with high speed they've made the D850 one of the most versatile DSLRs around. For anyone who carries a D810 for high-resolution shooting and a D500 for fast action work, for example, the D850 is capable of replacing both in a single body. It's…

GOOGLE has introduced its ‘Clips' camera, a camera that it describes as hands-free, for capturing life's spontaneous moments. According to the company, Google Clips has been designed to look for good moments to capture, as soon as you switch it on. It can also learn faces, so it knows who you like to photograph the most. Clips from the camera are sent across to your smartphone (Android or iOS devices are compatible) wirelessly and quickly, from where you can save or delete clips, or choose an individual frame to save as a high-resolution photo. Anybody using Google Photos can back up unlimited clips for free. As well as capturing clips automatically, there is also a shutter button on Google Clips, meaning it can be used as a conventional camera as…

LANDSCAPE pro Charlie Waite is well regarded by his peers, so much so that veteran Magnum Photos shooter David Hurn and wildlife pioneer Stephen Dalton recently arranged a print swap with him. ‘This is the first time I have done a print swap,' Charlie told AP. ‘It came about as I felt that we photographers never tend to acquire or collect other photographers' work but we expect the public to do so. I have a huge admiration for wildlife photographers in particular – I admire Stephen Dalton for doing what I damned well can't do! ‘It is interesting to see which images David and Stephen chose. I'd like to do more swaps; particularly with a ballet photographer I admire called Anthony Crickmay. I also believe all photographers should print more…

Macro muddle I recently purchased a new 105mm Sigma macro lens following a recent review in a photographic magazine which rated this one as the best of the bunch. Having tested it, I was rather disappointed with the results as it was only acceptably sharp from f/8 downwards so I returned it to the manufacturer. It was returned promptly, with Sigma having replaced three items in the lens. The results are excellent, just as I expected. This was not a cheap lens, which makes me wonder how lens manufacturers test their lenses. They obviously only batch test; otherwise this one would never have got through the system. I accept that there should be small marginal differences with so-called kit lenses but even those should not be substandard. I find that…

Andrew Fusek Peters Andrew Fusek Peters is a conservation photographer and nature writer. He is currently on commission for the National Trust and Natural England on Shropshire’s uplands. His books include Wilderland, Upland and the National Trust guidebook for the Long Mynd. www.andrewfusekpeters.com It’s an exciting challenge to take on a dark, star-filled night as a photographer. Whether it’s chasing the elusive Milky Way or showing the motion of the stars over a period of time to create star trails, you need to think carefully about choosing the right location, the right time of year and night, the right weather, the right settings and finally the right post-processing to bring the heavens into frame. Read on to discover some of my tips and tricks for producing sparkling results. Timing Shooting…

1 A full-frame camera that can cope with high ISOs is recommended for this type of work. Often you are dealing with a fair amount of dynamic range. 2 Raw all the way! Shooting in raw gives you so much more control over processing your final file, to recover shadow detail and dial down bright starry highlights if needed. 3 Use the 500 rule to avoid trailing stars. This is 500 divided by the 35mm equivalent focal length. So, 500/14 for the Samyang equals 35 seconds. In practice, I try to shoot shorter – around 25 seconds. 4 Shoot in manual or bulb mode. If using a 14mm f/2.8, start with ISO 3200, 25 seconds, f/2.8 and alter ISO to suit. 5 Use live view as it causes less vibration…

Stephen Flounders, Hartlepool As can happen to the best of us, one day Stephen realised he was trapped on the corporate treadmill of everyday life, and realised he needed a hobby to keep himself sane. As he works in London, he found he was ideally situated to try his hand at street photography. Stephen has always been an avid people watcher and finds the daily comings and goings of people a fascinating subject to photograph. He would eventually like to experiment more with night and urban photography, and he would also like to build up the courage to approach people to take their portraits. See www.stephen jonathan.photography. 1 Switch House, Tate Modern A clean and minimal look for a familiar subject. Spiral staircases are a popular subject but here Stephen…

Our cameras and lenses are tested using the industry-standard Image Engineering IQ-Analyser software. Visit www.image-engineering.de for more details The increase to 45.7 million pixels sees the D850 yield a slightly higher resolution than the Sony Alpha 7R II, but it isn't quite as high as the 50.6-million-pixel resolution offered by Canon's EOS 5DS and EOS 5DS R twins. With its lack of optical low-pass filter, the D850 sensor produces a jaw-dropping level of detail, with great scope for cropping and maintaining high resolution when required. Despite the sensor being densely packed with pixels, it offers wide dynamic-range leverage, allowing users to return a high level of shadow detail to raw files with minimal noise. Resolution The D850 resolves such fine detail, it was necessary to shoot our resolution chart from…

Resolution Our Image Engineering MTF tests tell a story of a lens whose performance reflects its price. It’s actually pretty sharp in the centre at 10mm, but the corners don’t come close, even when stopped down considerably. The best overall performance comes towards the middle of the zoom range, with pretty decent cross-frame sharpness at 16mm and f/8. Zoom to 20mm and the corners deteriorate again, with the sharpest results at f/11. Shading It’s no surprise to see corner shading at 10mm, but it reduces considerably at f/5.6, and is pretty much invisible by f/8. The effect also diminishes at longer focal lengths, with only a little falloff visible wide open at 16mm that again becomes insignificant by f/8. At 20mm, there’s nothing to worry about at all. Curvilinear distortion…

Starry starry night? Q I recently took some night/ blue-hour photos of the Opera House in Oslo. This was my first serious attempt at getting such shots. I have an entry-level Nikon D3200, with a Tamron 18-200mm VR lens. I used a tripod, set the ISO to 100, and used f/11 to f/22, with exposure from 10-20secs and with the VR turned off. I was initially very pleased with the results as they are in focus, sharp and nice ‘star bursts' from the lighting. However, when viewed in Lightroom at 100% the sky seems to be filled with tiny bright white stars even though it was cloudy! I can fiddle about in Lightroom with noise reduction and sharpening, but is that the only way? What is causing this phenomenon? Could…

‘The Nikon Pronea S wouldn’t even make a particularly effective paperweight, given its lightweight plastic construction’ As I work my way through my collection of old ‘analogue' cameras, I'm fairly confident that those that use 35mm film, and probably the120 rollfilm models, will be usable for at least another couple of decades. The same can't be said for the Advanced Photo System (APS) cameras that I've acquired. This short-lived format, introduced in1996, and discontinued in 2011, is heading inexorably towards extinction. Unlike some obsolete formats, there really is no workable way to reload an APS cartridge with its 24mm film bearing the requisite two perforations per frame. Until I spotted it on a shelf in a local charity shop, I wasn't aware of the Nikon Pronea S camera. I assumed…

THE LONGEST running photography exhibition in the world has announced its latest set of winners. The photographers chosen for the 160th edition of the International Photography Exhibition (IPE 160) all submitted images from a series. Four different medals are awarded – Gold, Under 30s Gold, Silver and Bronze. Glasgow-based photographer Margaret Mitchell took home the Gold Award for her series of photographs entitled ‘In This Place'. The four award winners were selected from thousands of entries around the world and will form part of a touring exhibition of 100 selected images (including Harry Borden's portrait of Peter Capaldi, above).…

1001 Photographs to See Before You Die Paul Lowe, £20, Cassell, 960 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-1844039173 ON THE face of it, trying to distil the world's entire photographic canon into 1,001 essential images is a herculean and thankless task, but curator Paul Lowe has done a pretty good job here. All the usual suspects are represented in his nicely designed tome, from Fox Talbot to Nan Goldin and beyond. Not all the entries will be to everyone's taste. For instance, I'm surprised that Lowe chose a grab shot of Frank Sinatra over Terry O'Neill's far superior image of Sinatra and his body double walking past some gobsmacked holiday makers in 1966. Furthermore, the choice of photographers veers towards the documentary/reportage/art genres, which may disappoint nature and landscape fans. There is…

Looking forward... Recently I have been wondering where we will all be in 10 years. Will people still be buying SLRs or mirrorless cameras or will phones and phone snaps just take over photography? Or does AP think there will be continue to be a small group of die-hard hobbyists who carry on using ‘conventional' cameras, including classic film cameras – a bit like people who continue to enjoy classic cars and motorbikes... Will photography using conventional cameras become a niche hobby for nostalgics and eccentrics? I also wonder if anyone will still be buying photography magazines in 10 years' time and we will have to go online for everything, fighting our way past all those annoying ‘pop up' ads and videos. And then there is YouTube – will video…

Tripod A strong, lightweight tripod is essential for the long exposures needed to capture stars, as well as a geared head for precise adjustments to frame both foreground and sky. I use the Manfrotto 055 Carbon Fibre with the Xpro Geared Head. Fast wideangle lens The superb new Sigma 14mm f/1.8 has completely changed my shooting, enabling me to go wide open with a lower ISO. The Samyang 14mm f/2.8 is a fantastic budget lens which is surprisingly sharp. Sky Guide and any weather app The right weather is crucial to a good night shoot. Checking weather updates right up until heading out is essential. A clear night with no moon is best for the Milky Way and stars. Sky Guide has a superb overlay to check out where the…

Oscar Dewhurst Oscar is an award-winning wildlife photographer. He has spent the past few years dedicating countless hours to photographing many species of wildlife, from bitterns to urban foxes and primates in the Peruvian Amazon. To see more of his work, visit www.oscardewhurst.com OCTOBER is a great time to photograph red deer as it is rutting season, when males (stags) compete to mate with the females (hinds). Sporting huge sets of antlers, the stags look nothing short of spectacular, and images of them bellowing and fighting can look fantastic, particularly in the right light. This, combined with their tolerance towards people when in deer parks, makes them an ideal subject for this time of year. It's also worth noting that locations frequented by deer may also harbour ticks, some of…

At a glance Vertical-style shoulder bag Converts to a backpack or tote bag Takes a camera and up to four lenses Pocket for 13in laptop Tablet and laptop pockets Separate padded inside pockets will take a 13in laptop and a 10in tablet. Removable camera holder The tall, thin padded insert has a see-through mesh zipped top cover. Tripod holder The holder pulls out from a zipped pocket at the bottom and can be tucked away when not required. Rain cover This cover fits over the bag to protect the top zip closure in really wet conditions. Most camera shoulder bags follow broadly the same messenger-style template, with little to distinguish one from the other. So when I saw this very different design from Manfrotto, I couldn't resist trying it out.…

‘The poses of the people are random but they are united by the cathedral’ In the late 1990s, Johnny Mobasher established www.streetphotography.co.uk. More than a decade later, he managed to acquire www.streetphotography.com. Having bought these two sites, you can gather that he has more than a passing interest in street photography. But what is ‘street photography’? I’m not sure. I write for Johnny’s streetphotography.com site, and he and I don’t always see eye to eye over a definition. Then again, it is very hard to find two photographers who do. However, this picture is the epitome of the kind of street photography in which the composition exists only for a split second. You shoot fast, hope to get it right and don’t show people the results if you don’t manage…