Innholdsfortegnelse for 16-Jul-2016 i Amateur Photographer

My first SLR was a Zenith EM, which had a crude selenium light meter fixed to the front of the prism. Looking back through my early negatives I don’t think I ever achieved a correct exposure with that thing. Perhaps it was because I never really learned what I was supposed to point it at. Metering technology has improved immeasurably since then, but can still be fooled if it isn’t used properly. Of course there’s no such thing as ‘correct’ exposure’ really – only the exposure that produces the result that you want to achieve. Whether you meter for the shadows, highlights or somewhere in between is really a creative decision. To help you nail metering every time, some leading pros from diverse genres share their hard-won wisdom and tricks…

Calling the shots Aside from the fact that the I-1 Polaroid-format camera (below) is one of the coolest cameras coming into the market, it also has an added nostalgia value in that it looks like an old-fashioned dial-up rotary telephone with the receiving handle off the hook! Johnny, Birmingham Repair ratio I have created a new photographic term: repair factor. This new piece of data is based on the cost of maintaining your camera after its purchase and was created following a quotation to repair my daughter's 2.5-year-old Nikon Coolpix P520, which had ceased to function. You simply add the cost of the repair to the cost of the camera and express the result as a ratio of the original price. It makes interesting reading to compare this factor with…

This shot (right) was taken for About Town magazine and published as part of a fashion feature in January 1961. The model, Peter Anthony, one of the few male models of the period, was wearing a Jaeger suit. It was taken at Grove Road Power Station in St John's Wood, London. ‘This kind of image, where Donovan has photographed his model against the backdrop of industrial London, was typical of his work in the early '60s,' says Robin Muir. ‘It was very dramatic to show the model against the plume of steam. Other photographers have done similar things since, but this was the first time it had been done in a mainstream magazine. There was no regard for health and safety! You couldn't get away with it now.'…

Wacom Intuos Photo • £75 • www.wacom.com Michael Topham tries out Wacom’s smallest tablet with touch-control functionality Multi-touch The tablet supports one-, two- and three-finger gestures for quick and speedy touch operation, much like a smartphone or tablet. Pen holder The pen holder prevents you from losing the pen on the go. Three additional nibs are provided at the rear of the tablet. Installation The tablet takes less than 10 minutes to install using the installation CD and quick-start guide. At a glance • Suitable for right- or left-handed use • Compatible with PC and Mac • 152x95mm active area • 4 customisable express keys WITH an active working area of 152x95mm, the Intuos Photo is the smallest model in Wacom 's line-up of graphic tablets, and it's aimed at…

‘Exposure management is possibly the skill that photographers value most of all’ The topic of exposure is at the core of photographic theory, and exposure management is possibly the skill that photographers value most of all. But when it comes to managing exposure, I find myself differing from a lot of photographers, many of whom think the word ‘exposure' is synonymous with the brightness of the output image. From a point of view of photographic theory, this is wrong. Exposure refers to the density of luminous energy at the focal plane. ‘Luminous' refers to energy that we can see, rather than absolute energy. We specify ‘energy' rather than ‘power' because we are interested in the total gathered over the exposure time rather than an instantaneous value. Finally, we specify ‘density',…

The Jump by Sarah Borque Canon EOS 600D, 50mm, 1/1600 at f/4, ISO 400 Admittedly this image, taken by Sarah Borque and uploaded to our Facebook page, is a little at odds with our current UK season, but when faced with an image so full of life we found it difficult to ignore. Sarah took this image during one of her daily walks. ‘I was taking photos of my dog Walter jumping for snowballs when Rupert, my second dog, decided to run over and join in the fun,' she says. ‘It was perfect timing and really captured some dog joy.' As she says, it's a perfectly timed shot – the fact she has caught one dog's legs framing the second dog in the distance makes the image such a success.…

RARE IMAGES of the Battle of the Somme have been released to mark the 100th anniversary of the battle. The images are published in a new book called The Somme: A Visual History, by Anthony Richards, head of documents and sound at the Imperial War Museums (IWM). A spokesman for the IWM, which published the book, said: ‘Rarely seen photographs captured by the official war photographers at the front, vivid wartime posters and artworks showing the horrors and sheer scale of the battle are woven throughout the narrative of the book, illustrating it with the faces and images of the time.' The book also relays the first-hand experiences of those who took part in the battle, plucked from private diaries, personal letters and interviews. Taylor Downing, a historian, said: ‘This…

FUJI has revealed a lens roadmap and more details of its delayed EF-X500 flashgun, writes Chris Cheesman. Due out in September or October is a new weather-resistant lens, the 23mm f/2 R WR, which Fujifilm UK marketing manager Andreas Georghiades says draws from an ethos first established with the 35mm f/2 – adopting a smaller form factor ideally suited to rangefinder-style models (such as the X-Pro2). This will be followed, in 2017, with two more similarly styled primes: a 50mm f/2 R WR and 80mm f/2.8 R LM OIS WR Macro, with the latter offering a 11 macro ratio. The 80mm lens will replace the 120mm that Fuji had originally planned but decided to drop because the company believed it would not be of an acceptable size and weight. The…

Ross Hoddinott Ross is one of the UK’s leading outdoor photographers and has regularly been placed in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. He is well known as a workshop leader and contributor to photography and wildlife magazines. Ross is contracted to NaturePL and the RSPCA Photolibrary, and his clients include the National Trust. Visit www.rosshoddinott.co.uk 1 Do rely on multi-metering Do rely on your camera's multi-segment metering mode in the majority of shooting situations. Also known as Matrix metering (Nikon), Evaluative (Canon) and ESP (Olympus), this should be your default metering mode. It is your camera's most intelligent mode, so it's reasonable to assume that it will also be the most useful and reliable. Remember, your camera's through-the-lens (TTL) metering is most likely to be deceived when the…

Nik does the trick, so what’s the catch? Thanks for the article on Google Nik software [AP 14 May] which was informative but failed to mention the incredibly good instruction material available. There is a range of superb Nik videos covering every module, from Basics to Advanced, on YouTube. The information included in these sources wouldn't be wasted, even if there is no further development of the software. If you wanted to splash out on a book then Plug in with Nik by John Batdorff is highly recommended. I have been using Nik Collection for a few years now, and it still feels fresh after trying some of the alternatives. It works flawlessly as a plug-in with Aperture (sigh!), Lightroom and Photoshop. Quite why Google would want to give it…

From the glistening gold of the Jules Rimet trophy, to the iconic long-sleeved red away shirts, England’s World Cup final triumph has become etched in our cultural consciousness. Whether you are a football fan or not, the scenes are instantly recognisable, and when we conjure up images of the match, we see them in our mind’s eye in glorious colour. This is partly down to photographer Gerry Cranham – one of only two photographers to capture that legendary game using colour film. ‘I met this chap who worked for Walt Disney’s London office,’ Gerry says. ‘He was a journalist and at the weekend he made up his money covering sports events for the Sunday papers. He said to me, “Gerry, colour is the future. You should be shooting colour.”’ It…

TERENCE Donovan was born in Stepney, East London, in 1936. The son of a long-distance lorry driver, Donovan spent most of the Second World War travelling around England with his father. He began a part-time apprenticeship in lithography at the age of 11 and studied block making at the London School of Photo-Engraving and Lithography. At 15, he began working as a photographer's assistant at a printing company. After National Service, he worked at the studio of fashion photographer John French. Then, aged 22, he set up his own studio. He shot editorial images for magazines such as Man About Town and Vogue (from 1963 onwards). He also shot fashion and portraits for Nova, The Sunday Times Magazine and others. He concentrated on advertising photography from the early 1970s, and…

Wacom Wireless Accessory Kit £32 Supercharge your graphics tablet with this optional extra. It allows you to connect your Wacom pen tablet to your computer wirelessly and saves you having to plug it in via USB. Wacom Bamboo Duo £20 This stylus features a responsive carbon-fibre nib for smudge-free operation on mobile devices and has a refillable ballpoint pen the opposite end. It’s an ideal solution for switching between mobile devices and paper. Wacom Intuos Pro Small £168 The next step up from the Intuos Photo is the Intuos Pro. This tablet offers a slightly larger active area (157x98mm), double the number of pressure-sensitive levels and a greater number of express keys.…

Sheldon Dick (1906-1950) is one of the less well-known photographers of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), and if his boss Roy Stryker is to be believed, deservedly so. In a 1965 interview Stryker called Dick’s pictures ‘lousy’. Even so, there is a certain immediacy to this one. Dick came from a moneyed background. He offered his services to the FSA for $1 a year, funding his photography himself. But he worked for the FSA only in 1937 and 1938, because his pictures were not gritty enough for Stryker and they didn’t fit the FSA narrative. For example, Stryker wanted pictures of coal towns to show the spoil heaps and other strong visual clues, and Dick failed to deliver. You have to look quite hard at this picture to see any…

LEICA IS celebrating the 10th anniversary of its digital M rangefinder system and has marked the occasion with special promotions for customers. The first in the series was Leica's first digital rangefinder, the Leica M8, launched in 2006. Next came the first rangefinder with a full-frame imaging sensor – the Leica M9. The series also includes the M Monochrom (Typ 246), launched last year with its full-frame b&w sensor. ‘The compact size, discreet design and quiet operation of the digital M rangefinder cameras make them ideal for reportage photography, allowing the photographer to shoot at the centre of the action,' says Leica. As part of a special promotion, customers can part-exchange any camera of any brand for a new Leica M (Typ 240), Leica M-P (Typ 240) or Leica M…

When you hear the words ‘twin-lens reflex' (TLR), you might automatically think of the classic medium-format Rolleiflexes and their like from the mid-20th century – the kind of thing Vivian Maier would have used. There were also a few smaller127 rollfilm TLRs, but the number of TLR models that took 35mm film could well be in single figures. An early example was the Zeiss Contaflex from1935, but even if I could afford the £1,000-plus that these change hands for, I'm not sure I'd want to own one as it shares the notoriously unreliable metal focal-plane shutter that plagued the early Contax rangefinders. I expect they were fine when new, but unlike the rival Leicas they have not stood the test of time. The Agfa Flexilette was introduced in 1961, and…

Do you think there will come a time when you stop taking photographs? A Yes, there will come a time when I hang up my camera 14% B No, I will carry on until I die 53% C No, but the type of photographs I take may change 33% What you said ‘I don’t think the type of photos I take will change. However, the type of camera and photographic equipment I use might.’ ‘I can’t ever imagine myself not taking photographs, even if I end up documenting my time in a nursing home.’ ‘I imagine I’ll stop taking photographs the day someone hands me a camera and I no longer know what it’s for. Or I’m dead. Whichever happens first.’ Join the debate on the AP forum This week…

‘When we enter a competition, we want to see all the other entries just as much as we want our own entry to be seen by others’ While photography platforms such as Instagram and Flickr are a great way to get your images out into the world, the prevalence of photographers uploading their work can often mean your photographs get lost in the binary mists of the digital ether. That is unless you’re particularly adept at the exhausting admin of social media and self-promotion. One alternative is to enter your shots into a competition – a worthwhile endeavour indeed. But what if your images either don’t win or don’t make the shortlist? As can be the case with the vast majority of competitions, the images entered disappear into a secret…

‘His photographs are just fascinating documents of the ’60s’ In the early 1960s, fashion photography went through a revolution that was led by three young and ambitious photographers: David Bailey, Brian Duffy and Terence Donovan. Talented and determined, with a fresh and informal style, they quickly usurped established fashion photographers such as Cecil Beaton and Norman Parkinson. ‘Before us, fashion photographers were tall, thin and camp,’ Duffy famously commented. ‘We’re different. We’re short, fat and heterosexual.’ Beaton himself later praised ‘The Terrible Three’, as he called them – ‘three cockney boys who rushed out of the somewhat staid John French’s darkroom and gave a signature to their times.’ Actually they weren’t all cockneys, nor did they all work at the studio of fashion photographer John French, but their photography did…

Ship on the horizon Callan Stroud Pentax K-S2, 50mm, 1/6,000sec at f/5.6, ISO 100 WOW! What great luck to see this opportunity, Callan. It is so good one almost wonders if it is real or something set up in your bedroom! I love the shape of the ship and those glorious ‘stairways to heaven' sunbeams streaming down. It's all very meaningful, and reminds me of the Christmas song I Saw Three Ships. We feel as if the sailors aboard have their gods with them and that, for now at least, all is well. All that bothers me are the proportions of the composition. The sea segment is either too small or too large to feel comfortable. It would work as a little strip along the bottom of the frame or…

DXO OPTICSPRO 11 has some significant drawbacks when you compare it with Lightroom or even Capture One Pro - its two main rival, professional-level raw converters. One is that it doesn't allow you to perform localised adjustments. You have to work with the image you shot, and any kind of local adjustments will have to wait until you convert it to a TIFF or a JPEG and open it up in some other image editor. Another is that it doesn't support Fuji X-Trans sensors, though admittedly this is only an issue if you own a Fujifilm camera. It's also rather complex and confusing to use when you start to probe beneath the surface of its tonal/exposure/lighting adjustments, but these niggles are easy to forgive once you see what OpticsPro can…