Innholdsfortegnelse for 30-Jul-2016 i Amateur Photographer

Most photos today are shot on smartphones, and a defining characteristic of such devices is that almost everything in the shot is usually in focus. This is a desirable outcome for most users who simply want a record of the moment. But for creative photographers, front-to-back sharpness presents a challenge – the viewer’s gaze can only be directed using light, colour or compositional elements within the scene. With proper cameras, selective blurring – through depth of field or choice of shutter speed – becomes a very powerful method to draw attention to specific areas in an image. It is perhaps the most obvious signpost that a photograph was taken on an actual camera. To the public, such pictures look ‘professional’ in a way they may not be able to articulate.…

With film cameras, the choice of emulsion has long been regarded as a crucial influence on the character of pictures. Fujifilm Velvia is celebrated for its rich greens and reds that render landscapes more luxuriantly vibrant than real life. Famous photographers like Sebastião Salgado created an entire aesthetic around the deeply black and contrasty look of Kodak Tri-X, whileJane Bown also preferred the Kodak film for her available light portraits. Those after a softer, more organic monochrome often championed Ilford HP5; in its reversal form it helped create the peculiarly English atmosphere in Chris Petit's 1979 film Radio On , for instance. Personally, I can still recall my disappointment as a schoolboy photographer when Kodachrome II was replaced by Kodachrome 25. I felt the magenta base of the newer emulsion…

Zoom lenses A couple of zoom lenses giving good coverage of focal lengths should suffice. I tend to use a Canon 24-105mm and Canon 70-200mm. Tripod A tripod is essential for long-exposure shots. A pan-and-tilt head may be useful for intentional camera movement (I use an old Gitzo model), although I tend to work handheld for this technique. ND filters For long exposures, a neutral-density filter can be handy. I prefer to use natural light if possible, but I also carry a B+W 10-stop filter for my main zoom lens just in case. Spare batteries With intentional camera movement you could be experimenting with lots of exposures all day long; make sure you don’t run out of power. Lens cloth If you’re working close to a raging torrent of water,…

Keep it simple Simplicity of composition is the key to ICM images. Bold horizontal lines work well in the composition here, but you'd probably want to avoid a strong vertical element, like a tree cutting through the horizon in this case, as it could produce a confusing result. Be bold Moving the camera may seem counterintuitive, as we're all trained to keep it as still as possible, but don't be tentative with your movements as you want to get a lot of blur – otherwise your result may look more like camera shake than the fine abstract image you had in mind. Experiment Don't be afraid to experiment, as it's not just a case of getting the right exposure set up and taking the shot – try different amounts and…

Projector lenses These lenses are among my favourites. They are usually very bright and give lovely out-of-focus areas. Magnifying glass This is an uncorrected (very soft focus), very fast lens with no aperture. The amount of light coming in to the camera is often too much even for slow emulsions. A makeshift aperture could be fashioned out of black card, which would reduce the light and also give a clearer, sharper image, although this would still be soft in comparison with proper optics, especially in the corners. Wide-aperture lenses A lens with an unusually large aperture for its focal length can produce interesting areas of out-of-focus blur, but this is not strictly soft focus. The quality of the out-of-focus areas is known as bokeh. Converted standard lenses Some lenses will…

Tamrac Stratus 8 Shoulder Bag £109, www.intro2020.co.uk This Tamrac bag features a smaller inner compartment than the Cullmann, but expands through its pockets to fit additional lenses and accessories. Thule Covert DSLR Messenger Bag £79, www.thule.com/en/gb Thule’s stylish alternative happily contains a small full-frame DSLR and lens, together with two extra lenses, a flashgun and a 15in laptop. Lowepro Magnum 200AW £159, www.lowepro.co.uk This bag is the smallest of three Magnum options, and holds a similar size of kit and includes Lowepro’s All Weather cover.…

AN AMUSING photo of the Duchess of Cambridge attending a charity day in London City has won first place in a competition for news photographers. Captured by Evening Standard photographer Jeremy Selwyn, the picture won best overall photo in a competition set up by the News Media Association (NMA) and judged by a panel that included AP Editor Nigel Atherton. Judges said Selwyn's eye-catching image (right) won Best Overall Rota Photo as it would have immediately caught the eye and drawn readers into the story about the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge attending ICAP's annual fundraiser. NMA provides services for photographers who are part of the Royal Rota, a system for covering royal engagements and pooling material. Winners received photography equipment vouchers. For the latest news visit www.amateurphotographer.co.uk…

I'M OFTEN asked what the optimum shutter speed is to make a realistic image of moving water, but I don't think there is one, as all still images of moving water are abstracted in some way (to be realistic, I think I'd have to shoot a video instead). What can be surprising, though, is just how much difference the shutter speed can make to the resulting image. This shot of reflections in the River Wharfe at Bolton Abbey was set up with the camera on a tripod, so each is exactly the same subject and composition. The first is shot at 1/500sec, so there's little blur with the ripples on the surface frozen, but the result still looks quite abstract. The middle image was shot at 1/15sec, so there's more…

My wife and I have been pursuing a project of sorts recently, making use of a hide we built a couple of years ago on a neighbour's farmland. This project can involve long periods of inactivity as we wait for the wildlife we know is there to get active and show up. Consequently, on the last weekend in June, I went prepared for a long session in the hide with my favourite crossword and that week's AP (2 July issue) to read. I'll confess to having opened it first, before we left home, so I knew what to expect. Nevertheless, I found myself reading Phil Hall's test of the Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6, which was illustrated with shots of owls, while I waited in a hide with my Nikon – for…

Martin Evening Martin is well known for his in-depth knowledge of Photoshop and Lightroom, and is the author of numerous books on digital imaging and photography. In 2008, he was inducted into the NAPP Photoshop Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, USA. One of the best ways to draw the viewer’s eye to an area of a photograph is through the use of selective focus. This can be done using a lens at its widest aperture to achieve a shallow depth of field, but you can also blur an image in Photoshop at the post-production stage. Although the Filter menu has 16 different blur filters, only the Lens Blur and Blur Gallery filters are capable of simulating how a photograph should look when the lens is out of focus. This…

‘The nature of the blur circle fundamentally determines the quality of the bokeh’ Bokeh, or boke, is a Japanese term that has become popular over the past 20 years or so. It refers to the quality of the out-of-focus parts of an image, so its meaning is restricted to images that have been shot using narrow depth of field to make use of accentuated differential-focus effects. The lengths and expense some people are willing to go to in order to achieve a particular bokeh effect is illustrated by the recent launch of the Meyer Optik Trioplan100mm f/2.8 lens. This optic was the subject of a successful Kickstarter campaign, and is a simple three-element Cooke triplet that sells for US $1,700. The high price is because of the fact that this…

MANY photographers are swapping their Nikon or Canon DSLRs for Fujifilm X-series mirrorless cameras instead, claims Theo Georghiades, general manager for electronic imaging at Fujifilm UK. In a video interview with AP, Georghiades (pictured above) said: ‘We speak to many Canon and Nikon photographers on a daily basis, whether they are a prosumer or a professional, and [they say] it's their daily life that they want to change. A big part of this adoption of Fujifilm is the system itself – the bank of lenses we have.' Fuji's X-series system offers a choice of 22 lenses. At the launch of Fuji's X-T2 flagship X-series camera, Georghiades said professionals are also being tempted over to mirrorless because of the improvements in autofocus and resolution.…

Mark Sunderland Mark is a landscape and travel photographer based in North Yorkshire, who specialises in images of Yorkshire and the UK in general. He also runs photography workshops in the Yorkshire Dales. To see more, visit www.marksunderland.com and natural-light-workshops.co.uk. Movement has always played a big part in my landscape photography. The ripples in a river, waves crashing on the shore and the wind in the trees all serve to create an element of abstraction, from the subtle movement of the end of a branch to the completely Impressionistic close-up of a fast-flowing waterfall where the whole photograph is a blur. From using the natural movement of subjects to produce abstract images, it’s just a short step to introducing your own intentional camera movement (ICM) into an otherwise static landscape.…

You answered… A Yes 39% B Yes, but not regularly 29% C No 19% D I have never considered it 13% What you said ‘There are some fantastic tutorials on YouTube, but recently I’ve been using it for product reviews.’ ‘I’d never considered it until I was watching one of PeteE’s videos. After his amusing and informative piece, one of the next recommendations was a video by Alex Wrigley who had made one about night photography in the Lake District. I found it useful. Since then I’ve watched a number of YouTube videos to gain insight into aspects of photography with which I’m not overly familiar. I’m not watching videos morning, noon and night, and I’m fussy about the ones I do watch, but there is some good stuff out…

Portrait photography is, perhaps, a deceptively simple-looking genre. A cursory glance at, say, a head-and-shoulders shot fails to take into account the finer details that go into the process. You are, after all, attempting to represent the character of a sitter, to bring out their best qualities and, in a sense, to communicate a narrative of a life. One photographer who is particularly adept at creating engaging and inspiring portraits is London-based commercial and portrait photographer Phil Sharp, who creates truly distinctive and, at times, minimalist contemporary portraits. His website portfolio is a real masterclass in how to use the simplest methods to create lasting portraits, whether it’s through lighting or, of particular interest in this special issue, shallow depth of field. ‘I don’t think a shallow depth of focus…

Cullmann Amsterdam Maxima 520 • £75 • www.intro2020.co.uk Matt Golowczynski tries out a new Cullmann bag Neoprene padded strap The diagonally attached strap is designed with a neoprene-lined pad for comfort. Protection Feet at the bottom of the bag provide additional protection from knocks. Portable A mesh slot at the back allows the bag to be mounted on rolling luggage handles – handy for travelling. At a glance • Shoulder bag with removable padded insert • 36x20x17cm (internal) • 1.3kg INSPIRED by the design and practicality of medical bags, the Amsterdam Maxima 520 shoulder bag provides easy access to its entire contents upon opening. This happens by way of its reinforced lip, which pulls the top parts of the bag upright to reveal a spacious chamber lined with a removable…

Resolution Our Applied Imaging tests tell us the centre is only slightly sharper than the corner when the lens is used at f/2. Centre sharpness improves as the lens is closed down towards f/4 and remains high up to f/16. Diffraction affects the level of sharpness at f/22, hence the drop on the graph. Corner sharpness improves when the lens is stopped down to f/8. Like the centre sharpness, though, it drops off at f/22. The sweet spot between centre and edge sharpness is located between f/5.6 and f/8. Shading Using the lens at its maximum aperture introduces corner shading at the edges, with corners appearing approximately 1.2EV darker than the centre of the image. I found this vignetting to be rather tasteful and it encourages the viewer’s eye towards…

Photographs by winners of the Nobel Prize are rare enough in this column; photographs taken with the processes they invented are even rarer. This picture, taken by Professor Lippmann (1845-1921), qualifies on both counts: he invented an interference process for direct colour photography with which he took this picture, and he won the Nobel Prize in 1908. The process is fantastically complicated, involving an ultra-thin emulsion in contact with liquid mercury. As this illustration from the Smithsonian Report of 1901 illustrates, though, a Lippmann image does offer the possibility of making photomechanical reproductions. A Hoen & Co of Baltimore, Maryland, USA, made this picture, and I chose it for three reasons. First, it’s very striking. Early colour photographers often wanted to scream colour as loudly as possible. What fascinated me…