Innholdsfortegnelse for 16-Jun-2018 i Amateur Photographer

Olympus launches ‘denim’ E-PL9 A special blue edition of the recently launched PEN E-PL9 camera has been announced. Joining the existing white, black and brown models launched in March, the blue colour is designed to emulate the look of denim material. The E-PL9 blue with M.Zuiko Digital 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 EZ pancake lens is available for £649.99 (RRP). Camera+ app gets major refresh One of the most popular third-party camera apps for iOS (iPhone and iPad) has a new version after eight years on the market. The new Camera+ 2 app features a redesigned interface to include manual controls, raw capture and depth editing. All its features are available from the get-go, with no need for extra purchases. Yongnuo introduces 50mm f/1.4 lens Budget third-party lens manufacturer Yongnuo has announced a…

A Royal response I wonder if I might comment upon the somewhat strange letter from Meckle Hausman (Inbox, AP 2 June) in which he questions the relevance of RPS distinctions to ‘successful professionals'. Surely he is completely missing the point. I cannot imagine why professional photographers would be attracted to those distinctions. They are, in no sense, qualifications and are unlikely to impress anyone outside the somewhat-restricted world of the RPS itself and the enthusiastic amateurs in camera clubs. What those distinctions do, superbly, is offer amateur photographers an excellent opportunity to set themselves meaningful challenges and indulge in project-based photography. Those of us who pursue them are not interested in impressing anyone. We are dedicated to self-improvement in our chosen hobby. I particularly object to the implied criticism of…

AS PART of its long-standing relationship as official photography partner of the National Trust, Panasonic will be holding events around a variety of photogenic National Trust locations over the coming months. The team will be at Lacock Abbey on 30 June and 1 July. The abbey is located at the heart of Lacock village within its own woodland grounds. The house is a quirky mix of various architectural styles, built on the foundations of a former nunnery. Visitors can experience the atmosphere of the medieval rooms and cloister court, giving a sense of the abbey’s monastic past. On the weekend of 30 June/1 July Panasonic LUMIX will be offering visitors to Lacock Abbey the chance to try its latest cameras and lenses, and to take advantage of expert advice. Normal…

As a wildlife photographer, achieving a sharp shot is a worthy goal. Post-processing tools can do much to improve an original raw file. However, sharpening takes place long before a photo appears on your computer screen. You need to study your camera body, lenses and settings, and develop skills to get close to species without disturbing them. For the cuckoo shot (page 41) I had been to a good cuckoo site on a cloudy day but returned when the sun was out. Clear morning light goes a long way towards producing an initial sharp raw file. After an hour of patiently getting closer to the male cuckoo, it finally allowed me to stand right under the telegraph wire and photograph it with the sun behind. Long telephoto lenses often have…

Unsharp Mask Hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate the layer. Zoom in on the head. Go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. Toggle the preview to see the effect – here I have increased the amount to 83%. Leave Radius and Threshold at default settings. Unsharp Mask again Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. Run the filter again. Check carefully that the image is not oversharpened and looking over-crisp. Use Opacity to lower the sharpening to create a pleasing image. Action stations To save time, create and record a set of actions. Go to Window>Actions>Record, and then run your unsharp filter sequence all the way through. Press ‘stop record' and save as a new action, naming it ‘Unsharp Mask.' The wonders of layer masks Unsharp Mask will sharpen the whole picture. With…

LAUNCHED 1961 PRICE AT LAUNCH £250 GUIDE PRICE NOW Body £150-175; lens £1,000-1,500 Here we have one of the last great 35mm rangefinder cameras from Canon, defined more than anything else by its standard lens. The focal length is the usual 50mm, but the maximum aperture is an incredible f/0.95. It became known as the ‘Dream Lens' and advertisements of the 1960s claimed it was four times more sensitive than the human eye. The lens is made up of seven elements in five groups. The filter thread is a whopping 72mm, against most rangefinder camera standard lenses with threads more like 40-50mm. The camera body has an L39 mount, to take Leica screw-fit lenses, but this is surrounded by a second, larger bayonet mount to support the Dream Lens. This…

This high-contrast street scene was uploaded to our Twitter page using the hashtag #appicoftheweek. It was taken by photographer Paul Crudgington. He tells us, ‘I took this image on the steps of the Eye Film Institute in Amsterdam. I found this spot where the architecture, natural light and shadows all came together to create the composition you see here; I then waited for the right person to enter. Post-processing consisted of basic adjustments for exposure, contrast, clarity, spot removal, some additional darkening of the shadows and a small crop tweak, but it doesn't differ greatly from the in-camera raw file.'…

Blindfolded and sedated, a young white rhino waits in a boma (enclosed area used to protect wildlife) after a long journey from South Africa. It will be kept in the boma and reunited with its mother before being released in Botswana's Okavango Delta as part of efforts to rebuild Botswana's lost rhino populations. The picture was taken by conservation photographer Neil Aldridge and appears in the new book Photographers Against Wildlife Crime, which also features hard-hitting imagery by Brent Stirton, Brian Skerry, Britta Jaschinski and Chris Packham, among others. The project aims to help bring an end to the illegal wildlife trade and to celebrate those who protect wildlife. Visit www.photographersagainstwildlifecrime.com Words & numbers 2 Number of years a Leica Summicron-M 35mm f/2 ASPH lens was lost in the desert…

THE IMMEDIATE availability of Nik Collection 2018 – a set of plug-ins for Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop – has been announced. Acquired by DxO from Google last year, this ‘by DxO' update marks the Nik Collection's return to the market with the first stable version and with customer support. Also announced at the same time is DxO PhotoLab 1.2, an update of DxO's acclaimed raw and JPEG image-processing software. DxO says it has spent several months analysing and optimising the code of the seven plug-ins that make up the Nik Collection. The update makes it fully compatible with the latest versions of Adobe products, as well as the latest Apple OS updates. The plug-ins comprise the following: Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Dfine, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro, Silver…

Even for people not necessarily enamoured with wildlife photography (or even animals generally), the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPOTY) competition is difficult to ignore. With such a diverse and global reach, there is something for everyone, whether it's in the subjects, the incredible technical proficiency or the message the photographer is looking to communicate. Last year's winner was Brent Stirton, whose image ‘Memorial to a Species' showed in unflinching detail a slain rhino and was taken as part of an undercover investigation into the illegal trade in rhino horn. It stands as perhaps the most hard-hitting, emotional and important winner of the WPOTY competition in recent years and is a good demonstration of why photo competitions like WPOTY are so vital (Brent was also awarded AP's Power of…

As a professional sports photographer, Canon Ambassador Samo Vidic photographs the world's top athletes for leading brands and publications. But in his latest project Samo wanted to shine a light on a sometimes-overlooked group of sporting heroes: disabled athletes who have overcome the odds to achieve great things in the sports they love. ‘Disabled athletes are rarely seen in the media in comparison with non-disabled ones,' Samo says. ‘I wanted to show different kinds of sports people and tell their life stories.' In this project, he wanted to emphasise the athletes' sporting prowess and the considerable obstacles they had to overcome. Slovenian photographer Samo has focused on sport throughout a busy career, which began in 1999. A keen sportsman in his youth who enjoyed ski-jumping, football and tennis, he initially…

Engineering and technology is exciting and fast-changing, shaping the world around us and improving the quality of our daily lives. From our smartphones and tablets, to our lighting and heating, the food we eat and medicines we take, engineers are inventing new ways to do things and finding solutions that will make the world a better place. And yet the profession is confronted with a big image problem: traditional images of engineering and engineers that are used time and time again focus on hard hats and dirty overalls, giving the profession an outdated stereotype. A recent study by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) found that this stereotypical image of an engineer is quite prominent among school children and adults, with most youngsters believing a typical engineer is white,…

‘These pangolin photographs represent a beautiful insight into a tragic reality’ Resembling a giant pine cone when curled up, the prehistoric-looking pangolin is like no other creature on earth. It is the only mammal covered in scales, has no teeth and cannot chew. Instead, it uses a tongue, the length of its body, to eat around 200,000 ants and termites per day. But there is one sinister and tragic fact about this curious creature that threatens its very existence – the pangolin is the world’s most traded mammal and no amount of protected status appears to be saving it from the hands of poachers. In 2016, the South Africa-based photojournalist Adrian Steirn travelled to Zimbabwe to shoot a video and stills to document the work of the Tikki Hywood Foundation,…

1 Initial sharpening In Lightroom's Develop Module, click 1:1 to zoom in. The area you want to focus on is the head, eye, beak and feathers. By default, Lightroom CC now has set the Amount slider to 40. Start by dragging to the right but beware of increased noise. 2 Setting the radius Radius is a way of increasing sharpness at the important edges between the subject and its surroundings. It is measured in pixels with the default set to one pixel. I suggest that the default is a fairly reliable setting but it's worth experimenting to see how it works. 3 It’s all in the detail Detail is exactly that, working out what is an edge and applying the sharpening to it. A lower detail will limit sharpening to…

HERE'S a creative solution to having to hide in the undergrowth – a portable pop-up hide that is ready to go in seconds. On a wildlife photo shoot, stay hidden with the new wildlife hide from wildlife charity the RSPB. This incredibly spacious and robust hide can hold two people and couldn't be easier to set up. The handy carry bag comes with shoulder straps for easy transport, and pops up in seconds once released. The four zip-close windows on all four sides provide a porthole for still photography and birdwatching, or a bigger opening for wider cinematography. The hide can be zipped open and closed from the inside and out. For ground-level shots, the low opening at the rear provides plenty of space. Made from strong polyester, the leaf…

TWO UPGRADES to Canon's 70-200mm zoom lenses have been announced, with a new 70-200mm f/2.8L and a 70-200mm f/4L shortly available to buy. The EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM replaces Canon's flagship 70-200mm lens, and has been designed with high-performance and extra robustness in mind. It has protective seals, which make it resistant to moisture and dust, while fluorine-coated front and rear elements are easy to clean. It has a wide maximum constant aperture of f/2.8, and features an eight-bladed circular diaphragm, with fluorite and UD optics for high contrast and excellent resolution. In addition, camera shake is compensated for with a 3.5-stop Image Stabiliser. A ring-type USM motor offers silent and quick autofocusing, while a focusing ring is also included for manual adjustment. The EF 70-200mm f/2.8L III…

Double Take: Reconstructing the History of Photography By Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger, Thames & Hudson, £24.95, 128 pages, hardback, ISBN 978-0500021224 In 2011, Andreas Gursky set an auction-price record when his image ‘Rhein II' was sold for a whopping $4.3million. Watching this news with stunned curiosity were two artists, (see Reconstructing Reality, AP 9 June) Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger, both of whom decided to embark on a challenge: could they use models and studio lighting to recreate Gursky's image in the comfort of their Zurich studio? Quite incredibly, it worked. That one image was the genesis for the set of images that make up this really quite impressive volume. Following the Gursky image, the artists decided to recreate several famous 20th- and 21st-century landmark images including Frances Browne's…

Lacock Abbey began life in 1232 as an abbey and nunnery. In the 1500s it was turned into a Tudor country house, and the medieval cloisters were incorporated into the design along with Italian Renaissance-style additions. John Ivory Talbot inherited Lacock in the 18th century and gave it a Gothic makeover, giving it its wonderfully quirky architectural styles. Once home to Henry Fox Talbot, Lacock Abbey has additional interest for photographers because it was here that Talbot made the earliest surviving photographic negative: an image of one of the oriel windows. The text accompanying the negative claims that as many as 200 squares of glass could be counted in the image (with the help of a lens). The abbey houses a museum to celebrate Talbot’s substantial contributions to photography. Justin’s…

ONE OF Samo's subjects was Slovenian swimmer Darko Đ uri ć . Despite being born with only one arm and no legs, he has become a Paralympian, a double world champion and broken the world record in the 50m Butterfly S4 class. When shooting Darko's portrait and action shot, Samo wanted to convey his story. ‘Darko only has one arm, but the water gives him wings, somehow. That's what I wanted to show,' he says. The sports shoot took place at a pool in Ljubljana, Slovenia. With Darko posing on a diving board for the portrait, Samo got two assistants to throw buckets of water at him from left and right, creating wing-like shapes with the water. Samo froze the movement of the water with his studio flashes, having placed…

If you don't have time to work in Photoshop, Lightroom has a great set of quick fixes that can produce a pleasing image. This shot of a sparrowhawk catching a collared dove was taken through double-glazed glass. Even before sharpening, apply the new Adobe Landscape profile. Bring up Whites & Blacks to move the histogram more to the middle. Add Contrast, Clarity and a slight Tone Curve. Remember that most sharpening works at defining contrast at the edges of your subject. Click on the adjustment brush, set Exposure to 0.13, Contrast 11, highlights 14, shadows 16, Clarity 19, Sharpness 17. Use a small brush and go over the head of the sparrowhawk and that of the collared dove and other areas that you want to emphasise. Use the erase brush…

As I walk into the café at Hampshire's Hawk Conservancy Trust, the lens I'm carrying immediately draws attention. I'm attending a wildlife workshop, organised by TimeLine Events, and I have with me an AF-S Nikkor 180-400mm f/4E TC1.4 FL ED attached to a D850. It's Nikon's second most expensive lens currently on sale and the company's first telephoto zoom to feature a built-in teleconverter. The cost of the lens is a recurring question and, once I disclose its astronomical price, everyone else agrees there's no excuse not to get some great shots. I'm quick to admit, however, I'm out of my comfort zone shooting birds in flight, so I'm thankful to organiser, Neil, who starts proceedings by explaining how to get the best out of the day. He suggests shooting…

Q Seeing as my Fujifilm X-T2 can use UHS-II cards I looked at various buying options but I was quite surprised by how much more expensive they are compared to UHS-I cards. I can see that some microSD UHS-II cards offer a significant saving. There are some good deals on some Lexar 1000x microSD cards, as well as Toshiba Exceria Pro M501. Are there any pitfalls in using UHS-II microSD cards? Obviously some kind of adapter would be required. Jared Misra A You could look at it in two ways. Some laptops and various other tablets and similar devices, for example, no longer offer full-size SD card slots, so using microSD is a plus. The use of an adapter adds an element of potential unreliability, but with care this can…