Innholdsfortegnelse for 11-Aug-2018 i Amateur Photographer

We’ve all seen the ‘no flash photography’ signs inside churches, temples and other historic buildings. It presents the serious photographer with a lighting challenge, as amazing interiors are something we all want to photograph. To help you avoid noisy, low-resolution images, we share some practical tips for using high-ISO settings and fast lenses to deal with interiors in this issue – tips you’ll find useful whether you are shooting in Canterbury or Cambodia. We also share the fascinating story of the Wrayflex: Britain’s first (and last) SLR. It’s a cautionary tale and an inspiring one, as is the story of top 20th-century photographer, Lee Miller (page 20). Canon users will want to check out our review of Samyang’s keenly priced new prime on page 43. Enjoy the issue!…

GIMBAL maker Feiyutech has announced the G6 Plus, a lightweight all-in-one gimbal with intelligent follow focus and OLED display. The device has start and end points which can be set manually, along with the path of time-lapse photography in auto-rotation mode. Entering lock-mode enables you to adjust the pan and tilt axis in any angle. Designed to allow an unlimited rotation angle of the pan axis and 35° angle for the vertical arm, the G6 Plus also features a new digital zoom button which enables users to zoom in or out, follow focus, change focus and control the three axis. The G6 Plus costs £269.99, and is on sale at leading retailers.…

AFTER a run of rum covers featuring scantily clad cover models from the 1970s and 1980s, it's good to go back to the solid and respectable 1950s this week. No sex please, we're British, but horse racing is much more like it. This image wouldn't make the cover cut these days as the editors wouldn't think it's razor-sharp enough, but this wasn't so much of a concern in the pre pixel-peeping age; it was more about the overall impact of an action scene (and some would say this was a more sensible way of judging a picture). There is some really good content inside this issue, including a thoughtful editorial on the difference between a snapshot and a ‘proper' photographic print. As the then-editor noted with magisterial disdain: ‘Nothing is…

10 years of mirrorless Andy Westlake looks at how mirrorless cameras have developed over the decade Reflections on mirrorless Four pros share their insights into the mirrorless systems they use Make the most of mirrorless Unleash the full potential of mirrorless with these tips from Angela Nicholson Masters of mirrorless A look at the strengths and weaknesses of today’s mirrorless systems CONTENT FOR NEXT WEEK’S ISSUE MAY BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE…

Although she died in 1977, new discoveries are still being made about the life and work of the pioneering US photographer Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller. Keeping the flames of excitement burning about her work are her son, Antony Penrose, and her granddaughter, Ami Bouhassane – both of whom have worked extensively on her archive for many years – yet even they are still discovering the full extent of her work and history. The new exhibition ‘Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain’ at The Hepworth Wakefield gallery in West Yorkshire recounts her involvement in this movement, but Penrose admits he previously knew little about it. He credits the discoveries to The Hepworth’s curator Eleanor Clayton. ‘Eleanor went off and did a fantastic amount of research. This is really valuable for us because…

Esther Ling is a professional photographer and LUMIX Ambassador whose main passions are social, documentary, food and travel photography. Her camera of choice is the Panasonic LUMIX G9. Here, she shares her tips for those who are new to the range. www.estherling.co.uk. 1 If you're learning, don't try to run before you can walk. Cut your learning down to manageable, bite-size chunks. Digital is a fantastic learning tool, as you have a visual reference and all the shooting information is recorded for you to look back on. 2 If you're having issues with camera shake, you're more than likely not stable enough on your feet or giving the camera the right support. You need to keep your feet at hip distance, one behind the other, and your elbows in as…

Wray made five screw-fit lenses for the cameras: 35mm f/3.5 Lustrar, 50mm f/2 Unilite, 50mm f/2.8 Unilux, 90mm f/4 Lustrar and 135mm f/4 Lustrar. It also adapted the Wray Prismscope – originally designed as a target spotting telescope – to fit Wrayflex cameras, with a focal length of 45 inches and a maximum aperture of f/18. A 50mm f/3.5 standard and 8in telephoto were planned and even advertised, but they never went into commercial production. Although independent manufacturers didn't make lenses for the Wrayflex, several non-Wray lenses specially adapted for the Wrayflex mount have been discovered. They include a 6in f/5.5 Teleros, 135mm f/4.5 Fujita, 40mm f/3.5 Macro Kilar and an enormous and very heavy 8in f/2.9 unmarked lens that is suspected to be a Dallmeyer Dalrac. The only Wray…

• £12.99 per book + £1.99 postage • cewe-photoworld.com Slip-case The photobook comes with a protective cardboard case. Square format The hardcover book measures 15cm square, and is printed onto high-quality matte paper. Delivery time CEWE promises that your photobook should arrive in 4 to 6 working days after ordering. Simple app CEWE has stripped the app back to the basics, making it very easy to use even on a smartphone with a small screen. IF YOU want to turn your pictures into something less ephemeral than electronic files viewed on a screen, then making a photobook is a great option. There's a real appeal to having a physical record of your favourite shots, and they also make excellent gifts. While many companies offer sophisticated photobook software for Windows and…

‘The photographer got it right. This is a better picture of the Bentley than any I can find elsewhere’ There are many ways to improve your photography, but one of the most agreeable and effective is to improve your subject matter. Concentrate on photographing what really interests you, rather than just ‘a bit of this and a bit of that’. It won’t necessarily work, because you can be passionate about something and still never master photographing it, and it doesn’t mean excluding all else; but it gives you a head start. Jonny Henchman, motor-racing aficionado (see @fireproof.creative on Instagram), shows what happens when it does work. Passion aside, let’s try unpicking this picture. Tilting the camera is a time-honoured technique, and one that’s as easy to underdo as to overdo.…

JAPANESE firm Tomy has launched a smartphone picture printer called KiiPix. This ingeniously simple device doesn't need an app to be installed on your phone, a network connection or even a battery – and it costs just £40. Essentially, it's a simple camera that takes photographs of your phone's screen onto Fujifilm Instax Mini instant film, with the print ejected after exposure using a hand-powered crank. Film packs have to be bought separately, and cost around £15 for 20 prints. In principle the Tomy KiiPix should work with smartphones of any screen size, with the phone placed face-down onto a mask that defines the print area, using an 8.6x5.4cm opening. In practice, this is a good match for smartphones with 4.7in screens, but will mean some cropping of the image…

The Samyang AF 85mm f/1.4 EF faces stiff competition, yet stands out from other 85mm f/1.4 lenses with its lightweight and compact design. It's an appealing lens as it doesn't add too much bulk and keeps the camera nicely balanced in the hand without feeling front heavy, but is ultimately let down by the sharpness it resolves at its maximum aperture. It's a lens that forces you to stop down to achieve satisfying results, which rather defeats the point of choosing it over an 85mm f/1.8. There's a misconception that f/1.4 primes are always superior to lenses with an f/1.8 maximum aperture, but after comparing and contrasting this prime to Canon's lighter, smaller and more affordable EF 85mm f/1.8 USM, I'd happily choose the latter and be content with slightly…

If you’d like to see your work published in Amateur Photographer, here’s how to send us your images: Email Email a selection of low-res images (up to 5MB of attachments in total) to appicturedesk@ti-media.com.CD/DVD Send us a disc of high-resolution JPEG, TIFF or PSD images (at least 2480 pixels along its longest length), with a contact sheet, to the address on page 24. Via our online communities Post your pictures into our Flickr group, Facebook page, Twitter feed, or the gallery on our website. See details above. Transparencies/prints Well-packaged prints or slides (without glass mounts) should be sent by Special Delivery, with a return SAE, to the address on page 24.…

A few weeks ago I found myself shooting a series of portraits on the Kent coast while testing several lenses that had recently been sent in for review. One was the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Art DG HSM in Sony E-mount – an astonishingly sharp portrait lens, but not exactly a compact or lightweight prime at126.2mm long and weighing1130g. Removing the Sony FE 24-70mm f/4 ZA OSS from the Sony Alpha 7 III and replacing it with this Sigma prime turned what was a well-balanced camera and lens combination into a very front-heavy one. It put a lot more strain on my right hand than I'm used to and after a while the bottom corner of the handgrip started to dig into my palm. Meanwhile my left hand was offering some…

1 Avoiding the shakes As a travel or location photographer, you have to make the most of the light conditions that you encounter, and can often find yourself shooting in gloomy interiors. There are many places where using a tripod is not allowed or not practical, or you might not even have taken one on your travels. If you increase the ISO, your camera will need less light to achieve a correct exposure and you can therefore use a correspondingly faster shutter speed, so you can handhold without camera shake in these low-light situations. 2 It’s not just about the shakes Increasing the ISO is not just about avoiding camera shake: it is a creative tool, allowing you to use the shutter speed or aperture that you want, and you…

Professor Newman's article on ultra-fast lenses (Tech Talk, AP 21 July) was a very interesting read, but I think while microlenses on the digital sensor may affect bokeh, there is another important factor regarding fast lenses, bokeh and micro-contrast when used on digital cameras. The thickness of any glass filters in front of the sensor (the filter stack, consisting of the IR filter, anti-alias filter, etc.) will introduce an amount of spherical aberration at apertures over f/2, with a loss in micro-contrast. Counterintuitive I know, but a thick, perfectly flat piece of glass placed in a perfectly converging cone of light will introduce spherical aberration. This effect increases with aperture size. Legacy ultra-fast lenses designed for film (which never had glass in front of it), won't exhibit the same bokeh…

Prior to the Second World War no English manufacturer had ever made a 35mm camera. The end of the war in1945 was the perfect time for some enterprising company to be the first, especially in light of the fact that post-war Department of Trade restrictions prevented foreign cameras from being imported into the country. The company that rose to the challenge was Wray (Optical Works) Ltd in Kent. Wray had dabbled in camera manufacture in the 1930s, with the Farvu, a kind of telephoto box camera that never really came to anything. But it understood the mechanics of camera production. It already had a strong reputation for optical engineering, and the import restrictions meant that the company faced little competition from foreign cameras. The camera that Wray designers and engineers…

Resolution The lens produced a poor set of resolution results wide open. As the solid red line on the chart shows, sharpness improves considerably by stopping down to f/2.8, with centre sharpness peaking around f/5.6. The Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art and Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM produce sharper results wide open and deliver far superior edge sharpness. Corner sharpness gradually improves to where it peaks between f/5.6 and f/8. Shading Using the lens wide open at f/1.4 results in the corners of images appearing about 1.6EV darker than the centre. By f/2.8 corner shading is less severe and unrecognisable in real-world images. At the time of testing a lens profile was unavailable, but the profile for Samyang’s 85mm f/1.4 AS IF UMC lens was effective at correcting…

Slow-sync flash QI take a lot of indoor portraits and lately have found it beneficial to use slow-sync flash when taking these. It improves the lighting on the subject, but sometimes the background is very dark and I have to do a lot of work with the Quick Selection Tool in PhotoShop Elements to brighten the background. Could you advise me on how to use slow-sync flash better? I use a Canon EOS M6, an EF 50mm f/1.4 lens at maximum aperture, and the built-in flash. Martin Houlton A For the benefit of the readers, slow-sync flash is a technique that slows down the shutter speed while using flash. It’s often used for an effect where the main subject is frozen and sharp while background motion, not frozen by the…

On its release in1999, the Nikon D1 was equipped with Nikon's state-of-the-art exposure meter, using a1,005 pixel CCD as its sensor, which was retained for the D2H, released in 2003, and the D3 in 2007. Then in 2012, the D4 upped the ante with a metering sensor boasting 91,000 pixels, and in 2016 the D5 increased the pixel count to 180,000. While Canon was slower off the mark, once it got into its stride, its advance in meter pixels shows an even faster progression, with the 2001 EOS-1D being equipped with a paltry 21 regions or ‘pixels' in its metering sensor, which was retained for the 2004 Mark II, but replaced in the 2007 Mark III with a 63 ‘pixel' unit, kept for the 2009 Mark IV. The 2011 1D…