Innholdsfortegnelse for 15-Jun-2019 i Amateur Photographer

Wildlife photographers are amazing. They rise early, and spend hours waiting patiently in uncomfortable conditions ready to spring into action as their subject makes the briefest appearance – capturing it in focus and correctly exposed. But even this isn’t enough to achieve greatness – the light needs to be right too. This week Oscar Dewhurst passes on his expert tips. I don’t know if Nadav Kander photographs wildlife but he’s one of very few photographers acclaimed for both his landscapes and portraits. Read our interview with him on page 22. For tech lovers we examine the use of artificial intelligence in cameras and phones, and I share my enthusiasm for the sublime Fujifilm X-T3. But if that’s all a bit too modern for you we also look back at a…

PANASONIC used the recent Cine Gear 2019 show in Los Angeles to launch its Leica DG Vario-Summilux 10-25mm F1.7 ASPH lens for Micro Four Thirds. This wide-aperture zoom lens, which was announced at last year's Photokina, has a fast constant aperture of f/1.7 and a 35mm equivalent focal range of 20-50mm, along with video-friendly silent operation via its inner focus drive system. It also has a mechanism to minimise focus breathing – that slight fall-off in focal length which can occur when an object is brought sharply into focus. The lens features 17 elements in 12 groups, and can focus as closely as 0.28m. Although it lacks built-in stabilisation, most contemporary Micro Four Thirds cameras are now stabilised in-body, and the lens has a relatively short focal length to begin…

The Xperia1 processes its images similarly to Alpha cameras. Rather than taking a picture, compressing it into a JPEG and adding noise reduction, the Xperia 1 takes a raw image and adds an algorithm to reduce the noise on this raw image before compressing it to a JPEG. Unlike Sony smartphones of the past, the Xperia 1 also gives users the option to access its raw files via third-party Android apps such as Adobe Lightroom, for greater flexibility and control during the editing stage.…

PANASONIC has also brought out 1.4x and 2x teleconverters for its Lumix S-series telephoto zoom lenses. They can be attached to the Lumix S PRO 70-200mm F4 OIS, extending the zoom range up to a maximum of 400mm ‘with high-speed, high-precision AF', claims the company. The telecoverters are dust/ splash-resistant and compatible with the upcoming 70-200mm f/2.8 S-series lens, due to arrive later this year. The 1.4x teleconverter will set you back £489.99 and the 2x model will be £579.99. Both should be available now. See www.panasonic.com/uk.…

A recent article by Imaging Resource (www. imaging-resource.com/news/2019/05/14/ricoh-interviewsub-frame-medium-format-dslr-comingmirrorless-will-return) quoted Ricoh executives as saying they believed that, in the next few years, photographers would switch from mirrorless back to DSLR cameras. I'm not sure how to break it to them, but I hope for the sake of Pentax they aren't banking on it. The inadequacies of early mirrorless cameras have now been pushed casually aside. In fact I struggle to think of a single way in which a DSLR camera has the edge over its mirrorless counterpart. ‘But, but the autofocus!' Welcome to 2019, where on-sensor phase detection enables you to have continuous autofocus tracking with points from the corner to corner of the frame. Eye-AF also enables photographers to shoot with an 85mm f/1.4 lens and not worry about getting…

THIS issue from the AP archive features an interesting valediction to Konica Minolta, which had been absorbed into Sony fairly recently. In his introduction, then editor Garry Coward-Williams – who's still a great friend of the magazine and shares regular pearls of wisdom – wonders if the new Sony Alpha DSLR, also featured, will prove as big a success as Minolta gear back in the day. Though the early Alpha SLRs are gone and not missed that much, Sony has taken the full-frame mirrrorless market by storm (particularly in Japan). Apart from video games and big tellies, cameras and sensors are now a hugely important market for Sony, which would have surprised a lot of pundits back then. Moving on, Garry is proud of a lens cloth freebie: the first…

Frost I'm always watching the weather forecasts, and frost is something I look out for. Clear skies, calm winds and cool temperatures increase the chances of frost, which turns scenes into a winter wonderland. When the frost is severe, shooting into the light can look great, with the light passing through the frozen moisture that lines surfaces. Owls Owls make great subjects to shoot with backlighting because the light can penetrate the tips of their wings, as seen in this image. As the bird flew in front of the setting sun with its prey, I had a brief window in which to capture images with the light how I wanted it. Fortunately, one of these images showed the wings in a nice upright position. Deer During the rut – the…

ENGLAND'S most northerly county can rightly claim to be one of the most beautiful and varied areas in the whole of the UK, which means landscape photographers can capture a whole portfolio of images in just one visit. Many shooters head for the honeypot locations found on the jaw-dropping coastline: Embleton Bay with Dunstanburgh Castle in the background, or Bamburgh Castle and Budle Bay, around 10 miles further north. These locations have gained a reputation for a good reason as they offer photographers classic views where it's harder to take a bad picture than a good one. However, heading inland will give you the opportunity to mix up your landscape imagery, whether it be to the vast Kielder Forest (the largest man-made woodland in England) or the majestic rolling hills…

WHILE computational photography has taken a firm hold over casual photography, the jury is still out on how large a role AI will play in professional photography, but there is undoubtedly some scope. Robotics, for example, has been used for many years to help cover sporting events from inaccessible places, such as the roof of stadiums or the bottom of swimming pools. To do this, Nikon's subsidiary MRMC has developed robotic supports, such as the Polycam Player, which can automatically follow and photograph an athlete without somebody at the controls. This motorised camera arm uses face detection and limb recognition to predict athletes' movements, adjusting the zoom and focus while tracking players. It can even home in on just one or multiple players.…

This is the first time I am writing a Final Analysis and when I was discussing it with the commissioning editor, she asked me if I would like to choose the picture under discussion or whether it should be chosen for me. As I feel that getting out of our comfort zone is very important when thinking about our photography, I chose the latter option, and this picture sums up why I feel I made the right decision. I love this portrait. The simple framing, the colours and the diffident look in the subject’s eyes. I grew up in South East England and know the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Light Railway. In fact, when I was a kid, my parents used to take me there as a treat. This picture…

REGULAR readers may already be familiar with the excellent work of Neil Burnell, who took home our coveted Amateur Photographer of the Year 2018 trophy. He has just added another award to his rapidly expanding collection, picking up the Fotospeed Photographer of the Year prize for his winning image of a roosting butterfly species. He spotted the butterfly at his local nature reserve, Berry Head, and submitted the photo to Fotospeed's weekly #fsprintmonday Twitter competition. His picture was selected from a gallery on display at The Photography Show in March. His prize consists of a Canon A2 printer, Fotospeed inkjet paper worth £500, plus a bespoke one-to-one day of tutoring with one of Fotospeed's top photographers. To find out more about entering the weekly competition for yourself, visit fotospeed.com. You…

After spending a day using the Xperia 1, I was left impressed in one sense, but underwhelmed in another. It's great to see Sony implementing functionality from its Alpha range of cameras, with Eye AF making light work of focusing when shooting people and its fast 10fps burst giving you the opportunity to capture fast, fleeting moments as they happen. Its 12MP resolution is adequate for social media posts or small prints and the general colour reproduction is faithful, though it seemed to struggle to expose tricky backlit scenes, and even with brightness set to maximum, it wasn't particularly easy composing or reviewing images in high-contrast conditions. The dedicated shutter button at the side makes for intuitive focusing and shooting in the landscape format. But while further comparison needs to…

Over the years, I've spent a lot of time photographing wildlife along the Suffolk coast. I love it there – it's such a contrast to London where I'm based, and the wildlife is fantastic. One species I've always been keen to photograph there has been barn owls, and a few summers ago I spent many evenings over a three-week period watching and photographing them as a pair of birds hunted over the grassland and marshland on either side of a country road. As I wanted to photograph them into the setting sun, I was restricted to photographing them on the side of the road where the sun went down. I would set up a couple of hours before sunset, and the owls were out most evenings, presumably with some hungry…

Pentax K-1 Mark II Northumberland can be a brutal place to shoot on a cold, wet day, so I need a camera that offers a high degree of weather-sealing. The Pentax K-1 Mark II is a tank of a full-frame camera that packs a beefy 36MP full-frame sensor. NiSi filters I shoot long exposures and use NiSi ND and ND grad filters. The glass is quality, doesn’t introduce colour casts and is good value for money. One of my favourite filters is the reverse ND grad. Lowepro Pro Runner 350 AW My camera bags get thoroughly used and abused, but this Lowepro model has stood the test of time. Capable of holding two DSLRs, three lenses and extra supplies, it’s also very comfortable, which is important as I often have…

● Arsenal is a device that connects to your camera and equips it with all that AI has to offer, from sophisticated remote control to AI-enhanced scene-recognition algorithms that automatically apply optimised settings for a particular scene. ● The Microsoft Pix app uses AI for editing options and takes a burst of images then selects what it thinks is the best one. ● The Spectre app uses AI for low-light photography.…

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 14. Via our online communities Post your pictures into our Flickr group, Facebook page, Twitter feed, or the gallery on our website. See details above.…

AFTER acquiring the Nik Collection of creative image-processing plug-ins from Google in 2017, DxO has launched its first major upgrade. Nik Collection 2 from DxO comes with several key updates, including 42 new presets that bring the total number to 198. Together they form the ‘En Vogue' collection, with 10 each available in Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro and Analog Efex Pro, and 12 in HDR Efex Pro. Meanwhile, Windows users with high-resolution monitors should also find the graphic user interface much easier to use thanks to the addition of HiDPI support. The biggest change, though, is that Nik Collection 2 now comes bundled with DxO's own raw-processing software, PhotoLab 2.3 Essential Edition. This provides direct support for camera raw files, meaning users no longer have to employ Adobe…

Operating system The Xperia 1 ships with Android 9 Pie. Various contract deals are available and SIM-free prices start from £849. Colour The Xperia 1 features 10-bit tonal gradation, helping to deliver deeper levels of black and more natural colour. Waterproof Unlike the Xperia 10 and Xperia 10 Plus, the Xperia 1 features IP65/IP68 certified water resistance. Availability Available now, the Xperia 1 will be sold in black, purple, grey and white colours. EARLIER this year Sony unveiled three new smartphones: the mid-range Xperia 10; the Xperia 10 plus; and the all-singing, all-dancing Xperia 1. The latter is Sony's latest flagship model and introduces the most advanced set of camera features we've seen on any Sony smartphone to date. What's interesting from an imaging perspective is the way Sony's mobile…

Standing on the platform end at my local preserved railway station I was peering through my viewfinder awaiting ‘the decisive moment'. The moment approached, my finger tensed on the shutter release, and then I became aware of the machine-gun chatter of a dozen cameras as my fellow photographers also became aware of the moment! I suspect that the ease of batch shooting with digital has compounded an age-old problem: how do you index/annotate all those images? I was drawn to look up what former AP contributor Lancelot Vining had to say in his useful book, My Way with the Miniature. I was surprised to see that even in the 1950s cataloguing negatives was a live issue. Vining made the point that good indexing made negatives accessible and findable, but required…

Binoculars My binoculars are with me every time I’m photographing wildlife. Their clarity and lack of weight means they’re great for finding subjects, but when your subject is too distant to photograph it’s also nice just to watch sometimes. Telephoto lens Most wildlife subjects are not particularly tolerant of people, so a telephoto lens is essential. The high magnification also throws the background out of focus, placing more emphasis on the subject. Lens hood When shooting into the light it’s essential to use a lens hood. Without it, light hitting the front element creates flare, which you will tend to want to avoid. The other function lens hoods have is to protect the front element. Lens cloth It’s important to keep your front element clean when shooting into the sun.…

Looking through the list of previous winners of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Awards reads like a roll call of some of the biggest names in photography. Not all will be to everybody’s tastes, but regardless, these are people who have not just contributed to the craft, but actively shaped it too. To name but a few, in the past decade, the top recognition has gone to Elliott Erwitt (2015), Martin Parr (2017), Mary Ellen Mark (2014), Eve Arnold (2010) and most recently Candida Höfer in 2018. The latest recipient is Nadav Kander, who having won a plethora of other prestigious awards in the past four decades, is no stranger to adding silverware to his collection. Among other top plaudits, he received an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society…

You can capture amazing images at any stage throughout the year, but my advice would be to avoid weekends as they can bring out the crowds, particularly at honeypot locations. Visit on a weekday and you're more than likely to have the whole scene to yourself, which can lead to beautiful minimalist views. If you plan to visit Holy Island, double-check tidal times to avoid being cut off from the mainland. And if capturing the aurora is your goal, make use of the various apps that are available for your phone – you can even set up notifications that will tell you when solar winds activity is peaking. Food and lodging There's no shortage of holiday cottages dotted along the coastline, but there are also some quality hotels you can…

THE CAMERA Raw Filter is not restricted to single layers. You can apply the Camera Raw filter to as many layers as you like. To do this they must first be grouped together within a Smart Object/ Smart Filter. In the example shown here, I grouped together all the layers that were used to create the neon sign effect, and merged these into a Smart Object that could then be filtered using the Camera Raw filter (the easiest way to do this is to choose Filter>Convert for Smart Filters. Once merged as a Smart Object, it is easy to expand these layers again by double-clicking the Smart Object layer to reveal the nested layers, all appearing within a separate, new image document. 1 Here is a layered image photograph that…

According to Greg Gorman, who over the past 40 years has photographed everyone from Elton John to Pierce Brosnan, if you have 20 minutes to shoot you should spend 15 minutes setting up your lighting and directing your model, and 5 minutes taking pictures. Watching Gorman work, it’s clear to see that he practises what he preaches. Before the model is even in position Gorman can be seen observing the strength and direction of light, considering where to position reflectors and/or diffusers. Unsurprisingly, he has a degree in cinematography, and his ability to make artistic decisions quickly and with confidence really shows. Looking at Gorman’s celebrity portraits you can see he has an uncanny ability to get inside people’s heads: Nicolas Cage rests against a door frame, exhausted and lost…

● £288 ● www.kaiser-fototechnik.de/en SOME readers may well be familiar with the Tiltall name as an American manufacturer of distinctively designed tripods featuring tubular metal legs and two-handled tilting heads. But with high-quality camera kit getting lighter, demand for this style of sturdy-but-weighty support has waned. So the brand has branched out to encompass much more modern-looking designs, of which the four-section carbon-fibre TC-224 is a typical example. They're highly regarded in the German market, where they are sold under the Kaiser Fototechnik label, and the distributor is hoping to repeat the success in the UK. In many respects, the TC-224 looks much like any other of the wide range of multi-functional travel tripods currently on the market. It employs a design where the legs fold up around the head…

Quite a lot of the cameras that I write about in this column are unusual or esoteric models that many readers would be unlikely to get their hands on, but that can't be said of the Brownie Cresta II. Even now, 60 years after they were last made, you don't have to look far to find one, usually for less than a fiver. To those who grew up in the 1960s, this style of simple eye-level box camera will be familiar, be it this particular model, or the very similar-looking Brownie 127. From their introduction over a century ago, until the end of the 1940s, Kodak's Brownie cameras were rectangular boxes; early versions were made from thick cardboard and later ones from sheet metal. This all changed in the 1950s,…