Innholdsfortegnelse for 27-Jul-2019 i Amateur Photographer

If you’d like to spend less time in Photoshop you need to get everything right in the camera, and that includes your white balance. This week we offer a refresher on how to achieve perfect colour every time. Elsewhere in the issue there’s a bit of an animal theme, starting with the stunning winners of our Animal Magic round of APOY 2019, and continuing with our expert tips for photographing badgers. Also, I’m slightly suspicious of anyone who doesn’t like dogs. What’s not to love about man’s best friend? I defy anyone to remain unmoved by the winners of this year’s Dog Photographer of the Year, for which I was delighted to be one of the judges. Finally, Panasonic’s stunning new full-frame mirrorless S1, tested this week, may not be…

Eamonn Doyle spent the best part of 20 years running a studio and record label specialising in electronic music, and looking at Made in Dublin it shows. The design is edgy and vibrant with brutally cropped images framed by white key lines, and snatches of text arranged on trendy orange backdrops. On first viewing it leaves you feeling as though you need a bit of a sit down and an Alka-Seltzer (or perhaps that's my age), but give it a chance and you'll soon find it less dizzying. Artist Niall Sweeney has played a large part in the design of almost all of Doyle's projects so far, and his influence is clearly a big draw. Made in Dublin brings together, for the first time, three of Doyle's series: i, ON…

ExpoDisc 2.0 This white balance tool comes in several filter-thread sizes and attaches to the front of lenses to provide a quick and easy way to set a custom white balance and to set a perfect exposure based on 18% grey. X-Rite ColorChecker Passport Photo 2 This pocket-size colour reference comes in a small hard case to keep the colour patches safe during transportation in your bag, and includes an 18% grey and a white balance target. This is a great tool in the studio and on location. Lastolite Ezybalance This foldable accessory provides a white surface on one side and 18% reflectance grey on the other for accurate manual white balance and exposure. The 30cm option is small enough to take anywhere.…

LIGHT is a form of electromagnetic energy, and the visible spectrum is made up of violet, blue, green, yellow and red. These colours combine to make white light, which is typically what you'd get outdoors around midday and from flash. The colour temperature of light obviously falls within this spectrum, and understanding how white light is made up of these constituent colours can be useful when working with different light sources, coloured gels, and when shooting at sunrise and sunset.…

1 Select Custom Enter the menu or use the relevant direct access button to bring up the white balance options on the LCD screen. Scroll down to Custom, usually at the bottom, and press OK. This will take you through to a screen where you need to shoot a reference image. 2 Fill the frame The camera will now ask you to shoot a reference image of something white. Use a sheet of white paper and place it in front of the camera. Look through the viewfinder and fill the frame before pressing the shutter button or another button as directed by the camera. 3 Confirm custom setting Once the reference image has been taken, most cameras will take you through to a confirmation screen to accept the custom setting…

1 CaronSteele 85pts 2 Tom Franklin de Waart 42pts 3= MarcoTagliarino 37pts 3= DanielSands 37pts 5 SteveJames 31pts 6= NeilLeatham 30pts 6= DarrenRose 30pts 8= BruceDeacon 29pts 8= StuartAshley 29pts 8= EberhardEhmke 29pts 8= Craig Scott 29pts To enter and find details of the upcoming rounds of APOY 2019 visit www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/apoy and click Enter Now…

Andrew Sydenham’s lab tests reveal just how the camera performs Our cameras and lenses are tested using the industry-standard Image Engineering IQ-Analyser software. Visit www.image-engineering.de for more details. With its 24-million-pixel full-frame sensor, it should come as no surprise to find that the Lumix S1 delivers image quality that's broadly comparable to its similarly specified peers. It produces crisp, highly detailed images, and special mention has to be made of its Lumix S 24-105mm F4 Macro OIS standard zoom which delivers excellent cross-frame sharpness, even at its 30cm minimum focus distance. High-ISO noise is extremely well controlled, and I wouldn't hesitate to use images shot at sensitivities as high as ISO 12,800 at least. Resolution Tested using the 24-105mm at 70mm and f/5.6, the S1 delivers around 3,900 lines per…

Peter Robinson As an amateur, I've found the D3200 offers a lot to a beginner. The camera is intuitive to set up, plus there is a wide variety of accessories and lenses readily available to enhance its performance and capability. The big plus point for me is its size; it's a perfect camera for travelling as it's not too heavy or unnecessarily bulky. The 540-shot battery allows you to fire away to your heart's content until you've got the shot you wanted to achieve. Having bought it with the standard 18-55mm kit lens, I couldn't wait to purchase a 70-300mm telephoto lens and fast prime to see what else this camera could do. I love using my Nikkor AF-S DX 35mm f/1.8 G lens for railway photography and experimenting with…

A REPORT on the state of the digital camera market in 2018 published by the Nikkei , Japan's biggest business news organization, reveals times are still tough in the industry. Compared to 2017, the total sales volume for digital cameras plunged by 22%, but some makers will be having modest celebrations following the report. Canon increased its market share to 40.5%, up 3.9% from 2017, and Fujifilm's share is now up to 5.15%. Olympus's share also inched up to 2.8%. That's the good news. However, Nikon's share fell to 19.1%, and Sony was down to 17.7%. For the latest news visit www.amateurphotographer.co.uk…

What shall I do? I must either stop reading AP or take out a subscription! Recently there have been several articles about good second-hand buys of obsolete cameras. One which caught my eye was the Panasonic Lumix GH3 (new in 2012). The article opined that it was a fine second-hand prospect. Out of interest I had a look at MPB's stock of the camera and found one reduced in price owing to a scratch on the base, but in otherwise good condition. I was hooked. I've never bought second-hand before but decided to purchase it. I would not have noticed the scratch on the base had MPB not pointed it out and the overall condition was first rate. I was truly delighted. So well done AP on a fine series…

In photography, everything is about balance – from composition and exposure to colour – and a tiny tip of the scales can often produce less-than-desirable results. White balance certainly falls into this category, and remains at the forefront of how the colours in your images are balanced and, indeed, how successfully your colour images convert to black & white. Colour balance, in a nutshell, can make or break an image. In a photographic world where so much can be adjusted post-capture, the temptation can be to shoot now and fix later, but whether you shoot images in raw or JPEG, there are many reasons why setting the correct white balance at the point of capture is the best way to work. What is white balance? White balance is a setting…

COLOUR temperature is measured in kelvin – a measurement of temperature most commonly used in science which starts at absolute zero, with no minus figures like Celsius or Fahrenheit have. At one end of the scale, we have orange light at 1000K, going all the way up to blue light at 10,000K, as the diagram above illustrates. We often refer to colour temperature and light sources from a subjective point of view: red, orange and yellow light are referred to as hot, while blue or green light are considered cold, but the reality in terms of kelvin is actually the opposite.…

1 Caron Steele UK 30pts Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, 100-400mm at 220mm, 1/1000sec at f/8, ISO 1000 There's so much to enjoy about Caron's outstanding capture. The sheer physicality of the image, with the pelican running towards the camera, its wings outstretched like an angel's, is extremely powerful, and the determined expression on its face is priceless. Timing is spot on, with just the tip of the bird's webbed foot touching the ice, and the pops of orange and yellow against the mostly ice-blue background stand out magnificently. A worthy winner that very much deserves its top billing in both the expert and the crowd votes. 2 Bruce Deacon UK 29pts Canon EOS 50D, 100-400mm at 285mm, 1/30sec at f/8, ISO 500 Using a slow shutter speed here has…

Food I try to avoid feeding badgers as they end up snuffling for food the majority of the time and display less natural behaviour. If you do feed them, limit it to one handful of peanuts/ sultanas per badger and scatter feeding days to avoid them becoming dependent on you. Camouflage netting Rather than hiding from the badgers, I use netting to hide from other people in order to ensure no unwanted attention is brought to the site. It can also help at new sites when trying to blend in to minimise disturbance.…

WITH THE Lumix S1, there's no doubt that Panasonic has produced a highly accomplished camera that's a strong competitor to its 24MP rivals, the Nikon Z 6 and Sony Alpha 7 III. It's solidly built and handles exceptionally well, while its superb viewfinder and screen give a class-leading viewing experience. The image quality is genuinely superb, too. Overall there's a huge amount to like here, especially if you habitually shoot a mix of stills and video. But the question is whether these benefits are sufficient to offset Panasonic's decision to make the system so large and expensive. This is brought into sharp relief when you compare systems based on the S1 and the Sony Alpha 7 III. For the same price as the S1 and its three lenses (24-105mm f/4,…

● £249 for Canon EF version; £99 for Sigma SA version ● www.sigma-imaging-uk.com IN SEPTEMBER 2018 Leica, Panasonic and Sigma formed the L-Mount Alliance, to produce cameras and lenses based on Leica's existing full-frame mirrorless platform. But one problem with this nascent system is that there are no affordable native AF lenses, with the cheapest being the Panasonic 24-105mm f/4 at £1,300. It goes without saying that this will put off some potential buyers. Help is now at hand in the shape of the Sigma MC-21, a fully electronic mount converter that allows L-mount camera owners to use Canon EF or Sigma SA SLR lenses. The two versions come at radically different prices: £249 for the EF-mount version tested here, but just £99 for SA. Sigma has to be applauded…

IN THE same week as announcing the Sigma fp, the company unveiled three new full-frame lenses designed specifically for the Sony E and Leica L mirrorless mounts: the 35mm F1.2 DG DN Art (£1,459), 14-24mm F2.8 DG DN Art (£1,459) and the 45mm F2.8 DG DN Contemporary (£549). The 35mm is the fastest AF lens released for L- and E-mounts. The lens is not light (1,090g) or diminutive (87.8x136.2mm) but has some impressive specs. The 14-24mm F2.8 DG DN also offers a fast maximum aperture, but is two-thirds the weight of Sigma's equivalent DSLR lens, at 795g. The 45mm f/2.8 is light and portable at 215g, with a dedicated aperture ring and a 24cm minimum focusing distance. Both E- and L-mount are available to pre-order now.…

LET'S get the ‘what a lot of balls' gags out of the way first, as this holiday-tastic cover from 22 July 1964 has a lot of period charm. Hipsters and Instagram ‘influencers' would kill for the wonderful look of professionally developed colour film from this era, and we could look at this cover all day. As the major feature on film processing inside the issue explains, it was not a process for the impatient or easily discouraged, and it is a salutary reminder of how spoiled we are today, with instant high-resolution colour imagery available on our phones. By 1964, a large percentage of the UK population owned some kind of camera, but colour processing, particularly processing at home, was still not that common. ‘Possibly the one thing that deters…

If there is one thing in life that's a guaranteed, nailed-on certainty it's that when Leica releases a camera, the internet goes crazy with comments about the price. The latest Leica M Monochrom ‘Drifter, designed in collaboration with musician and photographer Lenny Kravitz, is no exception. ‘My camera can take better pictures and only costs1/8th of the price!' posts Outraged Dave. ‘You're just buying the brand, not the camera!' laments Peter. ‘It's become a piece of jewellery!' types Curmudgeonly Chris. The price of a Leica camera shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. They have always been extremely well engineered and designed cameras, and command a price to match. Sure, in the digital age where the defining feature is of course the sensor, it is easy to compare one camera…

EISA Maestro competition winners The theme of the 2019 EISA Maestro competition was ‘Power'. The winning entries from each of the 16 participating EISA countries were judged together at the association's General Meeting in June and the final results will be revealed at the EISA Awards Gala in September. The overall winner will take home a cash prize of € 1,500 and the EISA Photo Maestro 2019 trophy. The 2nd place in the UK, as selected by the AP team, is Lee Acaster, and we see his work here. The winning images appeared in the 6 July issue, and the 3rd place will feature in AP 10 August. Lee Acaster, East Anglia ‘It was on moving to East Anglia from Yorkshire that I discovered a passion for photography. I have…

ONE OF the advantages of white balance is that when used creatively, it can change the overall look and feel of images. In the examples here, you'll see how simply using the Temperature slider in Lightroom or ACR can be used to make the images look colder (bluer) or warmer (yellower). To maintain realistic-looking results don't push the slider too far because you'll end up with an unattractive colour cast rather than making the shot look like it was taken at the blue hour or the earlier part of a sunset where the light appears warm.…

1 Take your shots Set up your shot and take one with the colour checker in the scene, then remove and continue shooting. Load your images into your raw-editing software and select the one with the colour checker before using the white balance dropper to click on the white square. 2 Copy settings Keep the reference image selected, hold down the Shift key and select the main image(s). Click on the Sync button making sure WB is checked. Click Synchronize or OK. This will copy the white balance settings so that your images without the reference card adjust too. 3 Get perfect white balance The result will be 100% perfect white balance. The colour checker is great for studio use because studio flash colour temperature varies from one brand to…

Caron Steele from Worcestershire has been awarded both first place and the crowd vote in APOY Round 3 for her photograph of a Dalmatian pelican running across the frozen Lake Kerkini in northern Greece. Caron can choose Sigma products of up to £1,000 in value (based on Sigma's RRP) as her prize. For those who love wildlife photography, the 150-600mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM | Contemporary lens (£999.99, left) is just the ticket. Its impressive focal range means that few subjects will be out of reach, yet it remains relatively compact and lighweight. With one ‘F' Low Dispersion glass element and three Special Low Dispersion elements, chromatic aberration is kept to a minimum.…

For this image, Charlie Waite used a Nikon D800 with 24-120mm f/4 lens. The exposure was 1/60sec at f/22, ISO 250. The focal length of the lens was 92mm, making it a short telephoto landscape scene. The sky didn’t require the use of any ND grads. ‘I’ve never been a big fan of super-wide images,’ Charlie says. ‘A wideangle shot looks like a wideangle, and doesn’t have any parity with what the eye sees. For this image, the wall and rock needed to be compressed and snuggle up to each other a bit more, hence the focal length.’…

L-mount Thanks to the L-Mount Alliance, this gives compatibility with 8 native full-frame lenses from Leica (3 zooms and 5 primes), and 11 upcoming Art primes from Sigma, alongside Panasonic’s own 3 optics. In addition, Sigma’s MC-21 adapter allows the use of Canon EF-mount SLR lenses (see page 53). Flash The S1 is compatible with the same dedicated flash units as Panasonic’s Micro Four Thirds cameras. Power The huge DMW-BLJ31 battery can be charged either internally or externally. It’s rated as being good for around 360-400 shots per charge, or up to 1150 when power save LVF mode is enabled Connectors On the side you’ll find 3.5mm stereo headphone and mic sockets under a shared hinged rubber cover, along with USB-C and full-size HDMI ports. The remote-release socket is placed…

I like a picture in which the subject only fills a very small part of the frame but is so eye-catching we know immediately where we are supposed to look. Such images show how powerful lighting, exposure, or your framing can be. Often it can present a far more comprehensive explanation of the situation than had the subject been framed tightly. Showing an expanse of environment while drawing viewers first to a tiny area of it, is almost like using a long angle and a wide angle at the same time. In this shot of a couple making a selfie at a concert we get to appreciate the size of the crowd, while Serbian photographer Jelena Jankovic points out to us what she wants us to see. It all works…