Innholdsfortegnelse for 22-Aug-2020 i Amateur Photographer

Buying and selling second-hand has always been a great way for canny photographers to upgrade their kit. But in these uncertain economic times it makes more sense than ever to either buy second-hand, or sell off those bits of our kit that we don’t use much in order to fund the purchase of a new item. This week’s special issue looks at both the buying and selling sides of the process, with expert tips on how to get the best price for your existing kit, as well as our pick of the best used buys in each of the main camera systems. We also feature the work of two people who have used photography in very different ways to overcome their own personal challenges, and a wonderful documentary project on…

Geometry by Jude Lee-Allan Nikon D5300, 50mm, 1/60 sec at f/8, ISO 640 Jude Lee-Allan is an 18-year-old photography student from Stroud with a real enthusiasm for portraiture. ‘I titled this image “Geometry” due to its structural appearance. The image was taken in my porch using just natural light and a white backdrop. It is part of a set of Avedon-inspired portraits that I created recently and is a photograph of a close friend.’ Chosen by Andy Westlake, Technical Editor The Calm Sea by Sue Woodbridge Sony Alpha 7R II, 16mm, 64sec at f/8, ISO 100 Sue loves being out in the fresh air and capturing the sea in all its forms, and as she lives on the south coast she has endless opportunities to do just that. ‘This particular…

Sigma has announced its latest lens for full-frame mirrorless cameras, the Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN | Art. This short telephoto prime is the first with a fast f/1.4 aperture that the firm has designed specifically for mirrorless cameras, starting a new line that will complement its existing set of f/2.8 zooms. It’s said to be ideal for portrait, wedding and event photographers. Sigma claims that the new lens delivers improved image quality compared to its counterpart for full-frame DSLRs, yet weighs only slightly more than half as much. Optically, it comprises 15 elements in 11 groups, including five super-low dispersion (SLD) elements and an aspherical element to combat optical aberrations. Particular attention has been paid to eliminate colour fringing around out-of-focus elements, a symptom of axial chromatic aberration. It…

THE PINK Lady Food Photographer of the Year contest has introduced a new category for women photographers called the Claire Aho Award. Aho (1925-2015) was a commercial photographer from Finland. ‘She was a trailblazer in many ways,’ notes Caroline Kenyon, founder of the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year competition. ‘As a woman working as a commercial photographer from the late 1940s at a time when almost no women were working in this field, in her use of colour photography and in her unique photographic blend of style, wit and vitality. Her achievements and legacy are an inspiration to women everywhere to express themselves through the medium of photography and it made complete sense to us to commemorate her in this way.’ You can find full details of the…

MPB ● www.mpb.com ● 0330 808 3271 What kind of used gear is really in demand at the moment? Canon remains top of the pile but we’re seeing an increase in Sony and Fujifilm users over the last 12 months. Recently with many people restricted over the lockdown, we have seen a spike in macro equipment, but the bestselling camera and lens combination remains the Canon EOS 5D Mark III and 24-105mm f/4 L lens – a classic combo to suit a range of scenarios. What are the biggest issues and problems you see that reduce the potential value of sent-in kit? Some repeat reasons we see for potential adjustments are high shutter counts not taken into account, dead batteries, scratches to glass on lenses and misquoted models – for…

Oscar Dewhurst Oscar Dewhurst is a wildlife photographer and filmmaker based in Bristol. He has photographed wildlife all over the world, and his images have been awarded in prestigious competitions and widely published. Visit www.oscardewhurst.com. MY FAVOURITE lens that I bought second-hand was a Nikon AF-S 600mm f/4D ED-IF II back in 2013. As a wildlife photographer, you are always after more magnification, and you can’t do much better than a 600mm f/4. This model was pre-VR, and weighed nearly 6kg without the camera body, but I didn’t care; it was razor sharp and the autofocus was lightning-quick. Sure, VR would have been nice, but it cost far less than the more recent models, which were almost double the price. I used it constantly for a few years, before I…

Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM ● £139 If you’re after a compact wideangle zoom for your Canon APS-C DSLR, this is a fine example and one that pairs up well with mid-range DSLRs like the EOS 70D. Its Stepping Motor Technology (STM) helps keep focus operation inaudible and with four-stop image stabilisation it’s possible to shoot sharp handheld images with shutter speeds as slow as 1/5sec. It may have a plastic mount and electronic manual focus, but don’t let that put you off as it delivers very pleasing results for such a low price. As such, it’s hard to think of a reason not to include this in your lens collection if you’re looking to expand and fancy owning an optic that’s better suited to containing more of what’s…

Fujifilm XF 18›55mm F2.8›4 R LM OIS ● £249 If your budget can’t stretch to the excellent Fujifilm XF 16-80mm f4 R OIS WR (£769) and you fancy a smaller standard zoom that covers a practical 35mm equivalent range of 27-84mm, this lens makes an excellent choice. It has picked up a reputation as one of the best examples of a kit zoom and unlike some kit lenses that are let down by poor build quality and mediocre sharpness, this example is quite the opposite. As well as delivering impressive sharpness, it focuses silently, is well constructed and features effective optical image stabilisation (OIS). Filters can be attached via a 58mm thread; it weighs 310g and has a 30cm minimum focus distance. You’ll find there is a healthy saving to…

Panasonic Lumix G Vario 12›60mm F3.5›5.6 ASPH OIS ● £159 This might look like just another small-aperture kit zoom, but in fact a couple of desirable characteristics make it stand out from the crowd. First is the unusually versatile 24-120mm equivalent zoom range, making it suitable for a broad range of subjects from landscapes to portraits. Secondly, the lens is weather-sealed to match the G80, making it the ideal choice for shooting outdoors in less than perfect conditions. It’s small and lightweight, at just 210g, while accepting 58mm filters and focusing as close as 25cm at the telephoto end. Sharpness is very respectable, with the best results seen around f/5.6-8, while integrated software compensation eliminates distortion and chromatic aberration. It’s a fine lightweight general-purpose zoom for everyday use. Panasonic Lumix…

In the 1940s and ’50s the photographers who shot for Vogue reads like a list of some of the gods of photography. Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Horst P Horst, William Klein, George Hoyningen-Huene, Erwin Blumenfeld, Lee Miller, Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton… the list goes on and on. Vogue, even if one was not interested in fashion, became the natural home to many who we now consider to be among the ‘greats’. The brilliant commissioning and freedom given to its photographers during this time made for a creative atmosphere that has seldom, if ever, been matched. One name is not on this list, and for rather sad reasons. Clifford Coffin was an American photographer brought over to work for British Vogue after the war. Coffin had studied and worked with the…

Ball and Chain by Fox Photos A man throwing the ball and chain at the Highland Games in Dunoon. Usually, the Cowal Highland Gathering takes place annually at the end of August – this year it’s one of the many event casualties of Covid-19. The first record of an organised games taking place in Dunoon dates back to 1871, with the first games resembling the modern event taking place in 1894. Events include The Pipe Band Competition, Solo Bagpipe Competition, Highland Dancing competition and a range of sports including shotput, caber toss and a 5km fun run. It is hoped that the games will return safely in 2021. The Getty Images Hulton Archive is one of the world’s great cultural resources. Tracing its origins to the founding of the London…

Tamron is developing the world’s ‘smallest and lightest’ telephoto zoom for Sony E-mount, the 70-300mm F4.5-6.3 Di III RXD. While Tamron has made many telephoto zooms that extend to 300mm for DSLRs, this is the first model designed for full-frame mirrorless. The lens is weather-sealed, sports an ‘RXD’ Rapid eXtra-silent stepping Drive for focusing, and is relatively compact – with a 77mm diameter and weighing 544g. ‘The 70-300mm F4.5-6.3 is a highly practical lens that makes the excitement of telephoto shooting easier than ever before across a diverse range of shooting styles including landscapes, sports and other athletic events, wildlife, portraits, and more,’ said the company. The lens will be available in autumn, and the UK price is yet to be confirmed.…

The winners of the Down’s Syndrome Association’s (DSA) international photographic competition have been announced, with successful entries coming from Ireland, Canada and the USA. Now in its tenth year, the ‘My Perspective’ competition gives photographers who have the genetic condition the chance to share their view of the world. The Peoples’ Choice Award was voted for by the public online. They chose Conor O’Dowd’s portrait entitled ‘My friend Jason the model’ as their favourite (top row far right). Conor, who is from Drogheda in County Louth, Ireland, said: ‘I am surprised to win. It’s great. It makes my parents proud. I can’t wait to tell my best friend Jason the great news. I love the My Perspective competition... during lockdown I was out and about taking pictures.’ Congratulations to everyone…

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12›40mm F2.8 Pro ● £439 It may seem odd to recommend a standard zoom that’s more expensive than the camera, but the 12-40mm f/2.8 is quite simply the perfect complement to the E-M5 Mark II. Indeed, more than any other lens in Olympus’s line-up, aside perhaps from the recently launched 12-45mm f/4, it best realises the concept of the high-quality, lightweight, weather-sealed system. Optically it’s fantastic, delivering excellent image quality at any focal length even when shot wide open, while also being capable of superb close-ups down to just 20cm, where it delivers 0.6x equivalent magnification. Operationally it boasts a dual-mode focus ring that can be snapped back towards the camera to engage manual focus, revealing a distance scale in the process. There’s also a programmable…

Sony Alpha 7 ● £409 It’s easy to forget just how revolutionary the Sony Alpha 7 looked when it was launched back in 2013 alongside the 36MP Alpha 7R, as one of the world’s first full-frame mirrorless cameras. Now that we’re three generations down the line, with the Alpha 7 III being one of the most sophisticated and accomplished all-rounders on the market, it’s also easy to forget just how small, stripped-back and lightweight the camera felt compared to contemporary full-frame DSLRs. At heart the Alpha 7 answers a very simple question, of how to squeeze a full-frame sensor into the smallest possible body while including an eye-level viewfinder. The resultant SLR-style design with its central EVF measures 127x94x48mm and weighs 474g, making it almost 200g lighter than the contemporary…

Olympus Tough TG-6 ● £370 ● www.olympus.co.uk Olympus’s Tough compacts have habitually won our underwater camera group tests, and this latest model is still the best of its type. It’s waterproof to 15m, shockproof against a 2.4m drop, crushproof and freezeproof. The 25-100mm equivalent lens is paired with a 12MP sensor, and viewing is via a 3in LCD. This is also one of the few rugged cameras that can record raw files. Panasonic LX100 II ● £749 ● www.panasonic.com/uk A high-end compact for creative photography, the LX100 II is based around a 24-75mm equivalent f/1.7-2.8 lens and a 17MP Four Thirds sensor that features a true multi aspect-ratio design. It also boasts a full range of traditional analogue control dials, and the corner-mounted viewfinder is complemented by touchscreen LCD. Reviewed…

Unripe by Patricia Wilden Canon EOS 70D, 40mm, 1/5000sec at f/3.2, ISO 200 Patricia didn’t take up photography until she retired in 2006 and now finds her hobby has turned into a bit an obsession. She has no particular favourite genre but takes mostly landscapes and street photography, although as a good creative spirit she will attempt most things! She explains how she took this shot, ‘I specifically went out on a bright blustery day to take photographs of an unripened cereal crop. The crop was moving in the breeze and after taking some shots I decided to focus on just one ear of barley. The only technique I used was to get down on my knees for the low point of view. I prefer to do that rather than…

Moods in a Room by Catherine Balet Hardcover, 120 pages, £35, Dewi Lewis, ISBN: 978-1-911306-59-7 In this intriguing series, Balet merges her own paintings with her personal photography archive, as well as pictures from the internet. There are no captions or context, which I usually find frustrating, but given the creativity of the images here it leaves me free to make up my own interpretations of the scene. Balet worked as a painter before turning to photography. As such, she mixes the two mediums extremely well. Each page of this book is intriguing, giving you reason to pause and look in depth into each image. This is not a book that every AP reader will naturally gravitate towards, but if you’re looking for something a little out of the ordinary,…

I’m a new subscriber and have just received my first magazine (AP 11 June). Wow, it’s informative! I am a newbie to photography, having only got my camera two years ago for my 69th birthday, so I’m a late starter. I don’t have a lot of knowledge but if I learn something I like to pass it on, as I think it’s more powerful to share information than keep it to yourself. So in reply to David Austin’s letter asking why he can’t share his photos on Instagram from his PC I’m writing to say that you can. Just open up the Instagram website on your PC, right-click anywhere on the page, scroll down the pop-up menu and click on ‘Inspect’. Then click on the tablet/phone icon on the task…

Sadly, we’ve had to make the difficult decision not to feature Pentax in depth. While it still has its dedicated followers, the brand’s popularity has dwindled and the supply of decent used digital kit is drying up. However for Pentax users looking to upgrade, we’d recommend the K-3; it’s a really fine DSLR with excellent image quality and an impressive feature set, and costs about £450 body-only. We’d pair it with the versatile, weather-sealed DA 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 WR zoom (£230), and look to add a set of the firm’s lovely Limited-series primes; perhaps the 15mm f/4 wideangle, 35mm f/2.8 macro, and 70mm f/2.4 telephoto, for about £300 each. For those on a budget, the lightweight DA 50mm F1.8 and 35mm F2.4 both cost well under £100.…

Nikon AF›S 18›105mm f/3.5›5.6G ED VR ● £129 If you don’t already own a DX-format lens and you’d like a versatile standard zoom that’ll cover most bases for travelling and times when you only want to carry a single lens, this example that was introduced with the Nikon D90 in 2008 can now be picked up reasonably on the second-hand market. Equivalent to 27-158mm in 35mm terms, it features Vibration Reduction (VR) and Silent Wave Motor (SWM) technologies, extra-low-dispersion and aspherical lens elements, as well as seven rounded diaphragm blades. It doesn’t have a robust metal lens mount and it’s not weather-sealed, however it delivers a good optical performance for a kit zoom and it goes about its business of focusing silently. Users of filters and polarisers will be grateful…

Sony FE 24›70mm F4 ZA OSS ● £439 Sony’s cheapest standard zoom is the FE 28-70mm F3.5-5.6 OSS, which is available for less than £160 second-hand. But unless you’re really on a budget, we’d forgo this entry-level lens in favour of the Zeiss-branded 24-70mm F4, as a better way of realising the potential of the full-frame sensor. It provides a usefully wider view, along with higher-quality optics and a more robust all-metal barrel that’s sealed against dust and moisture. However it’s still relatively compact and lightweight, at 94.5mm in length and 426g, and uses 67mm filters. It also includes optical stabilisation to help keep your images sharp when shooting handheld at slower shutter speeds. Overall it’s the ideal everyday zoom for use on the Alpha 7. Sony FE 50mm F1.8…