Innholdsfortegnelse for 13/02/2021 i Amateur Photographer

Despite the fact that colour photography has been around for over 100 years, black & white still refuses to go away. Perhaps this is because, paradoxically, even though colour is more modern, b&w is more timeless. Or perhaps it’s because mono is purer, reducing images to the key ingredients of light, tone, shape and form. In this week’s special issue we discuss the legacy of the late Mary Ellen Mark with her husband, Martin Bell; showcase great b&w landscapes, wildlife, portraits and documentary work; and explain how to create stunning b&w images from both digital files and film. We get to play with the world’s fastest AF lens, and most importantly of all, we launch Amateur Photographer of the Year 2021, which introduces some exciting changes. We have a new…

ALONGSIDE the X-E4, Fujifilm has announced two new lenses. First up is the Fujinon XF 70-300mm F4-5.6 R LM OIS WR, a lightweight telephoto zoom with a 105-450mm equivalent range. It’s compatible with Fujifilm’s XF 1.4x and 2x teleconverters for even greater reach. Optically, the lens is constructed using 17 elements in 12 groups, including 1 aspherical and 2 ED elements. A 9-blade aperture promises attractive background blur, while a linear motor is employed for rapid autofocus, with a minimum focus distance of 83cm. The built-in optical image stabilisation is rated for 5.5 stops effectiveness and works together with the in-body IS in the X-T4 and X-S10. Like the majority of Fujifilm’s XF lenses, the 70-300mm is weather-resistant and rated to work in temperatures as low as -10°C. Its relatively…

We’ve come a long way from being able to try cameras and lenses in camera stores to being offered free loan incentives from different manufacturers. Photographers who’d like to try before they buy have never had it so good. I always find it fascinating to read or hear about the journey people have taken to establish their interest, passion or careers in photography. For me it came through my dad passing his film camera to me and letting me have a go, which after some success, led to me asking for my own camera for my next birthday. I was very lucky to receive a Canon EOS 500N SLR, which served me well until it was finally replaced by my first DSLR in 2007. I still remember going into Dixons…

1 Walk around your subject to determine the best vantage point. 2 Attach a wideangle lens to your DSLR and secure everything to a tripod. 3 With the camera secure, refine your composition. 4 Switch to manual focus and refine your focus. 5 Find the unfiltered exposure time. To do this, select aperture priority, set the desired f-stop, and take a test shot. Make a mental note of the shutter speed. 6 Attach your chosen Neutral Density (ND) filter. 7 Switch the camera to Blub mode. 8 The length of time that the shutter needs to stay open will depend on the strength of the ND filter, and the effect you desire. Use the shutter speed from your test shot as a guide. 9 If you’re struggling to compensate for…

About Graeme Graeme is retired, having previously worked for the Scottish Prison Service. Favourite subjects I love street photography, and capturing fleeting moments of life. I’m a huge fan of Brechin City, and am also their official photographer. How did you get into photography? My dad taught me how to contact print black & white negatives. A friend and I then bought enlargers and we did our own printing. First camera My dad gave me his box camera, and then I had a Kodak Brownie Twin 20. What do you love about photography? The total control you have over what is included in the frame, which personalises every picture you take. And the way you can tell a story in a single frame. Current kit For street and family, I…

1 Make presets or profiles of your favourite black & white recipes so that you can easily apply them to other images. 2 Download black & white Lightroom presets from sites such as presetsheaven.com, presetlove.com, presetpond.com and on1.com. 3 Once you’ve converted to mono, use the Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop CC or Elements to selectively lighten or darken areas. 4 When you’re shooting for mono, switch your camera picture style to monochrome – and then replicate it afterwards with the Profile Browser’s Camera Matching set. 5 You can often get away with stronger Clarity and Contrast settings with black & white images, so don’t be afraid to push these further than normal. 6 After converting to black & white in Camera Raw / Lightroom, you can tweak the…

Are you keen to print your own negatives – either for the first time, or to return to it after a break? If you don’t want to build your own darkroom in the under-stairs cupboard, pay a visit to www.localdarkroom.com to see if there are any community labs in your area – or to post a request of your own. Of course, a lot of these facilities are closed at the moment, thanks to Covid-19, but when they’re up and running, a lot of them will provide chemistry and sometimes even tuition for an hourly or monthly-membership fee. In addition, a number of the printers featured here provide darkroom tuition (and who wouldn’t want to benefit from their years of experience?), so take a look at their websites to find…

Ask Fujifilm users what their favourite lens is and you’re likely to get a variety of different answers. Ask the same question to users of X-series cameras who have a love for portraiture, reportage or candid photography and there’s one lens that’ll be mentioned time and time again. If you haven’t already guessed, the lens I’m referring to is the stunning XF 56mm F1.2 R. Less than half the size of many 85mm primes for full frame and lightweight at just over 400g, it’s often the first lens to be pulled from X-series photographers’ camera bags. It’s hard to describe, but it’s strangely addictive to use. Yes it lacks weather-sealing and its autofocus is pretty slow, yet the utterly gorgeous bokeh and ludicrous sharpness at wide apertures make up for…

● £59 ● www.hahnel.ie Colour filters The kit is supplied with six colour filters, namely blue, green, purple, red, orange and yellow. Filter holder This attaches securely to the magnetic clamp. The lantern diffuser is also magnetised for quick and easy removal. Magnetic clamp Users will need a magnetic clamp to attach the diffuser to their speedlight. They come in two sizes and cost £10 each. Portability The kit is extremely compact and portable. The supplied wallet fits into a trouser pocket. SPEEDLIGHT modifiers and diffusers come in all different shapes and sizes. Just when I thought every possible concept had been made, Hähnel sent me a sample of its new modular speedlight accessory that’s quite different from anything I’ve seen before. Its Creative Lantern Kit is based around an…

Girls evacuated from Ilford celebrate Shrove Tuesday with a traditional pancake toss. This year, Shrove Tuesday falls on 16 February. The word ‘shrove’ comes from the Old English word ‘shrive’, meaning ‘absolve’. In the Middle Ages, a bell would be rung to call people to confession, and would become known as the ‘pancake bell’ to signify that it was time to prepare the pancake batter for lunch. The Getty Images Hulton Archive is one of the world’s great cultural resources. Tracing its origins to the founding of the London Stereoscopic Company in 1854, today it houses over 80 million images spanning the birth of photography to the digital age. Explore it at www.gettyimages.com.…

FUJIFILM has also added to its medium-format lens line-up. The Fujinon GF 80mm F1.7 R WR is the world’s largest-aperture lens for medium-format mirrorless, offering a 63mm equivalent view. The firm says it’s ideal for shooting portraits with a slightly wider perspective than usual. Optically the design employs 12 elements in 9 groups, including one aspherical and two super ED glass elements to suppress aberrations. With a weather-resistant barrel, the lens measures 94.7mm in diameter and 99.2mm in length, weighs 795g, and accepts 77mm filters. The minimum focus distance is 70cm. The 80mm F1.7 is due on sale in March for £2,099.…

FUJIFILM has also updated its 27mm f/2.8 pancake prime with weather-sealing and an aperture ring. With its slim dimensions and 40mm equivalent view, the new XF 27mm F2.8 R WR will likely be considerably better appreciated than its predecessor. Vital statistics are very similar to before, with the same 7-element 5-group optical design that includes an aspherical element to suppress peripheral aberrations. The diaphragm employs 7 blades, the lens can focus as close as 34cm, and it takes 39mm filters. The new version is just fractionally larger than the original lens, although at 62x23mm and 84g, it’s still tiny. A small dome-shaped hood with a matching cap is included in the package, which will cost £419.…

Women Photographers edited by Clara Bouveresse £35, Thames & Hudson, 3x softback, 432 pages (total), ISBN: 9780500411186 Women have been pioneering photographers since the earliest days of the artform, but for myriad reasons they haven’t always received the recognition they deserve. Split into three volumes – Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Contemporaries – this is a fantastic introduction to the lives and work of many of the women who have made a mark on the photographic landscape. You can purchase each book separately, but it’s worth getting all three together for completeness. Each book is a slender volume that can be easily flicked through when trying to fill an idle few minutes. A small biography of the photographer is accompanied by an image from their oeuvre – I don’t envy the person…

Canon 17-40mm f/4L USM lens Vassilis likes to use this popular lens for long exposures. It offers excellent optical performance and is also highly resistant to dust and moisture. Manfrotto 055 tripod Paired with a Manfrotto MHXPRO-BHQ2 Ball Head, this gives Vassilis maximum stability and flexibility. The head can support a 10kg load, capable of handling his Canon EOS 5D Mk III and lens. Blackstone ND filters These ND filters from Wine Country Camera use the latest technology to ensure that they are completely colour neutral. Vassilis regularly uses the 6-stop and the 10-stop versions. Google Maps It s a good idea to research a location beforehand, and Google Maps can provide you with satellite imagery and aerial photography at the touch of a button. Canon EOS 5D Mk III…

Mary Ellen Mark was a highly influential and respected photographer during her 50-year-plus working career, which spanned from the mid-1960s till her death in 2015. She was a pioneer in the art of empathy and embedding herself with her subjects – from poverty-stricken families in the US to prostitutes in the brothels of Bombay – while never judging her subjects, purely telling their stories with her amazing photographic eye. As a child Mark had a Box Brownie camera but she decided to study painting and art history for her initial degree. Her photographic career began in 1964 after she’d completed a Master’s degree in photojournalism at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the following year her travels began when she went to Turkey for a…

While much success comes in how you process black & white images, you can certainly give yourself a helping hand from a shooting perspective, too. For starters, while black & white has gone from a restriction to a creative choice, like any choice, it should be made carefully. Picking the right moments to use it should be key. It’s a treatment that should emphasise what you want to show in the subject, never disguise the shortcomings of a scene. Simplicity should be a driving force, too. Without colour to distract attention, the viewer’s focus will immediately be concentrated on the shape and contrast in an image, so in many ways composition becomes even more demanding. Like any technique or subject, experience will help you ‘see’ subjects that’ll work in black…

• ‘Have a passion. I grew up with black & white. My father started it – he gave me a camera and showed me the old magazines. The old LIFE magazines with Eugene Smith’s photographs are priceless. But when I saw how you’re creating something in the darkroom my passion lay in black & white.’ • ‘If young photographers are interested in black & white they should follow their heart. I do both colour and black & white, but I like the black & white things that I do much more. There are so many great colour photographers who can do things much better than I can, but I can do things quite well in black & white.’ • ‘Have drive. It’s been a quest all of my life to…

I’D PACKED a 77mm ND filter thinking it might be tricky to shoot at f/1 in bright sunny conditions, however it wasn’t used. Instead, I opted to keep the ISO sensitivity as low as possible and took advantage of the X-T4’s electronic shutter that enables the use of shutter speeds as high as 1/32000sec. Shooting in aperture priority and setting the shutter type to mechanical+electronic instructed the camera to use the mechanical shutter up to 1/8000sec. In bright situations where a faster shutter speed was needed to ensure the image didn’t become overexposed, the electronic shutter automatically took over and allowed me to continue shooting at wide apertures without any interruption.…

The Ricoh 66 Auto and myself have something in common. We were both introduced in 1959, and at the time of writing we’re both still going strong. This is a twin lens reflex and possibly the first TLR to incorporate any kind of automation. Advertising from the period boasts of the ‘The Automatic Electric Eye’, a feature common to a number of Ricoh cameras of the era. Today’s users would probably feel short-changed by the implication that the camera’s exposure system is automatic. In reality you still have to set the aperture and shutter speed, albeit by aligning a circular target to a meter needle, rather than selecting specific settings. In fact, the user is given no choice at all as to these settings. In low light the maximum aperture…

The notion of ‘travel photography’ can be a challenge – what is it? Superficially it’s easy enough to categorise, but – a little like ‘street photography’ – any attempt to really articulate what it is as a genre and you can come unstuck. And what’s the point? Why do so many photographers have such a strong desire to define genres anyway? A quick online search of ‘travel photography’ or a browse through the winners of big international travel photography competitions would suggest that it’s a style of photography that’s more about exotic destinations, cormorant fishermen in China or characterful women smoking cigars in Cuba, rather than anything to do with the concept of ‘journey’ or ‘travel’. While most of the exotic ‘destination’ images are technically competent and well crafted, albeit…

AP picture of the week Mayfield Mood by Paul Crudgington Fujifilm XT2, 35mm lens, 1/125sec at f/2, ISO 1250 Paul is based in Manchester and says his work sits somewhere between street, architecture and fine art. ‘This image was made in the Mayfield area of Manchester, a yet-to-be-redeveloped industrial part of the city,’ he tells us. ‘I hadn’t planned to go out with my camera that evening, but as the smoke from the fireworks began to settle and the drizzle started to fall, the conditions were too good to resist! The atmosphere was amazing, with the street lights diffused through the “fog” creating a dark and eery mood.’ This is a wonderfully atmospheric image. Sadly the lone figure isn’t Orson Welles but whoever it is they provide a useful focal…

5 February 1975 FEBRUARY 1975: a grave moment in British photography. An album of prints by Julia Margaret Cameron, given to her friend, Sir John Herschel, in 1864, had recently been sold at Sotheby’s for a world record price of £52,000 to the collector Sam Wagstaff, who was… (you might want to sit down for this bit) American. That’s £545,000 today. The sale stirred widespread feeling that a collection so important to British art history should stay in the UK. Wagstaff, who was Robert Mapplethorpe’s partner, had sportingly agreed to part with it if he was reimbursed, so AP started a fund-raising campaign, asking the public for donations and enlisting photography’s leading lights to help. ‘Unless you, the amateurs of this country, lend your support to this campaign to raise…

Do your research If the location you’re planning to shoot at is unfamiliar to you, carry out some research. Studying Google Maps, for example, helps trigger ideas and encourage you to previsualise the end result. ‘This is usually enough for me to take the ingredients and create my own vision with it,’ says Vassilis. Add some human interest In recent months, Vassilis has been experimenting with including human elements in his long exposure photographs. His background as a scientist means that he’s not afraid to experiment with new ideas. In the beginning he was just playing, and this sense of delight and discovery remains. Try to be original When we mimic the work of others for too long we are in danger of preventing our own creative vision from shining…

Esther May Campbell FILM photography has been in Esther May Campbell’s blood since childhood. She was given a Polaroid camera when she was eight years old, but it was the Olympus OM1 she received in her early teens that really changed things. ‘My teens were quite tricky times,’ she explains. ‘I was at a fairly dishevelled all-girls state school, and there was a certain amount of bullying. Taking pictures helped me navigate some of those relationships, and being in the darkroom meant I could escape and process the pictures of the world around me. It was bliss.’ Despite relishing the escapism photography offered, Esther had no intention of following it as a career. However, having worked her way up the ladder in television production, she discovered it was an industry…

1 B&W Mixer This panel in Camera Raw offers more control over your black & white conversion than any other in Photoshop. It works in much the same way as the near-identical Black and White panel in Lightroom by giving you on-image control over the luminance of eight colour ranges. 2 B&W Adjustment Layer Available in Photoshop as a direct adjustment (under Adjustment menu) or for more control as an Adjustment Layer (go to Layer > Adjustment Layer). Like the B&W Mixer in Camera Raw this also lets you control the brightness of colour ranges, but there are six here compared to eight in Camera Raw. 3 Channel Mixer Apply the Channel Mixer as an Adjustment Layer in Photoshop for a range of black & white effects. You can either…

There is nothing quite like holding a traditional, silver-halide black & white print in your hand. Steeped in the history of photography, it has a depth, resonance and integrity that’s difficult to replicate in digital form. Some would even argue it cannot be replicated. Printing is a fundamental part of the photographic process – bringing to life images that would otherwise remain as a scan or sitting in a neg file, where few have the opportunity to appreciate them. While many film-shooting photographers prefer to print their own negatives, logistics can get in the way. Not many people have the space required for a darkroom, and work and other commitments often have to take priority over this time-consuming hobby. For those who would still like to see their images in…

I refer to Mr Neale’s letter regarding Edwin Smith (AP, Christmas 2020 issue). He, in my opinion was one of the greatest English photographers, especially in landscape/architecture – even surpassing Bill Brandt. One of his followers was another great English photographer, James Ravilious, who I was lucky to meet at The RPS in Bath and get to know. In fact when Edwin died, Edwin’s partner Olive Cook gave Edwin’s Ica Camera to James. I recommend Evocations of Place: The Photography of Edwin Smith, published by Merrill in association with RIBA. A magnificent book.…

AP. Tell us about your photography background RF: I started landscape photography as a hobby in 2012 when I made the decision to purchase a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I quickly realised however, photography was not about owning a nice camera. Over the years I have taken a keen interest in our weather and frequently incorporated different weather phenomena as part of my compositions. I spent most of that time capturing Dartmoor in Devon. A couple of years ago my wife and I moved to Stirling in Scotland. Before we moved, I decided to hold a six-month-long exhibition of my work at the National Park Visitors’ Centre. I would say I am a bit more than a hobbyist, more of an obsessive semi-professional these days…