Innholdsfortegnelse for 12/06/2021 i Amateur Photographer

We’ve seen dozens of lockdown projects over the past year but Roff Smith’s ‘cycling selfies’ must be one of my favourites. Not only has he captured some lovely landscapes around his East Sussex home, he has included himself and his bike in just the right spot in every shot. The level of planning and previsualisation involved is impressive. It’s also a reminder that sometimes a landscape looks better with someone in it, and, if no one else is to hand, that someone could just as well be you. We also take a look at how to create multi-exposure abstracts, and with National Beer Day coming up (on 15 June) how better to mark the occasion than with portraits of brewers shot on film and developed in the beer they brew!…

PANASONIC has introduced a relatively lightweight and affordable standard prime for its L mount full-frame mirrorless cameras. The Lumix S 50mm F1.8 is the second in a line of lenses that share the same dimensions, control layout and 67mm filter thread, joining the 85mm f/1.8 that appeared last year. Boasting a dust- and splash-resistant design for outdoor use, the lens is designed to operate in temperatures as low as -10°C. Optically it employs 9 elements in 8 groups, including one extra-low dispersion glass element, one ultra-high refractive index glass element and three aspherical elements to maximise sharpness and suppress aberrations. The aperture diaphragm employs nine curved blades with the aim of delivering attractive blur in out-of-focus regions. As usual from Panasonic, the lens is designed with both stills and video…

Unearthed: Photography’s Roots Until 30 August 2021, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Adults £16.50. Advanced booking essential. See dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk We first mentioned this exhibition in December, but with various lockdowns, we’ve had to wait until now for it to re-open properly. It runs till the end of August. This major exhibition explores photography from the 1840s until today. It traces the medium through stunning images of plants and botany, with over 100 works by 41 international artists. It covers both the technical processes and narratives behind the images, with innovations by key figures including William Henry Fox Talbot and Imogen Cunningham, as well as more overlooked artists such as the Japanese photographer Kazumasa Ogawa. The show culminates with more recent advancements, from the glamour and eroticism of photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe, to…

Bass Harbor Lighthouse This photograph was taken of Bass Harbor Lighthouse in Acadia National Park, Maine, USA. The scene looks serene and peaceful. However, as Michael points out, from the lighthouse looking back you would have seen lots of photographers all competing for space on a narrow ledge. It was only after the sun went down and one of the photographers had left that Michael was able to find space to set up the camera on a tripod and take his photograph. This meant he needed to use a long exposure. Now, although the photograph was metered correctly, the main challenge here was to add more lightening to the shadows. It was therefore necessary to adjust the Shadows and Blacks sliders to bring out more detail in the rocks. I…

The CamRanger 2’s use isn’t limited to shooting stills. It can be used to wirelessly stream a video feed to iOS and Android devices, or a computer, and the video icon between the live view and AF/MF icons can be tapped to enter the camera’s video mode at the drop of a hat. This makes for a good way of eliminating camera shake by not having to physically touch the camera to start/stop recordings. There’s the option of remotely adjusting the focus as well as exposure mid-recording too – useful if a subject moves or the lighting conditions change. Videographers will also be appreciative of the histogram and hightlight/shadow clipping warning overlays as well as being able to view audio levels and the duration of recordings. Advanced users who’d like…

We’re in the transition period of the new drone regulations that came in at the start of this year. As the Air 2S weighs 595g, if you don’t hold an A2 Certificate of Competence (CofC) you have to fly it 150m from residential, commercial, industrial or recreational areas and 50 metres from uninvolved people. With the A2 CofC you only need to worry about staying 50m away from people. As things stand, after 1st January 2023, the Air 2S will have to be flown at least 150m from residential, commercial, industrial or recreational areas whatever qualification you hold. Fingers crossed that this changes.…

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. Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III ● £1,119 ● www.canon.co.uk This unique zoom compact offers excellent image quality by employing the same 24.2MP APS-C sensor as several of Canon’s DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, along with a 24-72mm equivalent lens. A central viewfinder, fully articulated touchscreen and comprehensive external controls round off a superb little camera for enthusiast photographers.…

Newspaper Shelter by Derek Berwin A group of spectators watching the Wightman Cup tennis tournament, which in 1936 took place in Wimbledon. Some members of the crowd are using newspapers to shelter from the rain. The Wightman Cup was an annual team tennis competition for women which was contested from 1923 up until 1989 (with breaks for World War II). Teams from the United States and Great Britain fought it out for the title, before it was suspended indefinitely in 1990 after many years of mostly US domination. 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.…

ADOBE has introduced a new background-blur filter in Photoshop, which creates a very shallow depth of field on a portrait, for example. The filter, found under Filters/Neural Filters, also enables you to adjust Blur Strength, Focal Range, Focal Distance, along with Haze, Warmth, and Brightness adjustment. It is available as part of the May 2021 update and is still at the beta (testing) stage. Watch out for a tutorial by Photoshop guru Martin Evening soon.…

WITH WhatsApp recently updating its terms and privacy policy, VPN/online privacy specialist Surfshark has analysed the privacy policies of more than 200 apps to find out which ones collect the most user data. Image editing apps were also scrutinised, and the results show that film-emulation specialist VSCO is the most data-hungry tool, while Pixelmator sought the least personal data. ‘Editing images doesn’t usually raise privacy concerns,’ said the Surfshark report. ‘But the apps are collecting data on us and some are worse than others.’ The company used Apple App Store data to compare the Privacy Details section of the most used image-editing apps. VSCO stood out for collecting the most data, with Adobe Lightroom in second place. But there’s no suggestion that users’ personal data is being misused. ‘In fact,…

9 June 1971 DON’T be fooled by the cute kittens on the cover of this issue. In his leader Editor Reg Mason gave UK retailers a kicking. ‘The abolition of retail price maintenance has caused a lot of heartburning among dealers who seem to think that competitors who cut their prices are unethical if not criminal,’ he wrote. ‘They also feel apparently that A.P. should not take their advertisements and in his speech at the Photographic Dealers Association’s annual dinner, President David Spring quoted an instance of a customer who asked the price of something and then produced A.P. to show that someone else was quoting a lower price. But a good dealer need not worry. Dealers who quote such a low price that their profits are negligible are not…

I really enjoyed your From the Archive piece on the Zenith E (AP 24 April). I bought a Zenit EM in the early 1970s with a 58mm Helios lens from Global Camera in Market Square, Hemel Hempstead, for the princely price of £26. I started shooting news pictures freelance for the Evening Echo. Wanting to look more ‘pro,’ I bought a second EM body, Helios lens and a 2x extender for the other shoulder (giving me a 116mm f/4). I got my first picture in the national press (the Daily Mail) with the EM which led to a 36-year career in news photography, five news picture awards, travelling across the world and pictures in Time magazine! My most interesting and frustrating day with a Zenit EM (with a Helios 300mm…

Photography and beer have a long and historic relationship. Not so much because beer helps to make better pictures – indeed the opposite is often true – but because a large percentage of people who like taking pictures also like taking beer. And just as we often feel the need to invent an ‘I just need one more because …’ excuse when buying a lens, some of us have a compulsion to justify the next pint before we’ve bought it. If you are one of those photographers who is happiest when given the perfect reason for buying beer you will be delighted that AP is about to furnish you with one, included free in the cover price of the magazine. Write it down: I need to buy more beer to…

THERE are times when it can be useful being able to set up our cameras at distance and control them remotely to capture images, or video, we might otherwise struggle to take. With an advanced wireless camera remote like the CamRanger 2 we’re given the opportunity to set up our cameras extremely close to the action, or whatever we might be attempting to photograph, before stepping back, monitoring the scene from an app and having the control that’s needed to get the shot at the perfect moment. The level of control far exceeds what most camera manufacturers provide from their own Wi-Fi apps and the 5GHz network is extremely stable unless you happen to be shooting from extreme distances where the 2.4GHz network is better to use. The connection remained…

DJI has improved each generation of its Air drone significantly and the Air 2S makes a worthwhile upgrade on the Mavic Air 2. The Air 2S is both fun and rewarding to fly and while not matching a good DSLR or mirrorless camera, its results are beyond those of an action cam whether you’re shooting stills or video. It’s also very steady in flight and, even in blustery conditions when you may see it buffeted in the air, the footage is smooth. Also, thanks to the new four-antennae system (up from two), the transmission between the drone and the controller is stable.…

THE OPPO Find X3 Pro is a heavy hitter, and shows this company is fully prepared to duke it out with better-known rivals. It squeezes in a lot of tech: as well as that quad camera line-up, fast processor and beautiful screen, you get a very respectable 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. In terms of camera performance, the ultra-wideangle and wideangle cameras deliver consistently good results, while the telephoto performance is more fair to middling. We were also a bit underwhelmed by the Night mode and the Microscope mode, which, while cool, is hardly a must-have. The AI colour enhancements sometimes proved to be a blunt instrument, too. The phone is a delight to use in its Expert mode, however, and the Panorama mode is superb. Usability and…

Shows, expos, fan fests, conferences and conventions have always been a rich source of content for photographers. Some of my personal highlights are photographing at a dwarf convention in San Francisco, California, and a Superman festival in Metropolis, Illinois, where a giant bronze statue of Kal-El stands in Superman Square and The Daily Planet reports local news. It was with similar fascination that I first witnessed cosplay at the 2011 MCM Comic Con at Excel Centre, London, which was also hosting a Professional Beauty show in the adjacent hall. Women arriving from across the country thick with fake tan looked askance at the eclectic brightly coloured cosplayers who looked incredulously back. ‘Sailor Zoom reconnects like-minded cosplayers during enforced isolation’ Cosplay is a merging of ‘costume play’, the practice of dressing…

AP picture of the week Southend Or California? by Daniel Goody Fujifilm X-T2, 23mm f/2, 1/1000sec at f/8, ISO 200 ‘Since lockdown restrictions have eased I have enjoyed going back to the seaside to continue my project on the pier,’ Daniel tells us. ‘Whilst walking along Southend seafront I noticed this couple enjoying a coffee and admiring the view. I stepped back to fit the bench in between the two palm trees and waited until something moved through the scene. Luckily this gull obliged. I enjoy making simple, minimal pictures and think this works well in black & white.’ We love the simple symmetry of this image, which is a tale of two pairs. It perfectly conveys one of life’s simple pleasures. Daniel is on Instagram @dangoodyart. We also liked...…

Dancing flowers Polina Plotnikova Polina is a fine-art photographer and tutor based in the south east of England. With a string of RPS and other distinctions, her work explores different styles of still life. You can follow her at @ photoartitude and check out her workshops at tradesecrets. live/#workshops. MY ‘DANCING Flowers’ series combines two in-camera techniques: multiple exposure and Intentional Camera Movement (ICM). It came from sometimes not being content with creating simple botanical illustrations and wanting to make images that are more expressive. Inspired by a friend of mine who’s an amazing dance photographer, I saw how she used slow shutter speeds to create ghost-like shadows of her subjects, capturing the movement and motion as a flowing blur. Wanting to apply this technique to my flower models, but…

In the camera world there are a handful of names that are a byline for quality and precision. Leica is perhaps the most obvious, but Minox is right up there too. Its tiny sub-miniature cameras were the brainchild of Latvian Walter Zapp, who made the first model in 1938. As in so many fields of life, the story was interrupted by the Second World War, but a factory was established in West Germany in 1948. The 1950s and 60s saw something of a craze for sub-miniature cameras, and the late Duke of Edinburgh was a known Minox enthusiast. Although Minox was careful to avoid references to espionage in its marketing, the Minox B is the classic spy camera. They were made in large numbers between 1958 and 1972, and mine…