Innholdsfortegnelse for 19/06/2021 i Amateur Photographer

Any photographer waking up from a 30-year coma and being handed one of the latest mirrorless cameras would be amazed and confused in equal measure, especially when it comes to the focusing options available. They would be blown away by the effectiveness of the eye detection for example, but figuring out how to find it and set it up on some cameras is like trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube. So we offer a brand by brand guide to optimising the camera’s AF in order to get the best results. Also this week, we gave the world’s most sophisticated mirrorless camera (this week, at any rate) to pro sports photographer Nick Dungan to see how he got on, and for those with more modest budgets we revisit the many charms…

NIKON’S mirrorless cameras have on-sensor phase detection pixels and use a hybrid AF system with between 209 and 493 AF points depending upon the model. All the cameras have AF points covering 90% of the imaging surface, which is great news for focusing on off-centre subjects. Nikon AF-Area modes Nikon’s AF-Area modes allow you to select the focus point you want to use individually or in groups. The options available change depending on whether you have Single AF or Continuous AF mode selected. Here’s a breakdown of how the main AF-Area modes function: Pinpoint AF and Single-point AF (AF-S) These modes are great for targeting small stationary subjects but it takes a long time to move the point around the scene with the joystick in Pinpoint mode. But it’s a…

In addition to the usual focus modes, Single AF, Continuous AF and Manual, Olympus cameras also have a Continuous AF + Tracking mode. When this mode is selected, tap on the subject on the screen of your camera to track it around the frame. It can be very useful, but as a rule, it’s better to use C-AF and select an area large enough to cover your subject, then keep it over the subject as you shoot. Olympus’s cameras with phase detection show their mettle with faster focus and much better subject-tracking than those that just rely on contrast detection.…

‘Face/Eye Priority in AF’ needs to be set to ‘on’ in a Sony camera’s main menu before it will scan for faces and eyes in the scene. Beneath that menu option, there’s ‘Face/ Eye Subject’, which can be set to ‘Human’ or ‘Animal’ on some Sony cameras, and ‘Human’, ‘Animal’ or ‘Bird’ on the Alpha 1. If you frequently swap between the different subject types, it’s worth customising a button to reach these options quickly, or at least adding ‘Face/Eye Subject’, to the ‘My Menu’, so you can find it quickly. If the Eye AF is active and a small AF area such as Center or Zone is selected, the camera will only focus on eyes within the selected AF area. However, if ‘Face/Eye Frame Display’ is on, the camera…

Beth Wylie, UK About Beth Beth is a recruitment and social-media coordinator from Kent. Favourite subjects Having worked for the RSPCA and also as a trainer, I feel most confident when photographing animals, because I understand their behaviour. How did you get into photography? I always enjoyed taking photos on my phone; however, during lockdown I used some savings to buy my first camera and attended some free online courses, which sparked this passion. What do you love about photography? Capturing small, precious moments that might otherwise be missed. I also love being creative when it comes to animal photography and often theme my shoots for occasions. First camera My first and only camera is a very old and beaten-up, second-hand Canon EOS 1300D but it’s still very reliable! Current…

The impact of Covid-19 has been felt by everybody, but some will have understandably felt it more keenly. Pregnancy, childbirth and new parenthood during these strange times has been particularly tricky. Dr James Clifford Kent’s project – Pregnant in a Pandemic – has highlighted a number of poignant stories. It all started with his own personal experiences. He explains, ‘Charley [James’s partner] and I found out she was pregnant at Christmas 2019. I started researching how different photographers have created a visual record of pregnancy, birth and early parenthood. A friend recommended checking out work by Harry Callahan and W Eugene Smith’s photo essay, ‘Nurse Midwife’, which was published in Life magazine in December 1951. Smith’s essay celebrated the work of Maude Callen – a 51-year-old healthcare worker caring for…

Dual screw The spider has a sprung 3/8in thread that reveals a ¼in thread so you can mount a head or a camera directly. Storage The tiny tripod comes with an equally small shoulder bag for transport and protection. Accessories There are three ¼in thread sockets which allow an arm to be mounted so you can attach accessories such as a microphone, monitor or light. ● £195 ● www.benroeu.com IT’S A rare thing to see a feature on a tripod that you have never seen before. I’ve scoured the internet and asked my peers, and no one has seen the main feature of the Benro Bat, yet it seems so obvious. You see, the Benro Bat range has five leg positions, three of which that angle downwards as you would…

Six-Year-Old Speedway Rider by George Konig As Father’s Day this year is on 20 June, we thought we’d take a look at this touching image of the British motorcycle builder Howard Cole, and his son, British motorcycle speedway rider also called Howard Cole. The pair were better known as George Cole and Kid Bodie. Here, Cole Junior is seen aged six in a leather jacket, while the duo inspect a scaled-down speedway bike at the family workshop in Wolverhampton, West Midlands. Kid Bodie went on to win the New Zealand Championship in Christchurch in 1967. He also rode in the 1969 World Final at Wembley, before racing in three British Championship finals from 1969-1971. He retired from racing in 1974. The Getty Images Hulton Archive is one of the world’s…

14 June 1961 THE IDEA of green and amber list countries could scarcely have been imagined when AP was producing its 1961 ‘Holiday Number’ though readers would probably have been bemused to be told that their breaks in Britain were not in fact holidays but ‘staycations’. Once such trip was made by RS Turner when he blagged his way onto the May, a sprit-sail barge sailing solely by wind power from Ipswich. ‘The voyage was to convey 126 tons of flour to a store in Strood, on the Medway, and from there to sail light to the Victoria Dock on the Thames to pick up a load of wheat for Ipswich.’ A fine set of photographs was accompanied by a fascinating travelogue. ‘During conversation with the skipper,’ he told us,…

AF Method The EOS R was the first Canon camera to feature Eye detection, but it’s been developed further for the R5 and R6 where it can be set for human or animal eyes. It works brilliantly and is a major bonus for pet, wildlife and portrait photography. Press the menu button and find ‘AF method’ in the AF tab. Tap on ‘AF method’ followed by the ‘Face+Tracking’ icon. Subject to detect Still in the AF tab, tap ‘Subject to detect’ followed by ‘People’, ‘Animals’ or ‘No Priority’. If the latter is selected, the camera will look for any eyes in the scene. Find ‘Eye detection’ in the AF section of the menu and set it to ‘Enable’. Alternatively, when Face+Tracking is active, you can activate and deactivate Eye detection…

Email the Editor at ap.ed@kelsey.co.uk and include your full postal address. Please don’t send letters in the post as there is no one in the office to receive them. Thanks for your understanding. Remotely interesting Your article on remote shooting (AP 1 May) was both timely and inspiring, and I can confirm that my own boredom at being largely stuck at home for several months has been lightened by being able to book a few remote shoots. Mine started at a distance of less than ten miles, and have since included models in the South of France and in Cyprus. Natasha J Bella makes good points about separating communication channels to maximise the use of bandwidth: not everyone can afford two Wi-Fi connections, but it definitely pays to work at…

Food is such a delicious and wonderful subject to photograph, and there are a whole number of ways you can capture the subject as this year’s Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year awards (www.pinkladyfoodphotographeroftheyear.com)reveals. From those delicious close-ups, to a more political and wider view of the subject, this feature shares the cream of the crop in food photography from a number of viewpoints and different cultures. Enjoy. People and food Marina Spironetti (www.marinaspironetti.com) took first place in the brand new Claire Aho Award for Women Photographers, a category of Pink Lady®Food Photographer of the Year 2021, and she tells us all about her winning image. ‘This image was part of a reportage project about the female butchers of Panzano in Chianti, Italy. Dario Cecchini, the world-famous…

Emma Phipps’s winning image, ‘Nightlight’, is steeped in nostalgia, narrative and history. The idea for the image came from the chamberstick featured in the image. ‘It is extremely old and well used and has had a lot of repairs,’ discloses Emma, who continues, ‘It made me think about its history and who else had used it as their nightlight.’ Emma has created a few images at home over this last lockdown with a similar style, however this is not part of a bigger project. She had a vision in her mind of what she wanted to create and used a rough sketch to work out the idea and composition, making decisions about the model’s clothing and the candle’s position in the frame before setting up the shot. Emma’s inspiration comes…

‘Monte Carlo or Nice for lunch today?’ was the sort of dilemma my shipmates and I would have to ponder on, on a typical working day as photographers on cruise ships sometime in the 1990s. Seems crazy now, right? I was a cruise ship photographer and now I’m proud of the fact. It wasn’t always like that, I used to be slightly embarrassed by it, especially in fancy photographic circles. I should not have been such a snob. The photography was certainly formulaic and humdrum, but the life experience was second to none. It turns out that quite a few of us in the world of UK-based consumer photo magazines have spent time snapping tourists on the high seas, including AP’s very own editor, Nigel Atherton. Good old days Nigel…

AP picture of the week Smailholm Light Show by James Elliot Sony A7, 50mm f/1.8 lens, 1/5sec at f/5.6, ISO 400 James, a 28-year-old from the Scottish Borders, took up photography two years ago. ‘I was lucky enough to be invited along to Smailholm Tower in Scotland to photograph the light show created by Andy McGregor to celebrate 250 years of Sir Walter Scott,’ he tells us. ‘It was amazing to witness and photograph in person. To learn more about Sir Walter Scott or watch the light show, visit walterscott250.com.’ Instagram: @james.e_photo. Angela by Miguel Oliviera Nikon Z 50, Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G AF-S, 1/125sec at f/2.8, ISO 500 ‘Me and a fellow photographer and friend Angela have a routine of going out for photo walks around London every time we…

ALSO unveiled alongside the E-P7 is the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 8-25mm F4 Pro wideangle zoom for Micro Four Thirds cameras. With a relatively compact retracting design and the ability to accept 72mm filters, it looks set to be a more practical alternative for landscape photographers than the firm’s 7-14mm f/2.8 Pro. Its unusually long 16-50mm equivalent range also promises to make it a more versatile option than other wide zooms such as the Panasonic 8-18mm F2.8-4. Optically the lens employs 16 elements in 10 groups, with an array of special elements on board to suppress aberrations. It’s built to the same standard as other Olympus PRO-series lenses, with weather-sealed construction to the IPX1 grade, freeze-proofing to -10°C and a fluorine coating on the front element for easy cleaning. Other…

MOST of Fujifilm’s current X-series cameras have its fourth-generation X-Trans CMOS sensor paired with the X Process 4. This 26.1MP APS-C format sensor has phase detection pixels that combine with a contrast-detection system to facilitate the Intelligent Hybrid AF system which has 425 user-selectable AF points. With so many points, you might think that it would be difficult or time-consuming to select the one that you want to use, but Fujifilm makes it easy and quick. Also, Fujifilm cameras like the X-S10 and X-T4 have a section of the menu that’s dedicated to focusing, so you can access the settings all from one place, but there are also some neat shortcuts. Getting started One of the first things that you may want to decide when setting up your Fujifilm camera…

The OM-D E-M1X has a Subject Tracking mode that uses AI to identify specific objects then track them, keeping them sharp. At launch, the options under this mode included trains, motorsports and aeroplanes, but a firmware update has added birds. When the mode is active, the camera doesn’t just look for front-on shots of cars in motorsports mode, it can also find and track objects associated with motorsports such as crash helmets and the like. It’s activated as follows: 1 Press ‘Menu’ and then go to Custom Menu A3.AF/MF 2 Tap on ‘Tracking Subject’. 3 Select the type of subject you want to track and press the ‘OK’ button. 4 Exit the menu and press the ‘OK’ button again to open the Super Control Panel. 5 Tap on the Focus…

SONY uses a hybrid AF system in its mirrorless cameras and they have hundreds of AF points. The popular full-frame A7 III, for example, has 693 phase detection points and 425 contrast detection points while the APS-C format A6600 has 425 points of each type, and they cover the majority of the imaging area. While the Eye Detection system in Canon’s EOS R5 and R6 has a slight edge over Sony’s Eye AF system, it’s still very good and Sony’s ‘Real-Time’ AF Tracking in its most recent cameras leads the way for tracking moving subjects. As usual, Sony cameras have a large collection of modes that aim to make selecting the active AF point easier. Here’s how they operate: Wide In this mode, every focus point is available for automatic…

I would like to tell you about a club competition we at Long Eaton Camera Club have run for 30 years or more. It used to be called the ‘One Roll Competition’. With a roll of slide film on a given night in, say, Derby, you’d take a picture of a clock at 7pm in the adjudicator’s car. Then you had two hours to take 20 pictures. You returned by 9pm and handed in the processed paid films, which were returned to the adjudicator. The first time we’d see them was on the night of the competition itself. Today we still run the competition, which is now called the ‘One Card competition’ but it’s the same principle: the first 20 photographs on your card are in the competition, the cards…

‘Although I’ve been on the advisory panel and helped with the shortlisting for a few years, this was the first time that I’ve been on the main judging panel and it was great to be involved in making the final selection. The standard seems to go up every year and there were lots of great images to choose from. However, I was immediately drawn to Huaifeng Li’s winning image. Initially it was the atmospheric light that attracted me but I love the interaction between the child and her mother. It’s a joyous image of one of the smaller moments in life that we can all identify with. I also particularly like Marina Spironetti’s image which won The Claire Aho Award for Women Photographers. The colours all work well together and…

At a glance £1,739 body only (in Like New condition) ● 24.5MP full-frame CMOS sensor ● ISO 100-12,800 (ISO 50-204,800 extended) ● Hybrid AF system ● 3.2in, 2,360k-dot tilting touchscreen ● 12fps cont. shooting in live view (7fps via OVF) Succeeding the Nikon D750, the D780 is possibly the company’s most versatile DSLR ever. It profits from some of the things Nikon has learnt from mirrorless to make it an even better all-rounder and the D780 excels in both stills and video. It has a 24.5MP full-frame CMOS sensor and a sensitivity range of ISO 100-51,200 which can be expanded to ISO 50-204,800, along with a quick 7fps shooting rate with the viewfinder or 12fps in live view. What we said ‘The Nikon D780 is a blend of what we…