Innholdsfortegnelse for 15/02/2022 i Amateur Photographer

Some of the most compelling photo opportunities occur after the sun goes down. In the city, lights of all colours, on buildings and moving vehicles, provide compelling subject matter for the creative photographer, while out in the country you only have to look skyward at the stars to find amazing subject matter. This week’s special issue is dedicated to getting great photos from dusk to dawn, with tips from leading photographers on everything from astrophotography to shooting gigs. We look at the best cameras and lenses for low light, and the best noise-reduction software for editing. I hope we give you lots of ideas and inspiration. Also in this week’s issue we launch the brand new 2022 Amateur Photographer of the Year competition, with £11,000 of prizes from MPB. For…

Morning Sky by Cath Thomas Huawei P20, 1/475sec at f/1.8, ISO 50 ‘This image of Mornington beach, in County Meath, Ireland, was taken around dawn while I was walking my dog. We’re very lucky in this part of the world to have such a wonderful natural resource close by and watching the sunrise from the seashore is definitely one of my favourite activities. I know I should but I don’t generally take my camera (a Fujifilm X-T3) on my morning dog walks – but I do, however, always have my Huawei P20,’ says Cath, from North Wales and living in Ireland. ‘I took up photography around 2018 after a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia for which I’d bought my first DSLR (a Nikon D3400). While travelling, I realised I hadn’t…

Write to 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. Replies are from the Editor unless otherwise stated The Nikon F5 Thanks for John Gilbey’s article on the Nikon F5 in AP 28 December. I was fortunate to be able to buy one of the first F5s in the UK in September 1996. I used it, and another F5, until I bought a D2H in 2004. I have occasionally used one or other of them, most recently with an AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 lens and it is here that I must disagree with John. The AF isn’t extremely fast, at least not when compared with the same lens on a D3…

Amateur Photographer has always championed the best in image making, and nowhere is this clearer than in our annual Amateur Photographer of the Year award (APOY), where the best non-professional photographers in the world compete over ten rounds to win some fantastic prizes. Once again, we have teamed up with used camera and videography retailer MPB to bring you £11,000-worth of prizes. The categories cover everything from black & white, to close-ups, to portraits and more, so there’s something to suit every interest. You might submit images to only one or two rounds, or you might set yourself the challenge of entering them all, with the aim of competing for the overall title and taking home the main prize – a £1,000 voucher to spend at MPB. In addition, the…

The winner of each round of APOY 2022 receives a £500 voucher to spend on anything at MPB. From top-of-the-range digital medium-format camera bodies, to entry-level DSLRs, as well as the longest telephoto zooms and widest lenses, and useful accessories, MPB is a one-stop shop for used kit. The winner could put their £500 voucher towards the superb Fujifilm GFX 50S, a medium-format 51.4MP mirrorless camera that starts from £1,974 at MPB. You could also consider the Sony A7 II, an outstanding full-frame mirrorless camera that features five-axis image stabilisation. Pick one up at MPB for £639 to £709. A versatile wide-aperture zoom such as the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 DC HSM Art is ideal for low-light shooting, and can be found for between £484 and £564 at MPB, depending on…

Sony Alpha range In his kit bag Mike switches between the mirrorless Sony A7 IV (recently launched and his main camera body), Sony Alpha 7R III, Sony Alpha 7 III, and Sony Alpha 7 II. He loves their low-light capabilities and agility due to the lightweight mirrorless build. Mike has only recently unboxed the Sony A7 IV. Check out his YouTube channel to find out what’s in his camera bag in 2022. Sony 14mm f/1.8 GM Mike is a fan of the wideangle lens and loves experimenting with his Sony 14mm f/1.8. He tells us he could talk about this lens all day. Having the ability to open the aperture wide helps greatly in a low-light situation and Mike loves the shallow-depth-of-field effect created. He’s also drawn to the ultra-wideangle…

Tower Bridge Mike is lucky enough to reside near the iconic Tower Bridge in London, making it easily accessible all year round, whatever time of the day. ‘There are so many angles to shoot it from, and it’s such an iconic landmark,’ he says. Gherkin Mike likes the buildings and cityscape surrounding the Gherkin in London. ‘There are lots of leading lines, modern architecture and cool buildings in this area that I like to photograph.’ St Paul’s Cathedral St Paul’s is another building that features heavily in Mike’s portfolio. He has photographed this iconic building close and far away with the Millennium Bridge in the foreground. London Buses For light painting, the famous London double-decker red buses provide the perfect streaky effect in Mike’s images. You need to get the…

Work close to home Find somewhere that’s easily accessible and nearby that you can return to ‘over and over again’, says Matt. ‘Any city in the UK now has urban foxes. By revisiting a location you learn the lie of the land, where the light falls, and eventually predict their behaviour.’ Talk to neighbours Ask your neighbours whether they have seen foxes nearby. ‘That’s how I gained access to the allotment,’ says Matt. ‘Relationship building is not something that’s often talked about in photography, but you might get access to someone’s garden who has foxes.’ Get support where you can Matt tries to avoid using tripods to stay mobile, so he will improvise. ‘I’ll use my camera bag or I’ve got a little beanbag filled with lentils, but usually I’m…

Some low-light gig images may need more work at the editing stage. ‘Adjusting the exposure, colour balance and saturation levels can help bring digital noise down more than the noise-reduction tool in Lightroom, which can remove too much detail. If the image still needs a bit of extra help, the Denoise plug-in from Topaz Labs for Photoshop has saved my skin many times, especially when I first started. I only tend to use the lightest setting (Raw Lightest) as it is destructive and you can lose a lot of detail if not careful. Sometimes I will also use a High Pass filter to help sharpen key details again.’…

X-T4 users can take advantage of the system’s superpower – the enticing brace of fast-aperture lenses for low-light shooting. The leader of the pack is obviously the XF50mm f/1.0 R WR which gives us an angle of view similar to that of a 75mm lens on a full-frame system. This makes it a very happy street lens and is ideal for ambient light portraits. The super-wide maximum aperture means we can work in very dark conditions without having to push the ISO up too high but still maintain a shutter speed short enough to freeze moving people. The company’s XF56mm f/1.2 lenses afford us similar benefits but with a slightly longer focal length, while a collection of six f/1.4 lenses offer us focal lengths between 16mm and 35mm – nicely…

As this is a compact camera, and Leica has tried to keep it relatively small, squeezing in a lens with an aperture as wide as this is quite an achievement. The lens is also very sharp, and while resolution does decrease as the aperture is stopped down, the maximum f/1.7 is more than usable. There are three aspherical elements in this lens to ensure it is sharp edge-to-edge as well as when it is used at anything other than the middle aperture settings. Shooting wide open offers more than enough sharpness, as well as the chance to avoid the highest ISO settings. This lens also features an optical image-stabilisation system that helps to minimise camera shake in long exposures so we can use the camera handheld in a wider range…

Centenary Exhibition by L Blandford The Royal Photographic Society (RPS) celebrated its centenary in 1953 with an exhibition at the Science Museum. In this photograph, Mrs Betty Sheppard of Leicester compares the Daguerreotype camera with the latest ‘Graphic Pace Maker’. The original aim of the society was to ‘promote the art and science of photography’. Originally called simply The Photographic Society, its first royal patrons were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, with the royal moniker being added in 1894. The RPS is still going strong today, and is now headquartered in Bristol. 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…

THE NATIONAL Portrait Gallery (NPG) has announced ‘The Nation’s Family Album’ initiative, which encourages people to submit images of their families for possible inclusion in a landmark exhibition online and at the gallery when it reopens in 2023. The NPG is collaborating with genealogy website Ancestry on the project and the idea is to represent the diversity of family stories in the UK and to showcase ‘undiscovered portraits of everyday British people’, which will then be collated into a ‘representative’ online album. Submissions to ‘The Nation’s Family Album’ will close on 30 June and must be uploaded digitally. Any person in the UK can submit up to a maximum of three images that relate to the following themes – Belonging; Legacy; Connection and Identity. Later this year, a panel of…

14 February 1979 As Venus emerges from the sea on her shell, AP readers gasp in amazement: how did they do that? George Hughes provided the answer in his interview with Bill Carter, the photographer behind the ‘eagerly awaited 1979 calendar from Motorway Tyres and Accessories.’ (Remember the days when motor-trade glamour calendars were eagerly awaited?) The calendar blended studio shots of 12 top international models in a variety of pre-designed poses which were then ‘ingeniously combined with the work of six artists’, creating a ‘striking effect in which the eye cannot tell where fact becomes fantasy’. According to Hughes, ‘Carter’s 1979 calendar is being hailed as The contemporary breakthrough in combination photo/art.’ He went on to explain, with the aid of artist sketches and behind-the-scenes shots, the huge cost…

Deeply flawed? I refer to Sally Mann’s comment relating to ‘the deeply flawed American character’. Some years ago, a colleague was on his first business trip to America. During the flight he fell into conversation with the lady in the next seat, and when they arrived they found the area under a deep snowfall. The lady’s husband arrived to pick her up, but the young man’s driver didn’t turn up. He would have been stranded at a snowbound airport, but the husband offered to take him to his hotel, which was over an hour’s journey in difficult conditions, out of his way. When they arrived, he thanked the man profusely, to which he replied: ‘This is America son, we help each other’. I’ve done a lot of work with Americans,…

Mike Will is most definitely nocturnal and seems to find his creativity when the sun goes down. So when the majority of us have the urge to hibernate and settle in for the evening Mike is doing the exact opposite and will be getting ready to go out onto the streets with his camera. ‘I love the process of shooting, of getting out and exploring,’ he says. Mike is a renowned photographer in the industry, and has been a Sony European Imaging Ambassador since 2018. Although Mike started his photography journey as a hobby his images soon got noticed on social media and his profession took hold. ‘I started taking images in 2016 and was instantly drawn to shooting at night. I just kind of found it really exciting to…

Symmetry & leading lines In the urban environment Mike likes to hunt for leading lines or symmetrical patterns to create strong compositions. The city is the perfect environment to capture both these elements. If you are going to go for the symmetrical shot, make sure your lines are straight and in line. Test your ISO You need to get to know your camera and find out what it is capable of. Do a test shoot throughout your ISO range to see where the image quality starts to deteriorate. Mike advises that your image will retain better quality if it is correctly exposed. Focus in To ensure his shots are sharp Mike finds the latest technology from his Sony cameras to be top-notch. ‘If I’m on a tripod at night then…

Matt now has an extensive collection of images of urban foxes by night, including photos of them hunting rats, standing on garden walls, sleeping on grassy verges or sitting at ease while London’s traffic roars by. This spring, many of his images, including some shown here, will be published in a new photo book, FOX: Neighbour Villain Icon. It also features the work of fellow wildlife photographers Neil Aldridge and Andy Parkinson, and launches at the Natural History Museum, London, in April. Priced at £35, you can order your copy now at www.foxbook.shop.…

When it comes to low light and night photography, few subjects are more compelling – and popular – than the northern lights. As the Royal Meteorological Society explains, this hugely photogenic phenomenon is caused by activity on the surface of the sun. Solar storms spew out huge clouds of electrically charged particles, which can travel millions of miles. Some of these particles are captured in the Earth’s magnetic field, accelerating down towards the north and south poles into the atmosphere. This is why aurora activity is concentrated at the Earth’s poles. So what we are actually seeing are atoms and molecules in our atmosphere colliding with particles from the sun. The aurora’s characteristic wavy patterns and ‘curtains’ of light are caused by the lines of force in the Earth’s magnetic…

The R6’s image stabilisation is the key low-light feature. The camera on its own can use its sensor shift to stabilise any lens that can mount on it, but when it is coupled with the right RF lens it comes into its own. The image-stabilisation systems of both camera and lens will work together to produce up to 8EV of stabilisation. In real terms that means we should be able to handhold a 50mm lens for a four-second exposure, or a 500mm lens for a 1/2sec. Much is dependent on the lens in use though, as some RF lenses allow only 6EV – such as the RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 IS. The extended imaging circle of many of the RF lenses is partly responsible for this as they produce a much…

There are compact zoom cameras with physically larger sensors than the 20MP Micro Four Thirds sensor in the Lumix LX100 ll, but few with an image-stabilised lens that offers a maximum aperture of f/1.7. In this model the lens gives us the views we’d expect from a 24-75mm lens on a full-frame camera, and even with a variable maximum aperture we can open up to f/2.8 at the longest end of the zoom. With these wide apertures we can handhold the camera much more often; it also means we can avoid the high ISO settings too. Panasonic doesn’t tell us how much stabilisation the OIS system in this lens offers us, but we can assume it is at least three stops, so again the camera can be handheld in dim…

WHEN producing a lower-cost lens a lot of difficult compromises need to be made, and in many ways how those compromises are chosen is more critical than those when the budget is much higher. One wrong move and the resultant performance can mean even a low price tag doesn’t make the lens worth owning. In this case though Canon has found a neat way through and has produced a lens with such moderate compromises it becomes very good value for money, instead of just cheap. Canon’s decison to use such a small aperture may look very odd to SLR users. But the crucial difference is that the autofocus systems of mirrorless cameras don’t have the same limitations and continue to work effectively at these smaller apertures. The limited maximum aperture…

WINDOWS users looking for a comprehensive image-editing solution will find a lot to like about Zoner Photo Studio X. It really does do it all, from copying your pictures off your memory card right through to creating prints and web galleries; I can’t think of anything else that provides such a complete set of features. Once you’ve familiarised yourself with how it works, it’s also reasonably easy to use, while providing an impressive range of options for advanced users to configure and work with it pretty much as they please. Some photographers will object to subscribing to software on principle, but ZPS has the twin virtues of being both inexpensive, and nicely behaved if you decide to stop paying. Thanks to the Autumn 2021 update, it now also gives much…

Power Either Sony F-series or Canon LP-E6 batteries can be used to run the device in the field. Both 12V DC and 5V USB-C inputs are also available. Bracket This fits onto your camera’s hot shoe, has a cold shoe for a microphone, and allows the monitor to be rotated to face forwards. Hood A lightweight plastic folding hood is supplied for use on sunny days, and attaches to the monitor via a snap-on frame. Mounting For attaching the monitor to a bracket or shoe mount, three standard 1/4 sockets are arranged on its top, bottom, and right-hand side. ● £199.99 ● www.feelworld.ltd DO YOU ever wish that your camera had a much larger screen, so that you could see your composition more clearly and judge focus more accurately? If…

Crescent Moon by Andy Parker Canon EOS M6 Mark II, Sky-Watcher 127 telescope, 1/30sec at f/12, ISO 100, 20 stacked exposures ‘The 12% waxing crescent moon was just above the rooftops from my back garden in south-east London. I attached my Canon EOS M6 Mark II to my Sky-Watcher 127 telescope to try to get a better zoomed view. I took 20 exposures and then stacked them in Photoshop. The moon was so sharp that night that only a few tweaks were needed in editing,’ says keen landscape and astro photographer Andy, from London. Instagram @balders18…

PHOTO editing software company CaptureOne has unveiled LIVE – a cloud-based collaboration add-on that allows creative teams working remotely to rate, tag and view images or to watch an edit or a tethered shoot in real time. The live photography/creative platform will allow photographers to show their clients their work in real time or to work on image edits together during a shoot. The LIVE service is immediately available for both Catalogs and Sessions and is available as an add-on paid service with an introductory rate of $9.99 USD per month or it can be trialled free for one month. For a complete list of all options visit the store at www.captureone.com.…

Every group event these days needs commemorating with a group photo. Whether it’s a meeting of family and friends, a team’s celebration of a job well done, or just a pleasant night out at the pub, the occasion wouldn’t be complete without a shot of the happy participants. Group portraits may be more common but our instincts on how to arrange ourselves within them haven’t changed much. Some sort of genetic predisposition to standing side-to-side quickly takes over, with everyone forming an orderly line as if summoned to an impromptu identification parade. This knee-jerk behaviour can jar with a photographer’s instincts, especially if you’re called on to record the occasion. But in the heat of the moment, finding the inspiration to rearrange the group into something more interesting can be…

Jeff Lovelace Jeff is an award-winning photographer from California, USA. He has telescopes running at a remote observatory in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Each scope includes a specially designed digital camera cooled to -25°C to help capture images of extremely faint objects, some over a billion light years away. www.jklovelacephotography.com WHEN I was a child I always wanted to be an astronaut, fascinated by space. I grew up during the period when Star Trek first came out and watched the moon landings. I didn’t do a lot of photography in my teens; I had this rivalry with my brother who really got into photography, which meant in my mind, I couldn’t. What kept me from launching into it was I thought it would be difficult – but I kept seeing…

The camera club award Do you belong to a camera club? You can accumulate points for your society when you enter APOY, and after all the ten rounds are complete, the one with the most points will win a voucher for £500 to spend at MPB. The club might want to spend it on gear for use by members, or even run its own in-house competition with the prize going to the most successful photographer. It’s entirely up to the winning group to decide. The Young POTY award For the second time, we are adding a Young Photographer of the Year category to APOY, in order to encourage our up-and-coming snappers. Entrants should be 21 years old or younger by the competition’s final closing date of 4 November 2022. All…

Based in London, Mike Will is known for his urban architectural images and vibrant style. Mike has travelled across the globe with his photography and his portfolio includes night cityscapes, travel, landscapes, music festivals and portraits. Follow Mike on Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube @m.visuals, and on Twitter @MVisuals…

This image of the iconic Tower Bridge gives a different perspective to the much-photographed location. The composition has been carefully considered and Mike is spot on with the symmetrical framing. A wide aperture setting has been used which blurs the foreground pleasingly. The lights in the centre of the frame jump out in their star shape formation and draws the eye in. The blue tone in the sky complements the cool lighting and tones of the bridge, and the warm orange/red subtle injection of colour in the double lines on the road contrast nicely against the overall cool tone. The airplane streak across the back of the scene is not apparent at first but brings another subtle element to the scene when you look further in. Mike is known for…

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV Matt uses both Canon and Lumix camera systems, but the Canon is his preferred option for camera trap and remote flash photography. He favours either one of two lenses for his night fox work, the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM or EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM (used in this shot on the right). Off-camera flash Matt has three Canon flashguns to choose from: the 680 EX-RT II, 580 EX and 430 EX II. For this and most of his flash photos he uses two flashguns, off camera. ‘It is so much better having two flashes rather than one, coming from either side, both set to really low power.’ Remote trigger Remote triggers allow Matt to still be on location and observe, but far enough away…

Olympus has a number of ‘Live’ shooting modes that really help for judging exposure with long shutter speeds. Live Bulb, Live Time and Live Composite all allow the user to monitor how exposure is being built-up during a long shutter opening, by displaying the progress of the exposure live on the rear screen. A faint image on the display becomes brighter during the exposure; the user can see in real-time how the light is being recorded, so the exposure can be stopped when the image reaches the required brightness. This takes all the guesswork out of long-exposure work and saves time-wasting experiments. Live Bulb works while the shutter button is being held down, Live Time works between two presses of the shutter button and Live Composite records the build-up of…

Martin Leighton, Nottingham About Martin Martin is a Landscaper, and has been taking pictures ‘on and off’ for about 20 years. Favourite subjects Landscapes or seascapes, but in the last few years, I’ve decided to capture people or animals in the landscapes. They make excellent subjects to rest the eye on and also reflect light well. How did you get into photography? I love sunrises and sunsets. I wanted to paint the landscape but was no good so tried photography, a pure and real way of recording nature. What do you love about photography? The feeling when you see a well done picture in print and you exhibit it. First camera A £2.50 throwaway camera. Current kit Canon 5DS, 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Favourite lens Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Favourite accessory…

Consider the two illustrations below. Each is a composite of two images, taken through a 50mm lens set to f/1.2, and focused on the word ‘of’ in the centre. In Figure 1, a semi-circular piece of black paper has been used to cover half of the rear element. The right side is obscured at the top, whilst the left side is covered beneath. The images are aligned at the point of focus. As we move along the border between them, the further from the point of focus we get, the greater the misalignment becomes. This is because light rays from the lens arrive at a point only within the focal plane. Elsewhere, the sensor intercepts a cone of rays instead, resulting in a ‘blur disc’. Obscuring half of the lens…

With the right photographic kit, a smidgeon of skill and a good dose of patience, it’s relatively easy to freeze a bird in motion today. So much so, we tend to take images of birds flying for granted. You have only to scour past editions of Wildlife Photographer of the Year or Bird Photographer of the Year (BPOTY) to find multiple examples. There is a lovely example in the 2021 BPTOY competition, in fact – a magical, beautifully lit photograph of a hummingbird feeding from a flower, taken by the Swedish photographer Nicolas Reusens, who won silver in the ‘Birds in Flight’ category. This photograph of a hummingbird – a rufous hummingbird – is rather different but no less impressive. It was taken 118 years ago in Portland, Oregon, by…