Innholdsfortegnelse for 08/03/2022 i Amateur Photographer

The rock band Rage Against the Machine never specified which particular apparatus they were so angry with but it was probably a printer. Those of us who have struggled with blocked nozzles, banding, ink puddles, borders or one of numerous other vexing issues, may feel that it’s a lot less hassle to just use a lab. But Dave Kai Piper begs to differ and explains how some free time following an accident led him on a journey that took him from home printing sceptic to evangelist. Far from being a source of frustration, he finds printing therapeutic, helping him to escape from the digital world of clicks and likes and reconnect with the tangible, physical nature of photography. Meanwhile technical guru Andy Westlake tests a very different type of machine:…

PANASONIC has revealed it is investigating additional autofocus systems, including Phase Detection AF, after using its contrast-based Depth-from-Defocus system in the new GH6. Panasonic Europe told AP: ‘In the development of the GH6, all technical possibilities, including PDAF, have been examined for a long time. Lumix continues to explore all possibilities for the future, including PD [Phase Detection AF], TOF [Time of Flight AF] and others. We are currently developing the next generation system with the continuous aim of practical improvement.’…

CANON has announced two new RF lenses – the RF 800mm F5.6L IS USM and the world’s longest AF lens for mirrorless cameras, the RF 1200mm F8L IS USM. Both lenses feature optical image stabilisation and a dust-proof and drip-proof design. Designed for the Canon RF mount, these will be of particular interest to those shooting with cameras such as the EOS R3 and EOS R5, especially professional photographers. Photographers can increase the focal lengths when coupling the lenses with the RF 1.4x or RF 2x extenders, with AF shooting and IS function. Canon claims that this means the 1200mm lens can capture detail of subjects that are over 400 metres away. The RF 800mm F5.6L IS USM is Canon’s lightest and shortest 800mm L-series lens yet, weighing just over…

Marilyn Stafford: A Life in Photography Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, until 8 May 2022. See brightonmuseums.org.uk for opening times and prices The most comprehensive display of Marilyn Stafford’s veritable archive to date, A Life in Photography complements Marilyn’s recent book of the same name. Marilyn won AP’s Exceptional Achievement award in 2019 and her story is remarkable. Her first professional photo was of Albert Einstein; she went on to photograph figures such as Edith Piaf, Twiggy and Albert Finney; and was a friend of Henri Cartier-Bresson. She also photographed the lives of many ordinary people, and became a pioneer of fashion photography in street settings. As one of a handful of women working on Fleet Street, she was also a trailblazer for female photographers, and now supports a new…

Avoid smaller printers Bigger printers can cost far less to run in the long term. You might think you are saving money by using a smaller printer, but the total cost of ownership is higher. Bigger printers let you save by buying in bulk in both paper stock and ink. Avoid third-party inks The constancy of the ink is what you’re paying for – third-party inks from batch to batch are just not up to the level of the ‘OEM’ ink providers. If you waste paper through bad prints and dodgy ink, that’s going to hit the wallet hard. Proof your prints There are two main ways to ensure your files are ready to print. Soft proofing is essentially using technology to help check that what your screen shows is…

Neil Brinsdon, Morpeth, Northumberland About Neil Neil is retired and is a member of the Moments in Time invitation-only club. Favourite subjects People with interesting life stories, hobbies or professions. How did you get into photography? My parents bought me a Canon AE-1 for my 21st birthday. In 2012 I began working with Neil Atkinson Photography Training and Neil has helped me develop my photographic portfolio and create my own website. What do you love about photography? Photography captures a moment in time that has a unique relevance to both the subject and the photographer. First camera Canon AE-1 – still in full working order! Current kit Nikon D7200, two Nikon D750 bodies, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8, Sigma 105mm macro, Tamron 10-24mm Favourite lens Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8…

+ Quicker and easier to use + Enables filter use with extreme wideangle and fisheye lenses + One set of filters works for all lenses + Reduced risk of vignetting when using multiple filters + Eliminates risk of cross-threading or stuck filters + More usable variable neutral-density filter + Reduced size and weight of filter kit + Easier to exposure-bracket using neutral density filters – Currently only an option when using Canon EF lenses on RF bodies – Costly clear filter has to be in place when no filtration required – Access to filter slot may be difficult when shooting in vertical format on a tripod…

USB port This is designed to be connected to a powerbank inside, then used for charging devices outside the bag. Side pockets Elasticated pockets on each side can be used to carry a water bottle or umbrella, etc. Tripod holder A ‘bucket and strap’ arrangement on the front allows a tripod to be carried without hindering access to your kit. Trolley strap The backpack can be slid over the handle of a rolling suitcase for easy transport. ● www.vanguardworld.co.uk ● £119.99 VANGUARD makes a large array of high-quality camera bags to suit almost any need and budget. Its Adaptor backpacks, introduced toward the end of 2021, are named after a specific feature. They include a USB power pass-through system, which allows you to carry a powerbank inside and wire it…

I have been working as a professional photographer specialising in dance for almost 20 years. In the 1980s I was fortunate enough to train as a contemporary dancer at the wonderful Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. Therefore it could be said (if you’ll pardon the pun) that I have a foot in both camps. Along with my partner Paul Hill, I also teach dance photography workshops, bringing groups of photographers and dancers together to experiment and learn about what makes a wonderful dance image. Obviously, there isn’t a simple answer to that question, but this photograph made by Sterling Henry Nahum (widely known as Baron) is certainly a good example. Baron was the official photographer to Sadler’s Wells Company at Covent Garden and this picture depicts…

Transsexual Roberta Cowell (1918-2011), formerly Robert Cowell, taking a photograph from a boat, March 1954. Roberta was once a Spitfire pilot, prisoner of war, racing motorist, husband and father of two – but became a woman following hormone treatment and surgery. As such, she was the first known British transsexual woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery. A story about her, entitled Roberta Cowell’s Own Story: My Years of Crisis, was featured in an issue of Picture Post in March 1954. 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.…

MAN Ray’s iconic photograph ‘Le Violon d’Ingres’ (shown above) is likely to set a world record price for a single photo at auction when it goes under the hammer at Christie’s New York in May, thanks to a record pre-sale estimate of US$5million to US$7million. If it reaches its estimate, it will be the most expensive photo sold at auction. The current record price for a photo is the $4.34million paid for Gursky’s ‘Rhein II’ at Christie’s in 2011.…

14 March 1992 This week the AP time machine stops at March 1992 to give us another opportunity to admire Roger Bamber’s sublime picture taken at the newly opened Brighton Toy Museum, depicting a man adjusting the model railway. It was part of Roger’s winning portfolio in the Features Category of the Nikon Press Awards that year which, perhaps confusingly, celebrated the best photojournalism of the year, and not just pictures taken on Nikon cameras. In Behind the Headlines AP showcased the rest of the award winners, some of which were pretty harrowing. Indeed the lead image by Tom Stoddart, which depicted an emaciated child at a children’s mental home in northern Albania, was regarded by the newspapers as too upsetting to be published. It was part of a set…

PC obsolescence I sympathise with Roger Lush, who is paying, via the Adobe Subscription plan, for the latest software but is unable to use it. It sounds as though he may have run into the downside of GPU based software. Which, as AI and Neural Filters grow in popularity, might affect more and more of us. Coders have discovered that modern graphics cards, or GPU, can be much more powerful than the rest of the computer that they sit inside of. As might be expected, graphics cards are designed to manipulate images, and they are proving to be much better at image manipulation than are the integrated graphics that were traditionally built into CPUs. So, if we want to use the latest and fastest post processing software then more and…

Luminar is a fully featured photo editor for Mac and PC designed for photographers of all skill levels, blending pro-level tools with remarkable ease of use and an enjoyable experience. A new Library feature lets you organise, find and rate images easily, while over 100 editing features, plus a suite of fast AI-powered technologies under the hood, will make any image stand out. NOTE: PRIZE APPLIES TO UK AND EU RESIDENTS ONLY…

LAUNCHED 1923 PRICE AT LAUNCH Approximately £50 GUIDE PRICE NOW £250-400 SOME will tell you the Leica was the first 35mm camera. It wasn’t. In fact, a significant number of cameras took 35mm film before the Leica was launched in 1925. One of the strangest was the French Debrie Sept. It was also very nearly the first camera with a built-in clockwork motor drive. (The first was another French camera called Le Pascal.) To say that the Sept is an unusual design is to put it mildly. It takes the form of a square-cornered box with a clockwork motor, whose high-tension spring is wound by a large key, mounted in a big ugly housing on the side. The result is a camera that, at 1.8kg, is extremely heavy for its…

AP picture of the week Winter Mist and Sunlight by Joel Walker Panasonic Lumix G80, Olympus M. Zuiko 12-40mm at 32mm, 1/100sec at f/9, ISO 200 Joel told us, ‘I bought my camera three years ago with the aim of getting better family photos, but YouTubers such as James Popsys, Thomas Heaton and Nigel Danson got me into landscape photography too. My busy life means I don’t get much choice over when I can go out with my camera, but on this morning in mid-January a few hours of free time coincided with beautiful conditions – a fantastic shallow mist which revealed all the shafts of sunlight as they shone through the trees. The mist lasted for most of the morning and I had an enjoyable photography walk wandering around…

BRITISH Culture Archive (BCA) has curated the documentary photography exhibition A Woman’s Work, which opens in Manchester on International Women’s Day, 8 March. A collection of photographs will be displayed at The Refuge Bar, Kimpton Clocktower Hotel, Manchester, to celebrate two acclaimed female photographers from the North of England – the late Tish Murtha and Anne Worthington. Murtha was known for capturing social change and everyday life on the fringes of society. Worthington has produced work documenting inner-city East Manchester in the early 2000s.The free-to-enter exhibition will run until the end of June. The BCA says it then plans to expand and tour it around the UK and Europe. See britishculturearchive.co.uk.…

I’m grateful to Peter Dench for his article about This Separated Isle (4 Jan issue). Intrigued, I set off in search of the book. It arrived this morning, and it is fascinating, and the interviews accompanying the pictures are eloquent and inspiring. Also, they are a condemnation of the Britain that we live in: it’s an easy place for the pale, male and stale (older white men) like me, but far tougher for anyone who has made the mistake of being born anything but a white Englishman. So, first, thank you, Peter. I have two suggestions. First is that wherever a book is involved in the subject of an article, that there is a footnote explaining where it can be bought. You often feature quite niche material which isn’t available…

Canon Canon’s own clear filter and polariser work perfectly well. Image sharpness is unaffected compared to using the standard EF-EOS R adapter. Its VND filter on the other hand has a strong blue colour cast, so I cannot recommend it. Breakthrough Filters Breakthrough Filters offer an extensive range of drop-in filters. Their design has been very well thought through. They click into place very positively, but also with the lightest touch (so no chance of moving the camera when using them). They are optically excellent with minimal colour casts. Their VND filter is particularly good with a fairly uniform effect across the image at all settings, but with a slightly warm tone. These filters can be used in the Canon adapter or Breakthrough’s own adapter. Currently available for pre-order direct…

The crops shown below are taken from the area outlined above in red With its 60MP sensor, the Leica M11 is capable of recording as much fine detail as any other full-frame camera on the market. It delivers truly superb results at ISO 64, and there’s barely any drop in quality as the sensitivity is raised to ISO 800. Noise starts to soften the finest detail at ISO 1600, but you have to look very hard to see it. Above this, detail progressively blurs away, but I’d still have no hesitation in going up to ISO 12,500. Above this, blotchy, low-frequency colour noise becomes visible in dark regions of the image, and while ISO 25,000 is still just about acceptable, I’d avoid the ISO 50,000 option.…

Olympus Tough TG-6 ● £369 ● 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. ★★★★…