Innholdsfortegnelse for 15/03/2022 i Amateur Photographer

Black & white photography should not logically exist in a world that is so colourful, and where reproducing those colours accurately is easier than it has ever been. But not only does it exist it remains hugely popular, and with good reason. Done well, b&w has a purity and a graphic power that colour can only envy. These days any colour photo can be turned into a monochrome one in seconds, but the best b&w photography is not done after the fact, but visualised that way from the outset. This week we share the expertise of a wide variety of skilled b&w shooters working in a variety of genres. Once you have absorbed the advice and inspiration contained within these pages you’ll be ready to enter the B&W round of…

Art of Fruit by Amitha A R Canon EOS 1200D, 18-55mm, 1/100sec at f/4.5, ISO 3200 India-based self-taught photographer Amitha says, ‘Most of my pictures are inspired by dark, raw food and their natural textures. Every image is a new lesson for me. This image is of the red banana. I took this at the start of the day in my home studio, the light made the banana look eye-catching.’ Instagram @official_amithaar Manali to Kaza by Anju Mishra Nikon D750, 24mm, 30sec at f/13, ISO 71, 10-stop ND filter ‘This image was made during a trip from Manali to Kaza in the Spiti Valley. The green hut under the blue sky created a beautiful drama which appealed to me.’ Visit cargocollective.com/ Anjumishra and @indiakalakaar on Instagram. Enjoy the Silence and…

LEICA has launched the Q2 Monochrom Reporter – an update of its robust, full-frame, 47MP monochrome-sensor reportage camera and the latest incarnation of 2019’s Q2. Leica claims the absence of a colour filter array, ‘leads to an unparalleled detail rendition and increased sensitivity.’ The full-frame compact camera has a fixed Summilux 28mm f/1.7 lens and an ISO range of 50-50,000. There’s also a 3.68m-dot OLED viewfinder and a 3in rear touchscreen. It is equipped with a ‘body armour’ made of Kevlar – a synthetic fibre used in the production of protective clothing. The remaining areas of the camera are protected by a specialist, dark-green, paint with abrasion-resistant properties. Leica’s Q2 Monochrom Reporter is available now with an RRP of £5,250.…

What’s in a name I’ve been a fan of Dorothea Lange for a long time, so I was interested in Zelda Cheatle’s Final Analysis (11 January issue). I have seen this photograph in two exhibitions, so I can vouch for its emotional power. The impact is almost physical, so I can easily accept that the image reduced Dorothea to tears many years after she took it. On this occasion I found the title especially interesting. Child living in Oklahoma City shacktown, 1936, is a factual, objective description, but it doesn’t tell the whole story, and it prompted me to ask, ‘What’s in a name?’ At the Tate Modern exhibition of photographs from Elton John’s collection, the picture was called The Damage is Already Done. Two years later, at the Barbican…

1 Enlarge the edit window Ever tried entering full screen mode in ACR? Hit the letter F on your keyboard and you’ll find the interface instantly fills your screen – handy if you’re editing on a laptop with a small screen. 2 Learn the shortcuts Hover your mouse or cursor over the tools in the toolbar and you’ll be able to view the name of each tool and the shortcut key, which is revealed in brackets. Learning the shortcuts is a great way of speeding up your workflow. 3 Refer to the histogram Remember to keep a close eye on the histogram up at the top right of the interface at all times. Turning the Shadow (U) and Highlight (O) Clipping Warnings on is a good idea…

Beautiful. Extraordinary. Different. All words that can easily be applied to the images found in All The Things You Are, a series of images that has recently been published as a book by Danish photographer Fie Johansen. The collection aims to reflect on who we are – as humans – by taking a closer look at other species. Fie attempts to show that these are sensitive and sentient beings, aware of their surroundings and able to feel just as we might do. Starting on somewhat of a whim – as many excellent photography projects do – a two-year period of photographing at Copenhagen Zoo started when Fie needed somewhere to test out her new camera. That choice might not necessarily be what most would immediately land on when searching for…

Be courteous Tony rarely gets stopped by security, but if he does he remains polite – if you get defensive and start telling people your rights, it rarely ends well. Sometimes they will say you need a permit, in which case simply ask where you can get one from! Pick a day Don’t let the weather dictate when you go out – pick a day, check the conditions and then decide what to shoot. If it’s a bright, blue-sky day then consider infrared, if there are fast-moving clouds, then try experimenting with filters and long exposures. Work with what you get given. Accept human behaviour Including people in the frame requires patience. If your camera is on a tripod, people will often avoid walking in front of the camera out…

Learn to see in infrared ‘Infrared is a translatory medium and you need to learn to see in it to become better at capturing it.’ A good way to help you to achieve this is to set your monochrome picture style to black & white on your camera, as David does. Experiment and surprise yourself David says, ‘You’ll think you’ve got it sussed out and you’ll think that you’ve got specific subjects that will or will not work; however don’t be presumptuous and keep experimenting with everything.’ Explore urban environments ‘The city is a great place to explore and is an alternative take on IR monochrome,’ David says. ‘The IR effect provides a different look to standard monochrome images. I’ll often tandem shoot two cameras together in different effects to…

With its 20MP sensor, one area where this camera lags behind is in resolution, compared to most of the competition. However, OMDS has made improvements in noise performance, thanks to the new BSI CMOS sensor and AI noise reduction algorithm. While ISO 6400 felt like the limit on the E-M1 III, I’d say that using ISO 12,800 and ISO 25,600 on the OM-1 produces improved results. There are also great results at lower ISO speeds, with images showing high levels of fine detail. Just be aware that with a base speed of ISO 200, the extended ISO 80 and ISO 100 settings do show a reduced highlight range.…

OVERALL, the Pixel 6 takes excellent images that are entirely on a par with flagship smartphones costing nearer £1,000. Yes, you miss the telephoto camera that’s included on most other premium flagships. But if you can live without this, you’re making an impressive saving, as well as benefiting from some of the most impressive computational photography features seen on any camera, let alone a smartphone. One area where the Pixel 6 could improve, perhaps, is by giving more control to the user. A fully manual mode might be useful, especially if you want to learn more about how to take photos. However, it looks like this isn’t very likely to happen. The selfie camera also lags behind some competitors, as Samsung’s flagships offer AF, rather than fixed focus, and even…

Model Soldiers by Gerti Deutsch Two members of the Society of Collectors of Model Soldiers inspect each other’s handiwork at one of the society’s meetings at their HQ, the Mason’s Arms public house in Maddox Street, London. This image featured in a story in Picture Post entitled ‘Hearth Rug Rearmament’. The photographer, Gerti Deutsch, also known as Gertrude Hopkinson (she married Picture Post editor Tom Hopkinson) was an Austrian-born British photographer. She produced a huge catalogue of photographic features over 30 years, becoming the first female photographer (and staffer) on Picture Post. 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…

HONOR has unveiled its flagship Magic4 Pro smartphone with a 100x ‘digital zoom’ within its extensive camera specifications. The Honor Magic4 Pro’s camera set-up consists of a 50MP wide camera, a 50MP ultra-wideangle camera with an aperture of f/2.2, a 64MP telephoto camera with 3.5x optical and 100x digital zooms, plus a 12MP selfie camera at the front of the phone. The Honor Magic4 Pro will be £899 in the UK on release. There’s also an Honor Magic4 handset on the way, but exact pricing for the regular Magic4 and UK release dates for both handsets have yet to be confirmed.…

THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S Gallery (TPG) in London will exhibit the work of the four finalists in the 2022 edition of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, from 25 March to 12 June. The nominated projects from the 2022 shortlisted artists – Anastasia Samoylova, Jo Ractliffe, Deana Lawson and Gilles Peress – will be in an exhibition over two floors of TPG. The overall winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced at an evening award ceremony on 12 May, with the other finalists each receiving £5,000. The nominated projects include installations of Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs 1980s to now (on post-Apartheid South Africa) and Gilles Peress’ Whatever You Say, Say Nothing (shot on the streets of Northern Ireland). In Centropy, Deana Lawson explores her representation of Black experience. Anastasia Samoylova’s FloodZone is…

Portrait of Britain Volume 4 £22.95, Hoxton Mini Press, Hardback, 336 pages, ISBN: 9781914314131 Now in its fourth volume, the annual Portrait of Britain competition is a real treat for contemporary portrait fans. Bringing together 200 images that depict Britain during another tumultuous period, these gripping portraits are paired with insightful stories and comments which show off how diverse, and perhaps more importantly how similar, we all are. This volume also includes an introduction by Jess Phillips MP to set the portraits within their cultural context. As we see consistently from books by Hoxton Mini Press, it’s been lovingly and beautifully designed, with the pages making the best use of its compact size to reproduce the portraits well. You’ll find works from established photographers alongside those lesser known. Names include…

1 Shoot some projects specifically in black & white to see how you get on – particularly projects with a documentary feel. Then ask for feedback, from your peers in a camera club for instance, or on online forums. 2 Shoot black & white by design rather than by accident. Never use it as a means to rescue poor colour images. 3 Set your viewfinder/LCD screen to monochrome to aid the ‘seeing in black & white’ process. 4 Work on your photographic style and find a way to integrate black & white shooting into that style. 5 Musicians use expression in their creations and so can we. So I’ll use black & white to add expression or feeling to an image – which could mean, for example, feelings of timelessness,…

A few years ago, I was asked by a magazine to photograph the first steam locomotive to be made in Great Britain for almost 50 years. I wasn’t given much of a brief. All I was told was that the photograph had to be striking and taken in the portrait format, as it was to be a pull-out poster in a forthcoming issue. The mix of natural and fluorescent lighting inside the engine shed, combined with the bright vermilion red buffer beam, made shooting in colour tricky. Converting the image to black & white before applying a few other basic adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw transformed the photograph to one that could have been taken in the heyday of steam on a film camera. To my relief, it got the…

‘Photoshop’s non-destructive workflow gives you the freedom to experiment with different edits’ When it comes to converting your images to black & white, there are some excellent image-editing options out there. Over the next few pages we’ll explore the key features of three of the best black & white editors – here we’ll look at Photoshop, then delve into DxO FilmPack 6 and Silver Efex (formerly Silver Efex Pro). As the best all-round image-editor, Photoshop has a depth of features that no other program can match. For black & white conversions alone there are at least six methods (Camera Raw B&W Panel, Black and White Layer, Desaturate command, Gradient Map Adjustment, Channel Mixer, and LAB Color technique). But this raft of options doesn’t necessarily translate to superior black & white…

1 Choose a preset Open FilmPack 6 (or if using Photoshop go to Filter > DxO > FilmPack 6) then begin by choosing a film stock from the list on the right. You can filter the 84 films on offer to view the various black & white choices. As well as film stocks, you’ll also find several image effects such as ‘old postcard’ and ‘new selenium’. 2 Find out about the film When you choose a particular film stock an info box will pop up that explains when the film was first produced, when (or if) it was discontinued and what the characteristics of the film are. We’ve chosen the classic Kodak Tri-X 400 here, used ‘by the great reporters of the 1960s and 1970s’. 3 Fine-tune the grain You…

Bill Duncan, Dundee About Bill Bill is a member of the Photo Forum at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Favourite subjects I love being outdoors, where I’m drawn to form, texture and tone. How did you get into photography? For as long as I can remember I’ve been making and looking at drawings, paintings, prints and photos. Visual art has been a constant in my life. What do you love about photography? Mastering techniques can be frustrating and satisfying in equal measure. It’s constantly stimulating. First camera Aged ten, a 6/11d Diana. Current kit Nikon D7100, Nikon D90, converted for infrared to 720nm, Nikon and Sigma lenses, Giotto tripod, LEE filters. All my kit is second-hand’. Favourite lens Sigma 10-20mm F3.5 EX DC HSM. Favourite accessory A £20 pair of gloves with…

Sensor 20MP Live MOS, 17.4x13.0mm Output size 5184x3888 Focal length mag 2x Lens mount Micro Four Thirds Shutter speeds 60-1/8,000s (mechanical) 60-1/32,000s (electronic) Sensitivity 200-25,600 (80-102,400 extended) Exposure modes PASM, B, Movie Metering Multi-pattern, centreweighted average, spotmetering Exposure comp +/-5EV (0.3EV steps) Continuous shooting 120fps with fixed focus, 50fps with AF-C Screen 3in, 1.6m-dot fully articulated LCD Viewfinder 5.76m dots, 0.83x magnification AF points 1,053 Video C/4K 60p, Full HD 240fps External mic 3.5mm stereo Memory card Dual UHS-II SD Power BLX-1 Li-ion rechargeable battery Battery life 520 shots Dimensions 134.8x91.6x72.7mm Weight 599g with battery and card…

WITH a brand new stacked sensor and new image processor, the OM System OM-1 gives Micro Four Thirds users a step up in image quality and noise performance, along with extremely rapid shooting. For those who enjoy shooting Olympus, the excellent high-resolution viewfinder, improved screen, new menus and controls, and IP53 rating make this the best ‘Olympus’ camera ever released. Autofocus has been greatly improved, and image quality sees a boost both in the ISO range available, and decreased noise at higher ISO settings. Meanwhile, for those who want rapid shooting with continuous AF, this camera really does offer some unique features, including Pro Capture and a blackout-free viewfinder. The improvement in weather-sealing also gives the OM-1 real appeal when you want a camera that can be used in all…

● £289.99 ● www.3leggedthing.com THE ORIGINAL Billy was a popular and reliable tripod, but 3 Legged Thing has refreshed it with all the upgrades that it has made to the second generation of its Punks range. That means that all three of the tripod’s legs can be unscrewed and replaced by the optional Vanz feet to create a tabletop tripod. One of the detached legs can also be attached to the centre column to make a monopod or microphone boom measuring around 1.7m in length. Because of 3 Legged Thing’s high-quality machining, the legs are easy to detach, and then reattach smoothly with little risk of cross-threading. In addition, the leg locks are beefier and have a central knurled metal section with textured rubber grips either side to give better…

Mother and Child by Kevin Mcguinness Sony A7II, 28-70mm, 1/80sec at f/10, ISO 320 ‘I started photography as a hobby and it soon became a passion,’ says Kevin. ‘No matter the weather, I’ll be outside shooting somewhere. On this day, I was out testing my new Sony A7 II, which I had just bought to try out and explore the world of mirrorless after using DSLR for so many years. I took this image close to where I live and I’ve walked this track many times, but on this day the mist was just right.The trees were bare, as it was mid January, and from this perspective and the way the trees were interacting, it looked like an adult and a child standing in the park. I shot handheld, then…

THREE Legged Thing (3LT) has revamped its QR11 Universal L-brackets, with design updates and improved features, to produce its QR11 2.0 brackets. The new-style brackets have been made in response to customer feedback, mainly because of the large number of cameras launched since the original QR11 in 2017. They are available as QR11-L 2.0 for standard mirrorless and DSLR cameras or QR11-FB 2.0 for ‘full-body’ and cameras with grips. The brackets have a refined shape and reduced weight. Available in either 3LT’s signature Copper or Metallic Slate Grey, the QR11-L 2.0 has an SRP of £49.99 and the QR11-FB 2.0’s SRP is £59.99.…

16 March 1932 The 1932 Spring and Empire Number featured on its cover a host of golden daffodils, and in colour, no less – a rarity for covers of the time. In the inter-war years AP published an annual Empire issue with contributions almost entirely from residents of the colonies – not all of whom enjoyed springtime in the month of March.‘For the lonely man of tropical countries there exists, perhaps, no more fascinating hobby than photography,’ wrote one correspondent using the nom de plume “African Amateur”. ‘The writer of these jottings, when in East Africa, found it a splendid pastime which, incidentally, brought him a fair financial return by taking photographs of natives. While professional photographers live 100 miles away in the big townships, the natives depend for portraits…

I find it difficult to believe I first used Ilford photographic paper in the school darkroom 45 years ago. In the UK, the name is synonymous with black & white photography, and there have been Ilford films, papers and chemicals in production for over 130 years. The brand’s origins date back to 1879, when Alfred H Harman, who ran an early photographic printing business in London, started to manufacture dry plate film, having moved to the Essex town of Ilford. From Britannia Works to Ilford These were sold under the name Britannia Works and in just two years, Harman had built up his company, opened several factories and extended the range of products to include photographic papers, registering his business as a limited company in 1881. In 1886, following legal…

1 Correct distortion After loading a raw file into Camera Raw, one of the first things I do is enable lens profile corrections which, in the case of this image, removed the barrel distortion that arose from shooting close to my subject at the wide end of the zoom. Next, I selected the Straighten Tool (A) and drew a straight line across the buffer beam of the loco to get the image perfectly straight. 2 Use the B&W Mixer Hitting the keyboard shortcut E is the quickest way of returning to the editing area of Camera Raw. From the list of Profiles, I selected Adobe Monochrome before making subtle tweaks to the Exposure (+0.35), Contrast (+40), Highlights (-60), Shadows (+90), Blacks (+15) and Clarity (+45) sliders. Next, I used the…

Dutch photographer Peter Eleveld was first seduced by the magic of the wet-plate collodion process in 2015. He was stuck in an artistic slump after years of managing a photo studio for Amazon in the UK and was searching for something new to revitalise his creative spirit after returning to the Netherlands. It was while viewing a creative show on the outdoors that Peter first became aware of and entranced by the wet-plate collodion process. There was a segment in the show that revealed the magical world of mobile darkrooms, large, unwieldy wooden plate cameras, and the alchemy of the collodion process. This process could, it seemed, be the perfect antidote to the sterile digital world which had stifled his art. ‘I felt the need to return to the roots…

Prime lenses Prime lenses force you to work harder when it comes to composition, but the results are worth it. Tony will sometimes shoot with a 24-70mm zoom and return later with one of his favourite primes such as the Zeiss Makro-Planar T* 50mm ZF.2. Nikon D810 The Nikon D810 is Tony’s main camera. When you’re shooting in low-light conditions, you need a camera that handles noise well – the D810 has an ISO range of 64-12,800, which makes it ideal. Nik Silver Efex When it comes to black & white, using the desaturation tool to remove colour isn’t enough. Tony likes to use Nik Silver Efex due to its unique algorithms and advanced tools and controls.…

Camera David has upgraded from his previous Canon EOS 6D with a 665 nanometer conversion (this mixes the visible red spectrum to the infrared spectrum) to his mirrorless Canon EOS RP with a full-spectrum set-up. A full-spectrum camera conversion is an adaptation where the internal IR cut filter is taken out, and replaced with a clear filter. This in turn makes the camera sensitive to UV, visible, and IR light. Adapter RF to EF David has a Canon Drop-In Filter Mount Adapter EF-EOS R that means he can shoot on his Canon EOS RP using his EF lenses. This adapter has a drop-in filter slot as well. Filters David uses a 590nm filter and a 665nm filter made by Kolari Vision (kolarivision. com). These filters work using a slot into…

1 Open in Camera Raw Photoshop’s Camera Raw and Lightroom both offer identical black & white tools. These are the best tools for converting to mono in Photoshop. Open the image into Camera Raw then click the B&W button in the Basic Panel to begin the conversion process. 2 Experiment with profiles If you want quick and easy black & white treatments then try using Profiles. These one-click effects can transform your image in seconds, and also make for useful starting points for further edits. Go to the Profile Browser in Camera Raw/Lightroom and try out the range of black & white profiles. 3 Boost contrast with Curves Go to the Tone Curve panel and plot three points along the diagonal curve line then drag them to make a shallow…

1 Try a preset Drag an image into Silver Efex to begin editing, or if in Photoshop you can open via Filter>Nik Collection>Silver Efex. The simplest place to begin is the presets panel at top left. This gives you a range of effects to try out, from classic black & white treatments to old analogue processes and vintage colour tints. 2 Adjust dynamic brightness We chose the Full Dynamic (smooth) preset here in the ‘Modern’ set. Next we can use the sliders to the right to fine-tune the look of our mono conversion. The Global Adjustments panel lets us make typical changes to brightness, highlight detail and so on. The Dynamic Brightness slider here gives us a welcome boost. 3 Boost the structure The contrast and structure controls in Silver…

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…

Andy Westlake, AP’s technical editor, asked me ‘why companies haven’t just made lower-resolution raw files by down-sampling the individual RGGB Bayer channels’. The theoretical answer is quite simple, because it involves a doubled interpolation step, which reduces resolution and introduces artefacts. The context of the question was given by the Leica M11, which uses a Bayer encoded reduced raw format. This is in contrast to the approach used by Canon and Leica, which uses a format related to JPEG YCbCr encoding. This method keeps a full resolution camera native green channel (as in, the pixel count of the reduced array), and quarter resolution channels that give the difference of the blue and red channels from the green channel. This format does not require a demosaicing interpolation over an already interpolated…

Mónica Alcázar-Duarte lives in London but is a fiercely proud Mexican artist photographer who uses multi-disciplinary techniques to make artwork with a serious message. Her work acknowledges her indigenous heritage – as she herself has said of this recent work, ‘Who has ever heard of a Mexican astronaut, never mind a female astronaut?’ When researching the Google view of Mexican women, she was appalled. While exploring and researching, Mónica’s work has become involved with migration and acts of survival. She is committed to spreading the word and altering notions and perceptions of representation, and her projects encompass thoughts on social, political, and cultural issues. A driving force to activate, share and inform those around her has resulted in some magnificent work. As a photographer/artist she invites you to join her,…