Innholdsfortegnelse for 05/04/2022 i Amateur Photographer

In the earliest days of wet plate photography pioneers like Roger Fenton had to drag a horse-drawn darkroom around with them so they could coat and develop their plates on location. Fenton took his to the Crimean War. That’s no longer necessary of course but the relationship between photography and vans continues. For landscape, wildlife and astro photographers in particular, the ability to park up at your chosen spot the night before, ready to shoot, is extremely advantageous, and of course campervans are enormous fun. This week we meet a few photographers who have taken the plunge. We also offer some tips and inspiration for better spring photos, show how to simulate another Victorian process, the daguerreotype, in Photoshop, look at the history of the Disc camera and review Rotolight’s…

Spring is Coming by Andy Craddock Samsung Galaxy A40, 1/1429sec at f/1.7, ISO 40 ‘Usually I use my trusty Nikon D3500, but for this image I tested a new combination of my Samsung A40 phone with a high-definition 0.45x super-wideangle and macro lens attachment. I took it just after a hailstorm and the light was super-fresh and bright. It was windy and the plant was set low in the garden so I had to shield the flower from the wind to capture a clean image and had to ensure the light was behind me to get the best image presentation. Fiddly prep for a very small flower!’ See more of Andy’s photos on Instagram and Twitter @andycraddphotos Always Stand Out From the Crowd by Zoe Hodkinson Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark…

The best portraits to use for this Photoshop technique are tight headshots or head and shoulders portraits because of the way that the shallow depth-of-field effect is applied. The portrait you use can be shot under natural light, flash or LEDs – whatever works best for you. Once you have your portrait the editing process only takes about five minutes and the result is unforgiving because of the way it accentuates skin texture and detail using colour channels. The blue channel is pushed to the maximum with can cause burning out if your model is wearing blue clothes. To fix this, create a Black & White Adjustment Layer above the Channel Mixer Layer and change the Blending mode to Luminosity. Reduce the Cyans and Blues sliders until detail returns, invert…

● £87.95 ● www.manfrotto.com/uk-en WHEN you need to carry other items alongside your camera kit, for example food, clothing or a laptop, a backpack will often be the most practical choice of bag. But then the question arises as to how you’d like to access your kit. While traditional front-loading designs are very convenient, the rear-access approach is more secure. Manfrotto’s Street Slim backpack ingeniously addresses this conundrum by providing two access points front and rear, with a reversible camera module that can be set facing either way. To make this work, the laptop pocket (which takes devices with a screen size up to 13in) is also removable and can be placed at either the front or rear of the bag. In fact, for maximum security while travelling, you could…

THE THIRD Photo North Festival will be held at the Bonded Warehouse, Manchester, from 7-9 May and includes a special exhibition to honour photojournalist Tom Stoddart, who died in 2021. The event will showcase work from many acclaimed photographers including Stoddart, Carolyn Mendelsohn, Chris Floyd and David Collyer. In memorial of Stoddart, Photo North will feature images from his final book – Extraordinary Women: Images of Courage, Endurance and Defiance. Photo North will also have book and zine stalls, workshops, portfolio reviews and screenings. www.photonorthfestival.co.uk.…

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 Wake up and smell the coffee On a recent nice morning we decided to go to the beach for a walk. My wife filled our two shiny new flasks with coffee and I fetched my Billingham Hadley. I fitted my Fujifilm X-T3 with a 16-80mm and added it to the bag. In the other two padded divisions, which would normally hold my 10-24mm and 70-300mm, I decided to put the two flasks. I put the bag on the back seat of the car and we set off. About two miles down the…

In an unassuming Gloucestershire town, in an unassuming street, nestled among a cafe, charity shop, butcher, bank and frozen food store, a quiet revolution is taking place. Walking through the door at Clifton Cameras, you find a significant percentage of employees have taken out cash and taken up tools to purchase and convert vans to drive their adventures in photography. ‘The two biggest things in my life are photography and mountain biking. Both came to a stop during lockdown. I was furloughed, all university study was based from home. That’s where the idea blossomed. To be able to travel, ride and photograph while sticking to the Covid rules. The idea had been floating around for a while, lockdown was the ignition to get started,’ explains 23-year-old Alex McDowell, part-time sales…

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. Reviewed…

Our favourite photos posted by readers on our social media channels this week Yellow-legged Gulls on the Cliffs of Tenerife by Peter Warne Canon EOS R6, Canon 100-500mm RF at 500mm, 1/1600sec at f/7.1, ISO 6400 Peter is a UK biologist who since retirement has been following his passion for wildlife. He tells us, ‘On a calm but overcast day (owing to a calima blown in from the Sahara) we took a boat trip to watch cetaceans. This image of two yellow-legged gulls was taken from the boat at the furthest extremity of the magnificent volcanic cliffs – Los Gigantes.’ See Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/peter_warne-epping_forest/ Facebook: Peter Warne…

SAMYANG has announced the new AF 35mm F1.4 FE II lens for full-frame Sony E-mount cameras and Sony’s APS-C mirrorless cameras. The AF 35mm F1.4 FE II is a revised version of a four-year-old lens. The two key, customisable updates are a Focus Hold button and a Custom Switch. The Focus Hold button keeps the lens locked at the focusing distance you’ve chosen, and you can assign functions, such as AF settings, via the camera. The Custom Switch can let you set silent adjustment of the aperture by rotating the focus ring. The AF 35mm F1.4 FE II will cost £635 and will be available from ‘early to mid-April’.…

THE SOCIETIES of Photographers have announced the overall winners of their Monthly Image Competition, with James Musselwhite FSWPP taking the coveted Photographer of the Year 2021 title. In total the 2021 Monthly Image Competition had 6,636 images submitted in 29 categories. Musselwhite’s overall winning image also won the In-camera Artistry category of the annual awards. The judges described it as, ‘An incredible and haunting, Raw capture. If that’s straight out of camera, then that’s phenomenal.’ James Musselwhite commented, ‘Thank you if you ever liked, shared, collaborated, paid money for, or ever said something nice about our work.’ Second place in the overall Photographer of the Year 2021 contest was awarded to Pedro Luis Ajuriaguerra from Vizcaya, Spain, for his macro shot that also won the Macro and Close Up category.…

‘INTIMATE landscapes are compositions that have been derived from the larger scene,’ says US photographer Charlotte Gibb. ‘It could be a photograph of a small section of beach, or a group of trees, or it could be a photograph of a section of an entire mountain. ‘Typically, the sky is not part of the composition, so intimate landscapes don’t rely on attention-grabbing sunsets. They are more subtle, and, for me, often have an element of symbolism in them,’ she continues. ‘It can be a challenge. Intimate landscapes can’t rely on grand, colourful scenes to inspire awe in the viewer, so the photographer has to be more clever about how to compose. Don’t feel dispirited if your photographs aren’t compelling when you start. Just keep at it.’ Rather than hunting for…

Living it large Having been a keen amateur for 40 years I ‘graduated’ to a Canon EOS R5 in 2020 – a fantastic camera that allows me to shoot 20 frames per second with brilliant AI focus so I hardly ever need to miss a shot. Then I went to the Photography Show last year with a friend and we realised we had both been looking at the same website in recent months: Intrepid cameras. The upshot is that we went mad and both came away from the show with an Intrepid 4x5 film camera. I absolutely love the large format experience, although I do get some strange looks. Instead of ‘firing off shots’ machine-gun style I am having to take my time and think more about what I am…

● Do your research. Don’t buy the first van you see on the market. You might not enjoy it, it’s not always luxurious and can be quite miserable at times, it’s cramped. Maybe hire one, see if you enjoy it. ● Don’t just buy the cheapest van, as it may end up costing you more long term. If able, take someone along who knows what they’re doing. ● Create a 3D model of your van layout. Tinkercad is web-based, free and easy to use. ● Fundamentally you need three things: somewhere comfortable to sleep (a van with a mattress in would do the job); somewhere to make a cup of tea; and somewhere to store your camera gear. ● According to Comfort Insurance, there are no UK laws stopping you…

In the tutorial, the approach results in a ‘cleaner’ look reminiscent of Chuck Close’s daguerreotypes. For a more grungy result you can use a texture image of peeling paint and add it as a Layer below the Curves and Photo Filter Layers you need to create on the following pages. Convert the peeling paint image to black & white by holding down Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+U, hold down Ctrl/Cmd+A to Select All, Ctrl/Cmd+C to Copy, click on the portrait image tab to make it active and visible then press Ctrl/Cmd+V to Paste. Next, change the Blending mode of this Layer to Screen or Multiply – see what works best, add a Layer mask and paint black over areas of the texture to hide parts of it before reducing Opacity to 10-20%.…

With a diameter of about 30cm, the AEOS 2 has approximately four times the surface area of the NEO 3. Yet it only weighs 2.3kg without the high-capacity V-lock battery in place; add the battery and the combination weighs 3kg. It’s fitted with a yoke which has a standard 5/8-inch female receptor mount, allowing direct fixing to light stands and the majority of standard lighting grip gear. There are handles for off-stand use and the unit is well balanced when used this way, as the battery is placed low down on the back of the light. The AEOS 2 provides sufficient power to use it outdoors as a video light and balance with the ambient light. It also shares the same flash function as the NEO 3, which is approximately…

The Truth is in the Soil by Ioanna Sakellaraki is a five-year exploration of grief as an elegy to her father and the dying tradition of mourning in Greece. It takes a lot for this hardbitten, cynical old photographer to say this, but this project, and this image in particular, makes me feel proud. Proud of what photography can still do, despite the seemingly endless bickering between film versus digital bores, wet plate enthusiasts putting everyone apart from themselves down, over-intellectual types seemingly determined to ‘discuss’ any feeling out of photography and the never-ending social media hype about NFTs (whatever they are) and how much money we should all be making from them. This simple, striking image did exactly what it should. It made me think. It made me feel.…