Innholdsfortegnelse for 31/05/2022 i Amateur Photographer

Many of us don’t give much thought to how certain colours make us feel, how they interact with each other in a pleasing or jarring way, and how we can use our understanding of colour to inform our composition and create images with strong visual impact. This week Tracy Calder presents a masterclass in using colour creatively. We also pay tribute to the legendary fashion and beauty photographer Patrick Demarchelier, who passed away recently. I had the great privilege of interviewing him for an AP feature back in 1997. He had taken a short break during a studio shoot in New York to speak to me over the phone and opened our conversation by telling me to be brief as the shoot was costing his client $15,000 a day! Also…

COSINA has revealed more details of its upcoming Voigtländer APO-Lanthar 35mm F2 Aspherical lens for Nikon Z-mount cameras. The lens was previously available for Sony E-mount camera systems and is constructed of 11 elements in nine groups, including five low-dispersion elements and two double-sided aspherical elements. It features a 12-blade aperture diaphragm, minimum focus of 35cm, a 52mm front filter thread and an aperture range of f/2 to f/16. Though it’s a manual focus lens it features electronic contacts that allow it to talk to Nikon Z-mount cameras. In addition to providing EXIF data, it can work in tandem with in-body image stabilisation and supports three types of focus assist functions: changing the focus point frame colour, focus peaking and focusing enlargement. Cosina says it expects to ship the lens…

PHOTOGRAPHER and artist Man Ray’s iconic surrealist photograph ‘Le Violon d’Ingres’ has smashed the world record price for a single photograph at auction by fetching US$12.4million at Christie’s New York on 14 May, well above its record pre-sale estimate of US$5-$7million. The sale of the photographic print came after a fierce, telephone-bidding period that lasted for nearly ten minutes during Christie’s New York’s auction dedicated to Surrealist art. Prior to the auction many had predicted the Man Ray image was set to become the world’s most expensive photograph, but few could have predicted its hammer price would be over $12million. The ‘Le Violon d’Ingres’ image depicts a nude woman (model Alice Prin, also known as Kiki de Montparnasse) with f-shaped violin markings on her back. It reached over $8million more…

1 Plan your image and palette – I sketch my images in Procreate. It’s easier to experiment with different colour combinations at this stage rather than doing it in the studio. It also makes it easier to source backdrops and props. 2 Use consistent lighting. Make sure your flashes have the same colour temperature and light quality, so you don’t end up with mixed light muddying your colours. 3 Use a colour checker tool to help you calibrate your colours when editing. www.hiyamarianne. com, Instagram @ hiyamarianne…

Having heroes is a dangerous business. Some of them go and die on you, while others fall into disgrace. French fashion and portrait photographer Patrick Demarchelier has managed to do both, and it’s hard to know how to feel. Demarchelier was among the first photographers I idolised when my photographic brain was being slowly moulded in my teenage years. Having exhausted the collection of books between 770 and 779 on the shelves between Printmaking and Music in our local library, I resorted to actually buying photography books and requesting them for birthdays. I think I saw the American Photography Master Series Fashion Photography by Patrick Demarchelier advertised by a photo book club in AP and, hoping it might inspire me, signed up and bought it. Along with the fashion pictures…

What even is time-slice photography? It’s a question I get asked a lot. People see me shooting and often wonder why I need to stand in a spot for hours to get a single picture. The answer is simple: to get one time-slice image, I first need around 700 individual ones. A time-slice photograph is similar to a time-lapse, in that it is used to show the passing of time. However, unlike with a time-lapse, I try to show the passing of time in just one image. Choosing the correct scene is the first challenge, as you have to perfectly blend the images so that you can see the passing of time while still ensuring they line up correctly. You need an eye for detail and a lot of patience.…

IN THE Find X5 Pro, Oppo has produced a fine Android flagship that looks fabulous, performs well, and takes great pictures and video. As such, it strikes an enticing middle ground between the cheaper, highly competent, but plainly styled Google Pixel 6 Pro, and the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, which is class-leading in terms of lens range and features, but painfully priced. One thing I really appreciated is the balance Oppo has struck between the three cameras. While other firms have been known to concentrate their efforts on cramming marketing-friendly specs onto the main camera alone, Oppo has included an ultra-wide camera that’s every bit as good, while also delivering very creditable quality from the telephoto. But the latter lens is also this camera system’s main weakness, as it offers…

See Goons by Chris Ware British comedians ‘The Goons’, seen here in image taken from a 1951 Picture Post story about the group. From left to right is Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. The Goon Show was broadcast on radio between 1951 and 1960 and was known for its surreal humour, puns, catchphrases and wacky sounds. Not too dissimilar to a typical AP planning meeting then. 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.…

LEICA has revealed that it has discontinued its CL and TL2 mirrorless APS-C format cameras to focus on producing full-frame cameras. The news came via an official Leica Camera AG statement posted on an online forum on 16 May 2022. The statement cites the decline in sales of compact and system cameras with smaller sensors in the photography market, whilst sales of full-frame systems have been rising. As a result, Leica has discontinued the APS-C models and said, ‘Going forward, the company will primarily focus its attention on the production of full-frame cameras.’ Leica says it will provide ‘comprehensive customer care’ for the CL and TL2 systems for six years from the date of purchase.…

ROTOLIGHT has unveiled the world’s first electronic SmartSoft Box for its AEOS 2 RGBWW LED lights, along with a brand new native iOS and Android app. The Rotolight SmartSoft Box fits over the AEOS 2 and allows users to electronically adjust diffusion, focus and spread without the need for gels or additional modifiers. Rotolight says it provides 1.5 stops of electronically variable diffusion, providing the flexibility of a soft output and a harder light source. The SmartSoft Box can be quickly mounted to the AEOS 2 and is adjustable via the light’s touchscreen display or via the Rotolight app. The new app will allow users to switch between lighting modes, adjust colour, power, flash settings and SFX. The Rotolight SmartSoft Box is available for pre-order now at £439 and will…

Use hot colours sparingly Warm colours such as red and orange attract the eye, even in very small quantities. The artist Henri Matisse once declared, ‘a thimble of red is redder than a bucketful’. As a result, these ‘hot’ colours should be used sparingly in a composition. Think about visual weight Certain colours have more visual ‘weight’ than others. Pure yellow, for instance, is perceived as visually light, whereas blue and red are deemed visually heavier. The ‘weight’ of a colour will affect how dominant or recessive it appears in an image. Experiment with pure hues ‘Hue’ describes a pure colour that has not been mixed with black, white or grey. By using two or three pure hues in a composition – think brightly-coloured spices at a food market –…

1 Look outside photography for inspiration. I’m drawn to the work of Edward Hopper and Rembrandt, but you might also find inspiration in music or other art forms. 2 Be a lifelong learner. If you don’t know something, then look it up. I grew up in a time before the internet, now it’s easier. 3 Look at stuff you hate. Whether it’s music, photography or painting, ask yourself why you hate something and think about how it makes you feel. www.nigelrglasgow. com, Instagram @ nigelrglasgow…

Goldstream Park Goldstream Provincial Park is located just off the Malahat Trans-Canada Highway on Vancouver Island. The parkland area is an especially popular tourist destination during the fall when the river levels rise and chum salmon swim up the Goldstream River to reach their spawning grounds. On this trip, I took my Fujifilm X-T30, with an 18–55mm zoom lens. The widest view on this lens is equivalent to a 28mm lens on a full-frame camera. Therefore, the lens is not quite wide enough for all landscape subjects. But no matter, an easy solution in such circumstances is to shoot a panoramic sequence of images and stitch these together later using the Photo Merge feature in Lightroom, to which I added a colouring effect that added more colour contrast to the…

Tripod A strong, sturdy tripod makes life so much easier when shooting time-slices. You want all the frames to stay aligned, so zero movement is a must. If you end up with a little movement, the time-slice is not lost, as you can always auto-align it in Photoshop later, but it’s always preferable to reduce the chances of movement from the start. remote A time-lapse An intervalometer is probably the most important item when it comes to time-slices – it triggers the camera and sets the shooting interval between shots. I use a LRTimelapse remote for this, but you can pick up a cheap intervalometer for about £15 on Amazon. Photoshop I use this to splice together all my time-slices – it’s simply a process of using layer masks to…

Leica patented several autofocus sensor technologies during the 1960s and early 1970s. The company showed an AF camera called the Carrefot at Photokina in 1976 and, in 1978, it displayed an autofocus SLR. Neither went into production. In 1983 Nikon launched the F3AF, an autofocus version of the F3, along with 80mm f/2.8 and 200mm f/3.5 Nikkor autofocus lenses. It wasn’t the success the company had hoped for. Also in 1983, Olympus introduced the OM30 which, when fitted with its 35-70mm AF Zoom, permitted autofocus. However, it wasn’t popular and soon vanished from the market.…

● £134.79 (1TB), £250.99 (2TB) ● www.samsung.com/uk Portable SSDs have now replaced conventional hard drives for working with image or video files on the move, as they’re smaller, faster, and much more robust. Certain cameras and video recorders can even save files directly to SSD. Samsung’s T-series SSDs have long been highly regarded for their speed and reliability. Latest in the line is the T7 Shield. This is a variant of the existing T7 SSD, but with its aluminium shell covered in a ridged rubberised armour for increased robustness. The firm claims it’s now shockproof against a fall from 3m, compared to 2m before. Otherwise, the T7 Shield promises the same performance as the standard T7. It’s rated for sequential write speeds up to 1000MB/sec, and read speeds up to…

AP picture of the week Spring Greens by David Ball DJI Mavic Pro 3, 1/120sec at f/2.8, ISO 100 Nottinghamshire-based landscape photographer David tells us, ‘I live in the countryside, which is a great place for catching the farmers at work throughout the year. This spring, I knew they would be out working, so during my lunch break, when I heard the tractors in a nearby field, I nipped out with my drone for an hour and captured this image of the farmer cutting the grass down ready to be collected.’ Instagram: @davidballphotography_ #appicoftheweek Win! To congratulate the AP Pic of the Week winner, Fujifilm is giving the winner a £25 voucher* to spend on any photo prints or gifts at myFUJIFILM.co.uk, so that they can print their image any…

PANASONIC has unveiled the new Leica DG Summilux 9mm F1.7 ASPH ultra wideangle prime for its Lumix G cameras. The lens (right) can also be used on Olympus and OM System Micro Four Thirds cameras. The Leica DG Summilux 9mm F1.7 ASPH has an equivalent focal length of 18mm in full-frame terms, which equates to a 100° diagonal angle of view. Its maximum aperture of f/1.7 is very fast for a lens this wide, while the minimum aperture is f/16. Thanks to a close focusing distance of 9.5cm, it can shoot half life-size macro photography. Other specs of the newly announced lens include an optical configuration of 12 elements in 9 groups, including two aspherical lenses to suppress astigmatism, along with two ED lenses and a UHR lens to minimise…

RICOH Imaging has announced the new Ricoh WG-80 – a shockproof and ‘breakproof’ compact digital camera that’s waterproof to 14metres underwater for up to two hours. It has a 28-140mm (equiv.) lens with f/3.5-5.5 aperture, a 2.7in screen and a 300-shot battery life. The WG-80 has several modes to help with white balance and colour reproduction underwater and the six LED lights around the lens are designed to aid with macro shooting. The ring light brightness level can be adjusted (five levels), and there is a self-portrait assist mode. The WG-80 is available now at £329.…

‘To me, colour is the most obvious component of putting together a photograph, and I tend to struggle when I get a brief that requires something more neutral. Colour can influence our moods and emotion, too. I think pairing up colours is definitely instinctual, but I’m always finding new combinations that inspire me. I collect colour palettes on the Pantone colour app – this allows me to point my phone’s camera at any scene and create a palette out of the colours. On Pinterest, I have dedicated boards for some of my favourite colours and also for colour combinations. When I find a new combination, I start a new board to collect visual samples, and then start playing with the combination in the studio. ‘Colour is definitely something that you…

1 Create a Panorama Merge I selected the eight photos I had shot and chose Photo>Photo Merge>Panorama. In the Panorama Merge Preview dialog, I also selected Fill Edges to autofill the full preview area. 2 Apply a Guided Upright Adjustment Having clicked OK to the Panorama preview, I went to the Transform panel and added two vertical Upright Guides. I manually adjusted the angles of the two guides so the trees appeared upright. 3 Edit the White Balance and Tones When photographing woodland, the camera auto White Balance will tend towards magenta. I select a Daylight White Balance preset to restore the natural green vibrance. In this step I fine-tuned the tone settings as well. 4 Add Texture and Clarity Next, I zoomed in to a 100% view and adjusted…

Select your images I use the library tab in Lightroom as this makes it easier to select the images you want to use. Pick your first image, then move along 10 images and select the next one. Repeat this step till you end up with the number of slices you want for your final creation. Apply your edit Now, go over all the shots and apply a rough edit (you’ll also get time at the end to fine-tune). If you decide to do some cropping, make sure all the images have the same crop applied to them – you can do this by syncing the crop. Move over to Photoshop In Photoshop, select all the images you’ve edited and right click>Edit in>Open as Layers. If you are worried you might…

Most explanations of how image sensors work will include a description of a component called a photodiode. This is the part of a pixel that is actually sensitive to light, and produces the photocharge, which is measured to produce the exposure reading from the pixel. The design of this component is full of subtlety, and upon its success rests the performance of the sensor as a whole. Eric Fossum, the inventor of the active pixel CMOS sensor, and Donald Hongdonwa, described the history of its development in a paper entitled ‘A Review of the Pinned Photodiode for CCD and CMOS Image Sensors’, and it is from this paper that much of the information for this article comes. In an image sensor, the collected charge is kept in place by a…

I never had long hair. I never will. It was once long enough to just about tuck behind my ears. I used a dual brush and comb combo to keep it knot-free and preferred the single application of an all-in-one hair wash shampoo over a separate shampoo and conditioner. I had things to do, places to be. Sometimes I went out with my hair wet. In the end, I cut it short – too much faffing about. In many cultures and communities, hair plays a vital part in identity. It can deliver self-esteem, self-respect, a sense of pride and belonging. Hair is sacred and significant. Sikhs allow their hair to grow naturally to honour perfection of God’s creation. Ultra-Orthodox Jews have a biblical obligation not to remove hair from part…