Innholdsfortegnelse for 20/09/2022 i Amateur Photographer

There are very few people in Britain who can remember anyone other than the Queen as our head of state. Her passing, and the ascension of a new King, is a moment in our nation’s history that will be forever remembered. Photographers have been busy creating the images that will fill the history books of the future, and some will become iconic. Perhaps the image on page 5 will be one of those. We will be presenting our own tribute to the most photographed woman in history, so do look out for that. In the meantime, in this week’s issue we interview Andy Saunders about his remastering of 35,000 images from the Apollo missions, we delve into the world of colour grading, and test a fantastic new lighting system that…

As somebody who is passionate about the importance of documentary and news photography, I’m worried. A recent survey from the respected Reuters Institute reveals that many people are turning off from the news as it makes them depressed. Almost four in ten of those surveyed say they often avoid the news, a sizeable jump from 29% in 2017. It also found that the number of people avoiding news over the past five years has doubled in the UK (46%) and Brazil (54%). The best photojournalism strives to tell the truth about events. When you think of Dorothea Lange’s record of dirt-poor US migrants, or Nick Ut’s ‘Napalm Girl,’ yes, they are upsetting and depressing images. This is not usually because photographers are trying to make viewers feel bad or manipulating…

Steve Best Steve Best (aka The Clowntographer) is a stand-up comedian and photographer who is known for his informal headshot portraits and his work photographing comedians, both onstage and backstage. He has been a stand-up comedian for over 20 years and has performed in Europe, Africa, Asia and even the Falkland Islands. He has been photographing fellow comedians since 2006 and has published the books Comedy Snapshot and Poker Face. His latest book, Comedians, is out in October. Visit stevebest.com For a man who tells jokes for a living, Steve Best is deadly serious about his photography. His relationship with photography dates back to his teenage years, when he shot pictures on holidays, and later extended to buying a Canon EOS-1 film camera. He explains, ‘I did a darkroom course…

I was asked to write this month about one of the beautiful books recently published by the Tate Photography Series. There are four books and they are all very interesting (in this series the books are by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Liz Johnson-Artur, Sabelo Mlangeni and Sheba Chhachhi.) I have chosen the image that features on the cover of Sheba Chhachhi’s book. Chhachhi is a photographer, women’s rights activist, writer, filmmaker and an installation artist. She is based in New Delhi and has exhibited her works widely in India and internationally. Chhachhi started her career in the 1980s with documentary photography, chronicling the women’s movement in India and recorded the mass protests in Delhi in the same time period. Personally, I love photography that shows us a culture that we may not…

THE ANNUAL unveiling of the latest iPhones sees some claimed major improvements to Apple’s flagship model. The iPhone 14 Pro now boasts a 48-million-pixel camera sensor for the first time in an Apple product – up until now all iPhone sensors had maxed out at 12 million pixels. It sits behind a 24mm equivalent f/1.7 lens with sensor-shift optical image stabilisation. Pixel binning will be used to keep output to 12 million pixels, unless you choose to shoot in raw format. An additional two lenses – an ultra-wide 13mm f/2.2 lens and a 3x telephoto (17mm equivalent) f/2.8 – are also on board. Users of the phone will also be able to shoot at ‘2x’, which is essentially a digital zoom carried out by performing a crop of the main…

AP picture of the week Red Admiral Feeding by Dave Harrison-Ward Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, Olympus 60mm macro, 1/2000sec at f/2.8, ISO 200 ‘As my wife and I are keen nature lovers, moving into a new house a couple of years ago afforded us the opportunity to reshape the garden into a haven for wildlife. Everything we have planted is either food or habitat for the local wildlife, and if you ever want to attract butterflies to your garden then a buddleia is a must – it’s commonly known as the butterfly bush for a reason! This shot is of a red admiral feeding on one of our bushes, taken as the sun was setting, creating a lovely sun-kissed glow. As is the power of the buddleia, the visiting…

Tech Talk My son kindly procured tickets for some of the recent Commonwealth Games events. The ticket conditions were long and detailed, and had very specific terms under which cameras were allowed into the events. There were no restrictions on the size of cameras themselves, but the lenses had to be no more than 300mm in length. I duly measured the 200-500mm zoom lens I often use for sporting events. It was under the limit by 5mm. Still, wielding such a lens in a packed grandstand seems to me to be quite anti-social, so I elected to take my Micro Four Thirds camera instead. Its 35-100mm lens is less than 50mm in length when stowed, and not much longer at full reach. When I got to the first event, there…

At a glance £1,899 body only £2,299 with 16-80mm lens ■ 40MP APS-C BSI X-Trans sensor ■ ISO 125-51,200 ■ Up to 20fps shooting ■ 8K 30P video recording ■ 5.76m-dot OLED EVF ■ 3in, 1.62m-dot vari-angle LCD touchscreen Multi-shot A high-res mode gives 160MP output from 20 raw files, but this can’t be generated in-camera. 8K video The camera can record in 8K at 30fps and output ProRes or BlackMagic raw over HDMI. AI AF Thanks to the X-Processor 5, the X-H2 gains the same AI-based subject-detection AF as the X-H2S. Design Physically, the body is identical to the existing 26.2MP X-H2S, with the only difference being the sensor. BACK in May, Fujifilm launched the X-H2S, a high-speed 26.2MP mirrorless model capable of shooting at 40 frames per second.…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Left field Thank you so much for your issue focused on mirrorless cameras (AP 16 August 2022). I was pleased to see Fujifilm being covered so much. However, the X-Pro range was only mentioned briefly. I’ve been a mirrorless user for a long time, but I switched from MFT a while ago because I acquired a Fujifilm X100F, was fascinated by the possibility of using the celebrated hybrid viewfinder with longer lenses, and managed to find a beautiful used X-Pro2. I really enjoy photographing air displays, but I have difficulty in following aircraft in flight with a long telephoto lens and conventional viewfinder, because I’m left-eyed. The accepted technique is to keep both eyes open as you track a plane across the sky, but that doesn’t…

B&W Profiles This photograph was taken in the deer park in the Ashridge Estate – a National Trust estate and stately home in the Chilterns, Hertforshire. I decided to add a custom photo border to the image. Now, because Lightroom does not support layers, you would normally use Photoshop for a task such as this. However, there is a workaround in Lightroom which involves adding a custom photo border image as an Identity Plate setting. The Identity Plate feature is mainly intended to let you add a custom logo to the top left identity plate area of the Lightroom interface. Lightroom expects the image you add to be no more than 57 pixels tall, so it scales fully to the available area within the user interface. However, there is nothing…