Innholdsfortegnelse for 29/11/2022 i Amateur Photographer

Bird Planet: A Photographic Journey by Tim Laman £40, Abrams, hardback, 224 pages, ISBN: 9781419761492 World-renowned bird photographer Tim Laman has spent thousands of hours in trees and jungles during his three-decade long career. This book celebrates some of his best work, with some spectacular imagery of birds from across the globe. There’s the scarlet ibis of the Orinoco River in Venezuela, rhinoceros hornbills in the rainforests of Borneo, red-crowned cranes in snowy Japan and more besides. A whole chapter is dedicated to Tim’s most well-known achievement, his mission to photograph all the known species of birds of paradise, which took him several years to complete. Another chapter looks at his visits to the penguins of Antarctica. If bird photography is your thing, you really can’t go wrong with this…

As a teenager in the early 1970s, Dutch photographer Paul Bergen developed – like most others who have come before and after him – a passion for the music of the time much of it thanks to the influence of an older brother, who listened to the likes of The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and The Who. The first album Paul bought was by Creedence Clearwater Revival, when he was 12. Then, when he was 15, a friend introduced Paul to the joy of photography and printing. Within a few months, he’d set up his own darkroom at home in Delft, and his burgeoning love of photography dovetailed with that of music. In the ensuing years, Paul found himself attending concerts not only for the experience of live…

At a glance £50 approx (Praktica L with 50mm f/2.8 lens) ● 35mm manual-focus SLRs ● Robust and economical ● Universal M42 screw mount ● Produced in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) ● Excellent optics available from a range of makers ● Gave access to low-cost, good-quality cameras for a generation of photographers If you were starting out in photography in the 1970s and 1980s, and wanted a single lens reflex, you had a few decisions to make. For many of us, budget – or the lack of it – was the biggest problem, not least when the rate of VAT for ‘luxury items’ zoomed from 10% to 25% in the autumn of 1974. The thickness of your wallet had a direct impact on where your camera would originate from.…

Now is the winter of our discounts DESPITE the grim economic news, a range of cashback offers from leading makers should help to lift some of the winter gloom. The biggest single offer is £1,050 back on the Fujifilm XF 200mm F2 R LM OIS WR X-mount lens with a 1.4x teleconverter. A wide range of other Fujifilm lenses are also covered, and the offer runs until 22 January 2023. Another highlight is £260 cashback on the Fujifilm XF 23mm F1.4 R LM lens. See fujifilm-x.com/en-gb/promotions Canon and Sony are ramping up the winter offers too. Notable deals include £450 casback with the Canon EOS 1D X Mark III, DSLR body. You can also get £270 back with the EOS R body, or in a kit with the 24-105mm f/4-7.1…

In the heart of Chelsea on the first floor of Saatchi Gallery, the New York-based writer and art-critic Antwaun Sargent has carefully curated an exciting exhibition showcasing the works of a generation of skilled and talented Black imagemakers. He stylishly and unapologetically introduces 15 growing talents such as Quil Lemons, Tyler Mitchell, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Campbell Addy, Micaiah Carter, and Nadine Ijewere alongside added contributions of Black British photographers in a non-conventional way. Instead of displaying the photographs in a traditional white cube he stimulates the visitors’ visual senses with an explosion of bold and lush coloured gallery walls complementing the equally vibrant portraits and conceptual images. In this thrilling exhibition the young Black contemporary photographers offer a different, inspiring, and fresh gaze presenting and framing the Black body as a…

LENS TEST Testbench Designed for Sony’s E-mount APS-C cameras such as the Alpha A6500 or the video-focused ZV-E10, the Sony 11mm f/1.8 lens was launched back in July. Thanks to a crop factor of 1.5x, this 11mm lens offers an equivalent focal length of 16.5mm, making it the widest autofocus prime available for Sony APS-C. As such, it’s well-suited to subjects such as architecture and landscapes. The f/1.8 maximum aperture also makes it ideal for low-light work. It also boasts a close-focusing distance of 0.15m (0.12m in manual focus), which in conjunction with the wide aperture could make it useful for shooting close-ups which are isolated from the background. The focal length of the lens makes it ideal for vloggers and content creators, especially those who like to film…

LAUNCHED 1930s PRICE AT LAUNCH £2-3 (guesstimate) GUIDE PRICE NOW £70-80 Describing itself as ‘two cameras in one’, this is a bit of a rarity. Even rarer is the outfit, whose box shows two children in the act of doing what it says on the side: ‘Snap, develop and print your own photographs.’ The camera was made by Standard Cameras Ltd, of which little is known, other than that they were based in Birmingham and seem to have had links to with the Coronet factory that hailed from the same area. Twin meniscus lenses are fixed focus with fixed apertures that are likely to be around f/16. Likewise, the shutter has a fixed speed of something like 1/80sec. The shutter is primed by a sliding lever between the lenses and…

Pictures, in their varying forms, can be a means of self-expression, documenting experiences or reporting events. Long after the ink of texts has faded or been forgotten, images hold a greater capacity to educate future generations about the past. They can influence our perception and understanding of history. Photographs also have the potential to shape global phenomena, from natural disasters, wars, protests and elections. In a world where mobile phones and digital cameras have become popular and accessible, almost anyone can take and circulate images. Non-traditional media platforms have increased the visualisation of private lives and the political landscape. While anyone can take a photo, not everyone can be a photojournalist. The art of relating a story through images, guided by high ethical standards, in pursuit of an objective narrative…

Had Chris Killip pursued his initial career option, we’d have been looking at a hotel manager and not one of Britain’s greatest-ever photojournalists. But, thankfully for photography, he abandoned his hospitality training on his native Isle of Man and decided to chase a career in photography. He headed for the bright lights of London, where he worked as a freelance assistant for various photographers between 1964 and 1969. In the big city he met and worked with an impressive collection of people, such as photographers Adrian Flowers, Justin de Villeneuve, Jeanloup Sieff, David Hurn, Josef Koudelka, Diane Arbus and the artist and musician Ian Dury, who would become a long-term friend of Killip’s. In 1969, after seeing his very first exhibition of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)…

When was the club founded? The club was started in 1952 as the Chelmsford and District Camera Club. Our members range from complete beginners to professional photographers but the common thread is that they all want to build on their interest in photography and to share their ideas with others. What does your club offer new members? We welcome all those interested in photography, whatever their experience. It’s a very friendly club with a good mix, including both males and females. The social side is important so new people can quickly and easily get involved. We run a training course for complete beginners and then there are mentors to help with specific techniques plus general encouragement to join in. As people get more experience they are encouraged to try for…

Testbench EDITING CONSOLE TEST At a glance £149 ● Editing console ● Works with Adobe software ● For Windows or MacOS PCs ● USB-C connection ● www.tourboxtech.com If you spend much time editing images, you probably find this entails a lot of repetitive keyboard and mouse work. The TourBox NEO aims to change all that. It’s an editing console that’s designed to streamline your workflow by providing an array of dials and buttons to select and adjust settings. It’s specifically designed for image and video editing, with profiles for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Premier all included. At £149, the TourBox NEO is relatively affordable for this type of device and with a footprint of just 11.6x10.1cm, it won’t take up too much space on your desk. It’s also highly…

DSLR Lenses Interchangeable lenses come in a huge array of types for shooting different kinds of subjects IN GENERAL, the easiest way to expand the kinds of pictures you can take is by buying different types of lenses. For example, telephoto lenses let you zoom in on distant subjects, while macro lenses enable close-ups of small objects. Large-aperture lenses allow you to isolate subjects against blurred backgrounds, or shoot in low light without having to raise the ISO too high. Meanwhile, all-in-one superzooms cover a wide range of subjects, but usually with rather lower optical quality. Lens mounts Each manufacturer has its own lens mount and most aren’t compatible with one another. For example, a Canon DSLR can’t use Nikon lenses, although you can use independent brands if you get…