Innholdsfortegnelse for 3/21/2023 i Amateur Photographer

If it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve seen butterflies in real life, I’d probably think that they are mythical creatures from some fantasy realm, like unicorns. Around 60 species of butterfly can be found in the UK, from late March, as well as over 2,000 moth species. Many of them are extraordinarily beautiful, but getting good pictures of them can be tricky – unless you’re Andrew Fusek Peters, who has just released a book of his stunning butterfly images. This week he shares his techniques with us. Speaking of stunning, we test the hugely impressive Canon EOS R6 Mark II and the update to one of my favourite lenses, Fujifilm’s 56mm f/1.2. Finally, don’t miss our essential guide to protecting your copyright online. This week’s cover image is by…

7 daysA week in photography Where does the value lie in your photos? Does it lie with your unique ‘take’ on the world and your individual vision, or does it lie with the technical quality of your images? Most photographers would say you need both and might assume you can have your cake and eat it, with camera kit that both releases your creative instincts and offers the best possible technical quality. For me, creative instinct and ‘mood’ are highly elusive. I can be technically correct all day long. That’s not creativity, that’s a process. But ‘seeing’ images is different. This is where I find that some cameras work for me, and some don’t. And I would rather have a photo that inspires and excites me than one that’s technically…

Most of us think of Saul Leiter as a street photographer. We probably know him for his stylish documentary of the atmosphere that existed in parts of the New York of the fifties and sixties. He did though spend much of his working life as a professional photographer working for fashion magazines such as Elle, Vogue, Queen, Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar, and his street work was something of a hobby he pursued in his spare time. His fashion work has for the most part disappeared into the mists of time, while his personal passion project propelled him – late in life, it has to be said – to the attention of the world. To date we’ve been able to see only a fraction of the street images he recorded but…

Thomas Vincent, Pennsylvania, USA About Thomas Thomas is primarily a landscape photographer, but also shoots occasion and wedding photographs. See thomasrossvincentphotography.mypixieset.com Favourite subjects I love to hike, so waterfalls are one of my favourites. You need to hike to get to most waterfalls, and once there, the payoff is taking the perfectly composed shot, whether it means getting your feet wet or not. Waterfalls are beautiful and powerful, and are a true display of nature’s splendour. How did you get into photography? I started taking photos in high school, as it was an elective I could take in order to get enough credits to move on to the next grade. I enjoyed being creative with an old film camera and black & white film, processing shots in a darkroom then…

● £798 ● bluettipower.co.uk WHETHER for financial or environmental reasons, everyone is trying to be more careful with their energy consumption. Solar power is one way we can all harness some green energy, and the Bluetti EB3A Portable Power Station and PV200 Solar panel kit might be an option for photographers to capture and use some of that power. The Power Station has an AC Pure Sine Wave 600W inverter. This means it can power equipment that runs at less than 600W, including sensitive electronic equipment such as computers. The battery has a capacity of 268 Watt hours; if you are powering something that consumes 268W, it will last for an hour. If you power something that consumes the maximum 600W output, it will last around 26 mins. Charging is…

There’s a word which is in use regularly today which, quite frankly, drives me up the wall.. That word is ‘backstory’. It is, sadly and annoyingly, a word often used when describing a photograph. It is particularly beloved of landscape photographers, when showing you yet another grainy image of some mountains in Scotland in the mist and rain. They will bang on endlessly about how they had got up at dawn, put their large format camera and their dark slides loaded with out-of-date colour neg film (it’s always one of the ‘I only shoot film’ brigade) in their rucksack, humped their tripod over their shoulder and yomped up the side of a mountain, braving hordes of midges and wasps to get their shot. Ocean of mediocrity My (often unsaid) reaction…

MPB has teamed up with the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year competition to offer a food photography masterclass with top pro Rob Wicks in Bristol on 3 April. Rob will be teaching the the art of lighting, styling, storytelling, texture and post-production, and participants can then get practical experience at an award-winning sustainable local restaurant. All proceeds will be donated to the Square Food Foundation, a Bristol-based charity that works to reduce hunger, improve health and bring people together through food. See bit.ly/bristolfoodphoto…

AP picture of the week 50 Shades of Green by Lesley Thornton Canon EOS 6D Mark II, Canon 24-105mm lens, 1/15sec at f/10, ISO 200 ‘I was on a small group photography tour travelling around Costa Rica in January this year. It was a rainy day and I was a bit “wildlifed out”. So I had a stroll round the grounds just looking for texture, shape and colour. A change of focus for a few hours.’ Instagram: @lesleythornton99 Photography tour: juliesadventures.co.uk The Intersection by Alexander Howard Nikon Z6, Sigma 14mm F/1.8 Art, K&F Concept tripod, 8sec at f/13, ISO 100 ‘I started doing night photography in October 2020. I’ve always been interested in long-exposure photography and this photo was taken on my most recent night walk. It is definitely up…

Looking back at portrait shoots I did much earlier in my career, it’s interesting to see how my shooting style has changed over the years. Back in 2000, for example, when I photographed Bob Mortimer, I would have taken a range of equipment to the shoot and tried as many different things as possible in the time available. Over the years I had hit on a way of working that suited the magazines and newspapers that commissioned me. Here I would have been directing Bob’s poses, asking him to stand in a certain way, make an expression or perhaps do particular things, making it up as I went along and trusting my instincts. It was a kind of creative scattergun approach. The resulting pictures didn’t tell you very much about…

Tech Talk Recently my eye has been caught by the appearance of a new lens, which seems to be quite a departure from the norm. The lens is the Voigtländer 50mm f/1.0 Nokton Aspherical, to give it it’s full title. Optically the design of this lens follows well-established patterns for such a fast lens. The front of the lens is a six-element double-gauss design, which could have been found in any fast normal lens since the 1950s – with one exception, of which we will talk later. Built into the rear of the lens is what has become misleadingly known as a ‘speed booster’ with three elements in two groups. The front lens will have been designed with a longer focal length than the 50mm marked on the lens while…

LEICA has announced the Vario-Elmar-SL 100-400mm f/5-6.3 lens, a telephoto zoom for full-frame L-mount cameras which becomes the longest lens in its SL-series line-up. Featuring built-in image stabilisation, it shares its optical design and major specifications with the Sigma 100-400mm F5-6.3 DG DN OS, but gains dust- and splash-proof metal construction. The lens includes a detachable, Arca-Swiss compatible base that can be clamped directly onto many tripod heads, and which fixes onto a lockable rotating collar for quick changes between landscape and portrait formats. It’s also compatible with a new Leica Extender L 1.4x, with the two combining to give a 140-560mm f/7-9 optic. The Leica Vario-Elmar-SL 100-400mm f/5-6.3 is on sale now for £1,910, while the Leica Extender L 1.4x is £785.…

CANON’S Student Development Programme for aspiring photojournalists is open, offering mentorship from industry experts and Canon ambassadors to 100 selected students. Up to 30 students will take part in a five-day workshop in Girona, including a visit to the Visa pour l’Image international photojournalism festival. The final five mentees will then be given the chance to attend Hamburg Portfolio Review, and will receive a €2,000 grant and Canon equipment. Submissions close on 16 April. See bit.ly/canonstudentscheme…

Technique CREATIVE BUTTERFLY PHOTOGRAPHY Andrew Fusek Peters Andrew Fusek Peters is a wildlife and landscape photographer based in South Shropshire. His photos regularly appear in the national papers and magazines, and he is on commission to the National Trust documenting the wildlife on the Long Mynd. His books include Hill & Dale, My Shropshire Year, Upland and Butterfly Safari. Andrew is an OM System brand ambassador. See www.fusekphotos.com and follow him on Instagram @andrewfusekpeters As I sit down to chat with Andrew Fusek Peters about his new book, Butterfly Safari, there are many questions I want to ask him, but one in particular has been bugging me since I saw one of his extreme close-ups of a Speckled Wood. ‘Why do some species of butterfly have hairy eyes?’ I…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH Olympus Tough TG-6 ● £399 ● 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. Reviewed Dec 2022 Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III ● £1,140 ● www.canon.co.uk This unique zoom compact offers excellent image quality by employing the same 24.2MP APS-C sensor as several of Canon’s DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, along with a 24-72mm equivalent lens. A central viewfinder, fully articulated touchscreen and comprehensive external controls round off a…