Innholdsfortegnelse for 7/11/2023 i Amateur Photographer

Just over a year ago, at the 2022 AP Awards, we hailed the Nikon Z 9 as the best camera ever made. But it was big, and pricey. It still is. But now Nikon has made a much smaller and cheaper version of it. No wonder the world is going nuts for the Z 8. This week we present our definitive review of this coveted camera. Also this week we tell the stories behind Corey Arnold’s superb, award-winning project on urban wildlife in the USA, and Irving Penn’s cover image for the Miles Davis album, Tutu. John Wade investigates a mystery surrounding the world of collectable Mickey Mouse cameras, and David Tipling heads to The Wash to photograph red knot seabirds at the world-famous Snettisham Spectacular. Connect with us EMAIL…

ZEISS is offering cashback deals on selected lenses for DSLR and mirrorless cameras from its Otus, Milvus, Batis and Loxia ranges. The scheme closes on 31 July and claims must be submitted by 19 August. The biggest £400 offer covers the premium Zeiss Otus range, including the Otus 85mm F1.4 (right), which costs £3,419 and is available for Canon EF and Nikon F DSLRs. Buyers of Milvus DSLR lenses, which also come in Canon and Nikon mounts, will receive £265. Meanwhile, Zeiss’s Batis autofocus lenses and Loxia compact manual-focus lenses for Sony full-frame mirrorless cameras all benefit from £165 cashback each. See cashback.zeiss.com/en/start…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Mirrorless panic I’m loving all this ‘DSLRs are dead/Let’s all go mirrorless/I’m getting left behind’ talk, as the panic to go mirrorless is bringing down the price of used DSLRs! I just bought a Nikon D750 with only 6k actuations from MPB at a very good price. Peter Murrell Win! The Samsung EVO Plus is reliably quick, offering superfast U3, Class 10 rated transfer speeds of up to 130MB/s, 6x Multi Proof protection and a limited 10-year warranty. Visit www.samsung.com/uk/memory-storage-devices/ Monochrome cameras I’m writing only out of curiosity, as I have little enthusiasm for black & white photos, and when I’ve tried converting a few of mine, I’ve always preferred the coloured version. However, I know many photographers are enthusiastic about the style. But I…

Testbench VINTAGE CAMERAS Camera collecting mysteries don’t come much more mysterious than the great Mickey Mouse Camera Mystery. It began in 1995 when an unusual Kodak Brownie Target Six-20 box camera came up for auction in London. What made it different was the faceplate surrounding the lens. Instead of the usual black and silver Art Deco design, the faceplate was coloured yellow and green. Curved across the top of the lens were the words Mickey Mouse, and Mickey himself strode across the bottom beneath the lens. The lower left-hand corner bore the words Made in USA by Eastman Kodak Ltd and, in the lower right-hand corner, appeared the words © Special Permission Walt Disney Enterprises. The mystery was that neither Kodak nor Disney had any knowledge of the camera.…

DAVID TIPLING Top wildlife photographer David has tips for great images of the Snettisham Spectacular PETER DENCH The AP regular brings us the story behind Corey Arnold’s stunning wildlife and nature reportage project STEVE FAIRCLOUGH The AP regular on the cover shot of the Grammy award-winning Miles Davis album, Tutu BENEDICT BRAIN The photographer and journalist shares his guidance for editing and printing your photographs ANDY WESTLAKE Technical Editor AP’s resident camera expert conducted our big review of the Nikon Z 8 JOHN WADE Our expert columnist on vintage cameras and photo heritage on the Mickey Mouse mystery…

7 daysA week in photography AP picture of the week Summer Solstice 23 by Malcolm Bawn Canon EOS R6, RF14-35mm F4 L IS USM at 19mm, 0.6sec at f/20, ISO 100 ‘I always make an effort to get out with my camera on the solstices to capture the sunrise, usually the Northumberland coast. This year my enthusiasm was curtailed due to a very poorly dog, so I decided to forgo Northumberland for something more local. South Tyneside coastline has probably the best rock scenery in the North East and although in an urban area, early morning you can be quite alone if you avoid the iconic landmarks and dog walking beaches.’ Instagram: @malcbawnwww.malcbawn.photosflickr.com/photos/malcbawn #appicoftheweek Win! The AP Pic of the Week winner currently wins an annual subscription to Skylum Luminar…

Phil Howell, Gloucestershire About Phil Phil is a YouTuber and landscape obsessive whenever he can be and an IT consultant 9-5. Favourite subjects Landscapes and woodlands. For me, capturing the light at sunrise or sunset is a real pleasure. How did you get into photography? I’ve always had a camera but started getting serious about photography when I bought my first drone (a Phantom 3 Standard) and found a passion for viewing the landscape from different angles. How and where do you find inspiration? Apart from finding it in my coffee cup at 04:00, I try to take each location as it comes and don’t research them too much. Going in without expectations usually yields great results for me. What was your first camera? A Fujifilm point-and-shoot with a 1.2MP…

● £69.99 ● www.vanguardworld.co.uk Vanguard’s Bag-in-Bag (BIB) range consists of padded inserts of various sizes that allow you to use your favourite shoulder bag, backpack, or roller case as a camera bag. Previously these bags were very basic, but the firm revamped them in late 2022 with radically improved construction and functionality. With dual top and front openings, the VEO BIB F33 is a one of the firm’s larger offerings, being designed to be carried inside a backpack. At nearly 32cm square and 20cm deep, this is a fairly sizeable bag that’ll accommodate plenty of kit. It comes with lots of dividers that you should be able to arrange to suit your needs, and which don’t occupy excessive space thanks to their nice slim profile. It’ll take a full-frame DSLR…

CANON has announced it has hit a production milestone of 110 million EOS-series cameras and 160 million interchangeable RF/EF lenses. A Canon EOS R6 Mark II, released in December 2022, was the 110-millionth EOS-series camera to leave the assembly lines, while an RF 100mm F2.8 L MACRO IS USM, released in July 2021, chalked up the lens milestone. The Canon EOS system was launched in March 1987, along with EF interchangeable lenses. The EOS branding has appeared on a huge range of cameras, from beginner-orientated SLRs to cutting-edge professional bodies. Canon’s EOS 5D Mark II, introduced in 2008, also helped establish the DSLR as a serious tool for video recording. In 2018 Canon jumped into the higher-end mirrorless market with the introduction of the EOS R series and RF interchangeable…

IF YOU’VE ever dreamed of being a National Geographic photographer on a long assignment, you’ve missed the boat. Owing to a new series of cuts by parent company Walt Disney Co, the iconic magazine has curtailed contracts that enables photographers to spend months out in the field, according to a Washington Post report, while also laying off its last remaining staff writers. You won’t be able to buy National Geographic on US newsstands from next year either.…

THE SOCIETIES of Photographers is running a one-day Wet Plate Collodion photography workshop on 8 August at the Cambrian Photography store in Colwn Bay, North Wales. While several big-name photographers have successfully experimented with this 19th-century technique, notably Sally Mann, it is not an easy process for the uninitiated to get to grips with. The course is run by wet-plate expert Tom Lee, FRPS, and you don’t need to have previous darkroom experience or be a member of The Societies to attend. Participants will get the chance to use Tom’s large-format Intrepid camera and can take home the fruits of their labour. The course costs £100, including lunch, but there are only ten places – see bit.ly/tomleecourse to book.…

David Tipling David is a wildlife photographer and author renowned for his artistic images of birds. He is an OM System Ambassador and hosts wildlife photography tours and workshops in Norfolk: norfolkphotosafaris.com. See more of his work at www.davidtipling.com There is a place on our shores which hosts one of the world’s great nature spectacles, attracting birders and photographers from far and wide: the autumn gathering of red knot (knot). The Wash, a vast tidal bay separating Norfolk from Lincolnshire and bordering the North Sea, attracts over 100,000 of these wading birds, a species that nests in the Arctic. Many use our coasts and estuaries to feed in winter but in autumn freshly arrived from the far north, they gather to take advantage of rich feeding grounds that the mudflats…

Benedict Brain Benedict is a UK-based photographer, author and award-winning journalist. He balances his personal practice with writing and travelling the world speaking about photography. His first book was published by Ilex Press in 2023. These two trees were taken in Bali, Indonesia. When I came across them, I was super-excited even though they are relatively dull compared to the graceful palms lining paradise-esque beaches that I have also seen on my recent travels. I am drawn to photographing trees, typically standing alone, in urban or semi-urban environments. This image is part of a wider body of work that I’m currently working on. A theme that underpins much of my practice is humanity’s relationship with nature. These lone trees seen in a manicured, artificial landscape intrigue me and raise important…

Testbench CAMERA TEST At a glance £3,999 body only ● 45.7MP full-frame CMOS sensor● ISO 64-25,600 (standard)● 20 frames per second raw shooting● 3.69m-dot, 0.8x viewfinder● 3.2in, 2.1m-dot 3-way tilting LCD● 8K 30p video recording Nikon’s latest high-end full-frame mirrorless camera, the Z 8, offers essentially the same specifications as the firm’s flagship Z 9, but in a significantly smaller and less-expensive body. With an impressive combination of high resolution, high speed, and cutting-edge autofocus, all wrapped up in a rugged pro-spec body, it’s a camera that should be able to take on any conceivable task. However, ‘smaller and less expensive’ doesn’t by any means mean ‘small and cheap’ – it’s still a hefty camera, and at £3,999, it’s a serious investment. Nikon is pitching it as a ‘true…

Tech Talk In an article last year (AP 28 June 2022) I wrote about the fundamental differences in the way that autofocus works in mirrorless and SLR cameras. This applies even in cases where the cameras apparently use the same phase detection autofocus method. It arises from the fact that the specialist autofocus sensor unit in an SLR is capable of making a much more precise measurement of subject distance than the adapted imaging pixels that are used in a mirrorless camera. The outcome of this is that mirrorless PDAF is in fact a hybrid system – whereby phase detection is used for large adjustments in focus position, and contrast detection used to make fine adjustments. It also affects the way that subject tracking works. In an SLR, this is…

Photo Critique It was a Eureka! moment when, in 1990, while perusing the meagre number of photography books in the then Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design, that I realised a photographer didn’t have to board a plane to the frontline of a foreign war to make pictures, you could visit the local pub, drop in on your neighbours or pop to the shop. The books that delivered this revelation included Looking For Love by Tom Wood, Living Room by Nick Waplington and I Can Help by Paul Reas. An image by Reas of a dad showing army-themed wallpaper to his friends he was about to buy for his son from a B&Q store in Newport, South Wales, blew my mind. It still does. The dad wears camouflage…