Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/8/2023 i Amateur Photographer

THE ALFIE Tych half-frame film camera with a rotary lens board was a highlight of last year’s Photography Show, and it is now available to pre-order, with Kickstarter orders also shipping. Half-frame cameras split the 35mm frame in half to get double the number of shots from a standard roll of film. ‘The Tych and the Tych+ are now capable of shutter speeds up to 1/500sec, while the Tych+ features a four-element rapid rectilinear lens which produces stunning results from a very small package’, said Alfie. This is in addition to the three lens options on the Tych – a 30mm f/8 single element meniscus lens, 25mm f/56 zone plate and 25mm f/125 pinhole. The standard Tych costs £299, while the Tych+ is £499. Visit alfiecameras.com…

In 1981, photographer Dafydd Jones was featured in a competition for The Sunday Times Magazine for his set of pictures, Bright Young Things, depicting undergraduates at Oxford University living a Brideshead Revisited life far removed from Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of national economic and race riots. The very bright editor of Tatler magazine, Tina Brown, had been hunting for a lucid lens to fill the magazine’s social pages. ‘The series by the runner-up, one Dafydd Jones, immediately caught my eye with its stark black & white definition and the sheer effervescent brio of its depiction of oblivious aristocratic bad behaviour; photographic moments as memorable as Evelyn Waugh’s sentences,’ writes Brown in the introduction to England: The Last Hurrah (ACC Art Books, 2023). Brown sent Jones off to Sandown Park to photograph…

While Sony usually releases a couple of new full-frame cameras every year, its APS-C line-up receives less love and attention. As the first new A6000-series model since 2019, the Alpha A6700 is an updated replacement for the A6600, which currently sits atop the firm’s stills-focused APS-C range. At £1,450 body only, £1,550 with the compact 16-50mm zoom, or £1,800 with the 18-135mm lens, it’s aimed at enthusiasts who want a highly specified camera, but one that’s more portable and affordable than a full-frame equivalent. Superficially, the A6700 looks much like its predecessor, with the same low-profile, boxy body, prominent handgrip, and corner-mounted viewfinder. However, it gains a whole host of hardware updates and interface improvements. But for all those Sony users who’ve been longing for an SLR-shaped APS-C model for…

BALLET dancers don’t tend to be photographed outside theatres, which is why aerial photographer Brad Walls decided to capture members of the New York City Ballet performing Swan Lake at the famous Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. ‘There exists a captivating harmony between the natural wonders of our world and the art of ballet – it’s a seamless fusion,’ said Walls, who’s long been fascinated by Swan Lake. A book featuring this and other projects is scheduled for 2024. See www.bradscanvas.com and www.instagram.com/bradscanvas…

£16.99, Thames & Hudson, softcover, 192 pages, ISBN: 9780500297131 Portraiture is one of the most wonderful genres any photographer can hope to tackle. But creating a compelling portrait is arguably much harder than wandering into a landscape that tends to be ever-ready, doesn’t talk back and doesn’t generally require direction. If you’re not sure where to begin or just want to deepen your existing knowledge, then The Portrait Photographer’s Manual is a fantastic place to start. Featuring the work of several leading practitioners, both contemporary and historical, you can work your way through projects to improve your own technique, or just learn more about how others have gone about it. Those featured include Hannah Starkey, Juno Calypso, Sian Davey, Gordon Parks, Nadine Ijewere and Dorothea Lange. The book’s authors are…

Affinity Photo has built a huge reputation as an Adobe Photoshop alternative that offers the same level of professional features as its Adobe rival, but without the subscription. Affinity Photo 2 brings some major new features and upgrades to boost productivity and creative potential, and we’ll go through some of them in this article. It’s a quick tour, but it will give you an idea of what this program can achieve and the depth of its creative tools. Affinity Photo is a powerful program that inevitably introduces some unfamiliar jargon here and there. Photoshop is the same. And, like Photoshop, Affinity Photo is designed not just for photographers, but designers and illustrators too. This means that there may be tools here that you simply don’t need right now. In fact,…

LENS TEST Testbench Nikon’s Z series cameras use the same mount for both its full-frame and APS-C (DX) models, meaning you can use the same lenses on both formats. However, some are designed specifically for DX format, being both better suited to the smaller sensor size and more affordably priced for the typical user of cameras such as the Z 50, Z fc, and Z 30. As it stands, there is not a huge number of lenses designed especially for Nikon’s DX format, but one new introduction is the DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ VR. This is being touted as a vlogging lens, while also being marketed as great for stills photography, too. It will set you back £379, which is significantly cheaper than almost all of the full-frame Nikon Z…

TAMRON has announced that it is developing a Nikon Z version of the 35-150mm F/2-2.8 Di III VXD, a lens originally released for Sony E-mount. The Tamron 35-150mm F/2-2.8 Di III VXD (Model A058) is the ‘world’s first mirrorless zoom lens with a maximum wide-open aperture of F2,’ according to the company, suggesting that it will be ideal for travel photography thanks to its broad zoom range and 33cm minimum focus distance. The lens also features a moisture-resistant construction, fluorine coating, and a hood-locking mechanism. Via the Tamron Lens Utility software, users will be able to customise the Focus Set button, setting two focus distances and shifting between them, for example, or switching the focus ring to set the aperture instead. Further manual focus tweaks will also be available via…

THE HISTORIC Photographer of the Year 2023 competition is now open for entries. The contest is organised by History Hit, a podcast and content platform set up by TV historian Dan Snow, and has two categories: ‘Historic England’ and ‘World History’. The Historic England category, run in partnership with Historic England, seeks images that celebrates the best of England’s historic treasures, capturing the true essence of these landmarks, while World History is looking for ‘sensational’ images of historic sites worldwide, including natural landscapes. ‘I love that our competition is open to all levels,’ said Dan Snow. ‘The passion, skill and art in all submissions means that the right shot at the right time could be the winning entry, regardless of experience.’ Images will be judged on their originality, composition and…

Johny Pitts: Home is Not a Place The Photographers’ Gallery, until 24 September From £5 / free for members See thephotographersgallery.org.uk for opening times Following a successful run last year in Sheffield, there’s another chance to see the Home is Not a Place project at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. In 2021 photographer Johny Pitts, along with poet Roger Robinson, travelled around the British coastline looking to find the answer to ‘What is Black Britain?’. Their collaboration became Home is Not a Place. The journey took them clockwise around the British coast, taking in coastal, urban, rural and suburban locations and plenty of places in between. The idea was to document and respond to the many varieties of black British culture, as well as presenting an alternative to official narratives…

Given the old adages that everyone has a book in them, and that writing about what you know is the key to success, it’s perhaps surprising that there haven’t been more novels set in the world of photography. Julia Boggio was an accomplished studio and portrait photographer, but her first love was always books. Keen to mix her two passions, her novel Shooters tells the story of a new-to-the-profession wedding photographer. So far, so good – but how to get the word out there in a world where shifting books is by no means easy and the competition is immense? It always helps if you have some good PR pics – but very often those which accompany a novel aren’t particularly inspiring. Step forward some of Julia’s industry mates to…

● £51.35 ● peakdesign.com Peak Design’s original Clutch strap is popular with DSLR users who like carrying their camera in their hand but want some security. However, it doesn’t work with cameras that have a grip that’s lower than the photographer’s hand. Peak Design’s solution is the Micro Clutch, which is designed to accommodate two fingers of your right hand, while your index finger is on the shutter release and your little finger is tucked underneath the camera. There are two versions of the Micro Clutch, one with a straight or ‘I’ base-plate and one with an L-shaped plate – not to be confused with an L-bracket. The I-plate is for use with cameras that don’t have a protruding grip, such as the Fujifilm X-E4, while the L-plate version is…