Innholdsfortegnelse for 1/2/2024 i Amateur Photographer

7 days A week in photography AMONGST Lego’s new Creator 3-in-1 sets for 2024 is a retro 35mm film camera. The set has a total of 261 parts including pieces to make two film rolls as well as a working film rewind handle and a flash hotshoe. Though you can’t take photos with this Lego toy camera, it includes slide-like images of safari animals and pets which can be attached to the canisters. The set, designed for budding photographers aged eight and above, can alternatively be used to build a toy video camera, complete with a viewing screen. It’s just a shame it wasn’t available for Christmas – the set went on sale on 1 January for £17.99. See www.lego.com/en-gb…

THE SOCIETY of Photographers (The Societies) is celebrating its 21st birthday this year and is holding its annual London Photo Convention and Trade Show at the Novotel London hotel from 17-20 January. The event will feature over 100 equipment brands, including Sony, Canon, Epson and Fujifilm, alongside over 200 hours of classes from 80 speakers, a Live Stage and more. Tickets for most of the main events are free, but you need to preregister at thesocieties.net/convention, where you can find full details of what’s scheduled. Attendance at the masterclasses requires payment, but AP readers can get 10% off the usual price by using the code AP24.…

Tracy Miller, Newcastle About Tracy Tracy has recently returned to the UK after almost 12 years in Abu Dhabi and is hoping to earn an income from her photography. See instagram.com/tracymiller_photography How did you get into photography? When I set up my own studio for my jewellery design business I decorated on a shoestring with my images on the walls. People would buy my photos as well as my jewellery! I decided to take it more seriously when I moved overseas and had more time. What do you love about photography? Working with natural light and that I can capture a split second in time. How where do you find inspiration? My lifelong love of animals inspires me to want to capture their essence. I want us to care about…

The Leica Q was a game-changing camera. It successfully captured the essence of what it’s like to use a Leica rangefinder – something that was lacking from the company’s earlier digital compact cameras. With an optically stabilised 28mm f/1.7 lens and 24.2MP full-frame sensor offering an ISO range of 100-50,000, it quickly caught the attention of those searching for the ultimate go-anywhere compact. At the rear there’s a superb 3.68m-dot built-in electronic viewfinder and 3in, 1.04m-dot touchscreen. Elsewhere there’s a comprehensive set of features with the exposure and metering modes you’d expect, as well as a set of scene modes. It can shoot continuously at 10fps, Wi-Fi is present and there’s video at full HD resolution (60p or 30p). What we said ● ‘The way that the camera operates as…

Looking At Trees: New Photography of Trees, Forests & Woodlands by Sophie Howarth is a big hardback book. 237x285mm. 224 pages. I know what you may be thinking so let’s clear that up. The publisher, Hoxton Mini Press, plants at least one tree for the order of this book and all its books are carbon offset. Throughout the pages the reader is introduced to the work of 24 photographers of varying nationalities who’ve committed part of their career to chronicling timber. The pages take the viewer across the globe from the UK, USA, Madagascar, Morocco, Tonga, Sicily, Australia, Germany, Japan and South Africa. From the jungles of Brazil to valleys of Romania. Canadian forests to lava fields of Iceland. It’s a book packed full of emotion, hope, joy, beauty, grief…

Sometimes photos have distortion and perspective issues. You can get barrel distortion from wideangle lenses and perspective distortion from converging verticals. These are actually two separate things, and while Affinity Photo has lens-correction profiles which can fix lens distortion, any kind of perspective distortion is something you have to fix yourself. Perspective distortion is caused when you tilt the camera upwards to capture the full height of a tall building, for example, and is more prominent with wideangle lenses because these let you shoot from closer but you have to tilt the camera more. The reason these two things are connected is that you need to fix any lens distortion before you can properly judge any perspective corrections. If you shoot JPEG images, these typically have lens corrections applied in-camera,…

Rob McCarthy My first digital camera was the 2006 Leica M8, which opened my eyes to the dynamite world of Leica rangefinders and lenses. Ten years later, Leica released the Q and I’ve been shooting with it ever since. For me it’s the right combination of size, weight, and image quality, plus the fixed 28mm lens is perfect for the vertical world of New York City. I feel I’m doing my best work when I feel free and unencumbered by camera gear, and the Q delivers precisely this on the streets. The silent leaf shutter allows me to shoot discreetly amongst people and the focus ring movement is fast and smooth. Most days, I like to switch to monochrome mode, and take advantage of the Q’s excellent tonal range. The…

7 days A week in photography THE SOCIETY of International Nature and Wildlife Photographers (SINWP) has announced the winners of the SINWP Bird Photographer of the Year 2023 in aid of RSPB competition. The winning entry was ‘Winter Fieldfare’ by Gianpiero Ferrari from Leicestershire. ‘The shot is from my garden,’ Gianpiero explains. ‘After a snowfall during the night, several fieldfares came in the garden to take advantage of the apple I provided. This one was very aggressive and took over the entire garden, chasing away all the other birds. I started to take some pictures from the house through a window, but I was not happy with the composition. I thought a ground-level composition would have been much better. So first I had to build a pile of snow…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Vintage lens advice The September 12 edition of AP included an article on vintage lenses. If you’re thinking of buying, you need to be aware that vintage lenses will have been designed to fit either rangefinders (RF) or SLRs. The latter are designed to sit further from the film in order to leave room for the mirror. If you’re using a mirrorless digital camera, adapters are available for either type of lens, but if you’re using a DSLR you can only use SLR lenses, eg M42 mount. Some, but not all, vintage lenses will be available in both SLR and RF variants, eg M42 and Leica Thread Mount (LTM) – you need to make sure you buy the right one! Many readers may be interested in…

Testbench SMARTPHONE TEST There are two variants of the new Pixel 8 series: the Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro. Here we’ll be concentrating on the flagship Pixel 8 Pro, which offers a triple-lens system, compared to the Pixel 8’s dual lens. It brings a few interesting updates compared to the previous Pixel 7 Pro model, with improvements to both hardware and software. We’ll discuss these further as we move through the review. Features As with its predecessor, the 8 Pro features a triple-lens set-up. While the focal lengths have remained the same, there are improvements in resolution and other specifications. The main sensor has 50MP and is of the 1/1.31in type. That’s the same as last year’s, but the accompanying 25mm equivalent lens is now f/1.68. It is…

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…