Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/13/24 i Amateur Photographer

‘I had the idea in my mind for ages, years. It could only work because of the COVID situation because nobody was around. There were no entertainers and no visits by family members. This meant that I was never going to be disturbed.’ It could be the beginning of a confession to a crime but is in fact much more thrilling. I meet Robert Speker (pronounced Speaker) in a comfy pistachio coloured sunlit room on a Sunday morning at the Sydmar Lodge Care Home in Edgware, north London. He’s sitting with a straight back in a low chair, neatly presented in a checked shirt and dark chinos, smart watch around the wrist. Care home staples are dotted around us; water jugs and beakers, a plastic orchid, jigsaw puzzles, hand sanitiser.…

There are many ways to enhance your photos in Adobe Lightroom Classic, from regular portrait retouching to improving group shots and full-length figures. Best of all, it does this without requiring external software or plug-ins or interrupting your regular Lightroom workflow. This is all done using masks and local adjustment tools, and it’s in Lightroom’s AI masking options where all the heavy lifting is done for you. The first time you open the Mask panel for an image in Develop mode, Lightroom will pick out any people in the scene. It then gives you a long list of automatic masking options for different features, such as eyes, lips, skin or even entire people. This automatic masking is so effective that it’s rarely necessary to intervene with any manual masking adjustments.…

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…

7 days A week in photography A shot from the Paris 2024 Olympics looks set to be an early contender for picture of the year, possibly even decade. Captured by French photographer Jerome Brouillet, it shows the Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina celebrating the moment he ‘kicked out’ at the end of a wave. Medina points his finger in the air after receiving a near-perfect 9.9 score. Brouillet was shocked to see the image when checking his camera. Speaking to the BBC he said, ‘He is at the back of the wave and I can’t see him, then he pops up. It was not hard to take the picture. It was more about anticipating the moment and where Gabriel will kick off the wave.’ See jeromebrouillet.com…

They called it the Swinging Sixties, and that applied as much to cameras as it did to the music and fashions that defined the decade. During that ten-year span many photo manufacturers took new looks at camera design, particularly in the 35mm single lens reflex (SLR) which drove the final nail into the coffin of the still-popular coupled rangefinder camera. It all began in 1959. With the lifting of Board of Trade restrictions imposed after World War II to prevent certain luxury goods from being imported into the UK, the Nikon F arrived from Japan to spearhead an influx of Japanese cameras that outdid their mostly German competition in both specification and price. The cameras were manual and mechanical, but by the end of the decade, electronics had emerged and…

TechniquePORTRAIT FOCAL LENGTHS Kate Kirkman Kate has run her photography business since 2010 (www.katehopewellsmith.com) and along with her cinematographer husband, Brent, represents Sony as a European Imaging Ambassador and works closely with Rotolight and Profoto. Together, Kate and Brent are directors of wedding brand byLumiere (www.bylumiere.co.uk), commercial content brand Create (www.createhub.uk) and MUSE, a luxury boudoir business (www.museboudoir.co.uk). @katehopewellsmith, @bylumiere, @createwestcountry, @muse_boudoir_uk In this article, I’ll discuss how different focal lengths can impact your portraits. But first let’s understand what exactly focal length is. Simply put, it’s the distance between your camera’s lens and the image sensor, usually measured in millimetres. It’s very important because this distance influences how much of the scene your camera captures and how your subject appears within the frame. From wideangle to telephoto lenses, I…

Jonathan Burch, Leicestershire About Jonathan Jonathan is a gardener who also enjoys running, walking and cycling – plus photography, of course. How did you get into photography? As a kid I started out with a very basic point-and-shoot film camera and I used to love the anticipation of getting the developed film and prints back from the chemist. Later on, I learned basic darkroom skills for developing and printing myself. I still have that sense of anticipation with digital photograph – Lightroom and Photoshop and my Canon printer have simply replaced the chemists and the darkroom! What do you love about photography? It helps me to appreciate the beauty but also the fragility of our world. Digital photography can be immensely empowering if used considerately. Favourite subjects Black & white…

7 days A week in photography Tamron has announced the full-frame 28-300mm F/4-7.1 Di III VC VXD 10.7x optical zoom lens for Sony cameras, making this lens an option for those who want an all-in-one superzoom. This goes up against the Sony FE 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS from Sony, which offers a 10x zoom, and a shorter reach at the telephoto end. The new zoom includes the VXD (Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive) linear motor focusing mechanism, Vibration Correction, and Tamron’s optical image stabilisation system (OIS) for more precise autofocus and sharper images, even when shooting handheld at 300mm or in low-light conditions. The lens measures 126mm in length by 77mm in diameter and weighs 610g. Like many other Tamron lenses, it uses 67mm filters. Meanwhile its minimum object distance is 0.19m…

7 days A week in photography £60, TASCHEN, hardback, 452 pages, ISBN: 9783836599184 It’s often said that former models make for excellent photographers, since they already have a fundamental understanding of exactly what makes for a good people shot. Clearly that’s abundantly the case for Ellen von Unwerth, who has made far more of a name for herself as a photographer than perhaps she ever achieved as a model. Her work, which undoubtedly divides opinion, takes on the traditional reins held by men in that they are an erotic look at the female form. For this latest work, Ellen revisits her childhood homeland in Bavaria to shoot ‘a posse of gorgeous girls out for fun and adventure’. The results are a cheeky, rebellious and not particularly subtle exploration of…

Mark Constable, Derbyshire Nikon D780, 24-70mm, 1/20sec at f/2.8, ISO 100 Mark came fifth in the People round in APOY 2024. The judges said: ‘The subject’s gaze over the top of her glasses is direct and verges on challenging, while the hands very much suggest she’s more interested in getting back to the crossword than being photographed.’ Mark says: ‘This image, taken in August 2022, was my entry to an upcoming competition at my local camera club (Derby City Photographic Club), the theme of which was portraits. Being mainly a landscape photographer, I had no portraits to use; so I had the idea of using Christine, a good friend who was 87 at the time the image was taken. Having asked her, and when she said yes, I planned to…

At a glance £329 £429 Premium Pack with case and solar filter ● Fixed 30mm aperture ● x25 magnification ● 850g weight ● Manual focus The Vaonis Hestia is the first ‘smartphone telescope’ on the market, enabling users to connect their phone to observe and capture images of the universe, from the sun and moon to major planets and beyond. The Hestia incorporates a respectable 30mm aperture lens, with x25 magnification. This manual-focus optic has six elements in three groups, and uses a series of prisms to send light to your smartphone’s camera sensor. Yet the unit won’t weigh star-gazing smartphone users down, as it measures 17x24x5.5cm and weighs 500g, so is relatively lightweight and travel-friendly. A wide range of smartphones can be used with the Hestia, which uses a…