Innholdsfortegnelse for 11/19/24 i Amateur Photographer

7 days A week in photography NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale $16. See nsuartmuseum.org for more details It’s fair to say that it’s not often we feature foreign exhibitions on our pages here, but, seeing as it’s perhaps just as likely that some of you will be visiting Florida as visiting, say, Glasgow, Manchester and London, you might just forgive me. Recently, the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has recently acquired over 1,800 words from the archive of Joel Meyerowitz, long considered a master of his craft, particularly for his pioneering use of colour in street work. Born in the Bronx, New York, Meyerowitz first started experimenting with colour work all the way back in early 1962, long before it was considered mainstream or normal for anything…

Technique AVIATION PHOTOGRAPHY For sheer excitement, air-to-air aviation photography takes some beating. You’re creating dynamic images while hurtling through the skies in fast-moving, high-tech aircraft in a variety of locations around the world, working closely with pilots and adapting to different environments and shooting conditions. It sounds glamorous, but what are the challenges and how difficult is it to get into this niche area? We asked Lloyd Horgan, a professional photographer and videographer who mainly works for Vertical Magazine, the world’s leading online helicopter publication, to tell us about his work. Breaking into aviation photography Lloyd, 32, who lives in Sheffield, first got into photography in his teens and went on to study photography at college for two years. He was initially interested in shooting architecture and landscapes, but on…

David Dunand, Switzerland About David David is a photographer having previously worked as an engineer. You can see more of his work at daviddunnand.com How did you get into photography? I’m self-taught, and I have been photographing since I was little. My father bought me my first camera when he saw my interest in capturing our family vacations and sports with friends. A few years later, I bought my first DSLR with my savings. That’s when I was able to start experimenting and understanding how my camera worked. This passion truly took hold of me in 2018, during my first bivouac in the mountains with friends. For the past six years, photography has taken a significant place in my life. It became so important that I made it my profession,…

Testbench SMARTPHONE TEST The Galaxy A55 is one of Samsung’s entry-level phones, but it sits at the top of the A-series range. This means you can expect some mid-range or even premium level features. AI is not one of these, yet, but Samsung has pushed to enable AI in older models with the One UI 6 software update – so watch this space. The RRP is £439, but you can find the phone on offer for rather less, which makes it one of the cheapest budget phones we’ve reviewed. The cameras in the A55 haven’t been refreshed, unlike the A54 before it. But it has been updated in looks, build and design, with an aluminium frame, compared to the plastic on the A53. There’s also Gorilla Glass on the front screen,…

MAGNUM’S AMERICAN ARCHIVE By the time you read this, we’ll have a new President Elect of the USA, and with all eyes on the land of the free, it’s perhaps the most potent time to bring out this immense volume. The large-format, 472-page, epic tome spans the Magnum Archive from the 1940s to the present day. The result is a compelling look at the country, from sociological, political and historical perspectives. And then of course there’s just some darn good imagery too. Presented as a timeline, there’s just about every big American event of the past 80 years, with some of the world’s most lauded photographers. Americans and non-Americans are featured in the book, so we’ve got the likes of Eve Arnold and Alex Webb, but also Martin Parr and…

OSKAR BARNACK AWARD There are a lot of prestigious prizes in the photography world, but few have the cachet of the Oskar Barnack Award, organised by Leica and presented at the company’s storied HQ in Wetzlar, Germany. The award celebrates the best in documentary/reportage photography and has run continuously since 1979, that year marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Oskar Barnack. Barnack (1879-1936) is one of the heroes of 20th century photography as he essentially invented the Leica as we know it. In 1913, Barnack developed the first commercially successful 35mm stills camera, known as the Ur-Leica at Ernst Leitz Optische Werke in Wetzlar. Essentially, Barnack took 35mm cinema film and adapted it for stills photography, also coming up with a horizontal film-transport design that enabled larger 24x36mm…

7 days A week in photography PHIL Reeds, from Otley, West Yorkshire, has won the CEWE Photo of the Month competition with this stunning image of a bike race in his home town. ‘Peloton Melee’ captures cyclists turning a bend within the course and was taken on a Nikon D7200 DSLR with a 70-300mm lens. As well as ICM (Intentional Camera Movement), Phil used in-camera multiple exposures to capture the frenetic energy of the race. The overall CEWE Photo Award is open for entries until 31 May 2025, with winners chosen each month until the competition closes. See www.cewe.co.uk…

IT’S 70 years since Leica introduced the revolutionary M rangefinder system and to celebrate, several historic Leica M models will go up for grabs at the 45th Leitz Photographica Auction in Vienna on 23 November. Highlights include a fully working M prototype, several early prototype chassis, a rare Leica M2 grey paint from 1958 and a very early M3 camera, produced in black paint specifically for the marketing department. Leica collectors are spoilt for choice, but the M prototype should particularly appeal. ‘The camera is one of the earliest known prototypes, without a serial number and composed entirely of unique machined and handcrafted parts,’ explained Alexander Sedlak, managing director of the Leitz Photographica Auction. ‘It is one of the most remarkable items we have ever offered.’ Estimated at between €600,000…

7 days A week in photography £75, Thames & Hudson, hardback, 360 pages, ISBN: 9780500025697 Inspired by historic tapestries, impressionist and contemporary painting, The Tapestry sees the photographic artist work with his own imagery by re-colouring, cropping and re-imagining his own photographs for this stunning book. The work was created during the pandemic, with the global pause giving Erik Madigan Heck the time needed to contemplate and revisit more than a decade of his work to date. Speaking about it, Heck said, ‘I wanted to move beyond photography. Most of my favourite artists paint from photographs, and I realised this whole time that I’ve tried to do the opposite – make paintings out of photographs. So, for some of these works, I wanted to explore that idea deeper, through…

Testbench LENS TEST Following on from the 35mm f/1.4 lens announced earlier this year, Nikon’s Z 50mm f/1.4 is only the second lens with this aperture for the Z mirrorless system. Traditionally, f/1.4 was favoured for those looking for a good balance between a large aperture and a lens which is reasonably portable. By the time you get to f/1.2, lenses tend to be much bigger and heavier. As with its 35mm sibling, this 50mm lens has a direct stablemate in the Nikkor S 50mm f/1.8, which was one of a trio of lenses announced alongside the very first Z system camera. Plenty will assume that an f/1.4 lens must be better than an f/1.8, and that this is therefore an update of that lens. However, the 50mm f/1.8 will remain…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Phone vs camera AP is at the forefront of advising keen photographers about the relentless progress of mobile phone cameras. The comprehensive review by Amy Davies is an excellent example. Yet a question arises: is a camera definitely still preferable on image quality grounds if one sets a level playing field? Specifically, a camera of a similar price to a flagship phone, with a range of focal lengths and meeting the ‘camera you always have with you’ criterion by fitting into a (large) pocket? My six-year-old iPhone XS records landscapes and outdoor scenes, plus occasional photos of my grandchildren. Its relatively modest cameras have produced five out of every six of my keepers in the past 18 months while my mirrorless heavyweight increasingly stays at home.…

Geoff Harris, deputy editor, chooses A Million Lashes by Patricia Stawicki, USA Nikon D850, 24-70mm with +10 macro lens filter, 1/60sec at f/2.8, ISO 100 Geoff says: ‘I like this image as the photographer has tried to do something different and creative with the macro brief. Does the world really need any more close-ups of bugs, frogs or exotic-looking but potentially deadly mushrooms and toadstools? The answer, of course, is yes, but there is also plenty of room for more diverse approaches, as here. The child’s eye and eyelashes are beautifully captured and the eyebrow nicely blurred out. It’s a very satisfying image and also works very well in black & white. Arguably a tighter crop may have made a good picture even better, but for me, the eyes have…

‘I have family in Austria. I go to Austria a lot. Every year there is a festival, the Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo that comes from the previous year’s Photo Festival Gacilly in France. Every year I’ve seen this festival I just thought I want to do this in the UK. And because we focus on women in photography, last year I thought right, I’m going to choose three of the women and we’re going to try to emulate it in the UK,’ explains Del Barrett looking out onto a rainy garden from her cold study on the edge of the Cotswolds. After 20 years in the City as a research analyst and then head of research, Barrett’s more recent career was in higher education, specialising in Language & Power, including…

7 days A week in photography THE ROYAL Photographic Society (RPS) has announced the recipients of its 2024 awards. Top honours go to Dr Ingrid Pollard MBE, who receives the Centenary Medal for her outstanding contribution to the art of photography. A founding member of Autograph ABP (Association of Black Photographers) her work has used genres such as portraiture and landscape to explore social constructs particularly around identity. The RPS introduced several new categories, with Samar Abu Elouf winning the Award for Photojournalism for her coverage of the carnage in Gaza, while Caroline Mendelsohn was recognised for her work encouraging young people to tell their stories through photography. The Award for Editorial or Documentary Photography went to Darcy Padilla for her long-term projects on the trans-generational effects of socio-economic…

Testbench LIGHTING TEST Power The light can run either from the mains, or from a battery via a D-Tap or USB-C connection. Grip Colbor makes a PG99 battery grip that’s ideal for holding and powering the light. Modifiers The W100 comes with a dish and a soft dome and is compatible with a softbox. A Bowens mount adapter is also available. Controls Physical controls on the body are paired with digital controls in the Colbor Studio app. At a glance £169 ● £99 for PG99 battery grip● Bi-colour LED light, 2700-6500K● 100W output● 157x43x93mm and 345g● colborlight.com Colbor’s latest creation in the LED lighting market is the Colbor W100 series of tiny, portable, units that pack far more power than you’d expect from their size. The W series comprises four options…

LAUNCHED 1983 PRICE AT LAUNCH £177 (with f/1.8 manual focus lens) GUIDE PRICE NOW WITH AF LENS £100 (recent auction sale) First there was the Olympus OM-1 in 1972, the camera that brought a new compact design to high-end 35mm single lens reflexes (SLRs). It was followed by the OM-2, OM-3 and OM-4. Then, in 1979, Olympus launched a series of SLRs aimed more at the average consumer with the OM10, OM20, OM30 and OM40. Of these, the OM30 was the star of the show. It’s a quality aperture-priority plus manual control camera with off-the-film metering. What makes it different is the addition of an electronic focusing aid. With a manual focus lens attached, the viewfinder shows two, red, arrow-shaped LEDs in the viewfinder which flash right and left to…

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…