Innholdsfortegnelse for 1/14/25 i Amateur Photographer

YASHICA is a brand that many readers will be familiar with, and the Japanese company has announced plans to launch two new digital compacts this year, with the emphasis on convenience and ease of use. The Yashica City 100 features a 3x optical zoom while the Yashica City 200 comes with a 10x zoom. Both cameras are based on a 13MP Sony type 1/3.06 sensor and offer subject detection AF, a modest ISO range of 100-3200, 4K video recording with a built-in microphone, and a range of scene modes with filter effects. There is a built-in flash too. The exact release dates are to be confirmed, but the Yashica City 100 is scheduled for the end of February (£219.99) while the Yashica City 200 should appear in March (£259.99). For…

While the DJI Air 3S tips the scales at 724g, well above the magic 250g weight that attracts the lowest level of regulation, it strikes a nice balance between portability, performance and value. That makes it a strong contender in the mid-range drone market. Its extra weight means that it is considerably more robust than lightweight drones like the DJI Mini 4 Pro, while being far more affordable than the premium DJI Mavic 3 Pro. Like DJI’s other recent drones, the Air 3S is very easy to fly but it’s essential to make a few checks and update the firmware before your first flight. With charged batteries, the drone and controller connect quickly and the propellers are easy to fit (taking note their diagonal pairing). If you’re unsure of the…

Nejc Ilenič, Slovenia About Nejc You can see more of Nejc’s work at ilenic.photos, or on Instagram @nejc.ilenic How did you get into photography? I first became interested in photography in high school when I got access to an entry-level Sony DSLR. There was a long pause during my university years, and I eventually picked the hobby back up in 2020. What do you love about photography? Two things: the first is simply that the act of photography gets me in the zone and helps me forget about everything else. Secondly, it works as a tool to express and communicate how your brain works: what you find appealing, what you are interested in, what is important to you. Favourite subjects I don’t think I have a favourite subject to photograph.…

Matt Brewin Having studied photography throughout early education, Matt started working as an assistant and then fell in love with the retouching process. It’s the perfect role for anyone with great attention to detail and the quest for perfection. Matt has been lucky enough to have had positive mentors that have pushed him to develop his cinematic style, giving him the opportunity to apply this to large global campaigns.www.iamaretoucher.com@iamaretoucher The winner of the 2024 Martin Evening Excellence in Digital Retouching Award (sponsored by Skylum, the company behind Luminar Neo) is Matt Brewin. Based in the UK, Matt works as a professional retoucher with over eight years of experience and a background in photography. He has worked with many top commercial brands, fashion and still-life photographers. This special award, initiated by…

Of all the AI-powered image enhancements developed over the past few years, high-ISO image denoising has probably been the most spectacularly successful. AI subject masking can be useful, AI upscaling has its place and AI object removal can be very effective a lot of the time. But out of all of these, it is AI denoising that has surely had the biggest impact. It’s fair to say that once you’ve used it, it changes your ideas about what your camera is capable of and the kind of lighting conditions that you can shoot in. And whenever anyone talks about AI denoising, three names always come up: DxO, Topaz Labs and Adobe. DxO’s DeepPRIME processing has become the stuff of legend, and you can apply it within DxO PhotoLab or DxO…

£60, Aperture, 440 pages, hardback, ISBN: 9781597115537 This extensive book contains more than 500 images and 25 artist portfolios – in short, it’s an expansive and generous redressing of a historic imbalance in representation of an important group. Although much of Japanese photography is known and celebrated, this book does a lot of work to add to our existing understanding. There are also contributions from writers, historians, and artists, to help further put the work in context and help us understand exactly what we’ve been missing out on. That’s not to say there are completely unfamiliar names here – especially if you have a particular interest in Japanese photography – but by bringing to the fore more artists who perhaps haven’t received extensive public recognition, we get a more well-rounded…

Chris Porsz, a former paramedic, has published no fewer than ten volumes of his photography, with titles that include Barking!, Reunions and Just be Kind. He has an eye for the absurd and a love for the genre, so it’s always a treat to flick through the latest volume he has to offer. In the latest book, Streets of America, Chris took on the impressive feat of visiting 23 American cities in an 80-day coast-to-coast adventure. As such, there’s San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Atlanta, Nashville, Boston, Philadelphia and many more to take in. Chris demonstrates a tenacity that is rare to find in this field, and as a result there are hundreds of images published in the book. I’m pleased that he has shared a selection with us…

If you do a lot of image editing in programs such as Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, you’ll know that operating them using a keyboard and mouse can quickly get repetitive and uncomfortable. This is where editing consoles come in. By providing more precise dials for adjusting settings, along with an array of shortcut keys tailored to each program you work with, they aim to speed up your workflow and make editing more productive. Logitech’s MX Creative Console is the latest addition to this market. Designed specifically to work with Adobe Creative Cloud software, it goes up against established devices from the likes of Loupedeck and Tourbox, but it brings its own unique spin on the concept. At £199 it sits in the middle of the field, pricewise. But how well…

DxO has released so many generations of its groundbreaking denoising process that it’s becoming hard to keep track. The original DeepPRIME process was joined by DeepPRIME XD (eXtra Detail), and this itself has been through a number of iterations and is currently DeepPRIME XD2s, introduced with DxO PhotoLab 8. DxO PhotoLab is the company’s standalone photo organiser and editor, offering a range of powerful global and local adjustment tools together with bespoke camera-lens correction profiles that correct not just distortion, chromatic aberration and corner shading, but lens softness at the edges of the frame too. There is probably no better tool for getting the maximum quality from your raw files. But not everyone needs another photo editor. They might be quite happy with the workflow they have already. So DxO…

Just as camera and lens makers are striving for better performance from their products, the software developers are doing exactly the same with some apps enjoying updates several times a year, although the current trend is for big changes to come along in spring and autumn. Whether you even decide to keep apps updated is up to you and with messages, alerts and prompts it’s almost impossible to avoid reminders. With shiny new features and security updates the reasons to keep pace are often compelling but it’s not obligatory. In fact, inaction is a sensible strategy because updates can come with bugs, so biding your time means other people can tear their hair out first. There is also the matter of cost. Updates, even the biggest ones, are usually part…

THE ASTRONOMY Photographer of the Year 17 competition is now open for entries, and it’s a great new year contest to get your teeth into. Organised by Royal Observatory Greenwich and the BBC Sky at Night magazine, the competition is open to photographers from all over the world, of all ages and levels. You can submit up to ten images in each of the categories, which are as follows: ● Skyscapes: Landscape and cityscape images of twilight and the night sky featuring the Milky Way, star trails, meteor showers, comets, conjunctions, constellation rises, halos and noctilucent clouds alongside earthly scenery ● Aurorae: Photographs featuring the Northern and Southern Lights ● People and Space: Photographs of the night sky including people or a human-interest element ● Our Sun: Solar images including…

MAP Camera, one of Japan’s largest camera retailers, has revealed its ten best-selling cameras of 2024, and the results make interesting reading – particularly for Fujifilm, which dominated the top five. Despite the difficulties in getting hold of one, the best seller was the Fujifilm X100VI, further underscoring the global popularity of this retro-styled premium compact. In an exclusive interview with AP, Fujifilm UK boss Theo Georghiades recently confirmed that the waiting time for the camera has fallen to a couple of months (see bit.ly/fujiukinterview). The Fujifilm X-T50, meanwhile, came second in the best-seller list, with the XT-5 fifth. The Sony Alpha 7C II took third place, while Nikon came in fourth with the retro-styled Zf and sixth with the Z6III. The Canon EOS R6 Mark II and R5 Mark…

£45, Bluecoat Press, hardback, 196 pages, ISBN: 9781908457899 One of our finest documentary photographers working today, Kirsty Mackay’s latest book was financed via a successful Kickstarter which raised more than £15,000. Given that it covers the important issue of poverty in modern-day Britain, it’s not hard to understand the strength of feeling behind such an important project. Not only is the photography within it a masterclass in documentary work, but through her practice, Mackay gives voices and a platform to those who have been affected by the realities of the consequences of 14 years of social welfare decline. Mackay herself also has a personal connection, growing up in a working-class tenement block in Glasgow. Her neighbourhood was next to a more prosperous area, giving her first-hand insight into social inequality.…

A super-telephoto prime lens can transform your wildlife, bird, sport and aviation photography, enabling you to frame distant subjects and create high-impact images. Fujifilm’s latest addition to its XF lens series, the Fujinon XF500mm F5.6 R LM OIS WR, is the company’s longest prime lens for its highly-respected X Series cameras, including the X-T5, X-H2S and X-H2, and it offers photographers a tantalising combination of exceptional reach, precision and portability. As a 500mm lens designed for Fujifilm’s popular APS-C format cameras, the Fujinon XF500mm F5.6 R LM OIS WR is equivalent to a remarkable 762mm lens on a 35mm camera. This makes it an ideal choice for wildlife, sports and aviation photographers who need to capture subjects from afar. Significantly, that impressive focal length is combined with a maximum aperture…

One of the best new photo-editing tools for portraits is Aperty, from AI-editing pioneers Skylum. Aperty has been designed in close collaboration with top portrait photographer Julia Trotti, and is a real time-saver for anyone who takes people shots. Whether you are taking portraits of family and loved ones or you’re working commercially with clients, the results are really impressive. Skylum Aperty’s key features Below you will see a run-down of some of the handy tools in Aperty, which is a valuable addition to any serious portrait photographer’s arsenal. ● Skin Smoothing: Perfect for fashion or wedding photography, this feature smooths skin texture, preserving natural tones and details. ● Blemish Removal: Remove blemishes and other imperfections while preserving skin texture and permanent details. Remove or restore the freckles. ● Face/Body…

Topaz Photo AI 3 is like an amalgamation of all of the company’s AI photo enhancement tools, which are no longer sold separately. Image denoising is not the only thing it does, but it’s the feature we’ll pay closest attention to here. You also get image sharpening, lighting and colour adjustment and upscaling too, so the licence fee brings more than just noise reduction. Topaz Labs does have an unusual marketing model, however, which could prove a barrier to new users (as it did to us in this review). There is a free trial for Photo AI 3, but it does not allow you to save processed images, so you have to satisfy yourself as to its performance based on on-screen previews. The only other option is to buy the…

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. Filter thread A thread at the front of the camera will have a diameter, in mm, which will allow you to attach a variety of filters or adapters to the lens. Lens mounts On the…