Innholdsfortegnelse for 4/8/25 i Amateur Photographer

‘HARVEST in Action’ by Wim Demessemaekers is amongst the shortlist in this year’s World Food Photography Awards (previously Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year). The winners of each of the 25 categories, plus the overall victor, will be announced at a ceremony in London on 20 May. The overall winner will receive £5,000. All of the finalist images will also be going on show at The Mall Gallery near Trafalgar Square from 21-25 May. For more on the shortlist, see www.worldfoodphotographyawards.com…

£40, Prestel, hardback, 240 pages, ISBN: 9783791393360 Featuring 27 profiles of women surfers from a variety of cultures and backgrounds, this delightful book is filled with great portrait photography. Often, portraits can be shot in the studio, or indoor locations, but a book like this shows us that combining portraiture with the outdoors really brings out a sense of adventure in the sitter – particularly of course in this case when every one of them is a lover of an exciting sport. We also learn a valuable lesson from it. Idealised beauty standards affect us all across most aspects of society – and you may be surprised that also applies to the world of surfing. Here, though, we see a group of women who are doing their best to break…

‘Walking alone in the winter for hours, often hiking at night, it’s quite easy to trip and hurt yourself. I have my trekking pole, which snapped. It saved my life on the coast of Wales. I twisted, fell on it really awkwardly and if that pole hadn’t gone out, I would have gone down a cliff.’ If ever there’s an endorsement required for photographers using trekking poles, award-winning architectural and landscape photographer Quintin Lake has it nailed. When Lake comes into focus for our Zoom call, I’m slightly disappointed he’s not sitting on a mountain top in a shaft of light or perched on a jetty at the end of a rainbow. He’s sitting wearing a grey sweatshirt in a stark white room in Cheltenham. In a way that’s his…

Alan Clements, Middlesbrough About Alan Alan is a retired professor of Computer Science. You can see more of his work at pbase.com/clements How did you get into photography? When graduating from university in 1971, I won a prize. I used it to buy a camera. Later, I started travelling round Europe during vacations and photographed people and places. My big step forward was moving to digital around 2000. Then I was freed from the tyranny of thinking about the cost every time I pressed the shutter. What do you love about photography? I love it because it’s miles away from my previous life of teaching students. I was isolated from the world because my subject, computer design, is incomprehensible to most people. Now I can show my photographs to almost…

Introduced into the EOS lineup more than a decade ago in 2014, the EOS 7D Mark II became Canon’s high-speed 20.2MP APS-C DSLR that boasted 10fps continuous shooting, 65 AF points, twin memory card slots and Full HD 60p video recording. Bundling all this together into a durable, weather-sealed body made it very tempting for enthusiasts and semi-professional photographers wanting more from an APS-C DSLR, but for less than it would cost to make the jump to full-frame. The 1.6x crop factor was also sought-after by action and wildlife shooters wanting greater reach from their lenses to fill the frame with their subject – for example, a 400mm lens is equivalent to 640mm. Compared to its original price at launch (£1,599), it can now be found for just £355 in…

Yes, it’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it – heading off to the ever-photogenic city of Barcelona with the Fujifilm X-M5 camera and a selection of lenses. Space was limited in my bag, but the X-M5 proved an ideal travel companion. The camera weighs only 355g and measures a mere 111 x 66 x 38mm, so it easily fits into a small cabin bag. The Fujifilm X-M5 is light on your wallet too, costing only £799, or £899 with the light and compact XC 15-45mm F3.5-F5.6 kit lens. It had been a while since I had used a camera without a viewfinder, but I soon got used to taking still images with the 3in, fully articulated touchscreen. Being able to twist the touchscreen around comes in very…

£18.99, Amberley Publishing, softback, 128 pages, ISBN: 9781398115378 Of course it would probably be remiss to run a whole issue on outdoor photography without mentioning the stunning landscapes of Scotland somewhere. In this latest affordable volume from Amberley Publishing, we get a catalogue of gorgeous shots from the islands off the west coast of Scotland. From Skye to Sell, Jura to Gigha, these locations are some of the most beautiful in all of Europe. With such jaw-droppingly scenic locations to wake up to, it’s perhaps no surprise that many have been drawn to live and visit these remarkable places over the years. The photographer, Alastair MacDonald Jackson, himself hails from the Isle of Skye. He’s been island-hopping for a number of years, in order to document them all across different…

Although there’s been relatively few Micro Four Thirds cameras of late, it remains a very popular format. The Panasonic Lumix G97 is an relatively minor update of 2019’s G90 and is designed to be a hybrid camera that should appeal to both photographers and videographers. Using the smaller Four Thirds sensor means that although the G97 is reasonably chunky in build, it’s compatible with a huge range of small and compact lenses. So it’s also ideally suited as a travel camera. Features In terms of what’s new compared to its predecessor, well, there’s not a huge amount to report really. This is essentially a light refresh, including a new USB-C charging port (as per EU mandates), a higher-resolution rear screen, and slightly better Bluetooth connectivity. The 20MP sensor and other…

Earlier in the year, we announced the winners of our UK Film Photographer of the Year competition, in association with Analogue Wonderland, Kodak and Ricoh Imaging. Despite missing out on the top three places, Graeme Purdy’s set of pictures taken in Svalbard, Norway, really impressed us at AP. Early years Born and raised in Northern Ireland, and now Margate-based, Graeme started his photographic journey in a school darkroom and watching slideshows with his family; a whole world away from the wild places where much of his time is now spent. Growing up, his father and uncle encouraged Graeme’s interest in photography, having always had a camera in their hands themselves. ‘When I had the opportunity, I too wanted to learn. At school I would skip class to use the school…

Although taking our ‘proper’ cameras to a picturesque location is generally a great joy, it can also be a bit cumbersome. By the time you’ve packed half a dozen lenses (just in case), a tripod, a set of filters, and goodness knows what else, you can easily be weighed down. That’s why recently, I’ve loved the freedom and versatility of using a smartphone for landscape photography. Not to mention all those times when you might just happen to come across a good landscape and not have your best gear with you. But, if you’re going to carry something in your pocket that is ideal for this task, you might as well make it a good one, right? Many modern phones are excellent across a range of genres, but they tend…

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 On the whole, each manufacturer uses its own proprietary lens mount. Notable exceptions are Micro Four Thirds, shared by Olympus and Panasonic, and the full-frame L-mount that’s used by Leica, Panasonic and Sigma.…

NIKON has updated its entry-level full-frame mirrorless model, with the new Z5II promising significant advances in every department. It’s designed for enthusiast photographers, but gains high-end features inherited from Nikon’s pro-spec models. Key updates include the addition of subject-detection autofocus, a brighter viewfinder, and a fully articulating screen. Internally, the Z5II uses the same 24MP sensor as the retro-styled Nikon Zf. It’s powered by the Expeed 7 processor, which should bring significant improvements in operational speed over the original Z5, particularly with regards to autofocus. The firm is also promising cleaner images at moderately high ISOs around ISO 3200-6400. Subject detection is on board for autofocus, with settings for people, animals, birds and vehicles, including cars, motorbikes, trains and airplanes. Nikon says that it can recognise subjects when they are…

Five years after Fujifilm released the Instax Mini Evo, another Evo, a wider Evo, joins it. As a hybrid instant camera, it essentially works much like the Mini version. In other words, it combines a basic digital camera with a printer for Instax film. The differences? A higher price tag, a bigger print size, and more control of the camera’s settings. Camera body and design While it’s got tons in common with the Instax Mini Evo, the main difference is who it’s meant for. The Wide Evo, dubbed ‘the photographer’s camera’ by Fujifilm, is designed to appeal to more serious photographers who have a certain amount of cash to spend. This is notably the most expensive instant camera being sold by Fujifilm, at £319.99. And it looks the part. The…

LAUNCHED 1958 PRICE AT LAUNCH £60-80 (guesstimate) GUIDE PRICE NOW £50-90 The Start was built by Krasnogorskii Mekhanicheskii Zavod. Krasnogorsk, meaning red hill or pretty hill, is the name of the location in Moscow’s western suburbs where the company was established in 1941. Mekhanicheskii Zavod means mechanical plant or factory. By the end of the 1950s KMZ, as the manufacturer is more generally known, had established itself among keen amateur photographers as the maker of Zenit single lens reflexes (SLRs). The Start was designed to take the professional SLR world by storm. But the failure to produce an intended range of lenses and the frailty of the film advance on early models didn’t endear the camera to its chosen market, even when a second model was introduced in 1961 with…

While it’s always good to celebrate well-established photographers who’ve already made a big name for themselves, there is something particularly rewarding about recognising and helping disseminate the work of younger, up-and-coming creatives. Josh Dury, aka The Starman, is a fine example, as he is fast establishing himself as one of the UK’s hottest young astrophotographers. Not only has Josh recently been named a Sigma creator, he has won several awards, been endorsed by no less an organisation than NASA and is a regular fixture on regional TV news and in the press. Josh is also about to bring out a new book with Ammonite Press, 52 Assignments: Night Photography. Not bad going for someone who’s not yet30! In addition, Josh will be a star speaker (pardon the pun) at our…

Professional and amateur photographers worldwide were invited to take part in last year’s International Landscape Photographer of the Year, the 11th year the competition has been running. More than 3,600 entries were received, with the overall prize for a portfolio going to Andrew Mielzynski from Canada for his beautiful set of serene landscapes. Also awarded was a prize for the best single image of the year, which was given to Ryohei Irie from Japan for this beautiful and surreal shot, ‘Traces of Light’. It shows dead trees in a forest in Ichinomata, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, which are illuminated magically by the light of fireflies. You can see the light streaks created by the fireflies reflected in the water that the trees sit in. The awards are judged by some noted…