Innholdsfortegnelse for 7/1/25 i Amateur Photographer

This issue we mark the birth of digital photography with Steve Sasson’s 1975 prototype. It was an invention that revolutionised the way we take and share photos, and led directly to the cameraphones that billions of people use today. We tell the story behind that ‘camera’, look at some of the earliest digital models, and share stories from early adopters. We also showcase a remarkable young Nigerian talent whose work documenting the world’s largest landfill site brings to mind Salgado’s iconic gold mine images, in terms of the scale and squalor. Speaking of documentary photography, don’t miss AP’s forthcoming live event on the subject. See page 46 for details and to get your tickets. Our cover photo was kindly provided by Steve Sasson and shows the prototype digital camera that…

ONE of the highlights of AP’s forthcoming Festival of Photography: Documentary on 9 August is a panel discussion on the legacy of the late documentary master Sebastião Salgado. The panel includes award-winning documentary photographer and AP contributor Edmond Terakopian, who is also running a week-long street photography workshop with fellow press photographer Steve Simon in London from 6-12 July. The Passionate Street Photography Workshop is now in its fourth year and is suitable for photographers of all levels and experience. Participants can expect a small group (maximum eight photographers), hands-on guidance, one-to-one tuition and constructive feedback. Based at the Fujifilm House of Photography in Covent Garden, the workshop will visit such iconic locations as Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly, Camden Town, Brixton, Greenwich and more. Full details are at…

4 July 1981 Going on sale on American Independence Day created what seemed an unmissable opportunity to make this a US-themed issue. It helped that one of the all-time greats of American photography, Irving Penn, was having his first ever solo exhibition in the UK at the time. Known for his fashion and portrait work for US Vogue, this exhibition of platinum-palladium prints focused more on his personal work. AP Features Editor Adrian Knowles described the prints as ‘stunning, but delicate and crisply defined, images typical of Penn’s work, which is given its special character by the intricate hand processing involved’, though we’ll have to take his word for it because this was all lost in AP’s reproductions. Also in this issue was a feature on Bruce Gilden’s pictures of…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Brilliant Billingham I recently bought an accessory pouch for my Hadley Pro and was surprised to find that there was a fault with the loop around the neck of the pouch. I contacted Billingham and got a response very quickly. This comprised arrangements for a new pouch and an exchange at my convenience. This was all organised by Billingham’s customer support team – no action needed on my part other than to hand over the pouch to the driver. Everything went without a hitch. What a brilliant service! To put all this in context, I’ve owned Billingham bags since 1988 (I still use the first one) and this is the first time I’ve ever had any problem. I can’t praise them highly enough. Thank you, Billingham.…

Eminent American inventor Thomas Edison said it best: ‘To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.’ Edison died in 1931 and the first digital camera didn’t appear for another 44 years. But his words might have resonated with electrical engineer Steven Sasson, the man credited with inventing that first digital camera, cobbled together from a miscellany of seemingly disassociated parts. But to begin at the beginning, let’s talk about Albert Einstein. During the early years of the 20th century, scientists had already discovered that when certain metals such as selenium are exposed to light, an electrical current is generated. The problem was, they didn’t know why. Light, they reasoned, was in the form of waves and surely lacked enough power to energise electrons in the way…

What calls us to an image, what captures our attention? Is it the use of colour, lighting, the overall aesthetic or some elemental familiarity that you just can’t quite put your finger on at first? Probably all of the above. From my visit to the Taylor Wessing exhibition last year, one image in particular struck a chord with me. I stood in front of James Clifford Kent’s portrait of Cary, Axiuli & Haytoo and felt an instant connection. Kent’s series ¡No hay más na’! (there’s nothing left) depicts life in Cuba far removed from the glamorised view that Western society and travel guides like to present. Looking at the portrait I couldn’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia that speaks of resilience and hope besides hardship. The wind rose…

JOHN WADE John writes about the first prototype; plus the landmark cameras from the dawn of digital – and beyond PETER DENCH Acting Features Ed Peter hears from pros about their early digital memories and shares his own JOHN GILBEY In our field test this issue, AP regular John Gilbey writes about using one of Nikon’s last DSLRs, the D850 BRITTA JASCHINSKI The photojournalist on Oyewole Lawal’s stunning series about the waste miners of Lagos GEOFF HARRIS Deputy Editor Buying used, or selling old kit? Geoff shares ten tips for getting the best deal AILSA MCWHINNIE Our APOY project manager presents the results of Round One, Black & White…

VILTROX has released the 85mm F1.4 Pro FE lens with autofocus, aimed at advanced enthusiast photographers and professionals. This new fast lens, for Sony E-mount, features 15 lens elements in 11 groups and 11 diaphragm blades, along with a 78cm minimum focusing distance and aperture range from f/1.4 to f/16. It measures 84.5x108.5mm, weighs 800g with a full metal body and weather-sealing, and costs a competitive £569. See bit.ly/newviltrox…

PEAK Design has launched a Kickstarter campaign around three new ‘Pro’ tripods that build on the success of its popular Travel Tripod. Designed in partnership with adventure photographer and filmmaker Jimmy Chin, the new Peak Design Pro, Pro Lite and Pro Tall tripods are designed to be sturdier models with higher-end features. They differ from each other in height, weight and load capacity. All three Pro tripod models employ a similar space-efficient design to the original Peak Design Travel Tripod, but now with four-section carbon-fibre legs with increased diameter and width. They gain a new CNC-engineered central hub, plus an upgraded ball head that incorporates smooth fluid panning for the camera platform. Perhaps Peak Design’s cleverest new idea is the add-on Tilt Mod adapter for video. This clips on top…

WIN! The AP Pic of the Week winner will receive a beautifully framed print of their winning image worth up to £100. If you Love it, Frame it! ThisPicture.com is an experienced, high-quality framing company with a unique, easy-to-use website. Build single or multi-image frames with a few clicks of your mouse and select from a wide range of frames, window mounts and glazing options. Each frame comes with a three-year guarantee and FREE P&P within the UK. Visit thispicture.co.uk The Silent Beacon by Mark Richards Canon EOS 6D Mark II, Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 at 80mm, 90sec at f/29, ISO 100, 10-stop ND filter ‘Shot in Dovercourt, Essex, this image captures the town’s historic lighthouse in calm, overcast conditions. Using a 10-stop filter to achieve a long exposure, I aimed…

Ian Slater Photography@IanSlaterPhoto1 ‘Ooooh, you must have a really good lens!’ Yeah, and 50 years’ experience luv. Hugh Maxwell Photography Someone messaged me to say an autumn scene of a river had too much yellow and orange colours in the fallen leaves! Pony Moore Score? (After photographing sports teams). Mairi Macaulay Submitted ICM image to camera club competition, judge’s comment: ‘it’s not even in focus’! Dibs Photography When someone stole one of my prints from my degree show, I took that as they loved my work so much they would do anything to have a piece of it. Paul M McKenzie ‘You must have a good camera’… Mike Cowlishaw A judge that told me that I shouldn’t have used a flash for a picture of a caver on a ladder…

IN MORE lens news, Thypoch has announced a new addition to its Simera range, the Simera 21mm f/1.4. Key features of this manual-focus prime lens for Leica M-mount include 13 lens elements in 11 groups, along with 14 diaphragm blades for a clean, rounded bokeh. The retro-styled Thypoch Simera 21mm f/1.4 lens is available now in Leica M-mount for $999, with other full-frame mirrorless lens mounts to follow. See bit.ly/newsimera…

Even the best camera phones for photography can boast ridiculously high resolutions, with smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra packing a monstrous resolution of 200MP. When digital cameras started to become mainstream around the turn of the millennium, with cameras like Canon’s first DSLR the EOS D30, camera manufacturers needed a metric to differentiate between models that would make it easy to understand why one model is better than another. Whilst this was useful back in the day due to the manufacturing limitations of cramming pixels onto a digital sensor, these days I think it’s a bit of an outdated metric. Let’s take Canon’s latest and greatest EOS R1 flagship as an example – it retails for a cool £6,799 and only packs a 24.2MP sensor, so does that…

£60, TASCHEN, hardback, 224 pages: ISBN: 978-3-8228-7544-0 What’s not to love? Well… maybe a little. In this heavyweight homage to one of the most electrifying performers in music history, Lindbergh trains his famously cinematic lens on the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll. But rather than dwell on grit and hardship, this is Tina all smiles, striding through Paris, Deauville, LA and the Mojave Desert with enviable energy and the occasional boom box. Fans of Lindbergh’s signature monochrome minimalism will swoon. The portraits are gorgeously lit and beautifully composed. Tina, often in oversized jackets, windswept hair and unshakeable heels, looks every bit the icon. But for those craving raw emotion or insight into the tougher chapters of her life, this may be more Tina Turn-off than Turn-on. That said, this is…

● £140 for combo kit ● hollyland.com Following my amazement last year at Hollyland’s Lark M2 system, with its clever magnetic transmitting microphones the size of a 10p piece, the company has recently introduced something altogether smaller in the Hollyland Lark M2S. The Lark M2S Combo kit I have for review compromises a receiver (RX) unit that sits in a hot/cold shoe and plugs into your camera’s mic port, as well as a receiver that plugs into the USB-C/ or Lightning port of your phone or your computer. Alongside these receivers are the reason the system caught my eye – a pair of tiny microphone/transmitter (TX) units that can be easily hidden somewhere in the clothes of the subject so they are hardly visible. The idea is that the back…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH... Round One Black & White Once you start to see in black & white, it’s almost impossible to stop, and that’s why this round always attracts a huge range of creative styles. The top ten can feature anything from a moody landscape to a wildlife shot, always with the focus on the light, form and tones that makes for a winning monochrome image. The best black & white shots are considered and created, not simply converted from a colour image at the processing stage, and that’s what makes our top ten, and our best camera club images, so compelling. 1 Michael Woodward, California Little Buckaroo 100pts Sony Cyber-shot, 16.4mm, 1/125sec at f/2.2, ISO 400 Michael has captured a truly decisive moment – the boy’s expression, the motion…

Peter Dench, photographer and AP acting features editor The once-in-a-lifetime commission came down to two candidates and one question: do you shoot digital? The other photographer said no – they preferred film on a Leica. Sensing the room, I said yes. I got the job. It was 2007. For over a decade I’d shot almost exclusively on medium-format film – Mamiya 6 and 7. I was nearly convinced my style could translate to digital. This was the nudge I needed. After the meeting, I called my mate Marcus Bleasdale to ask what camera system to buy. A few weeks later, I rang again for help navigating the menus and settings of my new Canon EOS 5D (and a spare). Released in 2005, it was a landmark: the first relatively affordable…