Innholdsfortegnelse for 8/5/25 i Amateur Photographer

Occupying the prominent outdoor space of the Soho Photography Quarter, The Canary and The Hammer by Lisa Barnard offers a thought-provoking visual essay on our enduring obsession with gold. Tracing the metal’s impact across continents – from ecological devastation and exploitative mining to its role in medicine, technology and global finance – the exhibition is intelligent, multi-layered and rich in historical and symbolic resonance. The work’s conceptual strength is clear. Inspired by the 2008 financial crash, Barnard positions gold as a barometer of economic anxiety, echoing the canaries once used in mines to detect danger. Visually, her photographs weave this metaphor through dense, often oblique imagery: gold bars, industrial landscapes, scientific apparatus, fragments of ritual. The presentation is slick, the prints imposing at scale. Yet while Barnard’s project thrives in…

It is almost impossible that a photographer who is also a carpenter wouldn’t attempt to build his own camera. Even amateur wood-botherers, and those of a mildly ambitious nature who also own a saw, will at some time have a go at creating a small MDF box with a hole in it. The best efforts of ‘normal’ home camera constructors though are unlikely to come up to the standards and complexities of the Mania MFZ pinhole system camera – a camera that can shoot in four formats and can adopt six different focal lengths. The brainchild of German photographer, and fully trained carpenter, Ralph Man, this modular camera system promises an enormous amount of flexibility, great artistic potential, a whole lot of fun and some very long exposures. Mania MFZ…

Triple-camera system Three cameras are included with equivalent focal lengths of 28mm, 70mm and 168mm. Storage There’s 64GB or 512GB of onboard memory plus a microSD card slot. Flight time You should get up to 51 minutes of flying per battery charge. 360° gimbal The camera system is fitted onto a rotating, stabilising mount for creative angles. Smart safety Low-light obstacle detection and intelligent return-to-home functions are included. While the previous Mavic 3 Pro’s specification list was impressive at the time of launch, the DJI Mavic 4 Pro takes things to a whole new level. It retains the familiar folding design and triple-camera layout, but almost everything else has been overhauled. This includes its headline features: a 100MP Hasselblad main camera and a 360° rotating gimbal that opens up new…

Chris Donovan’s The Cloud Factory is a searingly honest exploration of environmental injustice, industrial power, and community resilience in the small Canadian city of Saint John, New Brunswick. The title, drawn from a childhood misunderstanding – ‘Do they make all the world’s clouds?’ – neatly encapsulates Donovan’s lifelong reckoning with the forces that shaped his hometown. Home to Canada’s largest oil refinery and one of the country’s richest dynasties, Saint John also bears some of its highest child poverty rates. It’s in this complex, contradictory terrain that Donovan’s work finds both its visual and moral focus. Shot over a decade, the images in this book bear witness to vibrant neighbourhoods living in the shadow – sometimes quite literally – of polluting industrial monoliths. Donovan’s photographs are empathetic and unflinching. He…

This year we are celebrating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two. It is also the 30th anniversary of the death of British photojournalist and Magnum founding member George Rodger. Whenever I am asked to describe his character, I always use the old-fashioned word ‘gentleman’. In 1945 Rodger made a life-changing decision that he recalled in the 1977 interview. Traumatised by the experience of looking for ‘nice compositions’ of the corpses during the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, he vowed never to photograph another war. Instead, he embarked on a 28,000-mile journey all over Africa and the Middle East, focusing on animal life, rituals, and ways of life that exist in a close relationship with nature. Earlier his pictures of the London blitz had brought…

● £24 ● newell.pro Recently, we’ve tested several devices that are designed for charging, storing and transporting camera batteries, often with additional functions built in. The Newell LCD-PB-SD dual-channel charger stands out due to both its versatility and its bargain price, at just £24. As well as being a dual charger, it also works as a card reader and a powerbank. So what, if anything, is the catch? Measuring a shade under 14x8x3cm, this is a fairly compact unit that won’t take up too much space in your bag. It takes the form of a black plastic box with smoothly curved edges and a hinged lid. Open the lid, and you’ll find two battery slots plus two SD card storage slots inside, with a small but clear digital display in…

In a space dominated by DJI and cheaper imitators, new drone brand Antigravity is making a bold claim of doing something different. It’s promising a new sub-249g drone with an 8K, 360° camera and ‘true immersive capture’. It has been ‘incubated’ by leading 360° camera brand Insta360, which promises good things for the camera technology. While there’s no actual product announcement yet (one is coming up in August), Antigravity says that its design philosophy is all about ‘360° immersive flight’. Its aim is to remove the current complexity around both drone flying and 360-degree videography. To this end, the firm is talking about both ease of use and intuitive control. It says that rather than building products that can only be used to their full potential by expert pilots, it…

£55, Yale University Press London, hardback, 342 pages, ISBN: 9781606069691 This is the first major publication to survey the history of LGBTQ+ photography starting in the mid 19th century through the prism of queerness into the noughties, specifically examining concepts of gender, sexuality and self-expression. And it accompanies an exhibition at the Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles which is now on show until 25 September 2025. The well-illustrated book of 300 images traces the chronological history of how the LGBTQ+ individuals have influenced art and culture in many ways, and how photography continues to be a powerful tool in the representation of the queer experience. There is a useful chronology covering the whole period (1732 up to 2021) decade by decade, which allows you to pinpoint any specific important development…

When British shipping giant and international cruise line Cunard unveiled its Sea of Glamour exhibition earlier this year – curated by photographer Mary McCartney in Liverpool’s iconic Royal Liver Building – it offered a rare glimpse into 185 years of seafaring style. Blending celebrity moments, royal visits and guest-submitted snapshots, the show has set sail on a world tour aboard the Queen Mary 2 and later, Queen Elizabeth. But behind the glamour lies a vast and meticulously preserved photographic archive, housed at the University of Liverpool. Cunard archivist Siân Wilks tells me about the surprises, challenges and hidden gems within one of Britain’s most storied visual collections. AP: What is the scope of the Cunard archive, and where is it housed? Sian Wilks: The Cunard archive contains most of the…

OM System’s new OM-5 Mark II comes with a number of features that we’ve been waiting for since the release of the original OM-5. That was one of our favourite OM System or Olympus cameras, especially for those who travel. The OM-5 II is priced at £1,099 body only, and sits above the beginner-friendly Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV in the range, which is yet to receive an OM System refresh. Read on to find out all about the changes made with the new model. Features It’s been three years since the OM-5 was introduced, and now OM System has updated it with the OM-5 Mark II. This new model feels like a light refresh. It continues to offer a stylish, classic-looking design, with great colour reproduction. However, it gains…

When was the club founded? Founded in 1892, Guildford Photographic Society is one of the oldest photography clubs in the UK. What does the club offer to new members? Our club welcomes new members by encouraging them to engage in activities at their own pace with support from a range of initiatives. We regularly start new ‘developers’ groups to provide information and discussion sessions in areas such as: entering club competitions, processing and printing images. We have competitions divided into ability groups (Club, Intermediate and Advanced), allowing members to ‘self assess’ where they belong. Their progress through these divisions will be self-determined but feedback from competition critique and results will inform these choices. All new members are encouraged to join one or more of our Special Interest Groups to further…