Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i N-Photo: the Nikon magazine

Get even more out of N-Photo Faceboo Join 289,000 Nikon nuts who ‘Like’ us on Facebook www.facebook.com/nphotomag Weekly newsletter News, techniques and offers emailed to you every Friday. Sign up at www.bit.ly/nphoto_news Twitter Follow our tweets and keep up to date with all things #Nikon www.twitter.com/nphotomag PhotoClub e-Learning Learn online with our new online video training courses www.digitalcameraworld.com About the cover Title Hamnøy at Dusk Photographer James Paterson Camera D800 Lens Nikon 16-35mm f/4 Exposure 296 secs, f/16, ISO100 Web www.behance.net/jdwpaterso182a One of the age-old frustrations of landscape photography is that the weather doesn’t always play along, especially in winter. How can you capture stunning – heck, even passable – images when the wind is threatening to whip your tripod into the nearest lake and the rain/sleet/snow/hail (delete as appropriate)…

1 Use soft window light Window light offers soft, directional illumination that can fall beautifully over a face. North-facing windows are best (when north of the equator) as they don’t see direct sunlight. Try having the subject side-on to the window light (perhaps with a reflector to bounce light back into the shadow side of their face), or shoot with their back to the window and expose for their face for a more high-key feel. 2 Seek out contrast In most good portraits, the subject stands out from the background to draw the eye. One way to do this when you’re shooting outdoors is to look for contrasting lighting between the subject and the backdrop – either by having the subject in shade with a bright patch behind them (like…

When you shoot portraits purely with natural light, you’re usually restricted to one ‘correct’ exposure. But when you start to mix natural light with ?ash, you can manipulate the exposure to suit your artistic needs (see page 36). Any time that you work with two different light sources, the key is all about the ratio between the two. You can’t control the power of the sun, for example, but you can change your Speedlight power to alter the ratio between the two – as we’ve shown in our image (right) by overpowering the midday sun for a moody portrait. Notice how the boy’s hair has the look of a studio portrait, with a nice hair light to bring out detail and texture. But this is, in fact, sunlight. With the…

The mission • To sharpen details in soft images without added artefacts Time •20 minutes Skill level •Beginner • Intermediate • Advanced Kit needed • Lightroom 5 or later Getting photos pin-sharp can be a challenge for a variety of reasons. Many digital cameras have a built-in filter that blurs the image a little to avoid producing moiré patterns. But this low-pass (or anti-aliasing) filter can also soften important details such as a flower’s fine stigmas. By placing the camera close to a small subject, such as a flower, you risk getting a shallow depth of field. This leaves only a narrow band of detail in focus. Features in front of and behind this zone will look blurred. An image that appears sharp on your camera’s LCD may look disappointingly…

Our globetrotting Contributor at Large, renowned photographer and prolific author Michael Freeman, presents a new month-by-month masterclass that’s exclusive to N-Photo, in which he explores his tried and tested paths to more creative photography. Michael has published dozens of books on photography, including the bestselling Perfect Exposure. If you enjoy this article and want to learn more, there are 50 more paths to be discovered in Michael’s new book Fifty Paths to Creative Photography (NB: all 50 are different from those that will be featured here in the magazine). NEW SE RI ES ! Bringing some kind of personal order to a scene is one of the basic reasons for bothering at all with composition. Indeed, it’s composition’s primary purpose, but the emphasis is always on personal preference, because once…

My nephew has been using my D90 and 18-105mm lens, but his parents are buying him a D3400 with 18-55mm kit lens, which doesn’t have the same telephoto reach. Would the 18-105mm be a better pairing? Peter Williams, via email JASON SAYS… The small, lightweight AF-P 18-55mm VR kit lens is well suited to the D3400. It features Nikon’s new AF-P (Pulse) stepping motor autofocus system and effective vibration reduction (VR), rated at four stops. The retractable design makes it very compact, and it delivers impressive image quality. At retailers where the D3400 body is available without the kit lens, it’s not much cheaper, so it makes sense to get the complete kit. To add decent telephoto reach at a reasonable price (around £130/$150), he could supplement it with Nikon’s…

Lomography Daguerreotype Achromat 64mm f/2.9 art lens $499 (around £400) www.lomography.com As this month’s Big Test makes clear, there’s no shortage of conventional portrait lenses, but here’s an alternative that’s anything but conventional. Lomography has taken the design of the world’s first photographic optic and reworked it to provide fun, creative effects that are particularly suitable for portrait photography. At its maximum aperture the Achromat produces atmospheric soft-focus effects, but stop down to f/5.6 or smaller and you get images with deep contrast and razor-sharp definition. Aperture is controlled by slotting small aperture plates into the lens, with each plate corresponding to a specific aperture size. Use the Lumière plates for images with a soft, even glow, or go for the Aquarelle plates if you want out-of-focus areas to have…

WWW.JOEMCNALLY.COM This is not a political column, saints be praised. I talk about Group A, Channel 1, and stuff like that, not the results of the latest political polls. But the life of a photographer is punctuated with encounters, large and small. And you make pictures of these encounters! That’s the job. In the ’80s I photographed Trump for Newsweek and Biden for People. Different magazines, different approaches. Trump was a week-long encounter, Biden just a day or so. Trump was in colour, with lights and an assistant. Biden was by myself, no ?ash, working with window light. I’m a generalist, doing what the job requires, so I was comfortable with both approaches. The recent roiled political waters caused me to do a bit of an archive rummage, which was,…

James Paterson PAGE 16 Want to give portraits a go but not sure where to start? James takes you step by step through the skills you need. Christian Hoiberg PAGE 50 Landscape pro Christian takes this month’s Apprentice on a spectacular shoot in Norway’s majestic Lofoten Islands. Michael Freeman PAGE 76 In part three of his new series, Michael shares another path to help liven up your photos: getting creative with alignment. Karwai Tang PAGE 91 Award-winning press pro Karwai describes how a shot he took when he was just 19 helped to launch his stellar career. Frans Lanting PAGE 92 The legendary wildlife pro reflects on his extraordinary 40-year career, and discusses the secrets of his success. Joe McNally PAGE 130 Joe recalls how two portraits he shot in…

If you think of some of the world’s most celebrated and creative portrait photographers – names like Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Irving Penn – it’s their headshots that really stick in the memory. That’s because those pictures do something that all great portraits should: reveal the character of the subject. From the neck down, one person may be pretty indistinguishable from another. It’s what’s up top that marks us all out as individuals. Our faces are our most expressive feature, and a good headshot should celebrate this. Simple but effective Compared to some kinds of portrait, the humble headshot might seem a tad rudimentary, but there’s an art to getting it right, and it’s an important string in any portrait photographer’s bow. Headshots are always in demand, whether it’s for…

Now that anyone with a decent camera can take a competent photo, photographers are constantly looking for ways in which technology can help to set their lighting and techniques apart from the crowd. One modern lighting technique that’s being used more and more often by wedding and portrait photographers is to supplement the ambient light with off-camera ?ash, giving these images an edge over natural-light portraits. Another technology that has come on in leaps and bounds is continuous lighting options, including LED panels, ?uorescent tubes and even simple lamps. These aren’t as powerful as ?ash, but the effect of any changes to the angle or power of the light can be assessed instantly, and they’re ideal if you shoot both stills and video. For off-camera flash, a Speedlight only needs…

The mission • To turn a portrait into a stylised film poster Time • 30 minutes Skill level • Beginner • Intermediate • Advanced Kit needed • Photoshop Elements I f you need inspiration for a creative Photoshop project, take a look at the latest film posters. These are often at the cutting edge of Photoshop design, merging photography with type, graphics and effects. Here we’ll show you how you can create your own film poster, with a bit of a fantasy theme. As well as learning how to position images and words for a striking design, we’ll also show you how to turn ordinary people into larger-than-life CGI-like characters with the Liquify filter. What’s more, you’ll learn how to use layer styles to give your type impact, and we’ll…

LETTERS LETTER OF THE MONTH McNally’s lighting magic The January issue (67) has dropped through the door and immediately called into question this old atheist’s convictions! I’ve suspected for a while that Joe McNally has a contract written in scarlet with an underworld lighting representative, and his latest article has only strengthened this notion. When I try to use a flash, you can guarantee that my single light source and reflector will bleach out everything, will be too harsh or will be ineffective. Yet here is Joe using what looks like 12 or 13 light sources, plus daylight, at ISO 400, f/8 and 1/250 sec, and his superb image is still dark and moody and full of mystery. Surely this is the result of some necromancy or other dark art!…

DIGITAL FILTERS LEVELS & CURVES PANEL Access this powerful colour-editing panel in the Edit section at the right of the workspace. Here we’ve undocked the Levels & Curves and the LCH panels and used Window>Edit to hide docked editing panels for a cleaner workspace. RGB This drop-down menu defaults to viewing and editing points on all three RGB Curves at once, changing tone rather than colour. Adjusting points on each individual colour channel can produce creative colour changes (see the walkthrough below, and our accompanying video). COLOUR CHANNELS Here the highlights in the red channel have been pushed up and its shadows darkened, creating a classic S-curve. The blue Curve’s highlights feature a more severe dip, which helps add a cyan hue to lighter patches of sky. GAMMA You can…

JASON SAYS… One of my favourite ultra-wide lenses is the Nikon AF 20mm f/2.8. It was launched at the end of the 1980s, before a revised ‘AF-D’ edition that communicates distance information became available in 1994. It was built to last, and is remarkably compact and lightweight for an ultra-wide. Nikon AF 20mm f/2.8D THIS SMALL WONDER OF A LENS LETS YOU SHOOT ULTRA-WIDE WITHOUT GOING EXTRA-LARGE RELEASED: 1994 PRICE NEW: £500/$625 PRICE USED: FROM £315/$340 Less than two inches long and weighing just 270g, this Nikon lens is a slip of a thing. Don’t be fooled, though – it’s full-frame compatible and gives a mighty viewing angle of 94 degrees on the diagonal, and a respectable 70 degrees on a DX camera. It will autofocus on any current body…

Isn’t it funny how, as camera technology gives us ever-increasing image quality, many people still crave the imperfections of analogue film and the visual character that these bring? Thankfully, you can now get all of the retro flare of film and still retain the convenience of digital photography. As our tutorial on page 82 shows, you can make your own filters to create a grading effect in Capture NX-D. There’s also no shortage of Lightroom plug-ins loaded with filter effects designed to faithfully emulate many of the colour and monochrome film stocks of yesteryear. Most plug-ins go further, though, incorporating effects to mimic light leaks, cross processing, infra-red looks, and even double exposures. The starting point in each plug-in will usually be selecting one of many preset effects, but all…

One of the great things about using studio heads is the sheer variety of modi?ers and other accessories that you can choose to attach to them to change the lighting effect. From huge softboxes to tiny snoots, these accessories will help you to become a master of light, bending it to your will for any look you like, whether dramatic or subtle. Essentially these modi?ers enable you to change three qualities in the light from your studio head. These are its spread, its strength and its softness. You can tell a lot about each different light option by the way it affects the shadows under the chin on the images below. Smaller light sources such as a bare bulb or a snoot cast sharp, harder-edged shadows, while larger sources such…

The mission • To create a collage that shows a subject from multiple angles Time • One hour Skill level • Beginner • Intermediate • Advanced Kit needed • D-SLR • Photoshop • A printer (optional) Back in the 1980s, the artist David Hockney pieced together Polaroid photos into collages that showed a subject from multiple angles. Hockney’s joiners captured the public imagination. Since then, the technique has been muchimitated, to the point where it has almost become a bit old hat. There’s even a phone app – the Hockneyizer – that will do the job for you, which is probably about as far from the original spirit of the idea as you can get. But experiment with this photo collage technique and you’ll find there’s still life in it,…

We’re now into the 10th month of our year-long photography contest, which features a different theme each month, with all shortlisted images being put forward for the coveted title of N-Photo Photographer of the Year. The theme we set last issue was ‘winter landscapes’, and as you’ll see from the photos on the following pages, we had some stunning entries. If you feel inspired by these images, our next two themes are ‘nightscapes’ and ‘portraits’ (see this issue’s feature on page 16 for tips on the latter). Enter or vote for your favourites at www.photocrowd.com/contests The monthly competition prize is a £100 voucher for online printing specialists WhiteWall, while the Crowd Vote winner will receive a bundle of photography guides. The overall N-Photo Photographer of the Year will win a…

Alignment doesn’t always have to be tied to the frame edges or corners. Bringing together different objects in the frame so there’s some sort of order between them is a more personal kind of alignment. It’s more personal because it depends ?rst on you seeing the opportunity for this – which usually isn’t a real tangible connection, just a graphic one – and second on your viewpoint. Graphic juxtapositions like the one pictured to the right exist only from one camera position, so stepping to one side is usually part of the technique. The setting here was the Kaveri river in Karnataka, India, on a foggy morning. Like the Holy Island scene on page 77, it had the basic ingredients for a photograph, but it also needed something more. Fog…

PORTRAIT LENSES Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II ELEMENTS/GROUPS 21/16 DIAPHRAGM 9 blades OPTICAL STABILISER Yes FOCUS TYPE Ultrasonic (ring-type) MIN FOCUS DISTANCE 1.4m MAX REPRODUCTION RATIO 0.12 x FILTER SIZE 77mm ACCESSORIES INCLUDED Hood, soft case DIAMETER X MIN LENGTH 87x206mm WEIGHT 1.54kg PRICE £2000/$2100 Focal length With its 2.9x zoom range, this lens gives you great versatility for portraiture at weddings and other events, where you might need to react quickly and won’t necessarily have the time to manoeuvre yourself and others when composing the shot. Features This feature-rich zoom also boasts dual-mode optical stabilisation, a whopping seven Extra-low Dispersion (ED) elements, nano crystal coatings, an autofocus limiter switch and more besides – all wrapped up in a rugged, weather-sealed magnesium alloy shell. Size There’s no disguising…

T he book Crafted in Britain is a celebration of Britain’s surviving traditional crafts and industries. I shot images of fascinating workplaces and practices, and Tony Burton wrote descriptions of them. I met Tony by chance in a wonderful old Bristol pub about 25 years ago, as I was returning from a shoot for The Observer on the automation of Britain’s lighthouses, and he had just completed his 40th book about Britain’s industrial history. We decided to produce a book documenting the country’s disappearing industries and working practices. When I was offered a job running a large editorial photography studio and Tony was commissioned to present a series of TV shows, however, we put our book project on hold. By the time we returned to it more than 20 years…