Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i N-Photo: the Nikon magazine

This issue, landscape and wildlife duo Orsolya and Erlend Haarberg are in the N-Photo interview hot seat See page 92 With ever-increasing megapixel counts, clever advanced focus modes and amazing ISO performance, the latest Nikon DSLRs will give you incredibly detailed shots. But this level of detail isn’t worth anything if you don’t get your shots sharp in the first place. So travel photographer Steve Davey shares his in-the-field tricks and techniques for getting your sharpest ever shots. Using a decent tripod goes a long way to achieving this goal, and so we round up eight good-value tripods, all around the £200/$300 mark, in our Big Test. And if your lens is a real whopper, then we also put gimbal heads through their paces. With the World Cup around the…

Your camera can focus faster and more accurately than you ever can: the problem is that it doesn’t know what part of the scene you want it to focus on. The default setting for most cameras is that the camera will automatically choose which focus sensor to use, which governs where the focus will fall. If you are photographing a subject away from the camera, in the centre of frame, in bright light and with a narrow aperture, then the camera might choose the right focus. If you are being more creative, shooting closer, with the subject towards the edge of the frame and with a shallower depth of field, then there is a good chance that your camera will focus on the wrong object in the frame – this…

Set the correct shutter speed Even if you have accurately focused on your subject, you can still ruin the sharpness with even the slightest camera shake. This is where the camera moves during the exposure, but the shutter speed is not fast enough to avoid showing the movement. Camera shake can look like a slight ghosting on your image, and although Adobe has a camera shake reduction filter in Photoshop, you’ll want to try and avoid it in the first place. A rule of thumb is that you should try to use a shutter speed equal to, or higher than, the focal length of the lens – for a 200mm lens, try to use 1/250 sec; or up to a stop higher at 1/500 sec if you are using a…

WATCH THE VIDEO STABLE CAMERA BLURRING Be careful There’s lots of vibration transference between a moving vehicle and the camera mount rig, so triple-check everything is tight and secure before moving off. Try a test drive in a car park before heading onto the road, and when you do, drive very slowly and avoid busy streets. The mission Capture sharp shots of a moving vehicle whilst blurring the background Time One hour Skill level Beginner Intermediate Advanced Kit needed Wide-angle lens Telescopic camera Suction mount rig Variable ND filter (optional) For scenes with longer exposures, it’s necessary to keep the camera completely steady while shooting. This usually means shooting on a tripod to avoid camera-shake. By keeping the Nikon still during a longer exposure, so too will be anything in…

WATCH THE VIDEO PERSPECTIVES TRICKS The mission Make a model car look life-size using the forced perspective technique Time Two hours Skill level Beginner Intermediate Advanced Kit needed DSLR Two tripods Model car Small platform Wide-angle lens Forced perspective photography is one of the oldest visual tricks in the book, and also one of the most fun. With careful arrangement of objects in a scene, we can fool the eye by combining small and large elements into a believable whole. Even better, it gives us the perfect excuse to play with model cars. This project is a prime opportunity to make use of shooting skills and Photoshop magic, as it requires a little of both. We’ll start off by setting up our model car. The height of objects plays an…

EXPOSURE 1/1250 sec, f/4, ISO4000 LENS 400mm f/2.8 Vivid Picture Control Tom says… I set the Picture Control to Vivid. This pumps up the vibrancy of the grass and helps give the image added punch. I further customized it by tapping right on the keypad and dialling in +1 to both Sharpening and Saturation, which gives me a head start in the editing process as the images come out of the camera in a semi-processed state. A game of three thirds Tom says… I always say that shooting sports is one-third preparation, one-third shooting and one-third processing! You have to do your research pre-game – the teams’ relative position in the league can have a big bearing about how you approach the shoot. I spent easily as much time studying…

EXPOSURE 1/1250 sec, f/4, ISO4000 LENS 400mm f/2.8 Bright/dark pitch Tom says… We were shooting during a night game, so the floodlights were on, which meant the lighting was relatively even over the entire pitch, but on sunny days you’re likely to have part of the pitch plunged into dark shadow, the other half in bright sunlight – an exposure nightmare! To combat this, I set a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec for the dark areas, then scroll the main command dial to 1/2000 sec when pointing at the bright part of the pitch. This is an quick-and-easy one-thumb operation, whereas changing ISO requires the addition of a button press as well, so is slower, fiddlier and prone to mis-presses. Our Apprentice says… With both teams having so much to…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Horses for courses As a new subscriber, may I air some thoughts? Don’t forget, not everyone wants the latest camera – lots of us are content with our older technology. I’m satisfied with the quality from my D90 and D7000, and for those who do their own home printing, 12 or 16 megapixels are usable. One subject close to my heart is equine photography, but I’ve yet to see any articles from experts in this field willing to divulge their expertise. We could all benefit from some guidance, so how about some tips on snapping riders and their horses? The above shot was taken on Formby beach with my D90 and a Tamron 70-300mm lens. Brian Rankin We try to cater for all readers, no matter…

Austrian-born photographer Ernst Haas said, ‘The most important lens you have is your legs.’ This was in the days before good zoom lenses, but the point he made was to find the best possible shots by just using your legs. Not just closer or further, but up, down, sideways, from over there – anywhere that could improve the shot. Juxtaposing nearly always depends on relationships in the frame between the subjects – that means the position of you and your camera. The viewpoint is first, if you’re working towards a juxtaposition instead of hoping to come across one. Here’s a situation where there was plenty of time, and the best use of that time was to get everything correct. Viewpoint goes hand in hand with framing and focal length. A…

Profile Orsolya Haarberg was born and raised in Hungary, where she studied landscape architecture before undertaking a PhD in wildlife management. Erlend Haarberg grew up in northern Norway and studied biology before deciding upon a life as a photographer. Last year, Erlend was named overall winner of the European Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition for his photo of two fighting mountain hares. The Haarbergs have published three books together, two on Iceland, and Laponia, the culmination of three years of travels to Sweden’s wild north. www.haarbergphoto.com Over the past 12 months, the husband-and-wife photography team of Orsolya (Orsi) and Erlend Haarberg have exhibited across Europe, showing images from their stunning new book, Laponia. Laponia is about one of Europe’s largest and remotest wilderness areas. Theirs is a partnership of…

Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch? Get the free N-Photo app for your iPad or iPhone at bit.ly/nphoto_app then browse through our back issues or buy a subscription using the app Kindle Fire or Nook HD? Simply search for N-Photo on Amazon’s Newsstand or in B&N’s Nook store Android/Google Play Visit bit.ly/nphoto_googleplay to subscribe to N-Photo on your Android device Windows or Mac? Use Zinio Subscribe: bit.ly/zinio_nphoto Buy a single back issue: bit.ly/zinio_nphoto_back Also available on Magzter, PocketMags and PressReader Issue 84 • Fantastic astrophotography • Classic landscape masterclass • The best macro lenses • Budget remote picks Issue 83 • Delicious food photos • 101 Nikon tips and tricks • Top budget telephoto lenses • Rock photographer Adrian Boot Issue 82 • Master lowlight landscapes • How to shoot…

ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR RUNNER-UP Frenzy Feeding Greg Lecoeur, Scotland Here, we see gannets hunting fish in Scotland. With the recent fall in fish stocks, gannets have to compete for food to ensure their survival. Nikon D7200, 10-17mm, 1/320 sec, f/11, ISO200 ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR WINNER Enchanting Moment Tibor Kercz A beautiful kingfisher catching its prey from a small pond. Captured on a rainy, dark midsummer morning, Tibor used four off-camera remote-controlled radio-triggered flashes to freeze this fast moving bird. Both the bird and the raindrop are frozen mid-action, to make it easy to appreciate every minute detail of this picture. Nikon D4, 200-400mm f/4, 1/40 sec, f/9, ISO1000 OVERALL WINNER AND HABITATS & LANDSCAPES CATEGORY WINNER Guide to the Galaxy Ripan Biswas, India A Theobald’s ranid frog photographed in front of the…

Increasing the ISO Most people will only think of increasing the ISO to avoid camera shake, but you can also increase the ISO by a couple of stops, just to allow yourself an extra couple of stops of aperture for a broader depth of field. This is one of the reasons why I try to never use Auto ISO. This will only tend to kick in to avoid camera shake, yet there are other reasons for increasing the ISO. Modern Nikons have such good high ISO performance that increasing the ISO from 100 to 400 will have almost no effect on the quality of the image; but two stops of aperture can have a profound affect on the depth of field that you’re using. Control depth of field If you…

The mission Improve photos using classic compositional techniques Time A day Skill level Beginner Intermediate Advanced Kit needed Nikon DSLR The first thing we generally want to learn about in photography is how to use the camera and lens. But after this, it’s important to start growing artistically. So step away from the tedium of tech specs and instead learn about how to compose your images properly. A well-composed shot will make it easy for the viewer to identify a subject, it will retain their attention and might even tell them a story. So where do we start, what do we include and how can we use a few simple techniques to form the initial structure of an image? Follow these steps to anchor your shots before you experiment further.…

WATCH THE VIDEO SHAPING SHOTS Constrain Crop So you’ve drastically adjusted your image and now there are white edges of the frame where the photo has been manipulated. Click the Constrain Crop button to automatically crop these white edges. The mission Make lens adjustments and alter the geometry of your image Time 30 minutes Skill level Beginner Intermediate Advanced Kit needed Lightroom CC 2018 All lenses have their own quirks and physical characteristics that distort the field of view and alter the edges of the frame in a shot. Telephoto lenses tend to darken the edges of the frame and increase pincushion distortion. Wide-angle lenses, on the other hand, distort the perspective of photos and introduce barrel distortion, while central subjects are accentuated. In this tutorial we’ll go through two…

We subconsciously perceive scale and depth in flat photos by making a number of assumptions. First there’s ‘occlusion’: the assumption when one object partially obscures another – like our foreground figure here in front of the car (blended using a layer mask) – then the obscured object must be further away. Second, there’s ‘relative height’ – here we assume objects that are further away have higher bases, hence the platform we use to raise up the car. Third there’s ‘familiar size’, an assumption based on past knowledge of the objects in the frame – we know what size cars should be, especially when placed on a road. By exploiting these subconscious assumptions, we can trick the eye.…

EXPOSURE 1/1250 sec, f/4, ISO5000 LENS 400mm f/2.8 Our Apprentice says… For all shots I used the central nine focus points and then cropped them at the editing stage so that the players had space to ‘run into’ – you simply don’t have enough time to move the active focus point around, and with a 400mm lens you can crop quite aggressively yet still have enough pixels for a page-filling image. With two players challenging for the ball, it was important that both were in focus, and again stopping down the aperture to f/4 achieves this. Here Maikel Kiefttenbeld of Birmingham City gets past a challenge from Marlon Pack of Bristol City. Expert insight Tell the story of the game Shooting a football match is not just about the goals…

Lens focal length is a critical tool in handling juxtaposition, because it’s the one certain control over the size relationship between key subjects. On the previous pages, a 20mm wide-angle lens from close made a 60cm stone head similar in apparent size to two 15m towers. When the subjects are more closely matched, a long lens comes into its own. For the kind of effect I’m talking about here, the longer the better. Admittedly, the lens I’m using here, 500mm, is fairly extreme, but it makes the point. Long focal lengths are, by nature, highly selective, allowing us to choose and pick out details from a scene, that alone makes them useful for finding potential juxtapositions. That compensates for what they don’t allow, which is an easy change in how…

Tripod kits that comprise a set of legs and a head range in price from around £10/$15 for a flimsy, often unbranded option, to about £1250/$1500 for a top-of-the-range Gitzo. But how much do you need to spend to get a good one? With an eye on stability, load bearing capacity, features and performance, we’ve selected eight sturdy yet sensibly priced tripods, costing around the £200/$300 mark – a little less in some cases. But while the prices are fairly close, there are some fundamental differences in design. Historically, most tripods fall into one of two categories. They’re either full-sized, sturdy beasts, or relatively small, lightweight ‘travel tripods’. Practically none of us want a tripod to just use at home, so there’s a lot to be said for tripods that…

When you are shooting in the Raw format, you have a wide latitude for correcting your exposures. Even quite significant over-and underexposure can be rectified, and as long as you crop loosely, then you can also always improve your composition in post-production. One thing that you can’t do though – in spite of a number of Photoshop forthcoming feature teaser videos – is successfully deblur an unsharp image. If you don’t get your picture sharp in camera then there is pretty much nothing that you can do, other than just deleting it. The problem is compounded by the increasing resolution of digital cameras, which are better than ever at resolving detail. Which also means that they are merciless at showing up any inconsistencies with quality or technique. When I run…

Invest in the kit In the drive for sharper images, you have to accept that quality will cost. There is a reason why most kit lenses are virtually given away with a camera body! They will never be as sharp as a more expensive (and heavy) professional lens. Be realistic about the level of sharpness that you will be able to achieve with the kit that you can afford in the beginning. It used to be that the only way to get top-quality optics was to stick to the manufacturer’s lenses; these days, though, some of the sharpest lenses are from third-party manufacturers. Notably the Sigma Art range offers incredibly sharp lenses for competitively keen prices. Regularly edit images Always edit your photos as soon as possible; by doing so…

The mission Improve your clifftop captures by using filters and following compositional rules Time One hour Skill level Beginner Intermediate Advanced Kit needed Tripod Wide-angle or standard zoom lens Filters (such as ND, graduated ND polarizer) Remote shutter release Sweeping coastlines and craggy cliffs make for dramatic photographic subjects. Many of the general landscape photo rules remain relevant for coastal shots, but seaside scenes benefit from more detailed planning. This is because coastal locations are constantly changing, both over the course of a day and across the seasons. For example, tides transform the mood and composition of shots, and spring flowers inject striking colours into otherwise drab cliff-faces. Arriving in the right place at the right time for that money shot is easier said than done. Online or OS maps…

EXPOSURE 1/1250 sec, f/4, ISO4000 LENS 400mm f/2.8 Pro’s killer kit Two cameras & lenses Tom uses two cameras to shoot every match, one with a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom attached and the other with a 400mm f/2.8 prime (mounted on a monopod – handholding this beast for any length of time simply isn’t an option), switching between the two bodies depending on how far away the action is. Darren also owns two cameras and has same the pair of lenses – they’re not cheap, but they’re the go-to lenses for sports photography and vital for high-quality images. Be our next Apprentice If you’d like a chance to be the next N-Photo Apprentice,please email mail@nphotomag.com with Apprentice as the subject line, or fill in this form. Return this form to… The…

When faced with high-contrast lighting scenarios you can potentially lose detail in shadows or highlights. In our ‘before’ shot, we’ve set the camera to capture highlight detail, setting the shadows into detail-free darkness. Although Capture NX-D’s Tone (Detail) panel helps you lighten shadows or darken highlights, you may need to dig deeper and access some of the software’s more advanced tone adjusting tools, which you’ll find in the Levels & Curves panel. This panel enables you to target specific ranges of tonal levels and adjust control points on a curve to lighten or darken them. This gives you more precise tone-tweaking abilities than you’d get using the Tone (Detail) panel’s Highlight or Shadow Protection sliders. An adjusted tone curve can have an ‘S’ shape. By pulling the shadow control point…

Nikon AF-S 85mm f/1.4G ELEMENTS/GROUPS 10/9 DIAPHRAGM 9 blades OPTICAL STABILIZER No FOCUS TYPE Ultrasonic (ring-type) MIN FOCUS DISTANCE 0.85m MAX REPRODUCTION RATIO 0.12x FILTER SIZE 77mm ACCESSORIES INCLUDED Hood, pouch DIAMETER X MIN LENGTH 87x84mm WEIGHT 595g £1430/$1600 Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2 ELEMENTS/GROUPS 23/17 DIAPHRAGM 9 blades OPTICAL STABILIZER Yes FOCUS TYPE Ultrasonic (ring-type) MIN FOCUS DISTANCE 0.95m MAX REPRODUCTION ratio 0.16x FILTER SIZE 77mm ACCESSORIES INCLUDED Hood, pouch, tripod foot DIAMETER X MIN LENGTH 88x194mm WEIGHT 1485kg £1350/$1300 Versatility The 85mm focal length of this prime lens is ideal for capturing head and shoulders or half-length portraits on a full-frame camera, without needing to invade personal space. However, you’ll need to ‘zoom with your feet’ for adjustments in composition. For events when you’re shooting in…

This series of images is from my ever-growing collection of photography within the footwear industry. I work as an in-house photographer, creating imagery for a footwear retailer in Somerset. Shoes can be extremely detailed, so it’s my job to show the consumer these details in all their glory. I have been photographing shoes since about 2006, when my role as an IT technician slowly transformed into a full-time photographer for the same company. I developed the I Shoot Shoes website in 2016 after realizing that this work would sit much better within its own constantly evolving website. Most of what I shoot is studio based, I develop the concepts and take inspiration from anywhere and everywhere I can. I do enjoy getting out on location too, but working to strict…

Features Sigma currently markets no fewer than seven wide-angle lenses in its Art line of Global Vision optics. This latest addition is most similar to the 12-24mm | Art lens, which is a revamp of the older 12-24mm II lens that gained a constant f/4 aperture and a reduction in distortion. The new 14-24mm is a similar size and exactly the same weight. It doesn’t go quite as wide, with a maximum viewing angle of 114 instead of 122 degrees, but is an f/stop faster and promises much better image quality. There’s certainly no shortage of high-tech glass in this brand-new lens. Up front is an ultra-high-precision moulded glass aspherical element. Sigma claims that its manufacturing process for this type of optical element enables a new standard in excellence for…