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

The mission • Create an ’80s style portrait with two torches Time • One evening Skill level • Beginner• Intermediate• Advanced Kit needed • Tripod• 2x torches• 2x hollow acrylic rods• Wireless remote release (optional) Light painting is a great way to get into long-exposure photography and offers up a world where we can control light and shape it to suit our needs. Most of the time we use a powerful torch in low light or at night to visually paint a scene, with results often fantastical. However, in this project we’re going to place gelled torches in hollow plastic rods covered in translucent paper to create a light wand that features heavily in the creation of the final image. The torch we’re using also has a stroboscopic effect built-in…

WORTH £59.99 1. ON1 has set up a special page for N-Photo readers to download and activate their free software: visit www.onone.buzz/nphoto 2. The software will be added to your shopping cart as a free item, so you should proceed to the checkout. 3. On the next screen you will be asked to enter your name, country of origin, postcode and email address. Below is a checkbox for creating an ON1 account. Do not skip this part: you will need it to activate your software later in the process. 4. If you do not have an account, set one up now. It only takes a few moments. You can then download your software. 5. If you already have an ON1 account, sign in. ON1 Effects will be added as a…

THE PRO… NAME Pete Bartlett CAMERA D800 Pete studied Film and TV production for his master’s degree and, after working in the industry for a few years, he began to increasingly find himself with a camera in-hand and actors in front of his lens. Then, after a chance meeting with a photographer, he decided that photography was what he wanted to take up as a career. 12 years later Pete’s work has expanded and now includes dance, fashion and weddings, but his roots lie firmly in actor portfolio portraits. www.petebartlett.com THE APPRENTICE… NAME Heather Byne CAMERA D800 Heather’s journey with photography started back when she took a photography module during her graphic design course at university. At the time she was shown how to shoot – and develop – film,…

USE A MACRO LENS Macro lenses, although not essential for macro work, make it a lot easier to get close to your subjects without disturbing them. You also get amazing focus when up-close and get to shoot all the intricate details of the delightfully tiny macro world. LEARN THE BEHAVIOUR Get to know your subjects and observe them for a while before moving in to finally take the shot. You may even find that they have preferences and perch on the same flowers more than once – making it easier to get the shot. SET UP SOME FAST SHUTTER SPEEDS High-magnification photography means everything is a lot more extreme – especially movement. Use a fast shutter speed, like 1/500 sec, to freeze motion of the little creatures you’re trying to…

One well-tried and tested creative approach is to whittle down the number of things going on in a photograph. In other words, to reduce, and we already looked at the idea of graphically reducing an image in N-Photo 73 as a technique of composition. The principle applies in other ways, beyond composition, and is more about the actual subject – there are times when a part of it may be more interesting and focused than the whole. This means closing in on the subject in some way, and though it’s straightforward – and you might think almost too obvious to be worth mentioning – it can on occasion be very effective. It can even, as in the example here, be a solution to a shooting problem. The situation was an…

By making a black-and-white conversion of a colour image you can focus more on contrasting shapes and patterns in a scene. A monochrome image also harks back to the days of analogue film, adding a touch of retro class to your shot. Black-and-white images stand out from the colour crowd, which helps them get noticed on social media platforms such as Instagram. It’s a simple matter to desaturate a colour shot in Capture NX-D, but this can result in a bland wash of greyscale tones. An effective monochrome shot should have high contrast to help key subjects stand out. We’ll show you how to use Capture NX-D’s clipping warning tools to ensure the contrasting presence of white highlights and black shadows. In pre-digital days, black-and-white film photographers placed coloured filters…

VERDICT For optimum features, performance, build quality and image quality, the 70-200mm G2 is your choice. It also gives you a faster f/2.8 aperture for quicker shutter speeds and a tighter depth of field. But, if you need the longer zoom range between 200mm and 400mm, the standalone 100-400mm lens is lighter, slightly better in terms of image quality, and great value. NEXT MONTH: BALL HEAD VS THREE-WAY HEAD…

Price: £849/$847 The Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 S has a pretty understated exterior. Its f/1.8 maximum aperture means the front element 01 lacks the size of 35mm f/1.4 lenses, but it keeps the lens small and compact, and it matches the Z7’s body size perfectly. There is a very wide focus ring 02 taking up most of the front part of the barrel, and this can be configured to adjust the ISO setting or EV compensation when the lens is in autofocus mode. In MF mode, the focus speed changes according to how fast you twist the ring, and the Z7’s viewfinder is so sharp you see a real focus ‘snap’ when your subject comes into focus, even without magnification. Nikon credits the lens’s extra-wide Nikon Z-mount 03 for its…

Contact twitter.com@nphotomag facebook.com/nphotomag Monochrome Monday Your best monochrome photos from the past month Workshop Wednesday Wednesday is an opportunity to ask questions, share ideas and help others in the N-Photo community… I’m having difficulty getting a good white balance set on my D810 while doing infrared photography with a circular filter. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Gary Whittaker If you’re wanting to use a preset white balance then bear in mind that a preset like Cloudy will give warmer, yellower tones. However, a preset like Incandescent will produce cooler, bluer tones. You may want to try to use preset-manual white balance. Follow your manual for details on how to do so. Tutorial Tuesday This month we… Learn how to take full control of depth of field in this walkthrough…

Matt Golowczynski PAGE 18 Matt gives us the lowdown on everything mirrorless, with over 100 things you need to know about Nikon’s new Z system! Joe McNally PAGE 90 Joe sets out to prove that sometimes all you need the teeniest little splash of light to add an awful lot to a portrait… Pete Bartlett PAGE 52 Portrait photographer Pete gets this month’s Apprentice – and their model – ready to shoot a professional portfolio series. Aaron ‘Bertie’ Gekoski PAGE 92 Pro wildlife photographer Aaron tells us why he traded his successful life in London to be a wildlife conversationalist. Michael Freeman PAGE 76 Michael gets up close and personal, showing how and why you should fill the frame with beautiful, intricate detail. Andy Smith PAGE 102 Andy meets the…

The mission • Capture images using vintage, analogue lenses Time • One hour Skill level • Beginner• Intermediate• Advanced Kit needed • Vintage lens• M42 mount adapter (or equivalent) Whether you’ve got a drawer full of old lenses or you want to take some photos with character, using legacy lenses is a great way to get creative. In this project, we’ll show you how to go vintage. Rummaging through the loft or the stands at a car boot sale can be a photographer’s dream – you can uncover all kinds of weird and wonderful lenses begging to be given a new lease of life. On top of that, many vintage lenses possess character, from unique vignetting and bokeh to the way they render contrast and colour. Older lenses can be…

The mission • Enhance a dull sky with the Graduated Filter tool Time • 15 minutes Skill level • Beginner• Intermediate• Advanced Kit needed • Photoshop CC or Lightroom Classic Of all the tools available in Photoshop’s Camera Raw plug-in – or indeed in the entirety of Photoshop – the Graduated Filter is one of the most useful, especially when it comes to tweaking your landscape photographs. The tool allows you to make a linear adjustment over part of your photo, producing a transitional blend of tones. Anywhere beyond the first point that is typically defined will be entirely affected by the tonal settings that you input, with a gradual fall-off. This is entirely determined by the length of the line that you drag. As such, it enables you to…

My parents tell me I took an interest in cameras at a very early age, but my passion truly began back in 1981, as a 14-year-old, where I elected for photography as a hobby while participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Awards. We shot and developed black-and-white film, printing the images in the darkroom. Seeing the photographs appear in the print development process helped to get me hooked on this hobby. I bought an SLR and ran through between eight and 10 rolls of film a week, that was when I really learned photography. Since then my camera gear has changed a lot, and for these images gear was definitely important. I needed reach, filling the frame being a key reason these images work. Shooting under stadium lights requires a…

LETTER OF THE MONTH A bridge too far? As a recent purchaser of a Nikon Coolpix P900 I thought it’d be useful to subscribe to N-Photo. However, I find it disappointing that, like many other magazines, the content is aimed at DSLR camera users. Over the years I have used various camera and lens combinations but, like many others, have had to consider the weight issue with such equipment. Hence my purchase of the P900. Good images can be obtained from this camera but to do so is more challenging due to its limitations compared to the DSLR models. Therefore to have a magazine incorporate articles giving tips to the many users of this type of equipment would be most welcome. Buck the trend! Martin Rickard As a ‘bridge’ camera,…

Moving in to find detail in a larger subject, as on the previous pages, is the most obvious way of getting closer for a photograph, but there are others. The great war photographer and founder of Magnum, Robert Capa, came up with a few terse comments, and one of the best known was, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough”. He was talking in the context of war photography, and meant get close to the action to convey the sense of danger and emotion in battle, but it’s a useful piece of advice in other, less threatening, situations. It works best when there’s human action, and for a sense of engagement there’s really nothing like closing the usual gap between photographer and people. If you want to…

I tried shooting motorsports the other day but the cars look like they’re standing still. What shutter speed do I need to convey motion when panning? Dave Simmonds JASON SAYS…Shooting at 1/500 sec or faster should give you a good success rate for keeping the cars looking sharp, but will also tend to freeze the background and even the wheels. To give really smooth motion blur, I tend to use shutter speeds of between 1/60 and 1/125 sec. It’s a real challenge to pan smoothly enough to keep the cars sharp, so don’t be surprised if you take loads of shots and only get a few keepers. Try using continuous drive mode and continuous autofocus, enabling a burst of shots while panning. My Sigma 120-400mm lens’s autofocus shudders and stops…

WWW.JOEMCNALLY.COM Sometimes the answer is a lot of light. Sometimes all you need is a splash. It’s a splash, dash, modicum, a touch, a pop – call it what you will. But it is also tiny but powerful – it speaks volumes, in a small voice. Speedlights are perfect to execute a splash of illumination. They are de facto small, and governed to affect a small area. You can fire them via radio, TTL light pulse, or old-fashioned manual slave mode. What this little extra piece of light does is enhance the conversation your picture is having with your viewer, or even better, directs the conversation. In a subtle way, this accent of light is saying, “look here, this is what’s most important right now.” Like the cross in the…

Price: £999/$997 This new Z lens is a million miles from the giant 24-70mm f/2.8 lenses for Nikon’s DSLR cameras. The Nikon Z 24-70mm f/4 S has the same 24-70mm zoom range 01 as these monsters but is much smaller and lighter. It is one f-stop slower at f/4 compared to f/2.8, but its a superb match for the Nikon Z7’s size and shape, and the new camera’s in-body image stabilization (IBIS) makes wide apertures less vital for low-light shooting. This lens’s small size is due in part to a retracting mechanism 02 that activates when you turn the zoom ring firmly past its 24mm minimum position. An unexpected bonus is that the focus ring 03 is customizable. In AF mode, it can be set to control the ISO setting…

Adam Waring Editor The electronic viewfinder takes getting used to, but once you do, a DSLR’s flip-up mechanical mirror assembly seems archaic! adam.waring@futurenet.com Jason Parnell-Brookes Technique editor My camera bag weighs between 15-20kg by the time I’m kitted up with my DSLRs and lenses. I can’t wait to slim down with the mirrorless camera. jason.parnell-brookes@futurenet.com Ben Andrews Lab manager The Z-mount is a bold move from Nikon, but it seems to have paid off, as image quality from the 35mm and 24-70mm S-series lenses is phenomenal. ben.andrews@futurenet.com Matthew Richards Technique writer I’ll be interested to see how the electronic viewfinder works. I’ve found EVFs make me feel detached, and lack smoothness when panning or tracking. mail@nphotomag.com…

The mission • Make the most out of the autumnal colours Time • One day Skill level • Beginner• Intermediate• Advanced Kit needed • Standard prime or zoom lens For this project, you’ll need to find vibrant foliage, so head to a nearby forest or park. We’ve come to the stunning Westonbirt National Arboretum, in England – one of the best-known arboretums in the country, famous for its collection of over 15,000 labelled trees which started back in the 1850s. So with the perfect location we can hone our creative eye and consider the lighting in the environment. You don’t need any fancy kit; an entry-level kit zoom lens or a simple 50mm ‘nifty fifty’ prime will do the job. Autumn may be the shortest season we experience here in…

ON1 Effects ON1 Effects 2018 is a powerful filters-based program for applying all manner of effects to your images with ease. With hundreds of stackable filters, presets, borders and textures, you can easily add an HDR look, convert to black and white, bring out more detail, reduce noise, or enhance a portrait. It works as both a standalone program and as a Photoshop and Lightroom plug-in, and while it’s available to buy on its own, it’s also part of ON1’s flagship all-in-one browsing and image-editing program ON1 Photo RAW 2018 (see right). It comes with a large library of preset effects, organized into categories for easy browsing. When you see an effect you like, you just click its thumbnail to apply the effect to your image. But you also have…

The mission • Learn how to shoot underwater child portraits Time • One hour Skill level • Beginner• Intermediate• Advanced Kit needed • Soft underwater housing• Wide lens• Underwater LEDs (optional) The best child portraits usually occur when the kids are doing something they enjoy, rather than just being told to pose. Most kids love being in the water, so it’s a great place to get out your camera. Underwater scenes can be wonderfully vibrant – with rich blue tones, shimmering bubbles and eye-catching reflections on the surface, and then there are the dynamic poses, all made possible by the water. But the pool can be a perilous place for cameras, so we need an underwater housing. Many might think underwater photography with a DSLR involves using expensive hard cases.…

Our search for the world’s best Nikon photographer continues! Each issue the top 10 images for the monthly N-Photo POTY 2018 photo contest are selected by the N-Photo team – along with a guest judge! This issue’s competition has the theme of Sport, and we’ve asked Swedish sports photographer and Nikon Europe Ambassador Joel Marklund to help. GUEST JUDGE: SPORTS PRO JOEL MARKLUND JOEL HAS TO BE READY TO SHOOT THE MAKE-OR-BREAK MOMENT IN-GAME, SO WHY DOES HE USE THE D850? There are a few occasions in sports where you can’t let the shutter click, and one of those is during a player’s backswing in a golfing tournament. I’ve seen more than one player get furious at a photographer when they mistakenly press the shutter button that little bit too…

Sponsored by mpb.com Am I better off buying a secondhand official Nikon battery grip for my D810, or an independently made new one? Kim Stafford OUR EXPERTS AT MPB RECOMMEND… At the time of writing, we have a number of the genuine Nikon battery grips in stock, starting at just £44/$57. Typical of Nikon kit, you can be sure that they’re of great quality and should work flawlessly. Nikon MB-D12 Battery Grip IT’S A GREAT WAY TO UPGRADE YOUR D810 FOR A NUMBER OF REASONS RELEASED (YEAR): 2012 PRICE NEW: £349/$429 BUY AT MPB.COM TODAY: EXCELLENT: £99/$128 GOOD: £84/$108 The MB-D12 Battery Grip is compatible with D810, D810A, D800 and D800E camera bodies. The biggest plus point is that it duplicates the shutter release button, AF button, multi-selector and both…