Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2019 i N-Photo: the Nikon magazine

ENGAGE MANUAL MODE Jordan says… Steven had set his camera to Aperture Priority mode, but I suggested that he use Manual instead. That way, exposures will be consistent between shots – important when taking several of the same scene – and the ND filters we’d be using can throw a camera’s metering system. PLAYBACK OPTIONS Jordan says… I’m not a big fan of constantly checking images on the back of the camera – just a quick glance at a test shot to check the exposure is okay. I suggested Steven pare back the info displayed in the Playback options, but keeping Highlights checked – so that overexposed areas flash as a warning. IN-CAMERA BACKUP Jordan says… Steven’s camera has two memory card slots and he had one set record Raw…

Ocean Ambassadors CHRISTIAN VIZL Christian has devoted his life to capturing the astounding beauty of ocean life. He hopes that by photographing these emblematic animals that inhabit the world’s oceans, he can promote awareness and change on our planet. Camera: Nikon D810 Lens: 16-35mm f/4 Exposure: 1/400 sec, f/5, ISO500 The Struggle for Freedom CLETUS NELSON NWADIKE Cletus’s striking and emotive portrait is steeped with the bloody history of violent civil war between Nigeria and Biafra. Camera: Nikon D750 Lens: 24-120mm f/4 Exposure: ⅛ sec, f/4, ISO2000 Two Headed Eagle MAELA OHANA Two Headed Eagle is a collection of botanical portraits and landscapes shot during the short moments of dusk and dawn. During the golden hour, a sense of mystery envelops the landscape, creating uncanny interactions between flora and their…

couple were walking up the drive of our house to meet us. They were choosing a photographer and this was the first time we’d meet in person. In fact, it was the last time. I was inside and they didn’t know I could hear them, or that I would pick up on the disappointment in the woman’s voice. “Oh,” she said, “it’s just a converted garage.” We didn’t win the job this time. That’s when my wife Sarah and I knew it was time to take the next step. There had already been other clues that we’d outgrown our current setup… There was the time when a client was watching an emotive slide show of their portraits in our lounge, set to music, and our daughter strolled through. Or when…

The Mission – Learn to use a wideangle lens in conjunction with an ND filter Time – Two hours Skill level – Intermediate Kit needed – Wide-angle lens – ND filter kit – Tripod – Remote release Wide-angle lenses enable you to cram much more into your scene, with a wide angle of view that sucks more than the eye can see into the frame. The widest angles available in non-fisheye lenses used to be around 16mm for full-frame cameras, but recently we’ve seen lenses that stretch to 14mm, like Nikon’s 14-24mm f/2.8. A few more millimetres of focal length might not sound like much, but the effect on viewing angle at this end of the zoom range is a big deal, at 114º as opposed to 107º with a…

Where to get Capture NX-D It’s made for Nikons, and it’s completely free! – As new Nikons are introduced, Capture NX-D should be the first software to support them. Another advantage is that it replicates Picture Controls and other settings. Capture NX-D is available as a free download from the Nikon website at http://nikonimglib.com/ncnxd Capture NX-D is primarily designed to be a photo-fixing app that enables you to overcome common problems with colour, tone and composition. But with a little tinkering, its digital darkroom tools can be pushed in a more creative direction. A sunset (or sunrise) will enhance any landscape, but it takes effort (and a bit of luck with weather conditions) to capture one. In this walkthrough we’ll demonstrate how to use Color Control Points to change the…

Camera: Nikon D750 Lens: 18-35mm f/1.8 Exposure: 1/125 sec, f/8, ISO100 Mission: Capture foggy photos to be proud of, using the Spinnaker Tower as a focal point Photographer: Louis Stacey Location: Gosport, Hampshire, UK Kit used: Nikon D750, Sigma Art 18-35mm, Hoya PRO ND1000 Filter Website: www.instagram.com/louisstacey My journey into photography began in the summer of 2017, when I was after a telescope to look at the stars and the moon. Knowing this wasn’t going to be easily portable, I ended up getting a Nikon P900 bridge camera with a zoom equivalent of 2000mm – This gave me the reach I was after. I learned to shoot the moon in Manual mode, then began trying landscape astrophotography and instantly found myself wanting more. A few months later, I had my…

Q I use a Sigma 12-24mm with my D750. How much viewing angle would I lose if I swap to a Z 6 and 14-30mm lens? Hank Stevens A As reviewed last issue, the new Nikon Z 14-30mm certainly doesn’t come up short in quality, although its minimum focal length isn’t as short as your Sigma. Technically, the maximum viewing angles are 114 degrees for the Nikon and 122 degrees for the Sigma. This is measured on the diagonal of the image frame, but the figures aren’t a great help when trying to visualize the difference. For landscape and outdoor shooting, you usually won’t find the Nikon lens’s maximum viewing angle more restrictive. It can be more of an issue when shooting indoors, or any other time when you’ve got…

Camera: Nikon D750 Lens: 105mm f/2.8 Exposure: ⅛ sec, f/5, ISO200 It’s been a month of birthdays for food photographer Donna Crous – special ones at that. “I’ve got my daughter’s 18th birthday tomorrow,” she says, “so between trying to work and trying to get birthday celebrations organized, I’ve had a busy few days.” The previous week was her eldest daughter’s 21st birthday, and if that’s not enough for one month, Donna had her own birthday candles to blow out too, but politeness prevails and I refrain from asking how many were on the cake. After this interview, she will be making her daughter a lemon and poppy seed birthday cake. It’s a specific request because medical and health reasons mean Donna and her family stick to a wheat-free and…

Even though I’ve never been completely convinced by this one, I’m duty bound to offer it up because… simply, it works in my section of the market. My doubts are about just how actually creative it is, but the word ‘creative’ does have different interpretations, and in the contemporary art world it’s often more about concept than individual skill. So yes, this is directed toward the art world. Typology means a study of types and of classifying things, and it really belongs to science, but art always co-opts ideas from other areas in order to stay fresh and relevant. The typology idea in photography is to bring together a lot of images of the same type of thing, shot in the same kind of way. A type of example (sorry,…

Tokina has a strong tradition in wide-angle zooms, its popular 11-16mm lens for DX format cameras dating all the way back to 2008. A Mk II edition was launched in 2013, adding an autofocus motor to enable autofocus with Nikon D40, D3xxx and D5xxx series cameras. This 11-20mm goes further, quite literally, by extending the overall zoom range while still maintaining a constant-aperture design, delivering f/2.8 at all focal lengths. One of the things that made the original 11-16mm lens so popular was its combination of sturdy build quality and good optical performance at an attractive selling price. The 11-20mm feels similarly robust, and features a weather-seal ring on its mounting plate, as fitted to the Nikon 10-24mm DX lens. The Tokina certainly has better build quality than Nikon’s newer,…

Measuring just 71x86mm and weighing in at 430g, this Sigma is the smallest lens in the group. It’s only slightly heavier than the competing Tamron 18-200mm, despite having a metal rather than plastic mounting plate. The Sigma is also significantly smaller and lighter than the Nikon 18-200mm, despite matching it for zoom range. A space-saving ultrasonic motor helps to shed a few ounces, but the focus ring rotates during AF. Three aspherical elements help reduce the size, while three SLD (Special Low Dispersion) elements minimize fringing. Sigma’s Super Multi-layer Coating is applied to reduce ghosting and flare. The stabilizer has an effectiveness of about four stops and features auto panning detection. Performance Sharpness isn’t as impressive as Sigma’s 18-300mm at matching focal lengths, but it’s still good and cornersharpness is…

A shortest focal length of 18mm has become a standard in DX format superzooms, but this Tamron bucks the trend. Shaving off a couple of millimetres gives an ‘effective’ wide-angle focal of 24mm in full-frame terms, compared with the 27mm of other superzooms. There’s no holding back at the long end either, with an effective 450mm max zoom. Handling is more refined than with any of the other Sigma and Tamrons on test. Unusually for an ultrasonic motor-based lens, the focus ring doesn’t rotate during AF and enables full-time manual override. Optical highlights include LD (Low Dispersion), XR (eXtra Refractive) and ASL (Hybrid Aspherical) elements, along with advanced multi-coatings. Performance The extra zoom comes with some compromises. Centre-sharpness drops off through the zoom range and corner-sharpness is uninspiring at all…

The extra quality enabled by an FX rather than DX format camera comes at the cost of extra weight and price. It may seem counter-productive to hang a superzoom lens on the front of such a camera, but it helps you react to wide-angle and telephoto shooting ops without needing to swap lenses. With a bigger image circle required to fill a full-frame sensor, this lens has a larger diameter and weighs in at 800g. Tamron also markets a 28-300mm FX format lens, but the Nikon isn’t much more expensive yet has a faster aperture rating at the long end, a faster and quieter ring-type (rather than motor-driven) ultrasonic AF system, and a dual-mode optical stabilizer. It’s the same VR II generation fitted to the Nikon 18-200mm lens on test,…

Your Nikon is packed to the back buttons with clever tech that makes taking images a doddle: auto exposure gives you perfectly balanced pictures; autofocus ensures pin-sharp shots; your Speedlite calculates precisely the right burst of flash to light your subject; and in-camera processing generates ready-to-print photos, straight out of the camera. But to leave everything to your Nikon is to cede creative control, so we’re encouraging you to embrace manual photography. It’ll not only give you a better understanding of the science behind taking pictures, but you’ll produce artful images that would be otherwise impossible. The cityscapes our Apprentice shot under the watchful eye of pro Jordan Banks are a case in point. By embracing Manual mode and filters, he took amazing creative photographs of the nation’s capital. With…

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The Mission – See how setting the hyperfocal distance can maximize depth of field Time – One hour Skill level – Intermediate Kit needed – Lens with a focus distance scale Setting the focus distance of a lens to the hyperfocal distance will give you the greatest sharpness from infinity to the closest possible point in a scene. This makes it a very popular option with landscape photographers, when they want to retain sharpness in everything from foreground areas to the distant horizon. Two principal factors of hyperfocal distance are the focal length of the lens and its aperture setting. With shorter focal lengths or zoom settings, the hyperfocal distance becomes shorter. You’ll therefore be able to get more foreground sharpness when using a wide-angle lens. The hyperfocal distance also…

The Mission – Merge a set of focus stack images in Affinity Photo Time – 15 minutes Skill level – Beginner Kit needed – Affinity Photo When shooting close-up macro subjects the depth of field (DoF) will be very shallow, and the plane of sharpness may only stretch a few millimetres across the subject, even when using narrower apertures. So it can be a struggle to record a sharp close-up from front-to-back. If you need total sharpness, then try focus stacking. This involves taking a series of shots using a tripod-mounted camera, adjusting the focus ring after each frame so that a different part of the scene is in focus. Once done, the sharp parts can be merged into one superdetailed macro photo. Affinity Photo offers a powerful focus stacking…

The Mission – Learn several ways to frame foreground interest in photos Time – Two hours Skill level – Intermediate Kit needed – Tripod – Wide-angle lens – Six- or 10-stop ND filter In the last issue we looked at how to cheat at composition by – among other things – faking a foreground. This issue, we redress the balance by exploring natural ways to compose a scene. Over the next few pages we’ll explore a few techniques for making use of foreground interest in landscape photography. While in search of the perfect foreground we’ll encounter core landscape skills like depth of field control, long exposures and focus stacking. But what exactly is foreground interest, and why is it so useful? We may come across a scene – perhaps some…

Camera: Nikon D750 Lens: Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 Art Exposure: 118 secs, f/11, ISO100 Mission: Shoot a series of images while on a road trip all the way around Iceland Photographer: Lee Gale Location: Iceland Kit used: D750, Nikon 16-35mm f/4, Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 Art, Sigma 28mm f/1.4 Art, Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 Sport, various LEE filters, Manfrotto 190 Go Tripod Website: www.leegalephotography.co.uk I’ve always enjoyed taking photos, but I really got into photography back in 2013 when I needed to fill a creative void within myself. There’s been a passion for creating visual art ever since I was a kid, but I could never quite find my place. After trying my hand at being a musician for 15 years, I found photography, and it just seemed like the missing piece of…

The Brides of Horror is an ongoing passion, which has so far been going strong for five years now. The project spawned from my love horror films, something that’s been present since my early childhood. Most of the iconic characters that I’ve always admired have been from this genre and I’m particularly a fan of the Bride of Frankenstein and other female horror icons. In my work I shoot portraiture of people as horror characters, zombies and vampires – The Brides of Horror just seemed like a natural progression of this. It probably won’t ever be completed, as I just keep getting new ideas to shoot more. I work in a large workshop, or studio area, where I can set up my own style of lighting – I can also…

A joy of any interchangeable lens camera is that you can fit the right kind of optic for the task at hand. The drawback is that a big bag of lenses can eat into your baggage allowance when travelling, as well as weighing you down when you’re out. A superzoom aims to satisfy your travel needs, offering everything from wide-angle coverage to serious telephoto reach, without the need to carry additional lenses, or to swap the lens that’s fitted to your camera body. The majority of superzooms on the market are designed for DX format cameras, and typically start with an 18mm focal length. The Tamron 16-300mm is an exception, giving even wider coverage. The long end of the zoom range is a more moveable feast, with various other lenses…

The above series of photographs shows the approximate difference in wide-angle potential between the varying focal lengths of 16mm and 18mm on an APS-C format body, as well as the longest competing zoom settings of 200mm, 300mm and 400mm. On a full-frame body, the Nikon AF-S 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens gives just roughly the same zoom range an 18-200mm lens allows for APS-C format cameras.…

The larger of Sigma’s two lenses on test, this one is only 16mm longer at its minimum zoom, but has a focal length that stretches to 300mm. The length also stretches more at the long end of the zoom and has more girth, with a 72mm filter thread. In all, it’s not such a compact lens, and is 36 per cent heavier at 585g. The construction employs Sigma’s TSC (Thermally Stable Composite) material that’s resistant to size fluctuations during temperature changes. Again, there’s a metal mounting plate but no weather-seal ring. As with other Global Vision lenses, it’s compatible with Sigma’s optional USB Dock. Upgraded glass sees the inclusion of four top-grade FLD (‘Fluorite’ Low Dispersion) elements along with one SLD element. Performance Typical of motor-based ultrasonic systems, the one…

Following on from the Tamron 16-300mm, which offered an extra-wide viewing angle, Tamron’s latest superzoom goes extra-long instead. Stretching to 400mm, it beats every other DX format superzoom on the market for telephoto reach. Aiming to keep the size down and the quality up, the optical design includes two moulded glass aspherical elements and one hybrid aspherical, along with three low-dispersion elements. Autofocus is driven by an HLD (High/Low toque-modulated Drive) motor, which is quick and quiet. But, as with the Tamron 18-200mm and both Sigmas on test, the focus ring rotates during autofocus and there’s no full-time manual override. Build quality is good and the construction features weather-seals, including one on the metal mounting plate. Performance It’s a big ask to deliver good sharpness at 400mm from such a…

With 16-300mm, 18-300mm and 18-400mm lenses packing the superzoom sector of the market, Nikon’s ageing 18-200mm certainly doesn’t win any prizes for outright zoom range. Compared with all of the Sigma and Tamron DX format lenses on test, however, it has a more refined ring-type ultrasonic autofocus system, a dual-mode optical stabilizer, better handling, and delivers superior image quality. Since our last superzoom Big Test, the price of the Nikon 18-200mm lens has also dropped from around £650 to £429, making it much better value for money. If you want a bigger zoom range than the Nikon 18-200mm can offer, the Sigma 18-300mm gives the best overall performance at the most reasonable price. Nikon’s 18-300mm gives relatively lacklustre image quality and is much more expensive to buy. The Tamron 16-300mm…

There’s no better way to showcase nightscape shots than with a CEWE PHOTOBOOK with photographic paper. Printed on luxurious 300gsm Fujifilm paper, and available in Classic, Gloss or a Matte finishes, photographic paper has a wider colour range compared to traditional digital photo paper, and is also heavier, with a textured feel that oozes quality when held in the hands. The Gloss photographic paper option has a UV coating that adds a real feeling of depth to the image and brings out vibrant colours beautifully, while the Matte finish uses a chemical development process, rather than printing, to produce a crisp high-resolution image with smooth gradients. Whichever you choose, the result is a faithful reproduction of your photographs at a much higher resolution than digital printing can achieve. It is…

Regular N-Photo contributor James is a pro photographer and award-winning journalist. To see more of his glorious portfolio, head over to his website at www.jdwpaterson.myportfolio.com Cameras are more intelligent than ever these days, but despite all the advancements of recent times one thing still holds true – to get the most out of them, you need to take full control. By eschewing auto metering and tech, we can become better photographers. We can get to the heart of concepts like exposure, depth of field, focusing, lighting and processing. Of course, auto modes have their place. The results can be just as good when you let the camera take charge, and at times the speed and flexibility you get with auto features is essential. But if you can break away from them,…

The Mission – Capture creative landscape reflections in puddles Time – Two hours Skill level – Intermediate Kit needed – Wide-angle or standard lens – Puddles – Tripod (optional) Don’t let a little rain stop you from getting out and about with your camera! Just after a heavy rain shower can be the perfect time to get out and capture an environmental portrait with a difference – by using the reflections found in puddles as the subject for a fun photo project. The mirror-like reflections in the water surface enable you to explore an alternative perspective, and flipping the image, so that the reflection becomes the main point of focus, gives a surreal quality to your shot. Using your DSLR gives you control over how the image is going to…

The Mission – Create a cut-out with the Pen tool and drop it into a new composite image Time – 30 minutes Skill level – Intermediate Kit needed – Photoshop CC It might be one of the trickier tools on offer in Photoshop, but the Pen tool rewards those who persevere with a level of control like no other. It works by letting you plot a series of anchor points, each of which spouts control handles that let you determine the curvature of the line. At first it might seem complicated and unwieldy, but with a little practice the controls become second nature. In this tutorial we’ll use the Pen tool to trace around a car then, once done, we’ll use a layer mask to hide its original background and…

1 Wide-angle lens If you want to include foreground interest then you need a lens that’s wide enough to fit in both nearby details and far-off scenery. In this case, I used a 16-35mm. Here it lets me emphasize the powerful line that runs from the rocks just at my feet towards the imposing castle, far off in the distance. 2 Neutral density filters A set of Neutral Density filters are a useful addition to your kitbag at any seaside locations. They allow you to extend your shutter speed to several seconds and blur the movement of water and clouds. This results in some gorgeously creamy bodies of water. We used a six- and 10-stop ND filter on our shoot here. 3 Distant subject Our distant subject – Bamburgh castle…

we live in strange times. I’ve just seen a small town in Southern California brought to a grinding halt by wildflowers. Well, it was actually 50,000 selfie stickwielding tourists that descended upon the area to see the superbloom that brought the chaos. With a population of only 66,000, Lake Elsinore is just off Interstate 15 and the hills on the other side of the motorway are covered this year with orange, yellow and purple flowers after one of the heaviest winter rainfalls in years – ending a five-year drought. When I shot this area two years ago I thought it was great, but this is off the scale. It’s so intense it can be seen from space! Before, only the canyons were covered in carpets of California poppies, but as…

1. Bluebell Queen BY DAVID SHELLEY This is a fabulous outdoor portrait, subtly balancing daylight with David’s Godox AD200 studio flash head in a softbox to gently light Charlie, his model. Her clothing has been carefully chosen to match the bluebells that surround her, and David used a blue smoke grenade to enable him to capture the beautiful sunrays streaming through the trees, adding to the atmosphere of the shot. Camera: Nikon D810 Lens: 15-30mm f/2.8 Exposure: 1/200 sec, f/10, ISO64 2. Can Can BY DAVID BOAM To capture the erratic and constant movement of the dancer, David used a combination of continuous and strobe lighting. When balanced properly and using a correct exposure, the movement is captured as a blur, which is frozen at durations throughout the exposure with…

I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with photographers who want or need to work super simple, fast, carry very little and still have a good result with flash work. Being at the The Photography Show recently in Birmingham, UK, I had the pleasure of conducting a couple of photo walks with fellow shooters, and creating a couple of scenarios that are of the aforementioned ‘super simple’ type. I’ve really come to revere my little Ezybox Speed-Lite 2 Plus softbox… Let’s just call it the Speed-Lite 2, okay? It’s selfserving to say, as I had a hand in designing it with Lastolite, but it is the best damn little light shaper I have ever used. Witness Amber Tutton [Before], in the deep woods – okay, it’s a nature…

If you’re going to splash out on a ‘holiday lens’, it makes sense to keep the price down and buy something that you’re not going to be too precious about. With the least expensive price tag in the group, the Tamron 18-200mm is low-cost and, at 400g, it’s also very lightweight. As the second edition of Tamron’s 18-200mm lens, it adds VC (Vibration Compensation) and boasts an upgraded autofocus system. It’s still based on an electric motor but with an integrated gear train that runs more quietly than the original lens. As with the Sigma lenses, the focus ring rotates during autofocus and doesn’t enable full-time manual override. The lens is 30g lighter than its predecessor, despite being a bit larger. This is due to the fitment of a plastic…

A subtle refresh of Nikon’s original 18-200mm lens, this one get a zoom lock switch but keeps the same optical design and image stabilizer. For image quality and performance, it’s our favourite Nikon superzoom. There are three ED (Extra-low Dispersion) elements in the optical path and the second-generation VR system has switchable Normal and Active modes. The first of these includes automatic panning detection, while the second counteracts increased physical vibrations. Handling benefits from a smoothaction zoom ring and a ring-type ultrasonic autofocus system. It also manages to be quick and quiet, while enabling the focus ring to remain stationary during autofocus, as well as offering full-time manual override. Performance In our tests, sharpness proved better than in the Nikon 18-300mm, throughout the albeit more limited zoom range. Overall image…

Nikon’s first 18-300mm lens was a hefty affair that was less than ideal for a travel or holiday lens. This is the second one to come to market and, while it has a narrower aperture rating at the long end, of f/6.3 instead of f/5.6, it’s much more manageable, smaller and lighter than the older lens. The optical path includes three aspherical elements and three ED elements. Build quality feels pretty good overall and, as with most Nikon lenses, the metal mounting plate comes complete with a weather-seal ring. In other respects, however, the lens feels rather basic compared with the Nikon 18-200mm on test. There’s no focus distance scale, no additional ‘Active’ VR mode, and the hood is sold separately as an optional extra. Performance It’s a game of…

1. Carmen Norman EARLY MORNING AT TWEWT TARN This gorgeous image of Tewet Tarn catches the natural beauty of this spot perfectly. Carmen’s capture of this dreamy scene almost looks as if it was crafted by a delicate brush, as opposed to a camera. 2. Joey Terrill ORCHID FOCUS STACK Orchids are excellent subjects for focus stacking, and this image required 51 frames to be merged together to create this single photograph. The finished product is a delicate yet striking composition. 3. Waldemar Matusik PUFFIN It’s that time of year: prime puffin photography season! This handsome-looking puffin was taken at Isle of May, which Waldemar describes as “heaven for wildlife photography” – and we’re inclined to believe him! 4. Lorenzo Montezemolo GREENLAND DOG A pack of Grønlandshunden (Greenland dogs) lived…