Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i N-Photo: the Nikon magazine

Photo The Photography Show will be at Stand E32, Hall 5, Birmingham NEC, 14-17 March 2020 Jetting off all over the world to exotic far-flung places to take photographs and getting paid for it sounds like a dream job. And it is. Jordan Banks explains how he makes his living from travel photography – and what’s more, how you can too! We also jetted off to the French Alps, where adventure sports photographer Dan Milner taught our Apprentice how to take adrenaline-packed shots of skiers and snowboarders, both on- and off-piste. Pro music photographer Ross Halfin speaks to us about his amazing career, shooting some of the biggest names in metal, punk and rock, and why he believes black and white stands the test of time. The innovative D780 enters…

Above My Expectations GARETH MON JONES After a long and sketchy hike up Y Lliwedd on one of the flanks of Snowdon in North Wales, while trying to shoot the Milky Way, Gareth finally got above the temperature inversion that had hampered his shoot for much of the night. Camera: Nikon D810 Lens: 24-70mm f/2.8 Exposure: 30 secs, f/8, ISO250 The Supercell DENNIS OSWALD Dennis shot this image on his trip to Tornado Alley, USA. In the afternoon, some storms fired along the dry line and he managed to get in front of the most promising one. After a while, the storm created a good shape and frequent cloud-to-ground lightning was present. Camera: Nikon D800E Lens: 16-35mm f/4 Exposure: 1/6 sec, f/9, ISO50 Black Rock STEVE CARR This is New…

The Mission – Use a monopod to support a heavy setup and avoid fatigue Time – 30 minutes Skill level – Beginner Kit needed – Monopod – Telephoto lens WATCH ON YOUR DISC OR ONLINE www.bit.ly/NPhoto109 Many motorsport photographers swear by shooting handheld, and there’s no denying it offers you greater freedom of movement. But racedays are long and often involve a good deal of walking – it’s no wonder hours of holding lenses can take its toll. Practise using a monopod though, and you’ll have a viable solution if you feel fatigued. With the motorsport season upon us, we visited Castle Combe Circuit with a Nikon D800 and Sigma Sports 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM. The lens’s excellent Optical Stabilizer meant handholding was a cinch, but a combined weight…

WATCH ON YOUR DISC OR ONLINE www.bit.ly/NPhoto109 Where to get Lightroom Mobile A POWERFUL EDITING APP THAT’S FREE TO DOWNLOAD! – Edit photos on the go with the Lightroom Mobile app and have your changes transition seamlessly to your PC. It’s available for iPad, iPhone and Android phones (not tablets yet), and can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play for free. Lightroom has a desktop and mobile version. These let you organize and edit images with ease, from the comfort of your desktop or while out and about. Any changes you make to a shot in either version of Lightroom will be synced via the cloud (which stores a backup of your camera Raw files). This gives you the freedom to work where and when you want,…

Q Having switched from a DSLR to a Z 6, I’m a bit confused about the different shutter options and when to use them. Can you help? Mick McLellan A The Z 6 and Z 7 offer three shutter options, namely fully mechanical, electronic front curtain, and fully electronic. Fully mechanical is generally best, but ‘shutter shock’ can degrade sharpness, especially when using macro lenses at shutter speeds of around 1/4 to 1/60 sec. Electronic front curtain shutter reduces shock, but the maximum available shutter speed drops to 1/2000 sec. The default ‘Auto’ mode selects the most appropriate option depending on the shooting conditions. The ‘Silent Photography’ option in the shooting menu engages the fully electronic shutter. This is good for macro photography as there’s absolutely no shutter movement at…

Without delving too much into stereotype, Ross Halfin has that worn, raspy voice of someone who has been around the block and back in the company of rock stars and roadies for a decade longer than most of us would deem sensible. Which is exactly what he’s been up to since walking out of art college in the mid-1970s to photograph The Who in concert. There followed the gobbing punk of the Sex Pistols and The Clash, topped up by regular assaults of the ear-bursting, high voltage rock ’n’ roll of AC/DC. The tours have been as far removed from a soothing drive-time playlist as you can imagine, with cross-country convoys led by the likes of Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Aerosmith, Metallica and Kiss. Incredibly, Ross’s…

1. Old Pier Pylons DAN MIRANDA Shot at Princes Pier, Port Melbourne, Australia, Dan has caught this pleasing frame of some old wooden posts, with lush colours. If you look closely, you can see some old fishing line stuck around the wood. 2. Jumping Gentoos KEVIN FOHER Kevin says that this image was photographed on a very memorable trip to Antarctica. Here we can see a trio of eager gentoo penguins jumping from an iceberg in Port Charcot, Antarctica. 3. Latona and Her Children SUE SCOTT This shot of the famous sculpture, housed in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, wonderfully captures the subtle nuances of the piece. Sue has balanced the light and shadows delightfully.…

Bob Books £29.99, 26 pages www.bobbooks.co.uk Bob Books offers four different options for creating your photo book. We tried the Bob Designer Software and the Online Book Creator. It took us a little while to wrap our heads around the system, but we grew to like it. You add as many images as you want to the page, then choose from a few different layouts to get an aesthetically pleasing look. A common theme across many of the photo books we’ve reviewed is over-saturation of the front cover image, but Bob Books was the biggest culprit. Our original photo was graded with warm oranges, however, the final cover print had an eye-popping tangerine vibe. We later discovered that this may have been caused by Bob Books’ automatic image enhancement feature.…

£300/$349 There are signs that Nikon might be phasing out this budget telephoto zoom. New ones are becoming hard to find in the retail channel, which is a shame, although there are used options aplenty. Its main attraction is its clever retractable design, which makes it an ideal travel companion to recent editions of the similarly small, lightweight, and retractable 18-55mm VR kit lens. Tipping the scales at a mere 300g, it’s by far the lightest lens in this group and, when retracted, its dinky 71x83mm form factor makes it eminently pocketable. The flip side is that the lens only reaches a max focal length of 200mm, but that still equates to 300mm in full-frame terms. Further attractions include an ED element and 4-stop VR. Performance The ultrasonic autofocus system…

£379/$347 Like the AF-S 55-200mm for DX format DSLRs, this new Z-mount lens for the mirrorless Z 50 has a retractable design. At 74x110mm and 405g, it’s about a third longer and heavier than its AF-S sibling, but stretches longer to a 250mm rather than 200mm maximum focal length, albeit with a narrower f/6.3 aperture rating at the long end. The lens has a particularly powerful 5-stop optical VR system built in, as well as a virtually silent, yet super-speedy, pulse stepping motor autofocus system. There’s no ED glass in the optical line-up here and, as with the other DX format Nikon lenses on test, the mounting plate is made from weight-saving plastic. If you want it you’ll need to buy the hood separately as an optional extra. Performance Sharpness…

Being a Nikon user in 2020 is all about choice. The Big N might have turned up fashionably late to the mirrorless party, but in a year and a half it’s almost completely transformed its camera line-up. Whether you’ve chosen to embrace the Z mount, stick with the F mount or work with both, it looks like you’re covered for the foreseeable future. Since late 2018 we’ve been treated to the company’s first full-frame mirrorless camera twice (kind of), its first APS-C mirrorless camera and even a DSLR with mirrorless technology (more on that later). If that wasn’t enough, video folks can now make use of an impressive Raw video output upgrade for the Z 6 and Z 7, and thanks to a firmware update both cameras are now CFexpress…

Great reasons to subscribe now! ✔ Vanguard VEO GO 34M Messenger Bag An ideal compact and stylish messenger bag for a small Nikon DSLR or Z-system mirrorless with tripod and accessories ✔ Great savings Subscribe for 12 months and get your issues delivered to your door, plus this great Vanguard camera bag worth £69.99 ✔ Free Video Disc Each issue, you’ll receive a Video Disc packed with fantastic photo projects Option 1 6 month subscription £27 • 6 issues of N-Photo print edition delivered Option 2 Regular subscription £56 • 13 issues of N-Photo print edition delivered • Vanguard VEO GO 34M Messenger Bag • Expert PDF handbook • 20% off entry to The Photography Show Option 3 Premium subscription £69 • 13 issues of N-Photo print edition delivered •…

The Mission – Upgrade your Nikon’s firmware to the latest version Time – 30 minutes Skill level – Beginner Kit needed – Computer – Memory card and reader WATCH ON YOUR DISC OR ONLINE www.bit.ly/NPhoto109 Just as your computer’s (or phone’s or tablet’s) functionality is governed by its operating system (OS), your Nikon’s firmware affects how your camera controls. And in the same way that updating the OS to the latest version can give your Mac or PC a new lease of life, ensuring your camera’s firmware is up to date can endow it with powerful new functions. That’s exactly what Nikon has done with its mirrorless Z 6 and Z 7, with the 2.20 update adding some new features. It improves low-light performance, adds Raw video support, enables the…

The Mission – Replace a sky with selections and masks in Affinity Photo Time – 15 minutes Skill level – Intermediate Kit needed – Affinity Photo WATCH ON YOUR DISC OR ONLINE www.bit.ly/NPhoto109 Whether you want to drop in a new sky to improve a landscape or blend two shots, Affinity has excellent tools for compositing images. The first stage in any compositing project is to isolate part of an image, like our sky. This is a complicated shape, and selecting it freehand could take hours. But, thankfully, Affinity has a tool that does it in seconds. The Selection Brush has a ‘Snap to edges’ feature that helps it seek out changes in colour or contrast. So, by painting the sky here with the tool, it’ll snap on to the…

WATCH ON YOUR DISC OR ONLINE www.bit.ly/NPhoto109 The Mission – Shoot and edit a smoke-filled portrait Time – Two hours Skill level – Advanced Kit needed – Speedlight – Incense stick – Tripod – Black backdrop – Wireless flash trigger – Photoshop There are three parts to this fun smoky portrait project. The first two stages involve shooting the smoke and portrait. Capturing the portrait is very simple, we just need to photograph a person side-on in profile against a clean, light, backdrop. In fact, you might already have a photograph on your hard drive that would be perfect for this project (if you just want to test out your Photoshop skills, you can use the portrait we’ve already supplied). As for the smoke images, if you like, you can…

Q I want to upgrade from a DX to an FX format DSLR. What’s the best secondhand option for performance at a keen price? Ben Chivers A Our experts at MPB recommend… The Nikon D750 has effectively been superseded by the new D780, but is still an outstanding DSLR and a superb all-rounder. It’s an excellent secondhand buy and we usually have plenty in stock. MPB offers a next day delivery service & six-month warranty on all used equipment mpb.com Nikon D750 THE D750 PACKS A LOT OF TOP-NOTCH TECHNOLOGY INTO A USER-FRIENDLY FULL-FRAME CAMERA BODY RELEASED: 2014 PRICE NEW: £1179/$1496 BUY AT MPB.COM TODAY: ‘Excellent’ £779/$954 ‘Good’ £709/$849 The D750 packs a 24.3Mp image sensor and EXPEED 4 processor that combine to deliver spectacular full-frame quality. Picture quality is…

£2199/$2300 The Nikon D780 is staging something of a counterattack against the advancing hordes of mirrorless cameras. It takes crucial mirrorless technology, from Nikon’s own Z 6, to produce a kind of hybrid camera that offers the best of both worlds – an optical through-the-lens viewfinder, with the high-performance Live View AF and video features of a mirrorless camera. But what’s the beef with DSLRs vs mirrorless cameras? Traditionally, DSLRs offer optical viewing, but compromised (slow) Live View autofocus. Mirrorless cameras offer fast, hybrid on-sensor phase-detection AF, but compromise with an electronic viewfinder, though many see this as an advantage. Now Nikon is using its phase-detection on-sensor Dual Pixel CMOS AF system to give the D780 the same Live View performance as its own mirrorless bodies. All along, there’s been…

£329/$397 This is the stabilized edition of the cheaper, more basic DX 70-300mm lens that kicked off our Big Test. The optical design is essentially the same, based on 14 elements in 10 groups, along with the inclusion of an ED (Extra-low Dispersion) element. Neither of the lenses have an AF scale nor any onboard switches. Selection of auto/manual focus and VR on/off are therefore relegated to in-camera menus, the latter of which isn’t available on some older cameras, so VR remains active all the time. The look and feel of the lens is well suited to Nikon’s more recent DX format DSLRs, and it’s small and lightweight for a 70-300mm lens, at 72x125mm and 414g. That’s 14g heavier than the non-VR edition, pinpointing the weight of the VR unit.…

£524/$597 Nikon’s original AF 70-300mm ED from the days of 35mm film photography was something of a legend, and the AF-S VR edition that followed was one of our all-time favourite budget tele-zooms. That’s since been superseded by this latest AF-P version, which has a revised optical layout and replaces old-school tech with a pulse stepping motor AF system, electromagnetically controlled diaphragm and an uprated 4.5-stop optical VR system, which comes with Normal and Sport modes. The AF is almost silent, while the Sport VR mode makes it easier to track moving subjects, as well as avoiding any slowdown in continuous shooting rates. The electromagnetically controlled diaphragm also enables more consistent exposure accuracy in rapid-fire continuous shooting. Performance In lab tests, the Nikon loses out to the Tamron 100-400mm at…

£699/$799 A third heavier and much larger than Tamron’s 70-300mm lens on test, this lens goes toe-to-toe with Sigma’s 100-400mm. Both lenses have ring-type ultrasonic AF systems and 4-stop stabilizers, with switchable panning modes. A ‘Limit’ position on the AF/MF focus mode switch enables you to limit the range of AF either side of the current focus distance. As with the Sigma, an optional USB docking station is available, but the Tamron lacks additional Custom modes available via a switch on the lens barrel. Build quality feels robust and sturdy, and the Tamron features weather seals and a fluorine coating on its front element. The optical path includes an LD (Low Dispersion) element and nano-structure coatings to minimize ghosting and flare. Performance Solid performance in all areas ranges from fast…

After six weeks of bright sunshine the snow had come down heavily the night before the scheduled shoot, a sudden snowstorm covering the pistes with a fresh layer of powder. But the forecast for the day ahead was mixed. “We might just be lucky,” Dan explained to Michelle as they headed up towards the alpine peaks in a gondola to the ski resort above Les Houches. “For the moment, the sky is looking a brilliant blue. Whether that lasts for half an hour or half a day is anyone’s guess at this point. When it comes to the weather, anything can happen in the mountains.” Accompanying the professional adventure-sports photographer and his Apprentice was Oscar Jones, their model and athlete for the day. Raised in France but born to British…

Jordan Banks Jordan Banks is a pro landscape and travel photographer who produces images for a wide variety of commercial and editorial clients, as well as running travel workshops worldwide. For more information: www.jordanbanksphoto.com Most travel, lifestyle and landscape photographers dream of getting an assignment to a beautiful and idyllic far-flung destination to shoot for a magazine, tourist board or brand, but it’s not always that easy. There is no sure-fire way to nab this sort of assignment, but there are a few tips and tricks I’ve learnt over the years that may just help swing the scales in your favour – not just to get that dream assignment in the first place, but to keep them coming, by working smart before you set off and while on location. You have…

The Mission – Take stunning macros on a shoestring budget Time – One hour Skill level – Intermediate Kit needed – Reversing ring – Close-up filter – Extension tubes WATCH ON YOUR DISC OR ONLINE www.bit.ly/NPhoto109 Great photographers can make the most of any camera and lens, but they can’t work miracles. Some genres or techniques require certain items of kit and there’s really nothing you can do to get around it. Macro is one of those genres. If you can’t focus close enough to your subject, it’s impossible to capture a decent close-up image. However, if you’ve never tried macro before, shelling out on a specialist macro lens before you’ve even left the starting blocks might seem like a gamble. If only there was a way to shoot macro…

The Mission – Apply sharpening and noise reduction with Lightroom to enhance image detail Time – 10 minutes Skill level – Beginner Kit needed – Adobe CC subscription with Photoshop and Lightroom WATCH ON YOUR DISC OR ONLINE www.bit.ly/NPhoto109 Sharpening is an essential part of editing, but it often leads to confusion over what tools to use, when to sharpen and how much to apply. As such, it can be helpful to think of sharpening as part of a wider workflow, as we’ll show. Along the way we’ll perform initial sharpening and noise reduction in Lightroom. Then take our image into Photoshop for a little retouching to remove the distracting leaf, before we round-trip back to Lightroom for final sharpening. Our workflow involves two distinct sharpening stages, one at the…

Nikon D6 £6299/$6499 www.nikon.co.uk For hobbyist photographers, the headline specifications of the Nikon D6 might sound positively ordinary. It has a 20.8Mp full-frame sensor with fewer megapixels than even a basic DSLR or mirrorless, yet comes with a price tag ten times higher! But the Nikon D6 is built for environments tougher than most regular photographers will ever face. It’s primarily designed to capture ultra-high-speed action, often in the most difficult weather and lighting conditions, with utter reliability and precision. Outwardly, the Nikon D6 resembles its predecessor, the Nikon D5, with a tall body that incorporates a high-capacity battery slung underneath and a dual control layout for both horizontal and vertical shooting. The autofocus system is brand new. The Nikon D5 had a 153-point AF system with a mixture of…

N-Photo Nikon-fit lens buyers’ guide! http://bit.ly/npbuyers Buy a Nikon DSLR or mirrorless camera with a standard zoom lens, as featured in last month’s Big Test, and you’ll enjoy everything from a generously wide viewing angle to short telephoto reach. Unfortunately, the emphasis is generally on the word ‘short’ and you’ll often need a longer focal length to cover the distance when shooting sport and wildlife, or pretty much any other scenario in which you can’t get as close to the subject as you might like. It’s no surprise, then, that a budget telephoto zoom is usually the first extra lens that most of us buy for our kit. A traditional favourite for full-frame cameras is the trusty 70-300mm zoom, but this also makes a great choice for DX format cameras,…

£279/$347 Nikon’s own AF-P DX 70-300mm is the least expensive lens in the group, but it’s the only one that lacks optical VR (Vibration Reduction). Considering that the effective maximum focal length on a DX format body is 450mm, this makes it a real challenge to get consistently sharp handheld shots, unless you’re under bright sunlight and can bank on shutter speeds of 1/500 sec or more. Apart from the lack of VR, this lens is identical to the other AF-P DX 70-300mm on test. They were launched simultaneously in 2016, as Nikon’s first telephoto zooms to feature AF-P stepping motor AF systems. The two lenses look almost identical apart from the addition of a ‘VR’ legend on the stabilized edition. Performance Given that the two lenses have essentially the…

£329/$449 Unlike Sigma, Tamron still markets a super-cheap non-stabilized 70-300mm zoom but the Di VC USD edition is better in every way. Both are FX-compatible, but this one has a more exotic optical path that features LD (Low Dispersion) and XLD (eXtra Low Dispersion) elements, and a better AF system that’s based on a ring-type ultrasonic actuator rather than a basic electric motor. Unlike in the cheaper lens, focusing is internal, so the front element doesn’t rotate. And finally, it boasts the all-important addition of image stabilization, or VC (Vibration Compensation) as Tamron calls it. Launched at the beginning of the last decade, this was actually the first Tamron lens to feature ring-type ultrasonic autofocus, or USD (Ultrasonic Silent Drive). Performance Overall performance and image quality are very good for…

£679/$609 Sigma has dropped its 70-300mm lenses and replaced them with this 100-400mm zoom from the Contemporary section of its Global Vision line-up. The lens measures 86x182mm and weighs 1160g, making it shorter but heavier than the Tamron. Build quality feels robust and includes weather-seals, but there’s no optional tripod mounting ring. The optical path includes four SLD (Special Low Dispersion) elements, AF is of the fast yet whisper-quiet ring-type ultrasonic variety, and the 4-stop image stabilizer has a switchable panning mode, for panning in any orientation. Dual-mode switchable AF can give priority to AF or manual override, there’s a short/long AF range limiter switch, and two switchable ‘custom’ modes, which you can set up using Sigma’s optional USB Dock. Performance The lens didn’t score well in our lab tests…

Naturally, when choosing a ‘budget telephoto zoom’, price is an important consideration as well as performance. Nikon’s latest FX format 70-300mm lens ticks all the right boxes, especially now that the price in the UK has dropped by about a third since its original launch. It’s well built, delivers ultra-fast and silent autofocus, highly effective image stabilization and excellent image quality, while also being fairly compact and lightweight to carry. Overall, it’s our top choice for both DX format and full-frame DSLRs, as well as for Z 6 and Z 7 mirrorless cameras via an FTZ mount adapter. The Nikon Z DX 50-250mm VR is the perfect tool for the DX format mirrorless Z 50. If you’ve traded up from a DX format SLR to a full-frame camera, you might…