Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2021 i N-Photo: the Nikon magazine

Alone JADE LV Jade took this shot while in search of the greatest views on Mount Gongga, China and probably didn’t have to look much further than this awe-inspiring vista of heavenly hues. The human element adds a powerful sense of scale. Camera: Nikon D750 Lens: 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3 Exposure: 1/100 sec, f/8, ISO50 Street Food GARY CUMMINS Snowy nights in Toronto make for great photographic opportunities, as demonstrated in this wonderfully atmospheric shot of a lone food stall. Even the most mundane of subjects can make for captivating imagery if you know how to make the most of what you have. Camera: Nikon D810 Lens: 24-70mm f/2.8 Exposure: 1/500 sec, f/2.8, ISO1600 Roberta ANTONINO BARONE This photograph was taken during an afternoon walk in the hinterland of Sicily at around…

It would seem there’s a never-ending sea of accessories on the market available for your Nikon, but there are two particular pieces of kit we can guarantee every photographer owns: the humble lens and body caps that came with your camera (unless, like everyone at N-Photo, you constantly lose them – though we have a solution for that!). So this month we thought we’d spice up our boring old lens caps and improve their functionality. Nikon DSLR and mirrorless users will have three caps in total: a lens cap that snaps onto the front of the lens to protect the front element, a rear lens cap that protects the rear lens element, and a body cap that goes on the camera mount to protect the inner workings and the delicate…

When seen close up, soap bubbles are a sight to behold. Vivid colours swirl across the surface in a slow, elegant dance that has to be seen to be believed. The play of colours and textures make them look almost like planets. As such, a bubble makes for a wonderful subject for a vibrant abstract photography project. What’s more, you’ll probably have everything you need for this around the house. We can make our bubbles using a straw and a homemade bubble mixture. With a little care, it’s possible to blow up the bubble and let it dangle from the end of the straw to form a glowing orb of colour. The lighting is key… We need a flash to freeze the motion of the swirls and pick out the…

My heart beats north of the Arctic Circle, and this series is about the immensity of the lonely fjords, the aesthetic of the glaciers, the majestic mountains, and the light of the far north. As an Austrian with Norwegian roots, I decided in 2013 to settle in Northern Norway for five years. The intent of this project is to show the amazing, beautiful and powerful forces that have created the magnificent nature of the Arctic. Light is the main subject. The barren landscape north of the Arctic Circle, with the magic of the Northern Lights, the midnight sun and the winter darkness, are locations that have enchanted me. The main actors are, above all, the rugged rock formations and striking mountain ranges of Svalbard, Nordland and Finnmark. If I like…

MISSION: Capture the most beautiful seascapes in the best weather and lighting conditions PHOTOGRAPHER: Jerome Colombo LOCATION: Dinard, Brittany, France KIT USED: Nikon Z 7, Nikon Z 14-30mm f/4 S, Z 24-70mm f/4 S, AF-S 70-200mm f/4G ED VR WEBSITE: www.jeromecolombo.com INSTAGRAM: @jeromecolombophotography I have always been drawn to photography. I got my first real camera at the age of 16, after my first summer job (a long time ago…). It was a Nikon EM, which I travelled with a lot! After practising different aspects of photography with other cameras, I developed a real passion for landscape photography. I began to read everything related to the subject and my life has revolved around this passion ever since. I am always looking for the most beautiful landscapes, most of the time…

Channels & Groups The Nikon CLS and AWL systems control off-camera Speedlights by using Channels and Groups. You need to set the commander unit and remote Speedlights to the same Channel (frequency) and Group (collection of Speedlights). Groups come into play with multiple off-camera flashes. You can assign a Group to each flash, then change the mode and power of each Group. CLS & AWL differences The setup is similar whether using CLS or AWL. With CLS, you have four Channels and three Groups, A, B and C. The AWL system works in a very similar manner. You still have Channels, which are labelled 5, 10 and 15, but now you have six groups, labelled A to F, with each group supporting up to 18 Speedlights. This gives a huge…

If you’re in need of the best ND filter, then you’re in luck. We’ve rounded up the best neutral density filters to help you find the perfect one for your needs. Landscape and cityscape photography can benefit hugely from long exposures, which will smooth out water, get rid of any wandering pedestrians and capture beautiful light trails. But photographers will often find that there’s too much light in their scene with a bare lens. Using a narrow aperture, such as f/22, and setting a low ISO can be enough to help you achieve a slow enough shutter speed. However, sometimes the best option is to artificially cut down the amount of light coming through the lens with a neutral density filter. But it’s not as simple as randomly picking a…

£427/$477 Compact, lightweight and affordable There’s a lot to be said for compact lenses that don’t take up too much room in your kit bag. This one fits the bill perfectly, weighing in at just 350g. That’s less than half the weight of the Samyang MF lens on test. It’s also refreshingly inexpensive for an own-brand Nikon lens. Even so, it has a high-quality optical path based on nine elements, although there are no aspherical or ED (Extra-low Dispersion) elements. Build quality is good, complete with a rubber weather-seal on the mounting plate and a fast, ring-type ultrasonic autofocus system. However, it’s the only lens in the group with seven diaphragm blades, rather than the much more usual nine that you tend to find in 85mm primes. Performance This lens…

£929/$1099 A hefty lens that’s big on quality Unusually large and heavy for an 85mm f/1.4 lens, this Sigma weighs in at 1130g. Typical of Sigma’s Art series, the design is firmly focused on image quality without any concessions to reducing size and weight. Despite not having an optical image stabilizer, the optical path is long and complex, based on 14 elements. These include an aspherical element at the rear and two SLD (Special Low Dispersion) elements, placed at the centre and to the front. Autofocus is based on a ring-type ultrasonic AF. Sigma’s Art lenses are all very well-built but, unlike some of them, this one adds weather-seals. Performance Autofocus is both fast and accurate. Sharpness across the image frame is impressive, even when wide-open where it eases ahead…

£1399/$1597 A lightweight of an f/1.4 lens This Nikon lens is much smaller and only about half the weight of the competing Sigma 85mm f/1.4, but much more expensive. It’s only natural to feel you’re not getting as much for your money. The optical path consists of 10 elements, compared with the Sigma’s 14, and the forward elements have a considerably smaller diameter. As with the Nikon AF-S 85mm f/1.8 lens on test, there are neither aspherical nor ED elements in the line-up. On the plus side, the Nikon’s relatively compact and lightweight build make it somewhat easier to manage. Autofocus is typically quick and quiet for a ring-type ultrasonic system, and the mount has a weather-seal ring. Nano Crystal Coat minimizes ghosting and flare. Performance Shooting wide-open, sharpness drops…

I think the biggest chore in photography is data storage and everything that goes along with it. I absolutely loathe it. I’ll admit to being a naturally untidy person (you should see my desk) and that has manifested itself digitally (you should see my desktop…). In hindsight, lockdown was the perfect opportunity to whip my data discipline into shape – and tidy my desk – but although I spent some time organizing files and folders, an incident that happened this month reminded me I’m not doing nearly enough to safeguard my photos. A lost cause… If I’m handed a physical photo I’ll cradle it delicately in my hands, minding not to crease the edges or get fingerprints on the glossy finish. So why would I treat digital data any different?…

With spring in its full throes, now is the perfect time to get outside and photograph flowers. To that end, floral photographer Andy Small reveals his tricks of the trade for shooting truly creative plant portraits. Our Apprentice heads to the not-so-mean streets of Bristol to document the gentrification of the once-notorious Stokes Croft area of the city under the watchful eye of acclaimed street photographer Colin Moody. In our Gear section, we take a look at eight lenses that are perfect for portraiture, combining a mid-telephoto focal length and wide aperture for a delightfully shallow depth of field and stunning bokeh. We also pick five ND filter systems for slowing your shutter in both screw-in circular and slot-in square formats. And, while we already know that the Nikon Z…

Chromatic aberration (also known as colour fringing) occurs when different wavelengths of light are refracted at different angles as they pass through a lens element. This prevents the wavelengths from arriving at the same focal plane as the camera’s sensor, and since different wavelengths represent different colours, this results in the lurid fringes we’d all rather avoid. This effect is amplified at both wider apertures and the longest or widest focal lengths of a zoom lens. Lens manufacturers work hard to avoid chromatic aberration and other distortions by using various mixes of lens elements and specialist lens elements, such as Nikon’s Super ED and Short-wavelength Refractive glass. But all lenses are susceptible to at least some chromatic aberration. You’re most likely to encounter noticeable colour fringing when shooting in high-contrast…

A corrupted photo file will usually send us photographers into a cold sweat, but as a visual effect it can result in a striking photograph. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to get the pixelated glitch look in Affinity Photo using a range of simple tools. We’ll begin here by making two copies of our layer then apply the Pixelate filter to each layer in varying amounts. This handy filter effect breaks our image up into a series of coloured blocks, each an average of the segment of image underneath. By utilizing blend modes we can combine the different pixelated versions of our picture. Once that’s done, we can select little slivers of the pixel blocks then shift them slightly to enhance the glitch effect in the image. Along…

1 Baseline exposure In Manual mode, choose the aperture, ISO and shutter speed to control the ambient light and give you a baseline canvas to build images from. 2 Fix ambient light Fire the shutter and review the image to ensure you have the ambient light as you want it, adjusting your camera exposure settings until happy. 3 Add depth Position your Speedlight. Try placing it at a 45 degree angle to your subject. This will create depth to the image, with a nice subtle fall off in the shadows. 4 Remote settings Set the Speedlight to Remote and ensure it matches the Group and Channel settings from the CMD unit. Use TTL and a softbox to improve the quality of light. 5 Adjust the flash Take a shot, then…

1. Flower Beauty BY DIRK FIERS This month’s winning image is so much more than just a beautiful photo of a flower. The focus stacking technique was used to mitigate the shallow depth of field produced by the 105mm macro lens. The result is an incredible amount of detail and front-to-back sharpness. Natural and artificial lighting was used, which gently pulls the white flower from the pale background. Camera: Nikon D500 Lens: 105mm f/2.8 Exposure: 1/8 sec, f/16, ISO100 2. Natural Abstract BY SIRSENDU GAYEN We like how these leaves form a fractal-like pattern that appears to go on forever. The black and white conversion was an excellent choice; it amplifies the striped pattern on the leaves and removes any colourful distractions that may have otherwise detracted from the image.…

Lab tests explained Sharpness A chart with multiple sharp boundaries is photographed, the extent of blur at the centre, mid and edges showing how many line widths per picture height the lens can resolve. Simply put, the bigger the numbers the sharper the lens. Fringing Chromatic aberration is visible as purple or green fringing around high-contrast boundaries, caused by different wavelengths being focused on different areas of the sensor. The larger the number, the worse the score. Distortion A lens that bulges towards the edges of the frame produces barrel distortion, shown as a negative score. Pincushion distortion produces a positive score. A score of zero indicates no distortion. Our awards in a nutshell The best performance, design and value A product that gives you more for your money The…

£2909/$3600 An ever-increasing user base of enthusiasts and freelance content creators has demanded that the current generation of mirrorless devices be as comfortable producing a run-and-gun music video or travel documentary as they are a landscape still or portrait. It’s with these users in mind that Nikon launched the Z 6 in 2018, a well-rounded and well-received device that was the brand’s most serious foray yet into the world of video-making, but one not without some areas of weakness. Building on that foundation, the Z 6II answers some of its forebear’s criticisms and builds on its successes, and like the Z 6, is available in the guise of the Essential Movie Kit. This set comprises of the Z 6II, the FTZ Mount Adaptor, an Atomos Ninja V monitor/recorder, SmallRig quick-release…

£549/$569 Something of a rarity – an autofocus Samyang Samyang (badged ‘Rokinon’ in some countries) is best known for its manual-focus lenses, but the South Korean manufacturer also makes two AF lenses for Nikon cameras, the other being the AF 14mm f/2.8 F. Build quality feels typically solid and robust, complete with weather-seals. It’s small and light for an 85mm f/1.4 lens, and not much bigger than the Nikon f/1.8. The optical design incorporates a hybrid aspherical element and Ultra Multi Coating, while autofocus is driven by a Dual LSM (Linear Supersonic Motor), similar to the linear ‘pulse’ motors used in a number of recent Nikon lenses. As such, manual focusing and override of AF is courtesy an electronically coupled control ring. Performance Autofocus proved quick and reliable in our…

£1249/$1599 Sigma’s portrait lens is a weighty proposition Sigma’s 85mm Art lens is quite a handful but this one is about the same weight as a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom, at 1645g. Nicknamed the ‘bokeh master’ it goes long on focal length and extra-large in construction. Telltale signs include an oversized 105mm filter thread, due to the large diameter of the forward optical elements, and a tripod mounting ring to more evenly balance the weight. Rather imposing from the outside, the lens has premium components on the inside, including three FLD (Fluorite-grade Low Dispersion) elements, two SLD (Special Low Dispersion) elements, and one aspherical element. As with the Sigma 85mm lens on test, fine-tuning and firmware updates are available via Sigma’s optional USB Dock. Performance Living up to its claims, axial…

£1779/$1897 More manageable than the competing Sigma Shorter, slimmer and less than two-thirds the weight of Sigma’s upscaled 105mm lens, this Nikon has an identical focal length and aperture rating. It’s more manageable for handheld shooting although the purchase price is more difficult to swallow. Unlike in the two Nikon 85mm F-mount lenses on test, this one has ED elements (three of them) in the optical path, while sharing the f/1.4 lens’s Nano Crystal Coat. As with the Sigma, an incredibly tight depth of field is available. In the context of portraiture, you can have sharpness for a single eye and even the eyelashes will be blurred. You’re best off shooting with a tripod for the sake of focusing accuracy, at which point the Sigma is better balanced as it…

THE PRO NAME: Colin Moody CAMERA: Various Colin moved to Bristol 11 years ago from London’s East Ham and hasn’t looked back. He splits his time undertaking photojournalism assignments, leading workshops, putting on exhibitions and authoring photography books. He’s been mentored by Martin Parr and his work has won various awards, but despite his many successes, his passion for Bristol and street photography comes first. See more of his work by visiting: https://bit.ly/3a9azvt THE APPRENTICE NAME: Cassidy Grace CAMERA: Nikon Z 6 Cassidy is from Cardiff but is finishing her bachelor’s degree in journalism and media at Bristol’s University of the West of England. She enjoys travel and portrait photography, but wants to spend more time capturing the city she’s called home for the past few years. Cassidy has met…

A frame within a frame is a popular compositional technique used to frame the subject of a photograph with a natural or man-made object. This could be anything from a window or doorway, to an avenue of trees or a row of bushes. The frame doesn’t need to completely surround your subject, but it should be prominent enough to guide the viewer’s eye straight to the focal point. Frames are a great way to simplify overly busy scenes or obscure unattractive or boring areas of your images. Our photograph of Bath Abbey is a good example. The grand building is a beautiful architectural subject, but its size cuts a lonely figure as it protrudes high above everything else in the city, which makes it difficult to compose. Thankfully a nearby…

At first glance a freshly photographed landscape may appear more muted than you expected, but there’s often a whole heap of colour information in there, just waiting to be teased out. In this project we’ll look at how to make your landscape colours sing. But rather than simply applying a uniform saturation boost to the scene, we’ll instead make a series of targeted edits that are tailored to specific areas. We can make use of Photoshop’s array of intelligent selection tools, not least of which is the Select Sky command that isolates the sky for us. Once done, we’ll use the Curves command to boost tones and colours. Not only can we use Curves to add punch, we can also target the red, green or blue channels and use them…

For Tanya Habjouqa, travel has never been easy – even before COVID-19. For the past year, she’s been grounded like the rest of us, but it is her family heritage, upbringing and nationality that makes her the subject of added scrutiny, especially when crossing international borders. Her predicament is likely best explained by sharing her own words to the questions I put to her when trying to check the salient facts that are integral to her sense of identity. “Tanya, help me get this right: you’re Jordanian and went to university in Texas, as well as in London?” “Yes, that’s right.” “And you live in East Jerusalem with your husband who is Palestinian?” Tanya nods. “And, like your husband, you’re a citizen of Israel?” Tanya shakes her head. “That is…

MISSION: Capture the life and soul of racing – and turn motorsport photography into a career PHOTOGRAPHER: Danniella Edginton LOCATION: Hampshire, England KIT USED: Nikon D500, Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM | C INSTAGRAM: @edgintonphotographics WEBSITE: http://bit.ly/3bZwV3Y When I was around nine years old my father introduced me to the world of motorbike racing. Ever since then, I have religiously watched and followed every race weekend to date. In 2015 I picked up a DSLR camera for the first time and absolutely fell in love with photography. It wasn’t until the following year I visited a MotoGP track and photographed motorbike racing for the first time. I realized then that I wanted to pursue motorsport photography. I started travelling to every motorsport race I could to gain experience, and…

GET STARTED Getting great shots with off-camera flash takes practice. You first need to set the camera to expose for the background ambient light, then set your flashgun(s) to light your subjects. It’s best to use the Manual exposure mode on the camera. CAMERA SETTINGS Start with 1/200 sec, ISO200 and an aperture around f/5.6. Take a shot without flash. You can control the amount of ambient light with your shutter speed and/or ISO, while altering the aperture to determine the depth of field in the image. TTL OR MANUAL? On the Speedlight, you need to choose either TTL or Manual mode. The auto TTL mode produces consistently good results, so is a great place to start. You change the TTL output from the Speedlight using flash exposure compensation (FEC).…

The inverse square law is a technical term that describes how light falls off the further it travels from the light source. It is important to understand the concept behind the inverse square law as we can use this to improve our images. The inverse square law states that a light source of a certain intensity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of the physical intensity. It’s heavy stuff, even if you read it multiple times. Why is this important? The inverse square law basically says light falls off really, really quickly. Or to put it another way, if you double the distance to a subject, it only receives a quarter as much light. This knowledge of how light travels, combined with off-camera flash,…

Q I’m thinking of buying a used Z 6 and FTZ mount adapter. Will there be any drop in image quality if I use my F-mount lenses? Brian Keenan A I traded in my D750 for a Z 6 and FTZ adapter in January of last year. In the gradual switch to Z-mount lenses, I used my existing F-mount lenses via the adapter and didn’t find any drop in quality. The only noticeable difference that I found was that autofocus was more consistently accurate with the Z 6 body. One of the main attractions of Nikon’s Z-series mirrorless cameras is that the lens mounting flange has a much larger diameter and a closer proximity to the image sensor. This enables enhanced performance when using native Z-mount lenses, but older F-mount…

DxO PureRAW £115/$129 https://shop.dxo.com DxO PureRAW is a clever piece of software that can enhance your Raw files ahead of use in Photoshop, Lightroom, or other programs. It produces an ’enhanced’ Raw file with all the advantages of Raw for editing, but with DxO’s noise reduction and lens corrections already applied. It uses the same processing technologies as DxO’s flagship PhotoLab software, but it’s for photographers who just want better Raw files and don’t want to swap editing tools. DxO’s speciality is its huge database of tens of thousand of camera/lens correction combinations, its remarkable DeepPRIME noise reduction, which DxO claimed can even differentiate between ‘bokeh’ noise in blurred backgrounds and regular image detail. It could even give your old camera gear (and old Raw files) a new lease of…

We’ve all been missing friends and family, on and off over the past year. With restrictions on movement beginning to ease up, we can look forward to getting reacquainted and even capturing some quality portrait images as a keepsake. With that in mind, this month’s Big Test focuses on full-frame compatible lenses that are perfect for portraiture. An 85mm prime lens with a fast aperture rating is generally the best choice, but it’s not the only option. Nikon and Sigma both make highly desirable 105mm f/1.4 portrait-friendly contenders. Even so, an 85mm focal length gives a flattering perspective and enables a comfortable working distance, so you’re not crowding your subject and invading their personal space, but are still close enough to engage and give direction. Even if you’re shooting with…

£319/$399 A properly retro lens for Z-series cameras This fully manual lens from Samyang has no autofocus nor any internal electronics whatsoever, so the lens can’t communicate with the host camera body. You can therefore only shoot effectively in Manual or Aperture Priority modes, adjusting the aperture via the lens’s aperture control ring. Thankfully, you can use in-body stabilization on full-frame Z-series cameras, by setting up the ‘Non-CPU lens data’ in the Setup menu. While the feature-set might sound a dead loss, the reality is something a bit different. The viewfinders of DSLRs are notoriously poor for manual focusing, but the electronic viewfinders and rear screens of mirrorless cameras make it much easier, especially with aids like ‘focus peaking’. Performance A hybrid aspherical element and Samyang’s Ultra Multi Coating help…

£709/$797 Exceptional for an f/1.8 lens When it comes to fast primes, f/1.8 lenses are often seen as poor relations to their f/1.4 and f/1.2 counterparts. Naturally, you can’t get such a tight depth of field, or quite as quick shutter speeds under low lighting, but that’s not the whole story. This lens has a high-quality optical path that includes two ED (Extra-low Dispersion) elements and Nano Crystal Coat. As with other Nikon 85mm lenses on test, there are no aspherical elements but this can be a bonus for bokeh. Up-market build quality includes weather-seals and AF is courtesy of a quick yet virtually silent stepping motor. The electronically coupled control ring enables high-precision manual focusing and can also be used for adjusting the likes of aperture and exposure compensation.…

Most 85mm f/1.8 lenses have a reputation for being inferior to their faster f/1.4 counterparts, especially for top-level portraiture. The Nikon Z 85mm f/1.8 S fights back, with absolutely stellar image quality and all-round performance. Not only can it deliver a really tight depth of field, but it can do so with stunning levels of sharpness across the entire frame when needed, along with deliciously soft and creamy bokeh for defocused areas. Stopping down a little enables you to gain greater depth of field with practically no degradation in the quality of bokeh. All in all, it’s a perfect lens for portraiture, and the in-body stabilizers of Z-series cameras make for assured handheld shooting even under very low lighting levels. If you can live without autofocus, Samyang’s fully manual MF…