Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2016 i N-Photo: the Nikon magazine

D500 specifications Sensor DX-format CMOS, 20.9Mp Crop factor 1.5x Memory 1x SD, 1x XQD Viewfinder Optical pentaprism, 1x magnification, 100% coverage Video resolution 4K (UHD) 3840x2160 pixels at 30/25/24fps, Full HD 1920x1080 pixels at 60/50/30/25/24fps ISO range 100-51,200, expands to 50-1,640,000 Autofocus points 153, including 99 cross-type; 15 points sensitive down to f/8 Burst rate 10fps Max buffer capacity NEF 14-bit lossless compressed 200 shots, JPEG 200 shots LCD screen Tilting 3.2-inch touchscreen, 2,359k dots Shutter speeds 1/8000 sec to 30 secs, Bulb, Timer, flash sync 1/250 sec Weight (body only) 760g Dimensions 147x115x81mm Power supply EN-EL15 (1240 shots) For along time the top spot in Nikon’s APS-C- format (DX) SLR line-up was o c cu pied by the popular D300s, but that camera was launched in 20 09 and…

RAW files are not photographs – they are the raw (sorry) material for a photograph. RAW files are just meaningless digital data until they go through a conversion process, and this process has to happen before you can even look at them. When you look at a RAW picture you’ve just taken on the rear screen of your Nikon D-SLR, what you’re actually seeing is a quick JPEG preview image generated by the camera, not the RAW file itself. And when you look at a RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw, Nikon Capture NX-D or any other RAW conversion software, you’re seeing a preview of the image as it will appear using your current settings and software. You never actually get to see a RAW file in its ‘raw’ state.…

One reason we shoot RAW files is to capture a wider dynamic range, in case we need to pull back some highlights or bring out the shadows. But your Nikon D-SLR can do this already – maybe not quite with the same finesse, but more easily. Today’s Nikon D-SLRs come with a system called Active D-Lighting, which does a good job of managing high-contrast lighting. Or, if you need to go a step further, you could try the in-camera HDR mode. It’s only the more advanced Nikon D-SLRs that come with this, but if yours has it you’ll find it in the Shooting menu. Or, if you’re not sure you need extra dynamic range and you’re just unsure of the best exposure, you can shoot JPEGs with your camera’s auto…

The mission ● To get started with off-camera flash Time ● 30 minutes Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Nikon D-SLR ● Flashgun ● Wireless flash triggers ● Light stand When we get started in photography, we all buy the essentials: a camera body, a standard zoom lens, and maybe a tripod. Then we start snapping away and learning about the camera. But (in our opinion) 90 per cent of photography is not about finding the right subject, or even getting the composition spot on, it’s actually learning about the light – its quality, position, intensity and colour. As photographers, we don’t have to wait for the light to be right, or make the best of what we’ve got, we can take control of it.…

The mission ● To shoot a nostalgic, atmospheric portrait Time ● Two hours Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Nikon D-SLR ● Atmosphere aerosol OR fog machine ● Flashgun (optional) ● Gels (optional) ● Tripod (optional) We’ve all seen those steam-filled railway platforms in black-and-white movies from the ’50s, and how atmospheric they can be. Even at a rock concert, the appearance of artificial fog (dry ice) creates a moody atmosphere, and it’s no different in the stills photography world. By adding some artificial fog – we used a can of Atmosphere Aerosol – you can turn plain environments into dramatic stages, with shafts of light illuminating the areas around a model. All you need is a willing participant, a window with some direct light…

One mantra of travel photography is ‘Avoid the cliché!’, as in ‘Don’t waste your time taking yet another shot of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster from directly across the Thames, or of Mount Fuji with a bullet train racing by in front.’ Should you live by this mantra? Yes and no. Images become clichés in a two-step process: first, the view is good; second, many people take pictures of it. However, the problem is often that there are natural viewpoints for popular scenes that work very well (in many cases this is the reason they’re popular), and most photographers would choose these viewpoints even if they were unaware that they were clichéd. When faced with a popular subject, such as the Taj Mahal, the first question to ask yourself…

There is a fundamental difference in approach between travelling to and travelling through. Time is a luxury that few of us have as much of as we would like, and for most people embarking on a trip, the idea is usually to get to the destination as quickly and painlessly as possible. This often means by plane, as air travel is now relatively affordable. It is also unexceptional. However, other means of travel are full of potential for experience, incident… and photography. There are, for example, the views en route, and different means of transport offer different views. Canals, for example, having been built more than a century ago in most countries, offer a perspective that you just can get from a car, train or plane. As Carl Mydans, a…

While you need either a shoulder bag or daypack when you’re out for the day walking around and shooting, travelling with your equipment calls for slightly different packing priorities. There are many options, and this is mine: a well-padded backpack. Why? First, it has to work as carry-on baggage; and second, I also like to be able to carry it comfortably if I need to. This is a Manfrotto model, the Professional Backpack 30. It’s big enough to take my Nikon D4 with four lenses, a charger, spare battery and so on. Altogether it comes to 10 kilograms, and that’s without the laptop, which also fits in.…

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6 WEB www.adobe.com PLATFORM PC/Mac RECOMMENDED PC Intel Core 2/AMD 64-bit, 2GHz, 8GB RAM WINDOWS VERSIONS Windows 7 SP1 to 10 32/64-bit RECOMMENDED MAC Multicore Intel 64-bit, 8GB RAM MAC OS VERSIONS Mac OS X v10.8 or later HARD DRIVE SPACE 2GB MINIMUM SCREEN RESOLUTION 1024x768 pixels BATCH PROCESSING Yes ONE-OFF PURCHASE £110/$150 MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION £8.57/$9.99 with Photoshop CC Nikon Capture NX-D WEB www.nikon.com PLATFORM PC/Mac RECOMMENDED PC Intel Core 2/AMD 64-bit, 2GHz, 4GB RAM WINDOWS VERSIONS Windows Vista SP2 to 10 32/64-bit RECOMMENDED MAC Multicore Intel 64-bit, 4GB RAM MAC OS VERSIONS Mac OS X v10.7 or later HARD DRIVE SPACE 2GB MINIMUM SCREEN RESOLUTION 1024x768 pixels BATCH PROCESSING Yes ONE-OFF PURCHASE Free MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION N/A Background Lightroom is an industry favourite, boasting easy RAW conversion…

Several years before the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown which hit Fukushima in 2011, I arrived in Japan as a freelance photographer and cameraman for French TV. After the nuclear plant was damaged, I covered the crisis every day for at least six months. On returning to France I got chatting with my colleague, Carlos Ayesta, and we decided to do photo essays on different aspects of the disaster. It was my idea to photograph former residents of what became the no-go zone in their former workplaces, or the restaurants and shops they frequented. About three to four years after the disaster, the government started to allow people back for a certain amount of time, so we were able to photograph them in their former haunts. This began as…

During his six months aboard the International Space Station, British astronaut Tim Peake captured hundreds of spectacular images of Earth, and the heavens, with his trusty Nikon D4. To mark Tim’s return to Earth we’ve put together a selection of the best images taken by Tim – and one amazing image of Tim… 14 July 2016 All images courtesy ESA/NASA Spacewalk “My work site – perched on the farthest handrail on the International Space Station. To my right was nothing but the vast blackness of space.” This image of Tim’s spacewalk on January 15 was taken by US astronaut Tim Kopra, commander of the International Space Station. Northern Italy “Beautiful night pass over Italy, the Alps and the Mediterranean.” The cluster of lights at the bottom-right of this image is…

If you shoot JPEGs, you get finished, ready-to-use images straight from the camera. If you shoot RAW files you get the equivalent of undeveloped film, so you are going to need a software ‘developer’ to turn your RAW files into usable images. Most photographers use Adobe Camera Raw. This is the RAW conversion plug-in used by Photoshop Elements and Photoshop. It’s also the technology that underlies the editing tools in Lightroom. But there’s a snag: every camera model produces its own RAW file format. All Nikon D-SLRs produce NEF files, but the NEF file from a D3300, for example, is different to the NEF file from a D7200. Every new Nikon camera comes with a new NEF format, and Adobe must add support for this new format to its software.…

The mission ● To maximise depth of field in a landscape using hyperfocal distance Time ● Half an hour Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Nikon D-SLR ● Tripod ● Hyperfocal distance chart or smartphone app (see page 36) Getting your landscapes sharp from front to back is tricky, but exploiting a phenomenon of depth of field can help you get a tacksharp scene every time. Depth of field is the distance either side of the focal point that is ‘acceptably sharp’; it’s determined by aperture, focus distance and focal length, and – crucially – it extends twice as far beyond the focus point as it does in front. The point of using hyperfocal distance focusing is to focus at the point at which the…

The mission ● To delete dust spots and other sensor dirt from an image fast Time ● Five minutes Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Lightroom 5 or later Despite your best efforts to keep your lenses and camera clean, when you swap lenses on location, tiny fragments of dirt and dust can enter your Nikon’s body and adhere to the sensor. These can then show up in photographs as small, soft, dark blobs. They are annoying because they appear in the same parts of every photo from a shoot, and are particularly noticeable in clean, smooth areas such as skies. Your Nikon will attempt to remove sensor spots by vibrating the sensor, but this may not prove effective. For a more thorough clean you…

One of the paradoxes of travel is that it can always be relied on to deliver the unexpected. This might sound contradictory, but in my experience it’s true. Your chance of coming across strange facets of life is distinctly improved by travelling to, or at least wandering about in, the less obvious tourist destinations, but, as the image to the left shows, even local tourism can deliver some offbeat experiences. As far as most photographic opportunities on the road are concerned, time spent at any one destination is subject to the law of diminishing creative returns. The excitement of a first sunset, then sunrise, at a Grand Canyon overlook is slightly diminished on the following day, and it doesn’t take long before you have exhausted the obvious. But the unpredictable,…

Marco Colombo is one of Italy’s best-known nature photographers. He has a degree in natural sciences and is also a qualified scuba diving instructor, and often combines these skills to capture underwater views of his subjects. To see more of his work visit www.calosoma.it SUMMER, 2010 • SESIA VALLEY, PIEDMONT, ITALY • NIKON D700 Marco Colombo was just 22 when he chanced upon this grass snake by a stream in the Sesia valley in Piedmont, northwest Italy. It was his first visit to this stretch of water, a trip prompted by a friend who said she always saw snakes while canoeing in the stream. “I explored the shore of the main stream and I didn’t see any snakes, but then I found this little tributary nearby.” He spied a grass…

Recent wisdom says that a superzoom is the most travel-friendly option when taking your D-SLR on holiday or on a business trip, or when travelling to far-flung places for any other reason. A relatively dinky DX Nikon won’t weigh you down, and there’s a lot to be said for the versatility of a lens that covers everything from wide-angle coverage to telephoto reach in one convenient package. It means you can respond to pretty much any photo opportunity with just the turn of a zoom ring, instead of weighing yourself down with additional lenses that you need to change every few minutes. Popular current superzooms for DX-format Nikons include 18-200mm and 18-300mm lenses from both Nikon and Sigma. These have effective zoom ranges of 27-300mm and 27-450mm respectively. Both give…

WWW.JOEMCNALLY.COM I’ve always wanted to do a shot like this. Never got to it. I think it might be something about the degree of difficulty required to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. Let’s see… I need three vintage Stearman biplanes, all of which are fitted to spew smoke; three excellent pilots who can fly super-tight; a camera that can handle the vibrational effect of being right behind a massive engine, and that delivers high-res, supersharp results despite the rocking and rolling; and a client willing to fund the whole thing. That’s why this shot stayed in my head for the last 10-20 years, literally. Enter Lynn DelMastro, of my studio, and Jill Manka, of Waldo Wright’s Flying Service in Winter Haven, Florida. They brought their organisational skills to bear,…

Most people call them RAW files; Nikon calls them NEFs. Either way, they are the equivalent of a ‘digital negative’, a half-way stage in the image-editing process where you don’t yet have a finished image, but you still have access to all the colours, tones and data captured by the camera’s sensor. All Nikon D-SLRs give you the choice of shooting RAW files or JPEGs – or indeed both at the same time. JPEG images are ready to use straight away. You can print them, email them, and show them on your computer or tablet, but you have to leave it to your camera to process your images using the settings you chose when you took the picture. With RAW files, you get to do the processing, not your camera.…

RAW files bring flexibility and choice, but they also place heavy demands on your hardware and your time, so it this section we’ll take a look at some of the implications of shooting RAW. Some are obvious. RAW files are much bigger than JPEGs, so you’re going to need bigger memory cards and, perhaps, a computer with a bigger storage capacity. High-capacity hard disks are inexpensive these days, but as more of us move towards cloud storage, back-up and sharing, the extra overhead is likely to prove an issue. RAW files also take a lot of processing power, and they even affect your Nikon’s performance. If you want to use continuous shooting mode and the RAW format at the same time, for example, you may need to look at a…

The mission ● To photograph a landscape through a crystal ball Time ● Half an hour Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Nikon D-SLR ● Crystal ball ● Cleaning cloth WATCH THE VIDEO Have you ever tried to fit an entire landscape into a tiny little ball? Well, it is possible, if you’re using a crystal ball. Place a crystal ball down in front of a scene, and you can shoot the view as it distorts and refracts through the crystal (or glass) and reaches your camera. Choose a scene that’s quite high in contrast, so that it looks nice and punchy when it’s miniaturised by the ball. Sunny days and blue skies work well in this respect. You don’t need any fancy kit, though…

THE APPRENTICE… Name James Hillman Camera Nikon D7000 James is a contracts manager for an industrial door company based in the Midlands. In between work and family commitments, he loves his night photography, and often pops out for a bit of late-night shooting. This time he’s come to the south coast of the UK for a masterclass on shooting lowlight landscapes. THE PRO… Name Ollie Taylor Camera Nikon D810 Ollie originally took up landscape photography in 2002, as a way to escape the big city. He worked semi-professionally as a photographer from 2006, and a few years ago he abandoned his architectural career to become a full-time pro. He specialises in low-light, night and astrophotography, making him the ideal mentor for James. www.ollietaylorphotography.com Introduction Ollie invited James down to Weymouth…

Our globetrotting Contributor at Large, renowned photographer and prolific author Michael Freeman, presents a monthly masterclass that’s exclusive to N-Photo. Michael has published dozens of books on photography, including the bestselling Perfect Exposure. The broad idea of travel has a long and intimate relationship with the camera. By the middle of the 19th century, photography had become practicable, although by today’s standards immensely laborious. The weight of the equipment, and the difficulty and uncertainty of preparing and processing plates on location, did not deter scores of photographers from setting out to capture the world. They had a practical motive for this, because the invention of the new medium coincided, more or less, with an insatiable demand in the West to know how the world looked – its monuments, landscapes, cultures.…

It’s common for things to feel unfamiliar when you arrive at a new destination. The guidebook-recommended sights apart, where do you find a concentration of people in an attractive, photographable situation? Markets are the reliable constant the world over. They are where people congregate to buy, sell, exchange, and gossip, and they make an ideal entry point for photographing the local community. If nothing else, an hour or two taking pictures at the market is a kind of photographic exercise, a way of limbering up and brushing up your shooting skills if they’re a bit rusty. What makes markets particularly suitable for photography is that the people buying and selling in them are usually far too busy to be bothered with your hovering camera. As long as you don’t push…

WATCH THE VIDEO Edit your images selectively Use the powerful LCH panel to tweak lightness, colour saturation and hue 1 LCH PANEL To summon the Lightness, Chroma and Hue (LCH) panel, select a photo’s thumbnail and then click on this icon in the Edit panel. The LCH panel will appear below. If you right-click on the fly-out icon at the top right of the LCH panel, you can undock it and drag it anywhere in the workspace (as we have in our annotated example). You can also drag the corners of the LCH panel to increase its size and make it easier to access. 2 RECORDED SETTINGS By default, this dropdown menu is set to Recorded Settings. As soon as you start to edit the image’s colours by adjusting Curves,…

Profile JOHN’S CAREER TOOK HIM AROUND THE WORLD – BEFORE HE BECAME A TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHER! ● Now based in London, John was born and raised in Colombia. ● He worked as a picture editor for Viasat Broadcasting, and then for the BBC as part of the team that launched BBC iPlayer. ● John’s images have been published in The Times, The Guardian, National Geographic Travel UK and also by UNESCO. ● His many awards include a gold medal in the 2012 Prix de la Photographie de Paris. As befits his occupation, John Quintero is on the road when we track him down for an interview, a six-hour time difference away. All we know is that he’s somewhere in South America and within range of Wi-Fi for just a few days……

Jargon buster STEPPING MOTOR This new type of autofocus system, fitted to the Nikon AF-P 18-55mm on test, is virtually silent, and enables smooth focus transitions when shooting video. RETRACTABLE The Nikon 18-55mm and 55-200mm lenses on test have a ‘retractable’ design, enabling them to collapse down particularly small when they’re not being used.…