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

Nikon’s full-frame D-SLRs cost a lot more than its DX models. For almost the same price as the relatively basic FX-format D750, you can get the high-spec DX-format D500. So how do you choose? We explain the pros and cons of these two models PROS ✓ You get much more camera for your money – the D500’s specs easily outstrip the D750’s ✓ DX lenses are smaller, cheaper and lighter to carry around – and you can use FX lenses on DX Nikons too ✓ The 1.5x ‘crop factor’ makes telephoto lenses effectively 1.5x more powerful CONS × The smaller DX sensor can’t quite match a full-frame FX sensor for all-round image quality × The smaller sensor leads to increased depth of field, which can be useful, but can also…

Photography is all about light: its direction, angle, quality and strength. Scenes can look very different under varied lighting conditions and, as any landscape photographer knows, the most attractive natural light occurs at the start and end of the day. Not only does the low angle of the sun create pockets of light and shade that reveal the contours of a landscape, its rays have to pass through more of the earth’s atmosphere, causing the light to take on the warm qualities that result in vibrant sunrises and sunsets. If you can work out how the light will behave in advance, you’ll have a huge advantage when shooting landscapes. This is where technology can help. With a smartphone, all the information you need is at your fingertips. In the last…

The mission ● To adjust specific colours rather than make global adjustments Time ● Ten minutes Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Lightroom 5 or later Sometimes in photos certain colours appear weaker than others. If you boost the overall colour intensity of the image using the Basic panel’s Saturation slider, the weaker colours will have more impact, but the stronger ones may become over-saturated. This can lead to colours that won’t print correctly. In addition, a model’s skin tones may become too orange and garish. Lightroom’s Vibrance slider is designed to solve this problem by enabling you to increase the saturation of weaker colours withou over-saturating the stronger ones. It also tends to boost natural landscape colours such as blues and greens more strongly…

Nikon School photography workshops cater for every level of photographic ability, whether you are new to taking photographs, a keen amateur or a professional. Nikon School offers a wide range of workshops suited to individuals wanting to learn more about photography or expand their creative horizons. Courses will help you improve your skills, develop your eye for a photo and learn to take control of your camera. Workshops are a mix of easy-to-understand theory and practical assignments. They’re attended by small groups of up to 12 delegates to ensure that everyone can benefit from the expert knowledge of tutors. From understanding your Nikon D-SLR and lenses to image-editing; from street shots to inspiring landscapes; the school’s workshops cover a variety of skills and subjects. Workshops take place at either the…

Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II + AF-S TC-20E III Effective focal length (DX) 105-300mm (210-600mm with converter) Aperture range f/2.8 to f/22 (f/5.6 to f/45) Elements/groups 21/16 + 7/5 Autofocus Ring-type ultrasonic VR 3.5 stops Minimum focus distance 1.4m Diaphragm 9 blades Filter size 77mm Diameter x length 87x206mm + 66x48mm Weight 1540g + 330g price £1800/$2100 + £350/$500 Telephoto reach The 70-200mm naturally loses out to the 80-400mm for telephoto reach, but equals its maximum focal length once you add a 2x teleconverter. Nikon’s AF-S TC-20E III is a high-tech affair with seven optical elements in five groups, including one aspherical element. Aperture The constant-aperture design of the 70-200mm lens makes a relatively fast f/2.8 aperture available throughout the entire zoom range. However, this narrows to f/4,…

We’ve all been there, done that and got the lens envy. Almost any high-action event you can think of nowadays, from athletics to air shows, seems to be attended by massed ranks of professional photographers wielding whopping telephoto lenses that cost a fortune. Prime examples, so to speak, include Nikon’s recently launched fluorite-rich 400mm, 500mm and 600mm optics and their five-digit price tags. Top-flight zooms don’t come much cheaper, like the Nikon 200-400mm VR at around £5200/$7000. But if you’ve been inspired by this year’s summer sports spectaculars, fast-moving wildlife, or some other speedy subject, the good news is that there are some seriously good telephoto lenses on the market, at much more affordable prices. A main concern when photographing sports and wildlife is how much telephoto reach you need.…

Space… the final photographic frontier? These stunning shortlisted images from Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016 will have you longing to boldly go and pick up your Nikon to try shooting stars SHORTLISTED Seven Magic Points Rune Engebø The rusty red swirls of the circular, iron sculpture Seven Magic Points in Brattebergan, Norway mirror the rippling aurora above. Nikon D810, 14mm f/2.8, 4 secs, ISO3200 SHOTLISTED Stars and Stripes Brandon Yoshizawa Ancient petroglyphs are lit up by the glittering stars of the night sky in the Eastern Sierras in California, USA. Nikon D750, Nikon AF-S 14-24mm f/2.8G ED, 25 secs, f/4, ISO3200 SHORTLISTED Celestial Veil Yuyun Wang The natural light of the Milky Way battles with the light pollution over the fishing village, or kelong, in Batu Pahat, Malaysia.…

The mission ● To create an HDR image with enhanced shadow and highlight detail using Camera Raw and Photoshop Time ● 20 minutes Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Photoshop CC Of all the ways to create High Dynamic Range images, Photoshop’s ‘Merge to HDR Pro’ command has always lagged behind the best options available. Like all HDR tools, it enables you to combine a set of exposures into one image with a dynamic range beyond what your camera is capable of. However, it suffers badly in comparison to dedicated third-party offerings, such as Photomatix Pro, and almost all of the HDR presets it offers are too harsh, for my taste at least. It’s not completely without merit, as it does let you create 32-bit…

THE APPRENTICE... NAME Marilyn Tyzack CAMERA Nikon Df Marilyn has been taking photos since a very early age, but she’d found herself snapping and not understanding how the camera works. A decade ago she decided to go into more depth because the advent of digital made it easier for her to learn. Her first D-SLR was a Nikon D70, and she soon upgraded to a D7000 before settling on the sleek vintage design of the full-frame Df. She loves photographing gardens and relished the challenge of shooting RHS Wisley. THE PRO... NAME Philip Smith CAMERA Nikon D810 Philip specialises in plants, gardens and landscapes. His work has been published in many books and horticultural magazines worldwide and he is author of Better Plant and Garden Photography. In 2007 he set…

Coincidence is often (you might say even usually) in the eye of the beholder. This is what gives it a creative edge, because you’re basically saying to the viewer ‘I made this connection, and it’s not all that obvious, but I’d like to share it with you’. Point of view has a double meaning here. There’s the mechanical point of view, which is how you position yourself for a viewpoint that points out the coincidence, together with the focal length, what you cut out of the frame, whether you get both things sharply focused, and so on. Then there’s point of view in the sense of your opinion: what you actually think about the juxtaposition of things. I’ve chosen this shot deliberately for being a bit borderline, tentative. I saw…

There’s a variety of factors that can make it a challenge to get your photos looking sharp. For starters, older Nikon D-SLRs have a built-in filter that gently blurs the shot to avoid producing moiré patterns in complex textures. This low-pass filter can also soften delicate details such as the text on our vintage vehicle and create a photo that lacks impact. Then, if you shoot with a wide aperture key details may become blurred due to the shallow depth of field. What looks nice and sharp on the Nikon’s LCD screen may turn out to look disappointingly soft when viewed on your PC’s bigger display. Fortunately, Capture NX-D’s sharpening tools are designed to tease out delicate details in a soft-looking shot. These tools work by increasing the contrast around…

Mark Pain is the chief sports photographer for the Mail on Sunday. He was named Sports Photographer of the Year in the British Press Awards in 2005 and 2011. In 2011, Mark launched the first dedicated sports photography school in the UK. www.markpain.com October 2, 2010 • Celtic Manor, Wales, UK • Niko n D3s As the chief photographer for the Mail on Sunday, Mark Pain was already well established as one of the UK’s foremost sports photographers when he covered the 2010 Ryder Cup. Having photographed numerous Olympics, World Cups and other international sporting events, you could say he was in no need of a ‘break’. However, when he huddled down with the rest of the press pack to photograph Tiger Woods play a chip onto the green of…

These days, with the advantage of instant review and the brightness histogram, it’s easy to get the exposure of a photo right in-camera. Even if you don’t, choosing to shoot RAW files provides a safety net, giving you scope for fine-tuning the shot’s exposure later. The same can’t be said for the sharpness of a photo. Despite the advances in autofocus, continuous shooting speed and intelligent exposure modes, freezing a moment in time remains a challenge. And trying to make a blurred shot appear sharp using software doesn’t really work. In this feature, we’re going to look at tactics and techniques you can employ to become a sharp shooter. We’re concerned with raw, straight-out-of-the-camera sharpness here – the result of focusing the lens in the right place and getting the…

Teach Yourself Flash Part 5 This issue we’ll follow the process from part two of the Teach Yourself Flash series, (issue 60, page 38), where we used off-camera flash to light portraits, and add a few nifty tricks to make your portraits striking after sunset. Everyone shoots during the golden hour, but stay out a little longer and you’ll see everything turn a deep blue. This is known as the ‘blue moment’. If you turn your Nikon’s white balance to Tungsten the effect becomes even more pronounced, but unfortunately it turns your model blue, too. Lift their spirits (and their skin tone) with a colour temperature orange (CTO) gel over the flash. This will make their skin tone look natural while using Tungsten white balance. Let’s look at the specifics……

The mission ● To shoot and piece together a set of sporty images to create a dramatic composite Time ● Two hours Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Nikon D-SLR ● Tripod ● Two light stands ● Two flashguns ● Silver umbrella ● Plain sheet ● Photoshop CS5 or above Ever wanted to make yourself look like a sports star? With a few simple photography and Photoshop skills you can transform yourself into the next Rory McIlroy, Chris Froome or Lionel Messi, and all without the need for those endless hours of practice or drug testing. Over the next few pages we’ll take an in-depth look at how to shoot and combine a series of images into a composite like this. The aim here isn’t…

Mission: To capture lasting memories of family pets Photographer: Sarah Wells Age: 26 Location: Milton Keynes, England Kit: Nikon D3200, Nikon AF-S DX 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR II, Nikon AF-S DX 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR II, Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.8G, Nikon AF-S DX 35mm f/1.8G, Tamron SP 70-200mm f/2.8 Di USD VC As a child I used to love going to the shops and buying disposable cameras. I would take photos of everything. I couldn’t wait to get them developed at the chemist so I could add them to my photo album. When I turned 14 I was bought my first point-and-shoot digital camera. I would take lots of photos of my cat, (who I still have now) and this meant a lot to me, as they’re memories I can keep…

Lining things up when you frame a shot is one of the most basic decisions in composition. In fact, it’s so basic that many of us who take the trouble to align things in the frame do it semi-automatically. The things being lined up can be the edges of a subject, like the walls of a building, or a row of units, like cows in a field, and it’s ultimately very personal. For some photographers it’s a sign of neatness and professionalism, but at the other end of the scale there are people who feel it’s a bit cold and calculating, and gets in the way of simply grabbing the emotion or atmosphere in a scene. Here, obviously, I’m promoting the idea of alignment, but it’s certainly not a rule…

Another way in which elements can coincide in an image is in what I call a ‘graphic echo’. This is usually either by shape or by colour, and sometimes, as in this case, by both. There are no hard and fast rules for this kind of correspondence, but if you attune your eye to spot them, consciously look for them, you may be surprised by how often they appear. In either case, it helps if they are clear and simple. So, shapes that are distinctive and recognisable tend to do well, such as a triangle (although, in fact, triangles tend to be so common that their coincidence value isn’t that high). Colours that echo one another are, on the whole, easier to spot, but making a coincidence depends on them…

Profile RICHARD PETERS SPECIALISES IN PHOTOGRAPHING BRITISH WILDLIFE, OFTEN IN HIS BACK GARDEN. ● Richard is the current European Wildlife Photographer of the Year and last year won the Urban Wildlife category in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. ● He runs workshops at the British Wildlife Centre and shares many of his techniques in his acclaimed eBook, Back Garden Safari Back in February 2015, Richard Peters took a picture in his garden that went on to win awards in two major wildlife photography competitions. Since then he has published his first eBook, become a Nikon Ambassador and quit his day job to become a full-time wildlife photographer. He reflects on an extraordinary year… Last year you were named European Wildlife Photographer of the Year. How did you feel…