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

“To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest possible manner. Edward Weston For many photographers, no aspect of photography is more difficult than composition. Perhaps for that reason, people have tried to create rules for composing photographs. But the landscape masters of the past were unanimous in their disdain for such formulas: “To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk,” said Edward Weston. While rules (maybe guidelines would be a better word) can be helpful in some situations, the world is too complex for any rule to apply in all situations, but there is one principle that always applies: simplicity. The best compositions contain only…

In 1940, Ansel Adams, along with his fellow instructor at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, Fred Archer, developed the Zone System. Photographers had long known that they could alter the contrast of a negative by changing the development time: shorter development lowers contrast; longer development raises contrast. Adams and Archer were the first to quantify this and relate it to exposure. They created a precise procedure for evaluating the light and dark values of a scene, visualising the finished photograph, exposing the negative, and developing that negative to hold the contrast the photographer visualised. This system is still valid when using black-and-white film today, but how does it relate to digital photography? There’s a fundamental rule in digital imaging: it’s easy to increase contrast, but difficult or…

The mission ● To capture the bounciest balls around Time ● One hour Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Nikon D-SLR ● Tripod ● Remote release ● Bouncy balls ● Bucket or box ● Motionless subjects ● One or two lamps Here’s a fun project to sink your teeth into: make a vibrant bouncing bonanza at home using colourful rubber balls. There’s no need to buy props (besides the balls), and you don’t need a special flashgun. What’s more, you can do this tutorial at home or in a studio. And if you don’t have many rubber balls, we’ve even got a way around that for you. It can be hard to demonstrate movement in a still image. But with a continuous light or two,…

THE PRO… NAME Elliott Neep CAMERA Nikon D800 and D800e Elliott has spent the past decade working as a wildlife photographer and photo safari guide, guiding other photographers in East Africa, India and the Polar regions. He has won several photographic awards in various competitions including: Wildlife Photographer of the Year, International Photography Awards, and Nature’s Best. In 2014, Elliott founded ProHides Photography, a high-end ‘wildlife hides for hire’ venture in Wiltshire. www.prohides.com THE APPRENTICE… NAME Harry Wilkins CAMERA Nikon D300s Harry works in retail, but when he’s not busy working he sets his sights on photography. He’s been a photography enthusiast for the past few years and has moved from a bridge camera to a Nikon D300s. Harry is a big fan of wildlife and loves going round the…

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. If you grew up in the Kodachrome generation, rich, vibrant colour was such a release. So pleasurable and… well, real. Some of us came to wonder what would have happened if photography had begun with colour. Would black and white even have been invented? Well, now we know, and the answer is yes. Colour has been photography’s default for almost two generations, and now black and white is in full revival. Quite apart from people liking to change what’s gone before – that’s the basis of all fashion – black and white has the advantage of…

Control hues in your black and white photography and you can alter the sense of depth in a landscape shot. The technique relies on passing or blocking blue light, which increases with depth of atmosphere. The analogue method was to use a blue filter over the lens. The digital version follows the same principle, but offers more control, and you can choose to use it during processing, you don’t have to do it at the moment of capture. Given the choice, most people seem to have a natural reaction towards heightening contrast, probably because it has the effect of making images appear clearer. However, going in the opposite direction, expanding the aerial perspective, can also expand the sense of scale in a landscape, and gives a more delicate result.…

NEXT MONTH: CLOSE-UP FILTERS VERSUS EXTENSION TUBES VERDICT The R300 constant LED lamp enables you to see the lighting effect while composing macro shots, and aids manual focusing precision. It couldn’t be any simpler to use. The MF18 includes four LED modelling lamps. It’s more complex to use than a constant LED light but its colour display screen and excellent menu system enable intuitive adjustments for precise control.…

Profile FEDERICO IS PASSIONATE ABOUT AFRICAN WILDLIFE ● Based full-time in Kenya, Federico Veronesi is a much-admired photographer of African wildlife, as well as a highly regarded safari guide through his company Image Safaris. ● In 2011 he won the Grand Prize at the Nature’s Best Windland Smith Rice Award. ● He also contributes images to several conservation groups, including the African Wildlife Foundation and Cheetah Conservation Fund. ● Federico’s first book, Light and Dust, is the culmination of 12 years of wildlife photography in East Africa. Federico Veronesi spends most days in the African bush, often driving alone with his camera by his side. However, in 2016 he also made time to visit Europe and the UK to promote his new book. Tracking him down for this interview involved…

Established in 2009, the BWPA aims to celebrate British wildlife and raise awareness of its diversity and beauty. Feast your eyes on a selection of shortlisted and winning images from this year’s photo competition WILD WOODS, HIGHLY COMMENDED Autumn Woodlands Ceri Jones (Beech, Fagaceae; Pine, Pinus) Woodcote, Oxfordshire, England This scene was taken in my local woods on a misty autumn morning. I loved the warm colours of the autumn beech trees, which provide a natural frame around a view into pinewoods with a much cooler appearance. The camera was tripod-mounted. ANIMAL PORTRAITS, WINNER Contemplation Jamie Mina (Mountain hare, Lepus timidus) Tomatin, Inverness, Scotland The idea for this shot was to take the camera off the tripod and get down low to the same level as my subject. This allowed…

The simplest approach to the Zone System concentrates on highlights and ignores shadows. Start by picking the most important highlight – not a tiny spot, nor something that lacks detail. Pick the brightest significant part of the scene that needs to have detail and texture. Then decide what zone that highlight should be. If that sounds hard, it’s not, because there are only two choices. Zone 5 isn’t a highlight, it’s a midtone. Zone 8 is washed out – too light for an important highlight. So that leaves Zone 6 or Zone 7. Use Zone 7 for objects that are white or nearly white, like white water, snow, light sand, or very light rock. Use Zone 6 for any other highlight, including tans, yellows, light greens, or something…

The mission ● To learn how to use exposure compensation to change the brightness of your exposure Time ● 10 minutes Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Nikon D-SLR “Found on all D-SLRs, exposure compensation lets you dial in more or less light as needed” Your Nikon’s metering system plays a vital role in picture-taking. It works out how much light should enter the camera to make a correct exposure. Be warned, though: it’s very clever, but it’s not completely foolproof. The problem with metering is that it takes an average reading (either of the entire frame or part of it, depending on which metering mode you’re in), and this reading is assumed to be a midtone, halfway between white and black. More often…

The mission ● To improve the look of a monochrome conversion Time ● 15 minutes Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Lightroom 5 or later When shooting with black-and-white film, photographers can place a coloured filter over the camera’s lens to produce more striking pictures. Different coloured filters lighten or darken the greyscale tones of specific objects in the scene. For example, if you place a red filter over the lens it makes blue skies appear dark grey in the monochrome print, so lighter clouds pop out in contrast. Your Nikon’s Monochrome Picture Control setting enables you to produce a black-andwhite photo in-camera. You can even set it to apply colour filters that help lighten or darken greyscale tones in particular areas, such as…

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…

Mission: To track the activity of the local power station Photographer: Tony Alves Age: 56 Location: Johannesburg, South Africa Kit: Nikon D300, Nikon AF-S 300mm f/4D My home is near Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport, close to Kelvin power station. The power station was built in 1957, and still generates electricity, after it was partly mothballed some years ago. Our recent electricity supply crisis made it necessary to start up many of these coal fired relics, and I’m led to believe Kelvin is currently running at about 30 per cent of its capacity. Half of the facility is not in use. Every night outside my door, I see aircraft taking off from the airport heading every which way. The planes and power station make great subjects. “I am always…

LETTER OF THE MONTH Flashy shooting I like taking portraits but I’m not that good; for every 100, I take I get a couple I’m pleased with. (This year a friend said ‘even my wife likes some shots you took of her’. High praise indeed.) In August, I had the chance to take some night-time portraits of a friend’s daughter singing at the holiday resort we were staying at. I had my Nikon D7100, a Nikon 85mm f/1.4G lens and a Speedlight SB-900. I set the flash setting to rear curtain sync, put the Speedlight in command mode and used the pop-up flash to fire it. The flash was to the singer’s left. When we returned home I had a chance to process the RAW files, do some editing and…

The opposite approach to the dramatic high contrast/deep blacks mentioned on page 77 is a long range of mid-tones, and it too has a legacy in tradition. The legacy is that of platinum and palladium prints, which started at the end of the 19th century. As an alternative process, they are enjoying a revival, and while this isn’t really relevant to us here, the side effect is a different black and white aesthetic, one in which the middle greys are expanded. The result may not be as exciting as the punchy effect of strong black to strong white, but it has the appeal of subtlety. There’s less emphasis on striking shapes and graphics, more on nuance. It’s a common view that platinum and palladium prints have a very long range,…

WATCH THE VIDEO The internet bombards us daily with images vying for attention. Many shots have been post-processed to feature garish colours in the hope that they’ll catch our eye. One way to make your images stand out from the hypercolour crowd is to create a striking mono conversion. To do so you could simply drag Capture NX-D’s Saturation slider to the left to throw out all of the colour information in a photo. But, as highlighted in this issue’s Teach Youself Lightroom on page 42, this approach can leave you with a wash of drab greyscale tones where one object blends into another. An effective mono conversion uses contrasting tones to make a subject (such as our swan) stand out from its background, and one way to create…

Since the pilot series in 2009, I’ve been the stills photographer for Game of Thrones. I had no idea how big Thrones would become on the first day of the pilot in 2009. It was a much smaller crew than now, and we all went over to Scotland to start filming. The producers told me they didn’t really have a style in mind for photography, but that they liked my hard-grade, cinematic style and I should follow what I thought was right for the show. So I was given a lot of creative freedom. As a stills photographer my job is to portray the mood of Thrones in one shot, so somebody reading a magazine or visiting a website can instantly ‘get’ what the show is about. It’s all about…

Here at N-Photo we’re as passionate about landscape photography as you are. That’s why this issue we’re teaming up with Octopus Publishing’s ILEX imprint, to bring you a selection of extracts from Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and The Great Masters. Written and illustrated by professional photographer Michael Frye, it’s the perfect introduction to the techniques employed by the giants of landscape photography – Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston – and shows you how you can use similar approaches to take your digital Nikon landscapes to the next level. From composition to converting to black and white, here’s a taster of what to expect… Available now If you enjoy the following extracts from Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the…

Ultimately, the best photographs are not just interesting, or even beautiful – they are deeper than that, capturing a mood or feeling. The best photographs evoke a reaction in the viewer. Ansel Adams felt that the photographer had to respond to a subject before the viewer could: “I have made thousands of photographs of the natural scene, but only those visualisations that were most intensely felt at the moment of exposure have survived the inevitable winnowing of time.” Adams’ unique ability to capture the grandeur and mood of the American landscape cemented his place in photographic history, and in the hearts of millions of viewers. His best images convey the monumental quality of mountains or deserts, but also capture the feeling of a particular moment when the light, clouds,…

Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and Edward Weston each had their own post-processing workflow – a sequence of steps for developing, editing, and filing negatives, then more complex procedures for printing the best ones. The tools may have changed, but a good, consistent workflow is still vital – perhaps even more so with the thousands of images that digital photographers often generate. A good workflow should be streamlined but powerful. You want to wring out maximum beauty with minimal effort. It also needs to be flexible so you can make changes later without having to start over. Every step should be editable without having to throw away other changes. Today two main options fit those criteria: RAW workflows (for example using Lightroom), and Photoshop ones. RAW workflow This method uses Lightroom,…

The mission ● To make seemingly ugly landscapes look beautiful Time ● Half a day Skill level ● Beginner ● Intermediate ● Advanced Kit needed ● Nikon D-SLR ● Tripod We’ve all experienced it: you rock up somewhere hoping to photograph a landscape, mutter “Oh!” and put your camera back in the bag. Maybe the weather is miserable or there’s building work going on – whatever it is, you’re just not inspired to take a picture. But we say shoot it! Your Nikon wasn’t bought to be sat in your camera bag as you walk to the nearest coffee shop, so get it out and take a picture of that view you exclaimed at. There’s no telling what you’ll get until you shoot it, but your photography skills will…

 YOUR PROJECTS CRITIQUED M y first camera was a Nikon F80. In 2002 I travelled around Egypt and felt I needed to learn more about photography, so the following year I went on a landscape photography course. I returned to study in 2006 and learned about black and white documentary photography. Ironically, it was at this point that I started using digital cameras. My first D-SLR was the D70s, which I used for shooting sport events, but recently I returned to landscape and have tried architecture photography, which draws on my previous studies. Because I’m shooting more frequently now, I upgraded to a Nikon D800, which gives me much greater control over the details when shooting architecture. I am very much still learning architectural photography. In 2015 I had the…

The extremes of overall brightness and contrast are high-key and low-key images. Because they push the limits of tonal range, they tend to be more a feature of black and white than of colour. A high-key treatment depends on a large area and high value of whiteness, and on high contrast. For it to work well, there usually need to be some smaller, darker elements that are integral to the image. Raising the brightness and contrast throws emphasis on whatever darker areas remain. The boat on the lake above was shot in colour, and not as high-key as the result here, but it lent itself well to the high-key treatment. At this time of day, the mountains and sky in the reflection are bathed in blue, and so can be…

£400, $TBC (body only), £490, $650 (with 18-55mm AF-P VR) • www.nikon.com  Specifications Sensor 24.2-megapixel DX-format CMOS (EXPEED 4) Crop factor 1.5x Memory 1x SD/SDHC/SDXC Viewfinder Eye-level pentamirror viewfinder, 95% coverage Video resolution Full HD (1920x1080) at 60, 50, 30, 25 or 24p ISO range 100-25,600 Autofocus points 11 (1 cross-type) Max burst rate 5fps (11 RAW / 100 JPEG)* LCD screen 3-inch, 921,000-dot LCD with 170-degree viewing angle Shutter speeds 1/4000 sec to 30 secs, Bulb Weight 445g (body only) Dimensions 124x98x75.5mm Power supply Li-ion EN-EL14a Battery We’ve always held Nikon’s little D3300 in high regard, as have the countless photography enthusiasts who have contributed to making it one of Nikon’s most popular cameras. It’s not the most sophisticated D-SLR in the range, but its 24-megapixel DX sensor can…

The ‘macro’ badge often seems to be bandied about willy-nilly. You’ll see it applied to zoom lenses that give as little as a 0.33x maximum magnification ratio, or thereabouts, and to prime lenses that only give 0.5x magnification. By comparison, all of the lenses we’ve selected for this issue’s Big Test really go the distance, at least when it comes to short focusing distances, enabling full 1.0x magnification at their closest focus setting. But what does that actually mean? A macro lens with a 1.0x or 1:1 magnification ratio can reproduce objects at full life size on the camera’s image sensor. For example, if you’re shooting with a DX-format body like the D5500 or D7200, a postage stamp will fill the whole of the image frame. When viewing…