Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i N-Photo: the Nikon magazine

WHAT’S THE POINT? Lucy says… I will occasionally use 3D tracking – mainly for weddings – but most of my street shots are captured with single-point AF. With so much going on in the frame, the camera can’t always tell what you want to focus on. Single-point AF allows me to identify my subject and focus accordingly. WHAT’S ON THE MENU? Lucy says… I really love Nikon’s menu system; it’s much more intuitive than Sony’s. I put my most used settings in My Menu, such as my focus mode, so I can change from AF-C to AF-S and Silent Mode if I’m shooting a wedding or candid portraits. I even have battery info, so I know when I’m running low. BACK TO FRONT Lucy says… I have to react fast…

Mystical Inca HUNG CHANG LIN I set off from the foot of the mountain before dawn. As I entered Machu Picchu, the sky was filled with dark clouds and drizzle. Then the sun pierced the clouds, causing the Incan buildings to appear as if they were floating on the clouds. Camera: Nikon Z 7 Lens: 14-24mm f/2.8 Exposure: 4 secs, f/18, ISO64 Blacons Hike Arch STEFANO PELLEGRINI I discovered this spot after a hike in Tenerife. I fell in love with this huge pinnacle but I had to wait till 4am to have the Milky Way arch perfectly centred. I also wanted to add my figure. I had to make several attempts, especially for the light painting. Camera: Nikon D850 Lens: 15-30mm f/2.8 Exposure: 4 mins, f/5, ISO3200 & 13…

It’s nigh-on impossible to visit a grand building that isn’t blighted by hordes of visitors. You could visit at a quieter time of day or capture multiple exposures before masking out the moving onlookers – but what if you’re strapped for time, or there’s a ban on tripods? Turn your attention to the ceiling: it may well be even more magnificent than what’s on the ground. 1 Reach the ceiling Not all settings make for good look-up subjects. We captured Bath Abbey’s famous vaulted ceiling. While it’s magnificent to look at in its own right, its structure provides the perfect opportunity to capture a symmetrical composition. That’s not to say unsymmetrical ceilings won’t work, though: try to find abstract patterns, leading lines and shapes. 2 Lens choice Decide whether to lean into…

From antibiotics to alcoholic drinks, organic decay to delicious food, fungi play an important role in all manner of things. They range in size from tiny microscopic structures to the largest living organism on the planet. Underground, the ‘wood-wide web’ of fine tendrils creates a network that allows plants and trees to communicate. Above ground, the fruiting bodies form as mushrooms and other stunning structures that offer some wonderful opportunities for macro photography. Fungi – and mushrooms in particular – tend to prefer dark conditions like dense woodlands, crevices in rotten wood and shady areas. When photographing in these murky spots, a burst of flash can provide a welcome lift to the scene. But it’s not just about increasing the light levels, a flash also gives you the opportunity to…

The ‘Liminal Space’ series was created as part of the final project of my BA (Hons) Commercial Photography degree at Arts University Plymouth. The series is fashion-led, exploring how clothing, props and set design can be used to discuss themes of nostalgia and illusion. I wanted the images to speak for themselves, and to include elements that are not only technically advanced but also personal to me. I started the project by listing various things that were symbolic of my childhood and used these as motifs to inform my subject matter and composition, exaggerating the ideas of liminal space – a place, or state of mind, during a transitional period – and nostalgia to a degree that is high-fashion and oddly unique. The project was inspired by the longing I…

High ISO NR You’ll usually find this in the Shooting menu. It’s on by default because most people want their high-ISO shots to be as smooth as possible. Raw noise reduction If you use Camera Raw to process your Raw files, play around with noise reduction settings. Reducing noise can reduce sharpness, though. Photoshop filter Photoshop’s Reduce Noise filter can reduce both luminance and colour noise (see opposite). You can even adjust the red, green and blue channels individually. Noise plug-ins Some of the best results come from dedicated plug-ins, like Nik Dfine 2. These will analyse different areas of the image and balance detail and smoothness.…

OVERALL WINNER! 1. On the Edge BY PAWEL ZYGMUNT Each of the photographs printed here topped one of the 12 rounds throughout NPOTY 2023 – and, in doing so, beat over 15,000 other images to the punch. But only one reader gets to take home the Nikon Z 9 grand prize and be crowned N-Photo’s Photographer of the Year 2023… Congratulations to Pawel Zygmunt! His entry ‘On the Edge’ won our Winter round in issue 158. As we considered the 12 stunning monthly winners, Pawel’s entry stood out for many reasons. He had to hike to the Cadini di Misurina viewpoint for sunrise, in snowy conditions; he adapted when the glorious sunset he’d anticipated instead provided a moody skyline; and he managed to frame a hiker to convey the scale…

1. Nikon’s old-looking camera appeals to a young audience It’s no surprise that Nikon’s latest retro camera, the Nikon Z f, has been a big success. However, what may come as a surprise is who it has been a success with: the younger audience. Nikon’s director and executive officer director of marketing headquarters, Tsuji Takuhide, gave an insight into Nikon’s thoughts, plans, and observations with the Z f. https://bit.ly/47LKzlS 2. Nikon shows ‘timeless’ photographs for Nikon Z f launch To mark the release of the Nikon Z f, Nikon has released a series of images taken with the new camera that appear timeless but are made in the modern day, much like the camera design. They provided the camera to photographers from different locations and with different styles, with the…

GlareOne Vega monolights From £199 www.wexphotovideo.com Polish lighting specialist GlareOne has launched a brand-new range of studio lights. Offering a choice of studio flash heads, continuous lights, light shapers, stands and backgrounds, Vega is available in the UK only from the online and in-store dealer Wex. Originally focused on the Polish market, GlareOne was recently acquired by European Imagine Group, which also owns Wex Photo Video, and has since expanded across Europe. Compared with some of the big-name lighting brands such as Profoto, Elinchrom, and Bowens, GlareOne lights seem to be competitively priced – and look the part too. A GlareOne Vega 200 monolight with 200W LED bulbs, a recycle time of 0.9 sec and an energy range of six stops costs £349; while a 60W, 5500K GlareOne LED 600D…

Often referred to as ‘the most available light’, a decent flashgun is an amazingly versatile piece of kit. Supremely portable, a flashgun can make a huge difference to the quality of lighting in almost any scenario, from night-time shots and gloomy interiors to portraits on a bright sunny day. Indeed, filling in the shadows under direct sunlight is one of the things that flashguns do best. With i-TTL (intelligent Through The Lens) flash metering, dedicated flashguns can team up with your camera to enable correct exposures in all sorts of shooting conditions. The system works by using brief pulses of light, fired by the flashgun prior to the actual exposure. This is reflected from the subject and passes through the lens, after which it’s measured by the camera’s metering system.…

Welcome to the first edition of N-Photo of 2024! As we settle into the new year, it’s time to re-invigorate our photography, and to that end James Paterson sets 24 photo challenges for you to try over the next 12 months, from ideas to shoot at home to those designed to get you out and about with your Nikon. Our apprentice undergoes her own personal challenge, stepping firmly outside her comfort zone to sneak surreptitious snaps of strangers on a candid street shoot in London, under the watchful eye of pro photographer Lucy Hamidzadeh. In our Gear section, we turn the spotlight on to a selection of speedlights to add anything from a blip of fill to a blast of overpowering flash to your shots, plus we have in-depth reviews…

TONAL TWEAKS Lucy says… I use Lightroom to convert images to black and white straight away, to see whether colour or mono speaks to me on a storytelling level. I then make basic global adjustments for highlights, shadows, whites and blacks. Less is more, so I try to keep tonal tweaks to a minimum. ISOLATE THE COLOURS Lucy says… I use the B&W panel to target individual colour ranges. Pay close attention to how each slider affects your photo; it’s easy to go too far and even distort the image. Don’t feel you need to adjust every slider either. I then use the Color Grading panel to do a final tonal tweak. CROP AND STRAIGHTEN Lucy says… I’ll finish by straightening my horizon or verticals – if needed – and…

It’s hard to think of anything more stunning than a misty morning. Get up early and stand upon higher ground, and you’ll see the landscape below transformed. Photographing these conditions can require a degree of luck – sometimes you’ll need to return to the same location over and over before you get just the right conditions. Look out for cold, clear nights following warm, wet days – especially in autumn – and you might find that your favourite locations are totally transformed at sunrise. A favourite misty scene of mine is Corfe Castle, Dorset. The ruins stand high above the mist, and you can also capture some beautiful rays of light as the sun rises and shines through the crumbled architecture. Read on to find out my workflow… How to…

Modern cameras can produce images of staggering clarity and pixel-perfect detail, but these defect-free digital depictions of scenes can sometimes feel a little cold. It’s no surprise, then, that many of us feel nostalgia for a time when photography was harder, and imperfections in photos were the norm. There’s a certain charm to old pictures that have been tainted by colour casts, light leaks, blurry edges and grainy details. What they lack in crispness, they make up for in fuzzy old-school feels. This perhaps goes some way to explaining the continuing popular trend for adding analogue effects to digital photos. It lends them some of that retro charm, and lets you create photos that evoke a feeling of time and place. In this project, we’ll look at how to add…

THE ISO SCALE These are the standard settings – the range available to you will depend on your Nikon LANDSCAPE ISO50-200 Low ISOs give the best image quality, and using a tripod will mean you don’t have to worry about camera shake. SPORT ISO200-6400 The key to sports is capturing the action. Noise is secondary, so use whatever ISO you need if the light is low. ASTRO PHOTOGRAPHY ISO800-1600 This allows a shorter exposure to reduce object movement across the sky. LOW LIGHT/CANDID ISO3200-12800 The most important things are to get sharp shots and preserve the atmosphere. TWILIGHT/WILDLIFE ISO12800+ All current Nikons can shoot at high ISOs, ideal for low-light wildlife photography. NOCTURNAL ISO51200+ The sensitivity of the sensor in some advanced Nikons means you can shoot things you can’t…

The main reason for increasing the ISO in dark conditions is to make sure you can shoot at a suitable shutter speed. At the same time, you’ll want to shoot at the lowest ISO you can, to get the best possible picture quality. This means you can end up doing complicated mental maths when you should be concentrating on your pictures. But there’s no need, because your Nikon can do it for you! Auto ISO lets you select the minimum shutter speed you want the camera to use and the maximum ISO, then works out the best combination instantly as you shoot.…

Q I use a number of lenses with my Nikon D500 but am concerned that some might be incompatible if I upgrade to a Z 8. Can you help? Barbara Hilton A It’s good and bad news! From the full list you sent, all three of your FX format (full-frame) Sigma 105mm, Sigma 150-600mm and Nikon 300mm should work with the Z 8 without any limitations, via a Nikon FTZ or FTZ II mount adapter. Most of the other lenses are basically compatible but, being DX format (APS-C) lenses, they’ll only work in DX crop mode on the full-frame Z 8 (see the following Q&A). For your Tamron lenses, the Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD would need to be serial number 052673 onwards. If it’s an earlier sample,…

WORTH £2299! When we reviewed the Nikon Z f, we called it: “Nikon’s best-looking camera since 1982!” And now, together with Nikon UK, we’re giving you the chance to win this full-frame retro-style Z camera. It’s an incredible prize that’s worth a whopping £2299/$1999. Enter any of the 12 rounds of NPOTY 2024 to be in with a chance of taking Nikon’s nostalgia-infused Z camera home – and of being crowned N-Photo’s Photographer of the Year 2024. A blast from the… future? The Z f is far from retro under the hood. It’s built around a 24.5Mp full-frame CMOS sensor and inherits some of the latest advancements from the Nikon Z 8 and Z 9. It’s powered by the latest EXPEED 7 processor, has a native ISO range of 100-64,000,…

£4999/$4799 www.nikon.co.uk The Nikon Z 600mm f/6.3 VR S follows on from a couple of other super-telephoto lenses that have really impressed us. The most similar is the Z 800mm f/6.3 VR S, which has the same kind of design, based on the use of a Phase Fresnel element in the optical path. Similar to those used to focus lighthouse beams and stage lights, this enables a smaller, more lightweight design. Even so, the Z 600mm is much smaller and lighter than the Z 800mm, weighing just 1470g (including tripod mounting ring) compared with 2385g. It also has a regular 95mm filter attachment thread at the front, whereas the Z 800mm takes 46mm drop-in filters at the rear. A more recent lens that we’re really keen on is the Nikon…

Current market prices are checked regularly with reputable stores to serve as a guideline. Body-only prices quoted unless stated. Different lens bundles are available. Prices correct at time of going to press. DX DSLRS NIKON D7500 THE D7500 SHOEHORNS the best bits from the now-discontinued pro-grade D500 into a smaller, more affordable body. The control layout makes everything easy to get at, and there’s a top-plate info LCD, 51-point autofocus system, fast 1/8000 sec shutter speed and 8fps continuous drive rate. Video resolution stretches to 4K. FX DSLRS NIKON D780 THE D780 TAKES the D750’s winning design and handling cues, but adds on-sensor phase-detection autofocus and EXPEED 6 processing, inherited directly from the Z 6. The result is a capable and natural-feeling DSLR for shooting stills in viewfinder mode, coupled…

THE PRO NAME: Lucy Hamidzadeh CAMERA: Nikon Z f Lucy’s first DSLR was a Nikon D3100, but when she tried a friend’s Sony, she decided to go mirrorless. It would be the Nikon Z f that brought her back to the Big N, where she featured in a video on the new camera for Nikon Asia. Lucy’s love for street art developed from attending an Instagram photography meet 14 years ago. She’s since left behind a career in content marketing to become a freelance photographer, and has even produced a book, Lucy Hamidzadeh: Unfinished Stories. To see more of her work, visit: www.lucyhamidzadeh.com THE APPRENTICE NAME: Paula Irvine CAMERA: Nikon Z 7II NHS worker Paula was given a bridge camera 14 years ago, to document her first child growing up.…

The new year is a chance for new beginnings, lifestyle changes and fresh endeavours. So why not start by getting creative with your camera? Over the next 12 pages, we’ll explore a range of ideas to help you kick-start your photography in 2024. You’ll find a host of camera tricks, project ideas and lifestyle hacks that will leave you keen to grab your Nikon and get shooting. We’ll begin by exploring some of the cutting-edge techniques and technological advances that make Nikon photography in 2024 more accessible and exciting than ever. Then we’ll explore an array of fun shooting projects that anybody can try, from simple camera tricks to eye-catching lighting techniques. Whether you’re looking for inspiration or keen to learn new camera skills, you’ll find plenty of tips and ideas…

One of the biggest challenges when you shoot a portrait is to capture your subject’s skin tone as evenly as possible. The best way to do this is to avoid direct light, which causes harsh shadows and bright hotspots. But there are many other reasons why a subject’s skin tone might not be consistent. We photographed our model Jessica (Instagram: @connor_and_jessica) at a botanical garden, on a bracing autumn’s day. Cold weather causes skin to flush; and light, reflected off of foliage, causes green colour casts. Thankfully, there’s a clever way to fix these problems in post-production: frequency separation. This technique is so-called because it splits an image’s high and low frequencies – essentially, texture and colour – into separate layers. This means you can even out tones without actually…

There’s more to white balance than getting the whites balanced: it’s about every colour in the image. There are two ways to do this: you can set the white balance in the camera, or shoot in Raw and set it afterwards. The best practice is to set it in-camera, but sometimes this isn’t practical. By shooting in Raw, you can leave your white balance set to Auto WB, safe in the knowledge that you can tweak it afterwards, if necessary. Photoshop’s Camera Raw and Lightroom offer near-identical white balance tools, which you’ll find either in the Basic panel in Camera Raw or in the Develop module in Lightroom. The tools are simple, but there are some essential tricks to learn that can help you get the most out of them.…

Every night, there is one photographic subject that is accessible to all of us, no matter where in the world we might be. All you have to do is look up, and there they are: the stars. Admittedly, a night sky covered in cloud or obscured by the light pollution over a big town or city can affect the quality of the view, but with the long nights of winter upon us in the northern hemisphere, now is the best time to photograph celestial displays. Göran Strand knows better than most how to get results that will leave you feeling heavenly, thanks to his own life-long passion for astronomy. “I can’t say what sparked my childhood fascination with astronomy,” he says. “From what I recall, it’s always been there. I…

It’s easy to zoom in on a photo on the computer at 100% magnification and see every dot and speckle of image noise. But don’t forget that 100% is a very high level of magnification, especially if you’re using a Nikon like a D850, Z 7II, Z 8 or Z 9. These cameras have 45.7-megapixel sensors, so 100% view represents a very high magnification indeed. The danger is that you can end up paying far too much attention to reducing image noise areas that are too small to see at normal viewing sizes and distances.…

CHROMATIC Colour or ‘chroma’ noise is a multicoloured speckling, where neighbouring pixels show random colour variations. This is quite easy for noise reduction processes to remove without harming image detail, and you tend to see it on older cameras. LUMINANCE Luminance noise is caused by random variations in brightness between pixels. It’s harder to deal with because noise reduction processes can’t readily distinguish noise from real detail. Reducing it will usually have an effect on fine detail too.…

Q I’m planning a trip to Alaska. What secondhand lens should I add to my D5500 and 18-140mm zoom? Charles Thompson A Matthew recommends… The Nikon AF-P 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6E ED VR would be good as an additional telephoto zoom but an ‘all in one’ lens, like the Tamron 18-400mm, can be more convenient when you’re on a trip. Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD THIS TAMRON LENS STRETCHES FROM WIDE-ANGLE COVERAGE TO HUGE TELEPHOTO REACH RELEASED: 2017 PRICE NEW: £699/$699 SECONDHAND PRICE: ‘Excellent’ £449/$525 ‘Good’ £419/$499 There are rumours that this Tamron lens is about to be discontinued but it’s still available new and is a great secondhand buy. It’s unique in its extra-large zoom range, equivalent to 27-600mm in full-frame terms, so gives greater telephoto reach than a 70-300mm lens,…

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…

£1799/$1999 www.tamron.eu We’ve almost been here before. The full-frame compatible Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 Di III VXD for Z-mount mirrorless cameras is billed as the world’s fastest lens with this sort of zoom range. The Tamron 35-150mm f/2.8-4 Di VC OS, launched in 2019, offered the same zoom range, but was an f-stop slower at any given focal length. That lens was designed for Nikon F-mount DSLRs, but has been discontinued. Key features Many discerning photographers prefer constant-aperture zoom lenses but, while this Tamron has a variable aperture rating, it’s uncommonly fast at the wide-angle end, and still delivers a bright f/2.8 at its longest telephoto setting. The zoom range of 35-150mm is really useful, stretching from a moderately wide-angle field of view to a pretty powerful telephoto reach. Compared with…