Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 253 i Digital Photographer

As the famed naturalist and presenter David Attenborough notes in the above quote, the beauty of birdlife is present around the world. Hopefully, everyone does like birds, as we’ve got a pro guide to the subject this issue. Taking dynamic photos of flighty subjects is a challenge, but with some specialist kit, fieldcraft knowledge and camera techniques, you’ll soon get captivating results. From p22, explore five focusing methods for sharper shots, plus how to use natural light, white balance, composition and shutter speeds for your best bird photography yet. Next, we take a closer look at lenses – which form the backbone of any camera system but often come with confusing terms and intimidating choices. Understand exactly how modern lenses work, learn how to make informed buying decisions, and get…

The winners of the German Society for Nature Photographers (GDT) members competition have been announced. GDT is the number one organisation for nature photographers in Germany and, this year, more than 6,400 members entered hoping to win the top prize of an Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II. Thomas Hempelmann, a 23-year-old landscape ecology and conservation student from Greifswald in Germany, was crowned this year’s winner for his photo of a kestrel on a branch of blossoms. It was taken as he was cycling home from an unsuccessful photo tour when he spotted the bird of prey sitting on a lamppost. “When the kestrel rose up and then settled between the white blossoms, my heart began to beat faster. I had imagined such a situation many times before,” he said. To…

Difficulty level: Easy Time taken: Less than 1 hour All images © Tom Calton Summer is the time of year when portrait photographers come out of their studio hibernation and venture out into the world to take advantage of the warmer climate. Not only do the vastly improved weather conditions allow the flexibility of being able to shoot in a variety of different locations, but also the colourful blooms that light up the countryside are an easy but effective way to inject bags of colour into your portraiture. The summer sun comes with its challenges, though. Most notably you’ll need to be considerate of the harsh, direct sunlight that is created by a cloudless sky. If not tamed correctly, harsh, direct lighting will create hard shadows across your subject’s face,…

Travel Photographer of the Year Awards 2021 The Travel Photographer of the Year awards (TPOTY) is one of the world’s most prestigious photography competitions, with images presenting a gloriously diverse view of life on our planet. Despite difficult times for travel, the 2021 awards attracted 20,000 images from photographers in 151 countries and the winning images will be displayed in an exhibition in London’s King’s Cross. To view all the 2021 category winners and to register for this year’s competition, visit: www.tpoty.com…

96 Super-telephoto lenses For birds and other small, timid creatures, super-telephoto lenses are the order of the day. But what should you look for? We compare four top optics, from Nikon, Canon, Fujifilm and Sony. 104 Nikon Z 9 Although it’s late to the mirrorless party, Nikon’s flagship camera is impressive in all the right places. Discover how its specs and features match rivals from Canon and Sony 108 DxO PureRAW 2 Now with an excellent plugin to integrate with Lightroom, PureRAW 2 is a more appealing prospect for advanced raw batch processing 110 Lenses We take two professional optics out into the field and test their performance. This month, it’s the Irix 21mm f/1.4 Dragonfly and the Panasonic Lumix S Pro 70-200mm f4 OIS 112 Accessories It’s the little…

Price: £115 (£69 upgrade) OPERATING SYSTEM: Mac/Windows DxO PureRAW 2 takes the raw image processing and de-noising technology in DxO’s flagship software, PhotoLab 5, and puts it into a simple image conversion utility. The idea is that you get all the quality of DxO’s processing but in a simple batchprocessing utility. PureRAW 2 can output processed JPEGs, with noise reduction and lens corrections applied or, more interestingly, Linear DNG files. These are part-processed raw files that behave just like regular raw files in your software but have DxO’s de-mosaicing and de-noising process pre-applied. PureRAW 2 can be used as a standalone program, as a tool available directly in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer or, perhaps most significantly of all, directly from within Adobe Lightroom Classic (see boxout opposite). Another…

Canon has launched its first premium full-frame zoom lenses for professional cinema productions, called the Flex Zoom series, and they cost a cool $21,999 each! The CN-E20-50mm T2.4 LF / FP and CN-E45-135mm T2.4 LF / FP will offer professional performance and impressive quality for HDR, 4K and 8K productions. With the introduction of these lenses, Canon is enhancing its lineup to meet a range of filmmaking needs, providing filmmakers with even more options to choose from, and supporting high-end content creation for a variety of uses and shooting scenarios. Both lenses offer a constant and fast T2.4 aperture across the entire zoom range, as well as covering focal lengths most popularly used by filmmakers across a variety of productions. Both the CN-E20-50mm T2.4 LF / FP and CN-E45-135mm T2.4…

Bird photography might be considered one of the more niche genres, but it has a dedicated community of shooters and provides the nature lovers among us with so many shooting opportunities. Bird species come in all shapes, sizes and colours, and display such a wide range of fascinating behaviour to capture. And while it’s easy to find winged subjects in most parts of the world in parks, gardens and reserves, birds aren’t easy to photograph. Their small size makes it a challenge to fill the frame, and while long telephoto lenses can go some way to overcoming this problem (turn to p96 for our group test of bird-friendly zooms), even with the best kit you still need excellent technical skills to capture sharp, tight close-ups. Birds are, by nature, flighty…

Modern autofocus systems are examples of how far camera technology has come in recent years. Not only do they focus rapidly with minimal noise, but they can also isolate and track individual areas of the frame with ease, which is useful for busy, chaotic subjects. However, the danger with any complex system is that we can overlook areas of weakness. Autofocus accuracy varies between camera units and different body-lens combinations, while performance can also shift over time. This means that the position of the focal plane may not be optimally aligned with your subject. While this may not be an issue in a landscape scene, it could be a concern when shooting on a fast lens and at closer focusing distances, where critical sharpness can be lost. BEFORE The solution…

It isn’t difficult to find a high-resolution camera these days. Even smartphones have sensors with at least 10MP to hand, meaning it is possible to print images up to A3 size and above. However, there may be times when that pixel count just doesn’t seem to be enough – and printing large format images is one such occasion. To produce a print of A1 and larger at a resolution of 300dpi, you need to be using the maximum resolution your camera can offer, so any loss of resolution earlier in the editing process can be a threat to the integrity of your print. In these cases, interpolation is the answer. This is the process by which pixels are artificially added to an image using software algorithmic intervention. There are multiple…

Photographer: Brigitta Story-Walentin Title: Astronomical Observatory of El Roque de Los Muchachos Location: La Palma (Canary Islands) www.500px.com/gittistory @gitti.story About the shot: The drive up to El Roque is amazing. There are hairpin bends, forest roads, cliff edges and tunnels through rocks. Once at the summit, the main highlight is the Gran Telescopio Canarias – the largest optical-infrared telescope in the world. It is so powerful it is able to see the light from the headlights of a car from 20,000 miles away. Isn’t that impressive? Tag us @dphotographermag for a chance to feature here Every issue, we’ll be sharing the best images from our Instagram community. Tag us on @dphotographermag for a chance to appear as our Shot of the Month. WIN! SAMSUNG 256GB PRO PLUS MICRO SDXC MEMORY…

When you’re shooting birds and K .91 anything else you can’t get close to, you really need to cover the distance. As versatile as it is, a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens just won’t get you there. A popular option is to add a 1.4x or 2x teleconverter into the mix, but there’s usually some degradation in image quality and overall performance. One exception is coupling the fabulous Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S with the Nikon Z teleconverters, where the loss of quality is negligible. A more obvious exception is the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM, which isn’t compatible with Canon’s RF ‘extenders’. Either way, the best solution is to get the proper tool for the job, which is where super-telephoto lenses come in. For this group test, we’ve rounded…

My suitcase and kitbag are packed by the front door, and I’m waiting for an upcoming trip to a far-flung corner of the world to run workshops on the art of photography.I’m excited at the prospect, but hesitate to embrace that feeling – it’s the fourth time they’ve been packed since Autumn 2019 and every trip has been foiled at the last minute. The past two years have given me plenty of time to reflect on my practice. While I love photographing exotic parts of the world, I have developed a deeper appreciation for subjects closer to home. The landscapes near my house have revealed overlooked wonders, and even my home itself has become a stage for photographic contemplation, such as this jar of dying tulips on the kitchen table,…

Nikon recently announced new firmware for the Z 9 flagship mirrorless camera, plus the Z 7II and Z 6II mirrorless cameras. With the Firmware v2.0, the Nikon Z 9 will now be able to record 12-bit, RAW 8.3K 60p video internally. The jump from 10-bit to 12-bit is astonishing and the camera will now be able to reproduce 68 billion more colours. Nikon is calling its new file output N Raw and the video files are said to be a lot smaller than ProRes Raw, which is excellent news when it comes to transferring and storing footage. In terms of stills, photographers will now be able to set the EVF refresh rate to 120fps. The Z 9 also gains a Pre-Release Capture feature so that when you’re halfpressing the shutter,…

Lenses form the backbone of any camera system. Looking back through the history of photography, with some notable exceptions, it is often the lens mount which becomes legendary rather than individual camera models. The technology and the crosscompatibility of a lens system outlives the specific cameras on which they may have briefly been paired.The availability of lens options is commonly a central aspect driving the decision to invest in a camera model, as the variety, competence and versatility of optics will dictate the buyer’s success for many years. With such engineering precision comes a multitude of confusing terms and intimidating choices. Even as an experienced professional photographer, it is possible to fall out of step with the current offerings from the lens manufacturers. New features, hidden functionality and a plethora…

It’s rewarding, both emotionally and financially, to get your work out there into the marketplace. Whether it’s selling images, framed prints, calendars or greeting cards, there are a myriad of ways you could be making money from your shots. We spoke to a range of pros for their advice when it comes to selling images online. Whether you want to go down the route of selling prints on Etsy, advertising products on your own website, NFTs or look at stock photos as an option, we have covered these areas. Let’s get stock in Beata Moore (www.beatamoore.co.uk, follow on Instagram @moorebeata) is a photographer and writer living in Kingston-upon-Thames. “I sell my images through National Trust Images and Alamy Stock Imagery,” she says. “The stock photography industry has drastically changed in…

For our latest competition in association with Photocrowd, we challenged you to submit your best travel and adventure shots that capture the atmosphere of a location. After sifting through the entries, the winners have been chosen. Both crowd-voted and expert winners will win a licence to Affinity Photo professional editing software. Congratulations to all of the winners – as usual, the standard of submitted images was extremely high and it was a difficult task to pick out the best ones. 1ST PLACE WINNER Fishing net patch Photographer: Nguyen Tan Tuan Our comment: What an eye-catching shot! Any angle that makes us view a subject in a new way is an effective one and this top-down perspective certainly does the trick. We love the colour theme too and the way the…

The Nikon Z 9 boasts some truly ferocious specifications – some of which blow away the Sony A1 and Canon EOS R3 (as does the price tag). However, both of these rivals have a notable head start on the Z 9 – in the case of the A1, it’s a full year. Has Nikon done enough to deliver the best professional camera? From unlimited 8K 30p recording to a 120fps maximum burst rate, it’s hard to argue that the Z 9 isn’t the most capable all-round hybrid camera on the market. And it outperforms both the Nikon D6 (which it replaces as the manufacturer’s new flagship camera) and the Canon EOS-1D X Mark III. Key features The camera’s headline specs include the 120fps continuous shooting speed and 1/32,000 sec max…

PRICE: £1,749/ $1,698 FOCUS DISTANCE: 0.92m WEIGHT: 985g Build and handling You’d expect a professional 70-200mm zoom lens to feel like a quality product and the Lumix S Pro 70-200mm f4 OIS handles like a dream. It has that milled-metal feel you only get from the finest grade barrel constructions and the controls don’t compromise this. A welcome feature is the rotary internal zoom mechanism, which means the lens doesn’t change length when adjusting the focal length, bucking the trend amongst modern mirrorless zoom optics. The tripod collar is handy but this isn’t a heavy lens. It’s not small, especially with the hood attached, but will make a pleasant travel companion. Performance AF speed is top-notch and the elements are moved into place almost instantaneously and with minimal noise. The…