Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 514 i Photography Week

Welcome to the world’s No.1 weekly digital photography magazine. If you’re already a reader, thanks for your continued support and involvement; if you’re new to Photography Week, you’ve come to the right place! In addition to expert advice, brilliant tips and step-by-step tutorials, every issue features interactive galleries of brilliant photos, how-to videos on essential shooting and editing techniques, and in-depth reviews of the latest camera kit. But that’s not the whole story. Photography Week is more than a magazine – it’s a community of like-minded people who are passionate about photography. To get involved, just follow any of the links below and share your shots and comments. JOIN THE PHOTOGRAPHY WEEK COMMUNITY AND START SHARING! FACEBOOK http://bit.ly/39py9lg TWITTER http://bit.ly/2vGadLP FLICKR http://bit.ly/2VIgsJO We’re more than just a magazine – read…

At the extreme end of the artistic scale, compositing work can produce highly visible blends and stylised images. Many photographers who focus on this type of work are not trying to produce seamless shots, where the boundaries between each component part are well hidden. Instead, they choose to embrace the less than natural colour and lighting continuity for creative images which stand apart from traditional concepts of photography. While this may initially seem unappealing to a photographer, the look produced is more familiar than you might imagine, appearing in cinematic works, such as film posters or artwork used in the music industry. In many other day-to-day compositing applications, however, we find ourselves working to match the lighting and colour of each composite element, to create final images which look like…

One aspect which really gives away the fact that an image is a composite is unnatural shadow position. This can be remedied by preserving real shadows from the subject. Shooting on a white background really helps with this, as a selection of the shadow area can be made, copied onto the new background and the blending mode of this layer changed to Multiply. This removes the white and blends the natural shadows with the underlying texture.…

When shooting backgrounds for a specific image, or simply when out shooting for non-compositing purposes, try to capture a range of backgrounds and textures that can be used in future compositing projects. Look for walls, lighting elements and neutral locations which might fit various themes. Car parks and brick walls suit dramatic composites, while elegant interior details may benefit future bridal fashion shoots or location portraits. Always shoot multiple angles and focal lengths, and place these sequences in collections for easy retrieval.…

1 FIX THE COLOUR Apply basic fixes in Camera Raw. In Photoshop, use Ctrl/Cmd+J to copy the layer and Filter > Blur > Average. Change the layer blending mode to Color, and add a Clipping Mask so it affects the subject layer. Control the effect with the opacity slider. 2 CONTROL SHARPNESS Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and set the Radius to 0.3 or to taste, depending on your image. This will ensure the subject and background fit better together, without any unnatural variations in sharpness throughout the shot. 3 MATCH VISIBILITY Add a new layer, fill it with a light colour and add a clipping mask to apply only to your subject. Lower the opacity slider to make the look natural. Remove the effect with a…

Venus Optics has announced the new Laowa 10mm f/4, an ultra-compact rectilinear pancake lens for APS-C mirrorless camera systems, which the company is billing as one of the world’s widest lenses of its kind. The lens is available for Canon RF, Fujifilm X, Nikon Z, Sony E and L mounts. It has a 109.3-degree angle of view, and offers a roughly 15-16mm full-frame equivalent focal length. The optical construction is pretty advanced for a prime lens, consisting of 12 elements in eight groups, including two aspherical elements and four extra-low dispersion elements. The lens is fully manual, and lacks any contacts for AF/EXIF transfer. According to Venus Optics, most compact lenses with a pancake design suffer from excessive distortion, with their extreme field of view causing either a fisheye effect,…

PORTRAIT LIGHTING Capturing balanced portrait shots out on location is challenging, and sometimes impossible where lighting equipment cannot be carried on site for safety reasons. Shooting the background on location and then the subject in the studio is a more effective use of time and resources. Larger group shots also benefit. SKY REPLACEMENT This can be incredibly useful for stock photography where either more or less detail is needed for end use. Photographically, we might replace a bland sky with one that has better-defined clouds or colour, while for design purposes, dropping in a seamless blue sky might look better. PRODUCT DEPTH Capturing equal sharpness in product arrangements can be difficult, especially without stopping down past f/22 and introducing diffraction. Shooting each element individually offers quality and lighting advantages, while…

One of the challenges of pro composite photography is knowing which elements should be captured first. Which works better – finding a subject to fit a background or a background to match your subject? In an ideal world, we would have a concept of what the final image will look like when shooting the elements, as this would ensure lighting and colour were aligned throughout the whole process. This isn’t always possible, but we can optimise our working practises to make pulling content elements together as smooth as possible. Generally speaking, we should approach the image from the perspective of the subject first. Since this is where we want viewers to look, we should get this area right before building the environment around it. Compositing expert Brooke Shaden explains how…

1 MOCK UP THE FINAL PICTURE You can add a mannequin or stand in to preview the perspective and shadows. Here I created a background in 3D using Unreal Engine, which made it easier to create a model and then add my subject. 2 DRAGIN YOUR SUBJECT You can also use a version with no model. Once you have the photograph of your subject, you can use the Move Tool to drag and drop, while holding down the Shift key. Doing it this way means that you can retain two different layers. 3 SET THE SUBJECT Now that you have your picture of your main subject, make sure to set it to a realistic size to match the scenery. Zoom out and use Transform (Ctrl/Cmd+T) to reduce your file to…

The US National Audubon Society has announced the winners of its annual photography contest, with Jack Zhi taking the Grand Prize for his dramatic image of two white-tailed kites in flight, with one clutching its prey. Zhi says: “I studied white-tailed kite behaviour for three years before I got this close-up. It was a challenge to get the action, distance, lighting and angles of the individuals all right […]. The father, who teaches his fledglings to hunt, held a vole in his talons. The fledgling flew in and, in a blink, grabbed the rodent as the father let go.” The Audubon Society is dedicated to protecting birds and their habitats across the Americas, and is named after the US naturalist and artist John James Audubon, This year’s contest attracted entries…

www.tamron.com £828/$999 The Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 Di III RXD G2 is something of a modern classic, reinvented. The original edition was excellent in every way, shoehorning a useful ‘standard’ zoom range and fast, constant f/2.8 aperture rating into a compact yet high-quality construction. Tamron’s ‘Generation 2’ lens adds new thrills and frills, making it an even more desirable option for Sony full-frame E-mount cameras, although it still lacks optical stabilisation. First up in the features list is a redesigned optical layout that’s designed to increase resolution and image quality. LD (Low Dispersion) and GM (Glass Moulded aspherical) elements are featured, along with high-tech coatings. Autofocus is also revamped, now based on a VXD (Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive) linear stepping motor. Another new feature is a USB-C socket and smart functions that…

Compositing is actually not a new concept – it has been a part of the photo-editing process since the days of film photography. In decades past, it was still possible to seamlessly blend image components together in the dark room, only this was done by physical means, rather than electronic. These days, thanks to digital imaging and photo-editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, it’s easier to create seamless and convincing image blends than ever before. The potential uses of compositing are wide-reaching, and in the modern marketplace there’s a steady demand for photorealistic compositing work. From environmental portraiture to product photography, landscapes, and advertising and property images, it’s a skill that has applications in almost every line of contemporary genres. Compositing is a broad term, covering everything from simple sky…

1 BACKGROUND LIGHTING Adjust shade by adding a light or switching this off. Generally even, two-light setups provide the most successful extractions 2 CONTROLLED MAIN LIGHT Match the direction, colour and softness of your main light to the expected lighting of the background for credible final lighting structure 3 FLOOR CONTRAST For full-length portraits ensure you can easily select the subject’s feet and shadows to believably place them in a new environment 4 SUBJECT HEIGHT Relative angle to the camera can make or break the credibility of the composite. Use stools or boxes if extra height is needed. 5 RIM LIGHT This adds a highlight to the edge of the subject, providing a little extra contrast from the background for tighter selections 6 CONTRASTING BACKGROUND A neutral or chroma background is different enough…

1 MAKE NOTES When shooting your subject, write down the details of the subject distance from the camera, focal length used, camera elevation and exposure settings. This allows you to capture backgrounds that are better matched to the final requirements. 2 ADJUSTCAMERA HEIGHT Set the height of the camera, relative to the subject. To make this more accurate, place a marker at the expected subject location in the final image and use a tape measure to lock height and assess the angle. 3 BRACKETEXPOSURES Set your camera to Auto Exposure Bracketing mode and capture a sequence of three or five images, one stop apart. This covers the whole exposure range while reducing the size of the working file, once open in software. 4 SHOOT VARIOUS F/STOPS Try to capture images…

1 SMART RADIUS This intelligent feature adjusts the precision of the selection based on edge properties. Use higher settings for hair or fine detail 2 VIEW MODE This feature enables the user to preview the extraction using a mask, with colour and type based on subject properties 3 MASK ADJUSTMENT TOOLS Create bespoke selections by adjusting the hardness, position and smoothness of the mask edge. You can quickly invert the selection from here too 4 OUTPUT SETTINGS Choose to output to a selection, layer mask or another option. Check Decontaminate Colors to reduce colour spill from the background…

Once you have selected and extracted your image elements, it’s time to start blending them all together. This is often the stage when photographers who are new to high-level compositing make mistakes. For a composite image to truly work, each element must look as though it fits organically within the new setting, which can be a challenge even when you have attempted to achieve uniform light and colour at the shooting stage. One of the major improvement issues is edge halos and colour spill. Light from the background can reflect onto the edge of your subject, outlining it with distractingly contrasting colour and tone and making it tricky to seamlessly blend the object into the surrounding detail. Halos can be reduced using the Decontaminate Colors option in Photoshop’s Refine Edge…

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15 MINS When you take a photograph, the shutter generally opens for just a fraction of a second. But when you shoot in extremely low-light conditions, such as at night or while using a strong ND filter, the exposure time required can extend to several seconds – or even minutes. A camera’s built-in shutter speeds typically range from either 1/4000 or 1/8000 sec at the faster end, to as slow as 30 secs. But what if you need to shoot slower than this? You need to engage Bulb or Time mode. These enable you to close the shutter manually after a delay of your choosing. Bulb mode is so called because, back in the mechanical days of photography, the shutter could be held open manually by squeezing an air-filled rubber…

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