Innehållsförteckning för February 2018 från Digital Camera Magazine

Photography news from around the globe BELGIAN photojournalist Alain Schroeder has been named overall winnner of the 15th Travel Photographer of the Year contest. Over 20,000 images from photographers in 129 countries were submitted, but the panel of judges, which included award-winning photographer Eamonn McCabe and Michael Pritchard director general of the Royal Photographic Society, selected Alain’s powerful portfolios of Kushti wrestling in India and the complex rituals associated with death in Toraja, Indonesia (pictured above) due to their “sensitivity, tenderness and even humour while depicting stories with an edge”. For his depiction, Alain has earned £4,000 in cash, £750 to spend on Páramo clothing, and a leather portfolio case. All three age groups in Young Travel Photographer of the Year were won by budding photographers from the United States,…

LEICA’s latest special-edition rangefinder is identical to the existing full-frame Leica M (Typ 262), but with one obvious difference. The solid aluminium top plate and baseplate have been anodised in rich red to match the special-edition Leica Summicron-M 50 mm f/2 ASPH lens released in 2016. And, just like that lens, the new camera is limited to just 100 examples worldwide. Each copy of the ‘red anodised finish’ edition will have a unique serial number and be available at Leica Stores and Boutiques for just shy of $7,000 – quite a hike from the £4,680 /$5,595 price for the standard version. https://uk.leica-camera.com; £7,750/$6,995…

WE HIGHLIGHTED Lomography’s Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for its Neptune Convertible Art Lens System earlier in 2017, and now the lens system is available to buy through Lomo’s online and bricksand- mortar stores. The Neptune system comes in Canon EF, Nikon F and Pentax K mounts, and includes a selection of three prime lenses – 35mm, 50mm and 80mm. Its dual aperture mechanism allows you to work with either a seamless diaphragm or drop-in aperture plates (pictured above) for creative bokeh effects. https://shop.lomography.com; £839/$990…

Seven fresh challenges to push your photography in new directions MAKING interesting and unique images from details within the landscape that are often overlooked or considered not photogenic is a challenge that I love. The coast is a particularly great place to do this kind of photo project: it’s in a constant state of change, with new weird and wonderful subjects revealing themselves with the ebb and flow of each new tide. On the late December morning I took this shot, I arrived at Whitley Bay Beach to find the stormy winter seas had washed up large banks of tangled kelp. Overnight sub-zero temperatures had dusted the kelp in a light frost, accentuating its form. I was drawn to this arrangement as I was instantly reminded of octopus tentacles. To…

WE’RE going to show you how to create a powerful image of a car that’s seemingly screaming down the road. It’s enough to kick you into the back of your seat – and all it takes is a car, a quiet location, a willing model/driver and a flashgun. Essentially, we’ll be mounting the camera to the car we’re shooting with a suction-mounted attachment, so that the DSLR and car move at the same speed and direction. This will ensure the car stays sharp in your shot. While sitting inside, we’ll wirelessly trigger the camera as the car is driven along by our driver/model, and combine this with a pop of flash to light the driver. So let’s get buckled in and put the pedal to the metal (photographically speaking)... Step…

THE basic rules governing the positioning of objects and focal points are great for many shooting situations, but they can only give a bare structure to images. Thinking about how the different areas, objects and subjects in the picture interact with each other and add to the story will enable you to go beyond simply where to position them in the frame. These connections are sometimes obvious and literal, such as a line or an object linking two areas of the frame, but can also be more ephemeral, such as using similar shapes or subjects to add to the story. It can also involve using two strikingly different subjects or colours to create a contrast to add impact or even conflict to the narrative of the image. When you are…

FROM the wide view of a short focal length to the high magnification of a telephoto, the type of lens that you use has an impact on the composition of your images. But it’s actually your viewpoint that is the real weapon in your composition armour. Your perspective is governed simply by the relative distances between your viewpoint and the different subjects in the scene. So, when you are out shooting, don’t simply stand in one spot and rely on zooming in or out (or changing lenses) to include more or less of the scene: you’ll need to move to really transform your composition. Also consider high or low viewpoints, to give your images and composition a distinctive twist. PICK THE CORRECT LENS THE lens you use simply determines how…

NORTHUMBERLAND LANDSCAPES Our Northumberland road trip continues with Ben Brain and two readers meeting up on a misty morning to photograph one of the world’s Most Recognisable trees… READER 1 Dave Brightwell CAMERA: Canon EOS 6D LOCATION: County Durham DAVE is passionate about shooting landscapes and seascapes and cites the Isle of Skye as a favourite location – a sentiment that is undoubtedly shared by many landscapers reading this issue. Dave works shifts, so gets some clear days to indulge his passion, which he has enjoyed for the past seven years. He is a familiar face on the landscape photography scene in the north-east, and has had a number of images commended in Landscape Photographer of the Year 2016 and 2017. www.facebook.com/davebrightwellphotography READER 2 John Haswell CAMERA: Nikon D7100 LOCATION:…

IT’S six days’ walk before I cross the border, but I’ve just had the first glimpse of Scotland across the Solway Firth, misty and undulating in the distance. I wasn’t expecting this first view to stir my soul. Whitehaven was once the third largest trading port in the UK, exporting coal worldwide. The impressive scale and handsome engineering of the harbour only accentuate the melancholy feeling now its whole purpose is redundant. I spend a night camped in the earthworks of Milefortet 21, part of the Roman frontier defences that connected with Hadrian’s Wall. I put the tent up in the dark, kneeling amongst hundreds of writhing slugs that are feasting on the wet freshly cut grass, their skins glistening in the torchlight. The rain has been relentless for days,…

CSC www.sony.co.uk SPECIFICATIONS Sensor_42.4MP full-frame Exmor R CMOS, 35.9 x 24.0mm Image processor_Bionz X AF points_399-point phase detection, 425-point contrast detection ISO range_100-32,000, expandable to 50-102,400 Max image size_7,952 x 5,304 Metering zones_1,200 Video 4K_UHD at 30, 24fps Viewfinder_Quad-VGA OLED, 3.69 million dots Memory card_2 x SD/SDHC/SDXC, inc 1 x UHS II LCD_3-inch touchscreen, 1,440k dots Max burst_10fps (76 compressed raw) Connectivity_Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth Size_127 x 96 x 74mm Weight_675g (body only, with battery and memory card) OF course, it was bound to happen. We knew Sony had the technology to combine high resolution with high-frame rates from the moment it launched the Alpha 99 II, and then Nikon announced the D850, which pulled the same trick. Some might be disappointed that the sensor resolution is unchanged from the A7R…

CANON and Epson make the best photo inkjet printers on the market. For A4 (8.5 x 11 inches in the USA), recent models combine a pigment-based black ink, for crisp document printing, with four or more dye-based inks for premium photo output. Moving up to larger format A3+ printing (13x19 inches), there’s a choice between printers that are based exclusively on dye or pigment inks. Dye inks are fully absorbed into the paper, and tend to give a smoother, more even finish on glossy, semi-gloss and lustre photo papers. Pigment inks are often preferred for fully matte photo papers and the larger molecules are more faderesistant over time, especially for prints that you’re going to hang on the wall. For running costs, using the manufacturers’ own-brand inks and high-quality papers,…

Online and high street print labs are easy to use and their prices are very persuasive, but nothing beats the convenience and immediacy of a home printing set-up.…

9 ALL-NEW PHOTO TIPS CARDS Digital Camera’s popular photo tips cards put the settings and techniques at your fingertips. Look for the cards after the magaziine and print them out. CARRY ON YOUR NEXT PHOTO TRIP! 51 MINUTES OF VIDEO TUTORIALS CAMERA RAW BASICS Explore this program’s essential photo-editing tools WATCH VIA bit.ly/dc199video MAKE A COMPOSITE Take a background from one photo and place it in another WATCH VIA bit.ly/dc199video RETOUCH A PORTRAIT Use the Spot Healing Brush tool to remove blemishes WATCH VIA bit.ly/dc199video BLEND MODE BASICS Easily generate effects with the Blend Mode menu WATCH VIA bit.ly/dc199video 162-PAGE BUYERS’ GUIDE EBOOK If you’re after some new kit this year, you won’t want to miss your free Camera Shopper ebook, with the best buying advice around. Download the PDF…

DO ANYTHING once a week, and you will get better at it. About to begin its seventh year, 52Frames is an online group of photography enthusiasts from around the world, seeking to improve their camera skills through a weekly challenge that encourages creativity, inspiration and learning. Centred around a different topic each week, some challenges take on the technical aspects of photography – such as the rule of thirds, leading lines or fast shutter speeds – while others take on a more creative approach, with themes such as love, the colour red and the crowd favourite, a chair. The point of a weekly photo challenge is not to take your best photo, but rather to take a photo. Every week. To be comfortable with whatever level you are at and,…

THIS is one of those photo tricks that makes viewers think, “How did they do that?” The answer is surprisingly simple, and the real skill begins in-camera. To create a seemingly levitating figure, we capture two different but perfectly aligned versions of the scene – one with the person lying draped over a stable support and the other of just the empty scene. So the camera technique is easy – we just use a tripod and take two shots. As well as a sturdy tripod, you’ll need backlighting; we used the car headlights and two flashguns – one behind and right, and one to the left. Then we piece the two images together in Photoshop, which is a relatively straightforward job. The real skill lies in crafting atmosphere around the…

HAVE you ever wondered why some pictures just look ‘right’, while others don’t? The answer lies in composition, which relates to the positioning and relationships between areas and focal points in the subject you are shooting. Understanding how composition works is the single most important thing you need to know to improve your images. Composition is a combination of art, a little bit of science, and a significant sprinkling of ‘gut feeling’. In these 12 pages, you’ll discover all of the rules and techniques that you need to improve your composition skills, how to use them and how they affect your images. While we can’t teach you the ‘gut feeling’, simply getting out there and using these composition techniques will help you discover which ones work for you and the…

WHILE the basic positioning and placement of the elements within a picture is vital to the composition, this is only one part of improving your images. Even when you have positioned your subjects beautifully, you can end up with very flat-looking images, so you need to use some other techniques to add a sense of depth and distance to shots. There are two main techniques that can help emulate a three-dimensional scene within the constraints of a two-dimensional photograph: leading lines and aerial perspective. The first relies on using shapes, lines or curves in the subject to draw the viewer into the picture. This technique can be enhanced by using geometrical rules such as vanishing points and objects getting smaller as they get further away from you, giving a sense…

THE WILD CHALLENGE Two professional photographers are challenged to shoot, edit and print their work on location in the wilds of the Peak District Admittedly, it’s a bonkers idea taking a printer into the wild landscape. But we love a bonkers idea at Digital Camera – so when pro photographers Doug Chinnery and Paul Sanders asked us to join them along with the equally mad folk from Fotospeed for a fun-filled day of ‘wild printing’ on location in the Peak District, we couldn’t resist. Well, who could? Our mission, apart from some pure unadulterated photo fun, was to bring home the importance of printing photographs. It’s all too easy in today’s world to leave images languishing on hard drives. We believe passionately that the final print is an intrinsic part…

ACCIDENT OF A CARELESS DRONE PILOT NAME: Stefan Thaler LOCATION: Tirol, Austria KIT: DJI Phantom 4 Pro drone with 24mm lens at 8.8mm EXPOSURE: 1/400 sec at f/4, ISO 100 WEBSITE: www.stefanthaler.net Expansive view Wide-angle lenses are ideal for photographing expansive landscapes, and the relative focal length of 8.8mm from this drone’s built-in lens exaggerates the sense of scale of the scene. The curved pathway through the trees creates a striking composition, even when the shot is being viewed from a distance. Snow angel “Many people get concerned at the sight of a drone, but no one ever worries about the pilot himself,” Stefan says. While concentrating on controlling his aircraft, he slipped in the snow. By including the detail of himself sprawled on the ground, the scale of the…

1 Get up! If you want mirrorcalm conditions for perfect lakeside reflections, you are most likely to get them at dawn, so get yourself out early to find those beautiful scenes. 2 Long exposure You can get reflections even on a disturbed lake surface but you need a long exposure to smooth out the water and allow the reflection to appear in the image. Use a strong ND filter to extend exposure times into several seconds. 3 Trick of the light Reflections are darker than the scene that’s being reflected. You can use an ND grad filter to bring the two exposures closer together, but your reflection should always be a little darker to make it look as natural as possible. 4 Keep your eyes peeled You can get reflections…

WILD WONDERS EXPERT JUDGE: Will Burrard- Lucas WINNER MICHAL DOBES Will says: “Michal’s skill shines through in this photograph. The perfect composition, colour, contrast and behaviour have been combined together to create a truly stunning image.” 2nd GRAHAM NIVEN “The use of monochrome in post-processing and the low angle have been used to great effect by the photographer, in order to accentuate the majesty and power of this impressive stag.” 3rd PETAR SABOL “Petar’s patience and effort has been highly rewarded with this stunning behavioural image. The timing and composition are also excellent, which is all the more impressive when you consider that the image was taken underwater.” IT’S A SMALL WORLD EXPERT JUDGE: Levon Biss WINNER ANDY EDGE Levon says: “This is a very nicely framed image in which…

1 What else will I need to pay for? Check carefully what’s included in the price of your course. Sometimes you are simply paying for the tutor’s time and expertise – everything else is extra. Typically you will need to pay separately for travel and some meals. But you will find some options where accommodation, board and travel is all included. Insurance, visas and vaccinations are all items you should factor into the cost for more exotic locations. 2 Local knowledge It can be exciting to follow a professional photographer exploring a new location, but for a workshop you will usually want someone who knows the location well, so that he or she can get you to the best vantage points at the right times of day without even having…

JOEL Meyerowitz is one of America’s most famous fine-art photographers. He has been many things during his long career: a black-andwhite photographer capturing life on New York’s streets; a pioneering largeformat colour photographer; the official photographer documenting the aftermath of the 9/11 Manhattan terrorist attacks in 2001; and, more recently, a still-life photographer meditating on light and perception. What kicked off his passion for photography? After studying painting and drawing at Ohio State University, he began working as an art director and designer for an advertising company. In 1962, as part of one job, he watched legendary American photographer Robert Frank, who was then earning a living doing commercial work, shooting pictures for a booklet. Meyerowitz was so inspired by seeing him work that he returned to his office, told…

FOR going large with your home printing and maintaining ultimate quality on glossy paper, for both colour and black & white photos, the Canon Pro-100S is the perfect choice. It’s reasonably priced for a large-format printer, both to buy and to run, and is much faster than pigmentbased printers. And it’s more than just a glossy paper specialist: it also delivers excellent results on wide-ranging matte and ‘art’ media. If you need pigment ink for maximum anti-fade longevity, the Pro-10S edges ahead of the Epson P600 for sheer print quality. However, the Epson’s roll feeder is a bonus, enabling you to create prints of any aspect ratio, from square to panoramic. Taking a step down in size, many of us are happy to limit our home printing to A4. Here,…

ONE of the best ways to enhance a composite, or any image for that matter, is to add tonal effects with Adjustment Layers. They work by changing the tones in all the layers underneath them in the Layers panel, which means that they can be edited independently of any of the other elements that make up your image. This is a great help when you are building a composite, because they can trick the eye into thinking that the separate parts belong together. Crucially, you have the option to tweak any Adjustment Layer at any time by double-clicking the thumbnail icon in the Layers panel. What’s more, you can alter the way they affect the layers underneath by lowering the Opacity, changing the Blend Mode or painting a Layer Mask.…

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR – WINNER DIMINUTIVE DUNE____BENJAMIN GRAHAM “A Tuesday evening in early October guaranteed a mostly deserted location, and while heading along the estuary’s edge at twilight, the subtlety of the sand forms caught my eye. As well as its minimal simplicity, I particularly like the indeterminate scale of the image. The double S-curve could be two metres long or 2,000. It was actually about 20…” Kit Nikon D810 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens Exposure 0.6 sec at f/11, ISO 64 SEND US YOUR SHOTS Your photograph could appear here! Send your best recent shot to digitalcamera@futurenet.com (subject line: Hotshots) HIGHLY COMMENDED – ADULT CLASSIC VIEW JUDGE’S CHOICE – CHARLIE WAITE STOWE POOL____DAVE FIELDHOUSE “After a particularly chilly night, a sliver of ice had formed on the pool: thin…

LIGHTBOXES are designed to illuminate a subject from behind. A favourite of artists, they’re also perfect for shooting close-ups of semi-translucent subjects. Ready-made lightboxes or even light tables can be pretty expensive to buy, but you can build your own for next to nothing. Take an old cereal box, some translucent material such as greaseproof or tracing paper, and some fairy lights. You might need to do a bit of jiggling to get the light to spread evenly, but it works brilliantly for capturing close-ups. Anything semi-translucent that allows some of the light from the box to shine through, such as this lime tree leaf, makes a good subject to shoot. You don’t even need to use a macro lens – we used an inexpensive close-up filter. Try lots of…

IDENTIFYING and positioning the main subject, and other focal points, in your image is at the heart of good composition. Get this wrong, and you’ll simply end up with an unbalanced, awkward and unfulfilling image that will never look quite ‘right’. So here we’ll start with the building blocks of where to place subjects and focal points to help you get better balance, shape and distribution of form in your photos. No single one of these rules and techniques is the ‘golden bullet’ to getting the right balance every time you take a shot, but if you are struggling to find a framing and composition that works, implementing one of these rules can really help you get a shot that looks great, instead of one that is only destined to…

YOU don’t always have to fill the frame with the main subject or include loads of different elements in a scene to produce striking compositions. In fact, it’s often better to isolate a single focal point or leave space around the subject to give it room to ‘breathe’. This approach to composition will help you produce more relaxed, contemplative images, because the extra space helps to give the viewer more time to ‘find’ the subject in the image without the competition of other elements or focal points in the scene. Finding this perfect simplicity isn’t always easy. You will need to identify the dominant subject and then isolate it from any distractions around it to produce a really striking composition. To help you isolate the subject, you can use a…

METERING modes have made huge advances across recent generations of cameras, with intelligent ‘pattern’ metering systems able to deliver well-exposed images in situations where you’d previously end up simply binning the results. But that’s not to say they’re foolproof. There are still times when the camera meter can struggle to make sense of a subject – such as when you’re shooting in very low light – or where the scene has such a wide range of brightness values that the camera averages out the scene incorrectly. Although camera manufacturers use different brand names for their metering modes, they’re all designed to measure the level of brightness through the lens, and suggest an exposure – a combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO – to record this brightness correctly. The meter…

Dave OUR second stop of the day would be the Hareshaw Linn waterfall walk, which can be accessed from the village of Bellingham. The walk to the main waterfall takes you through a steep, wooded valley which is peppered with rapids and smaller waterfalls, and there are plenty of opportunities for creative landscape and macro photography here – as long as you give yourself plenty of time, of course. We arrived relatively late in the day, and although the light was soft, we knew we wouldn’t have time to make it to the main ’fall. Instead, we worked the smaller pockets of white water as we moved up the valley until the light began to fade. “This is a shot of a small set of ’falls that are right at…

A Not necessarily, Susie, unless you specifically want to shoot a few small droplets at life size so they are really big in the frame. A macro lens is a brilliant tool for allowing you to focus in on tiny detail, but there are other ways to get the type of shot you are describing. I suggest you try it with a telephoto lens, if you have one, and zoom in so you have a tight composition with lots of impact. If possible, work with the camera on a tripod so you can carefully control your composition. If your camera has Live View, use it for both sorting the composition and to zoom in and focus very precisely. You can use either natural light or diffused flash to light the…

PHOTO workshops and holidays come in all shapes and sizes to suit every type of photographer. They can be as straightforward as spending a few hours getting to know the settings on your camera with a professional photographer, before returning home with more confidence over your camera’s controls. At the other extreme, it can mean spending a couple of weeks on the other side of the world hunting down rare wildlife with an award-winning professional photographer, combining a once-in-a-lifetime holiday with some advanced photographic training. Whichever type of course you choose, you not only get professional photographic advice, but you also create time for you to progress your photography. Holidays with the family, or days out with the kids, mean that your photography is compromised. With a photographic holiday, you can…

What first sparked your interest in artistic expression? My father was an engineer and worked in a factory, but he was always doodling. His big ambition was for me to become a draughtsman: from his position that was the height of sophistication, so he encouraged me to do a lot of technical drawing. It went on from there. I’m probably the last person left on Earth who’s got an A-level in Geometric and Engineering Drawing. You studied Fine Art at Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic – was that where you got interested in photography? It was probably the year before, when I did my foundation course at Salford Technical College. You do everything during that year, including etching, sculpture and photography. I went through my Fine Art course as a sort of…

LIGHT www.profoto.com POWER and stamina are key factors for any battery-driven location flash kit. Both get significant upgrades in Profoto’s new B1X kit, making it a worthy update over the popular B1. The kit comprises a flash head, mains charger, rechargeable lithium-ion battery and carrying bag; the whole caboodle weighs just 5kg, complete with clip-on battery. The powerful 500Ws head has a nine-stop output range in 1/10th-stop increments. There’s also an HSS (High Speed Sync) mode for using flash with fast shutter speeds to overpower the sun or use wide apertures to shrink depth of field, though for this and TTL flash you will need to buy an additional remote. (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm and Olympus versions are available.) Performance Maximum flash output is impressive, and there’s fairly minor drop-off…

Bitplay standard lenses www.bitplayinc.com From £22/$20 1 BITPLAY’S range of standard lenses may be compact and cheap, but optical quality pays the price. Sharpness from the 3x telephoto optic falls off fast from the centre, and there’s distortion. At the other extreme is the circular fisheye+5x macro optic. In fisheye mode you get a true 180-degree field of view, but sharpness is low and fringing atrocious. Unscrew the front of the lens and you reveal a tiny macro optic. If you can ignore the huge sharpness falloff and pincushion distortion, centre-frame detail is impressive and highly magnified. The 0.3x full-frame fisheye tightens the FOV: fringing is less severe, but centre-frame detail is only marginally improved. It’s a similar story with the 0.68x wide angle+1.5x macro lens, where barrel distortion and…

www.alanranger.com What’s your current mood? Tired, but inspired by the great people I met in Sharjah, UAE, at the Xposure Photography Festival. What’s your favourite place on Earth? Any woodland. It grounds me, fuels my soul and amazes me each season. How do you relax after a shoot? Beer and a fag, and then more beer. What’s the first photograph that comes to your mind, and why? The Vietnamese girl (Phan Thi Kim Phuc) running away from napalm clouds, taken by photographer Nick Ut. What did you want to be when you were five years old? A musician – I grew up surrounded by musicians. Expression and joy was frequently associated with music. What is top of your bucket list? Love, hope and fulfilment. Be honest – what kind of…