Innehållsförteckning för No. 365 från 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 the best new 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 – your photo might even appear on our cover! JOIN THE PHOTOGRAPHY WEEK COMMUNITY AND START SHARING! FACEBOOK http://tiny.cc/7s2zgy TWITTER…

We are all tempted to spend too much time thinking about equipment, but for the best results in zoos you’ll need to get the basics right. Top of the kit requirements is probably a decent telephoto lens capability. Assuming that you’re working with a good DSLR body, adding lenses of 300mm to 400mm will likely cover the majority of situations. We find our Canon 5D Mk IV and 1Dx Mk II bodies work really well with the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS II lens as a start point. This type of lens not only offers a good level of magnification at the 400mm end of the range, but also gives you the near-instant option to pull back to include action or the environment in your images as a situation unfolds. However,…

Glass and fences are an inevitable reality of zoo photography, so let’s look at some techniques and tricks for dealing with these obstructions if they can’t be avoided. The problem of fences is actually easier to solve, providing you can safely get close to them. The issue is the distance between the camera lens and the wire, compared to the distance between the wire and the animal. The closer you can get and the further away the animal is, the better the results. We try to literally touch the front of the lens to the fence and carefully line up with a hole in the mesh. The smaller the diameter of the lens front element the easier this will be, but even big telephoto lenses like a 600mm f/4 will…

1 CHOICE OF LENSES Before you even set out, it’s useful to equip yourself with the right lenses for the job. This will of course depend on what you’re shooting, and how far away the subject is. We find lenses like a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 are a perfect start point for versatility. 2 THE BEST ANGLE As you’re driving around, try and spot the best angle for capturing your subjects. You’ll not only need to consider the subject, but also what the background behind it will be. Choosing natural backgrounds usually makes for easier photos. 3 WINDOW OPERATION All animal collections will have clear rules on opening windows around the park to keep us safe. It’s obviously extremely important that we follow these instructions, but, where possible, images will be improved…

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2 HOURS Sometimes joy comes from creating a great image; other times, the end result is more of an added bonus, and instead it’s the process of creating the image that’s the most enjoyable part. This project definitely falls into the latter category… it can result in wonderfully vibrant photos, but the technique itself is just as compelling. That’s because in this project, we get to make paint dance! You get this unique effect by placing drops of paint on top of a speaker, then playing a song at high volume – as the speaker rapidly kicks out air, the paint jumps to the beat. There’s something hugely appealing about the idea of capturing music in this visual way. Sure, the speaker is simply a means of creating vibrations, so…

Nikon has unveiled its new mirrorless movie-making system for videographers, the Nikon Z 6 Essential Movie Kit, which is built around the video-friendly 24.5MP full-frame 4K-capable Nikon Z 6 full frame mirrorless camera. Comprising filmmaking essentials such as the Atomos Ninja V monitor, a SmallRig camera cage and spare batteries, Nikon describes the Movie Kit as “providing the pure essentials to get rolling quickly, with all the core tools to make high-quality movies,” while “leaving filmmakers free to customize further components to suit their personal preferences”. The Nikon Z 6 Essential Movie Kit pairs nicely with the recently announced firmware that will make the Z 6 and Z 7 the first consumer cameras to officially support raw video output. Costing £2,639 in the UK, the Z 6 Essential Movie Kit…

1 GET CLOSE TO THE WIRE The key to shooting through wire fencing is getting the camera as close as possible to the mesh. It also helps the focus differential if your subject is a significant distance from the wire. Always try and get as close as you can, making sure you don’t break any rules the zoo or park has in place to keep you safe. 2 SHOOT STRAIGHT ON It’s simple to appreciate that the larger the holes in the fence you’re shooting through, the better the resulting pictures will be. Shooting at an oblique angle to a fence effectively makes these holes smaller and impacts on the quality of your images, so always try and be square-on to the wire if you can. 3 AVOID DIRECT LIGHT…

Hours sitting at a computer editing pictures isn’t for everyone, but it is useful to use the tools that software offers to get the very best from your zoo and safari park images. As a standard, we use Adobe Lightroom to not only sort and categorise our pictures but also for polishing them with a little processing. Once you’ve gone through your images and decided on the ones you feel deserve a little attention, you can use your editing software to make the picture as good as you can. This usually involves exposure tweaks, boosting saturation and contrast, white balance correction, sharpening, and perhaps cropping or retouching to improve the composition and remove distractions. The thing to remember is you only have to do the amount of processing you feel…

Lower flash power means faster flashes. In the image below – shot with 1/1 power – the motion is blurred, but at 1/32 power in the main image the faster flash has frozen the motion. The type of flash plays a part too, with flashguns often out-performing studio lights. Monolights can have longer flash durations; they use variable voltage control, and so the flash pattern has a longer ‘tail’ – the light spikes quickly, then falls off slowly. By comparison, the light from a flashgun also spikes swiftly, but instead of tailing off, it’s abruptly ‘quenched’. This is known as IGBT control (Insulated-gate bipolar transistor). It means that at lower power settings, the quenching gets more and more abrupt, resulting in faster flashes.…

NIKON Z 7 VS PANASONIC LUMIX S1R www.nikon.co.uk £2,799/£2,999 (body only) www.panasonic.co.uk £3,399/$3,699 (body only) Perhaps the key selling point of mirrorless cameras is that they’re smaller and lighter than DSLRs. Sure enough, the Nikon Z 7 packs its high-resolution 45.7MP full-frame image sensor into a less-than-full-fat casing that weighs a modest 695g. Throwing the rule book to the wind, however, the Panasonic S1R is the size and weight of a high-end full-frame SLR like the Nikon D850, tipping the scales at just over a kilo. Naturally, any system camera is only as versatile as the range of lenses that are available for it. It’s a clear win for the Z 7 here, with a growing number of fabulous Z-series optics, and an adaptor that offers access to an enormous…

Based in a safari park, a big part of our working week is focused around the challenges of shooting pictures of beautiful animals in a captive environment. While this may sound easy, it still contains many of the challenges associated with wildlife photography in general. Accurate focus, good exposures and thoughtful compositions are universal requirements for shots of value, but there are also two or three specific complications to consider here. First and foremost is the challenge of working around the barriers that will almost certainly contain your animal subjects. One of the first thoughts we have whenever we encounter a new species or enclosure is, ‘What are we shooting through?’ Modern zoo design has opened up lots of possibilities of uninterrupted views. Concealed fencing, moats and raised viewing platforms…

When you visit a zoo or safari park, you may have an idea of the species you would really like to capture. However, it’s generally a good idea to keep an open mind, and make the most of whatever opportunities you’re presented with – sometimes the best pictures come from animals you hadn’t realised were there. We should remember that when we make a visit we’ll likely only see each animal for a tiny part of their day, and it’s likely that some animals won’t be doing anything particularly interesting at that exact moment. What saves this situation is the fact we see many different animals in different enclosures, and sooner or later we’ll encounter something of interest. Opportunism is therefore a great skill to have – always be prepared…

Shooting pictures from vehicles is a part of animal photography that isn’t confined to safari parks, and the techniques we use are similar to other scenarios in the wild. We try to effectively use the car as a mobile platform to shoot from, and in the case of a safari park we are doing this to keep us safe, as well as so as not to disturb the animals, but this does have some real advantages. A vehicle gives us room to have the equipment we need to hand, and is warm and dry in weather conditions that would be more taxing on foot. We tend to start out with a handheld camera with a medium telephoto fitted, and have a longer lens, supported on a monopod, as an additional…

Adobe has revealed its third annual Rising Stars of Photography list, highlighting the work, stories and careers of up-and-coming photographers from around the world. “After searching high and low, we’ve narrowed the list down to these incredible up-and-comers,” Adobe says. “They range from smartphone photographers to fully geared-up shutterbugs, from homemade foodies to globetrotting environmentalists, from North American to Middle Eastern to European and beyond.” The list includes wedding and portrait photographer Yaphet Woubishet, originally from Ethiopia but now living in the US; Adriane de Souza, a portrait and documentary photographer from Qatar; and Ariel Fields, a nature and landscape photographer from Israel. Click the link to see more images, and to read the stories of this year’s Rising Stars, at the Adobe blog. SEE MORE IMAGES http://tiny.cc/7axkcz…

Strong lines and clear shapes work well in landscapes. Here, the shape of the high mountain on the right is the focal point of the scene, but the skyline could be enhanced with a subtle shift in perspective. In this video tutorial we’ll lower the distant horizon using selections and layer masks, which will make the foreground mountains jut further up. We’ll also drop in a smoother sky from another photo to offer more contrast with the rocks below. Some might say such alterations are plain cheating, but these things aren’t set in stone – and ultimately it depends on the result you’re after. DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES http://tiny.cc/h9f3bz ON A PC OR MAC WATCH THE VIDEO http://bit.ly/2mvxfmm WANT MORE PHOTOSHOP TUTORIALS? CHECK OUT PRACTICAL PHOTOSHOP For more Photoshop tutorials,…

Nikon Z 7 Nikon certainly hit the ground running when it launched its first full-frame mirrorless camera. The Z 7 remains something of a quart in a pint pot, packing a dazzling array of features and premium performance into its slim shell. By comparison, the S1R feels big and clunky, more like an DSLR than a mirrorless camera, but it handles well, has a plethora of direct-access controls and feels balanced with large lenses. When it comes to lenses, the S1R is something of a poor relation to the Z 7 right now. We shouldn’t have to wait long for plenty of quality glass from Leica and Sigma, though, as well as from Panasonic itself. The Z 7’s autofocus system is a little more dependable, especially in low light and…