Innehållsförteckning för No. 550 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 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…

A busy, cluttered frame can be confusing for a viewer, so when you come across a scene that you think has potential as a shot, think about why it has potential – what are the major ingredients that attracted your eye and made you reach for your camera? Make a mental note, and log these elements, as they’re the things that made you consider picking up your camera in the first place, and are therefore what your shot is about. Just as important as what your shot is about is what it is not about! When you frame up – balancing the key elements within the viewfinder (more on that shortly) – look carefully around the edges of the frame. If you’ve included any components that are not part of…

1 CANON VIEWFINDER GRID DISPLAY To bring up viewfinder guides on a Canon camera, select Grid display in the menu. Choose from 3x3, 6x4 or 3x3+diag, which is the 3x3 grid plus two lines running diagonally to each opposite corner, crossing in the centre of the frame. 2 NIKON VIEWFINDER GRID DISPLAY To access viewfinder guides on Nikon cameras, enter the Custom Setting menu, select Shooting/Display then Viewfinder Grid Display. Switch it on to get horizontal and vertical guidelines at 25% increments. 3 ELECTRONIC LEVEL INDICATOR Most cameras have a level indicator that can be seen in the viewfinder or on the Live View screen. These are useful for preventing wonky horizons when shooting scenics – showing as green when the camera is held level, but yellow (or red) when…

The documentary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson is credited with coining ‘the decisive moment’, a term that has come to epitomise the art of firing the shutter at just the right time. Whatever type of photography you enjoy, there is always the perfect moment to press the shutter button, when all the elements come together in a harmonious way. Cartier-Bresson’s photography certainly displays this approach, whether the main subject is moving or relatively static. With an arranged still-life, we can make design tweaks as much as we like, but when shooting a scene you have no direct control over there’s a large element of anticipating what might happen. This is certainly the case with Cartier-Bresson’s photography, and his images show it’s the human eye and speed of brain that are the true…

When framing up, we tend to automatically lift the camera and shoot with it held horizontally. It’s the most natural and comfortable way, but is it always the best? Some scenes lend themselves to shooting this way, but ignore composing in vertical orientation at your peril! Even landscapes, for which you might think the horizontal format would always be best, can benefit from shooting vertically. When using a heavy telephoto lens, loosening the lens collar will allow you to spin the camera body easily from horizontal to vertical, so there’s no excuse not to compose a scene upright, even with a bulky zoom. It’s also worth remembering that with some cameras, the standard aspect ratio of your image can be changed in-camera, as well as cropped afterwards in post-processing. For…

SPILLOVER II TOM MORTENSON “An early morning sunrise in front of this striking metal statue, named Spillover II, which is located at Atwater Beach on Lake Michigan, in Shorewood, Wisconsin, USA.” https://bit.ly/3EykdWb TIME AND MOTION RICHARD HARVEY “While waiting for my friend to return with a tray of adult beverages I glanced up at the ceiling of the bar, which led to me to pondering the cyclical nature of all things.” http://bit.ly/3DiGCWx BLUEBIRD ‘MR. BLACKSPOT’ ALAN GIBBLE “This was taken in my yard in Lititz in Pennsylvania, USA. Mr Blackspot, as I named him, lived here for three-plus years, and fathered two broods of chicks each year. The black spot is distinctive, and I have no idea what caused it. Sadly, I discovered him dead in the nesting box recently,…

If you’ve been paying attention to the photography news, you can’t have failed to notice the furore over AI image generation. Generators like Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and Midjourney make it possible to create artwork from nothing more than a descriptive sentence. This has caused a great deal of both excitement and apprehension among photographers, and the way these tools gather and reassemble the substance of existing photos raises various issues. One thing is certain though: we’re entering a whole new era of image-making. Users looking to experiment with text-to-image generation will find an intriguing new tool within Photoshop Beta. The Backdrop Creator Neural Filter lets you create a new backdrop from a few words. Of course, Beta means it’s not the finished article, but, as you’ll discover in this video…

Sony has announced the ZV-E1, its new premium vlogging and content creation camera aimed at YouTubers, streamers, and budding social media stars. The camera combines E-mount lenses with a full-frame sensor, the latest video specs, and groundbreaking AI technology from Sony’s more premium Alpha and Cinema camera ranges to deliver what Sony says is the “ultimate content-creation experience”. The ZV-E1 has a body that resembles a mashup of the Sony ZV-E10 and Sony 7C cameras, and according to Sony the ZV-E1 takes the crown (from the A7C) as the world’s most compact and lightweight full-frame interchangeable lens camera. It features a more premium design than previous cameras in the ZV range, and in a first for a ZV body it has weather sealing on a par with Alpha cameras like…

You will often have an obvious focal point that is the subject of your image. This is typical of wildlife photographs, but can be applied to almost every genre in some way. Your main subject has a direct relationship with what’s around it. Think of the focal point – in this case the flamingo – as positive space (1). The area to the right is passive space (2) and the zone to the left is active space (3). The background reeds and foreground water are negative space (4). Balancing all four elements is important, and the role played by active space – which is the area the subject can look or move into – is critical. As a general guide, it should be bigger than the passive space behind the…

If you imagine a ‘noughts and crosses’ 3x3 grid over your frame, you’ll have four ‘power points’ where the lines intersect, and the idea is to use one of these as a guide for positioning your key point of interest. If the shapes in your scene allow, you can also place a secondary point of interest on a diagonally opposing powerpoint to add extra interest. Additionally, either of the horizontal lines can be used to place your horizon effectively, so that it sits at one-third or two-thirds up the frame, whether you’re holding your camera vertically or horizontally. This rule may be as old as the hills, but it works!…

When there are moving elements in the frame, the important thing is to try to capture your subject looking as dynamic as possible. Within any action – whether it’s a surfer or a running horse – there will be moments when the subject looks ungainly or awkward. Your compositional challenge is to press the shutter at the right moment to show it at its best. A short burst of frames at the optimum time is better than just blasting indiscriminately, or firing off a single shot in the hope that you’ll get it right.…

No one is immune from making compositional errors. Sometimes we can’t physically get into the ideal camera position, and other times we manage to capture a great moment with a one-handed grab shot on the run! Whatever the reason for a less-than-perfect frame, there are some options for making dramatic improvements, or even restoring the image to get the shot you would have taken, had all the conditions been in your favour. This method uses the Free Transform command in Photoshop (other image editors offer a similar feature), and because the pixels within the image are enlarged and distorted, neither the shape of the picture nor the overall resolution of the image are changed. In fact, this technique is so handy that you may well find yourself using it all…

The Mobile Photography Awards has announced the winners of its 12th annual competition, showcasing another remarkable selection of images across a range of genres that could easily hold their own against anything taken with the best DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. Australian photographer Glenn Homann was named overall winner, and picked up a$3,000 top prize, for his eclectic and technically dazzling portfolio of images, which included colourful architectural shots, portraits (one of which you can see above), and landscapes, all taken with an iPhone 12. “Glenn Homann’s mobile photography is remarkable on so many levels,” the judges said. “He takes us with him through a broad sweep of genres with particular mastery of light and shape, character and narrative.” The Mobile Photography Awards is the longest-running international competition for mobile photographers.…

www.sigma-imaging-uk.com £429/$549 The Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN | C bucks a trend. Think constant-aperture f/2.8 ‘trinity’ zooms T and you’re probably thinking chunky, heavyweight lenses. This Sigma is a more compact proposition, designed for Sony E-mount and Leica L-mount APS-C format cameras. It’s amazingly small and light for an f/2.8 zoom, even by APS-C standards. Even the price tag is refreshingly lightweight. Top of the list of desirable features is the fast and constant f/2.8 aperture. Compared with most variable-aperture standard zooms, this enables quick shutter speeds in low-light conditions, and a relatively tight depth of field. The optical design incorporates three high-precision glass-moulded aspherical elements, which help with the downsizing of this ‘Contemporary’ lens, as well as boosting sharpness and reducing aberrations. There’s also an SLD (Special Low…

If there’s one thing that separates a successful photo from a so-so effort, it’s composition. Whether it’s a scenic landscape, a portrait, an architectural study or a wildlife picture, how you frame up and arrange your shot is the most defining element in terms of the impact it has on the viewer. A smartphone in the right hands will always capture a better shot than a top-end camera in the wrong hands, and this is because composition is the photographer’s primary weapon. Other factors play their part, like having good light and sharpness in the right areas, but none of that matters if you haven’t composed the shot effectively to create a balanced frame; and how you compose an image can also help communicate the story you want to tell.…

Placing your subject bang in the middle of the frame is often seen as pretty dull (it’s something the ‘rule of thirds’ avoids), but if you have lots of lines converging on this point, it can be really striking. The power of symmetrical framing comes from the way it grabs a viewer’s eye and leads them towards the central point; with lots of converging lines the eye has nowhere else to go, and is inexorably drawn into the frame. It can work with a positive, strong centre point, or even an implied one, but the key is to make sure you have those converging lines leading to it. Without these lines coming from the bottom or top corners, you’ll just have a bland, centre-based composition.…

When shooting fast-moving action, especially when the movement is erratic, it makes sense to worry a little less about the nuances of in-camera composition, as the main challenge facing the photographer is getting the subject in the frame and sharp. We’re not saying that this can’t be achieved on top of the ideal in-camera composition, but merely that it becomes much harder to get a precise, aesthetically pleasing composition while tracking an erratic subject moving at high speed. Most of us have enough to do keeping a subject in the viewfinder and getting our camera’s autofocus system to lock on to it! In these situations, there’s a practical solution that works very well, even though it’s not as ‘pure’ as the in-camera approach. If you leave enough room around the…

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2 HOURS Wide-angle lenses enable you to cram much more into your scene, with an angle of view that pulls more than the eye can see into the frame. The widest angles available in non-fisheye lenses used to be 16mm or 14mm for full-frame cameras, but more recently we’ve seen lenses that stretch to 12mm and even 11mm. A few more millimetres of focal length may not sound like much, but the effect on viewing angle at this end of the zoom range is a big deal, at around 126 degrees for an 11mm lens as opposed to 114 degrees for a 14mm lens. Ultra-wide lenses come with a caveat: capturing the light at such extreme viewing angles necessitates the inclusion of bulbous front elements that make using regular filters…

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