Photography News 61 by Bright Publishing

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Issue 61 26 Nov-13 Jan

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Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

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News Tests Clubs

Exhibitions

Techniques

Interviews

Competitions

Reviews

Photography Produced by

Issue 61 26 Nov-13 Jan

news

Your FREE newspaper packed with the latest news, views and stories from the world of photography

Awards

Camera tests

Time to vote for the best gear See page 13

Full reviews of the year’s big full-frame mirrorless launches Canon EOS R, page 34 Nikon Z 7, page 50

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The NEC, 16-19 March Put these dates in your 2019 diary

Merry Christmas Next year’s The Photography Show at the NEC will run alongside inaugural The Video Show. The Photography Show is aimed at image-makers at all levels and there’ll be something for everyone. Masterclasses and talks from leading photographers for those seeking inspiration and the chance

to handle the latest kit, including all the many recent full-frame innovations for those who enjoy kit. And for those who want to buy, that opportunity is there too. Highlights include The Great Outdoors Stage, the Super Stage and the Wedding & Portrait Stage. It's early doors and names are still being finalised, but you can

rest assured that talks and demos of the world’s leading image-makers will be on the programme. Oh, nearly forgot: Photography News will be there too, so make sure you get those dates in the diary. thephotographyshow.com

2018 has been an epic year of imaging and without your support we wouldn’t be here, so thank you and from the Photography News team, may we wish you a Merry Christmas and a safe, happy, peaceful, shutter-clicking 2019

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

News

Sigma prices confirmed Sigma recently announced a variety of lenses and we covered them in detail in the last issue but at that time UK prices had to be confirmed, so here is confirmation. The 70-200mm f/2.8 DG OS HSM Sports (shown

here) will be £1349.99 with Canon EF and Sigma SA fit available in December and Nikon F following on in early 2019. The 40mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art is priced at £1099.99 with Sigma, Canon and Nikon fits available

this November and Sony fit following in January 2019. Finally, the 56mm f/1.4 DC DN Contemporary in Sony E and MFT is priced at £399.99 sigma-imaging-uk.com

Marumi’s magnetic attraction Marumi’s new 100mm magnetic filter system has the potential to save time and space in your bag. At the system’s heart, the M100 Magnetic Filter holder is very slim which makes it suitable for use with lenses as wide at 16mm and the basic kit comes with three lens adapter rings, 72mm, 77mm and 82mm. To use the holder on smaller lenses needs step-up rings which are readily available at low cost.

The 100x100mm and 150x100mm glass filters are fitted with magnetic frames. Magnetism simply takes over when offered to the filter holder and the filters attach securely in place yet, in the case of the graduate filters, can be quickly moved up and down to suit the shot. The first filter can be locked in position which is useful when using extreme NDs and grad filters together, so the grad filter is

Tokina in tune Above The Marumi’s very thin holder won’t vignette with wide lenses. free to be moved. With extreme ND filters, foam gaskets on the holder avoids light seepage. The system brings the ability to use a polariser in tandem with other filters thanks to ingenious design. The adapter ring has another ring with a serrated edge incorporated into it and it’s this that the polariser is screwed onto. Once the filter holder is positioned on to the adapter ring, the serrated edged meshes with a small drive wheel which when operated adjusts the polariser’s orientation.

Marumi filters use top class glass for high image quality and have coatings to combat flare and repel water and grease. A range of NDs and grads (normal and reverse) is available. The M100 filter holder costs £125.94, 100x100mm filters cost £179.94 each, 150x100mm grads cost £199.98 and the circular polariser is £114.96. There’s a test of Marumi’s new magnetic system in First Tests in this issue. kenro.co.uk

Laowa go wide Lexar storage Laowa’s latest lens is a 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 and designed for fullframe Sony FE cameras; it’s the widest lens currently available for that system. There are no electronic connections which means this lens can also be used on Sony APS-C format cameras giving a 15-27mm equivalent focal length range. Its modest maximum aperture helps keep size and weight down and

this lens measures just over 9cm in length and weighs just 496g. The lens features a 14-elementsin-10-groups construction with one extra-low dispersion and two aspherical elements to help deliver a good performance. Its wide view makes filter use tricky but there is a rear filter slot for 37mm filters and there is an optional filter holder for 100mm filters. The 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6’s guide price is £899. laowalens.co.uk

Lexar has announced two new storage accessories. Lexar’s 512GB microSDXC 633x UHS-1 card is the largest capacity card of its format to meet the Application Performance (A2) requirements. The 633x speed allows data transfer at 100MB/s. This card costs £230. The Lexar JumpDrive F35 is one of the fastest and most secure USB 3.0 drives around. It uses fingerprint authentication taking under one second to analyse the print and allow access to the drive’s contents. The F35 can save up to ten fingerprint IDs, and it’s easy to set up without needinsoftware. Transfer speeds

Tokina’s new Opera series sees the introduction of its 50mm f/1.4, a high-spec autofocus standard lens is available in Canon EF and Nikon F. The lens’s advanced optical construction features three SD (Super-Low Dispersion) and one aspherical element to combat chromatic aberration and help deliver edge-to-edge sharpness at all apertures, while a nine-blade diaphragm gives a round iris for smooth bokeh. Optimum performance is possible thanks to Tokina’s ELR (Extremely Low Reflection) coating to help ensure maximum light transmission and avoid ghosting and flare in strong lighting situations. Autofocus is swift and nearsilent thanks to its ultrasonic, ring-shaped motor, and the lens’s dust- and weatherresistant sealing helps to keep the lens performing at its best in arduous situations. The Tokina Opera 50mm f/1.4 full-frame lens is available now and priced at £899.99. tokinalens.co.uk

are up to 150MB/s and sizes from 32GB to 250GB are available. The 32GB version costs £26. lexar.com

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

News

SWPP Give your photography a great start in 2019 – get yourself along to The Societies of Photographers' Convention and Trade Show, taking place 17–19 January at the Novotel London West, Hammersmith. Go to the website and pre-register before 5 January 2019 and entrance to the trade show is free. Entrance is £10 after that date. SWPP members and non-members are welcome. Over 100 brands will be present at the show including Canon, Epson, Fujifilm, Panasonic and

Profoto battery offer Buy a Profoto A1, the world’s smallest lighting unit, before 31 December and you’ll receive a spare battery free of charge. Buy the A1 Duo kit and you will receive two free batteries. profoto.com

Sony, and dealers CameraWorld and Park Cameras, so there will be the chance to buy, too. As The Societies' CEO Phil Jones says, "There is no question that this show is a must-do event for all serious photographers. Our message to photographers is simple… don't miss it." swpp.co.uk/convention

Power up your people pictures Make the most of your people pictures with PortraitPro Version 18. This popular and powerful software (standalone or plug-in) just keeps going from strength to strength. The latest edition features artificial intelligence to make locating features and masking backgrounds easier and faster than previously possible, and there are other great new features, too. There’s a customisable Restore Brush, an Advanced Layers function, Closed/Open Eye control and a new Hair Shape finder. PortraitPro 18 is available for Mac OS X 10.7 or later and 64-bit Windows 7, 8 and 10. Three versions are available: Standard, Studio and Studio Max, priced at £34.95, £59.95 and £119.95 respectively. Very briefly, the Standard version is for working with 8-bit TIF and JPEG files, the Studio has Raw support and works with 16-bit TIFs, while the Studio

Max version is fully featured and has full batch support Go to the website to download a free trial of PortraitPro 18. portraitprofessional.com/ download

Grow your sales Many photographers use their talents to sell pictures and this where Online Picture Proof can enhance your business. There is just one plan at one price with no commission, set-up or hidden costs. The plan costs £24 a month (VAT included) and this includes everything. Because the plan is charged a month at a time, there is no long term contract and you can cancel at any time. The plan includes a beautiful and dynamic website with swipeable galleries and slide shows, online proofing where you can create your own packages, marketing and SEO tools, and a shopping cart with the ability to take credit or debit card payments online or over the phone. You can create unlimited custom photo mobile apps (for

Meet Metz’s new light iOS and Android) for clients and your details and logo will be included in the app. So when your client shows the app, featuring up to 40 images, to their clients, they will be exposed to your business – it’s like a digital business card to boost your word of mouth marketing and referrals.

Finally, if you have an existing website, integration is easily done and Online Picture Proof has a full support team to help. Try a fully functional Online Picture Proof service free for 30 days. Sign up on the website. onlinepictureproof.com

Metz mecalight S500 BC is a compact and powerful LED light containing 117 bulbs with a 1000-lumen output. With 60 white and 57 warm LEDs, the colour temperature can be adjusted to match existing light, to help you avoid colour casts. There is also the facility to fix the light onto a tripod or mount

it on the camera hotshoe. A rear-facing OLED display shows colour temperature, battery run time remaining and brightness as a percentage. Power is supplied by rechargeable li-ion battery. The S500 BC’s guide price is £119.99. intro2020.co.uk

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

News

More from Manfrotto

The 490 is a simple head with a payload of 4kg so ideal for CSCs and nicely priced at £44.95. The MH492-BH and MH492LCD-LH are priced at £54.95 and £64.95 respectively. These ball heads have a 4kg load capacity and are ideal to hold accessories, such as a monitor for video, a microphone or a reflector. Last but by no means least this month are two lighting control units produced under the banner Lastolite by Manfrotto. The HaloCompacts use the innovative RapidExpoframe, a collapsible lightweight aluminium

Above Manfrotto's product range is constantly expanding and evolving and there's more great kit to tempt this month. frame that quickly slots together and the reflector or diffuser material simply clips on to the frame to make a unit that measures 85cm across. It folds down to fit into a carry case that measures 27x6.5x6.5cm. The

HaloCompact Reflector is available in silver/white with a guide price of £71.95 and at the same price is the HaloCompact 2EV Diffuser. manfrotto.co.uk

olympus.co.uk

Software from DxO £119.99 respectively. This is not a subscription software and you can put Essential on two computers and Elite on three. Existing DxO Optics Pro and PhotoLab 1 owners can get a discounted upgrade. A fully functional one-month trial version of PhotoLab 2 is downloadable from the website. DxO has also updated its popular Nik Collection by DxO 2018 set of imaging plug-ins. V1.1 is fully compatible with macOS Mojave and Adobe’s latest image editing softwares. The collection costs £59. dxo.com

London Fashion A Fashion Photography Course is now available at the London College of Style. Applicants have to be over 18 and have their own DSLR, but no experience is necessary and the course is diploma certificated at pass, merit or distinction level. Tutors include top fashion photographers, such as Kenneth Lam, Tiffany Mumford and guest speakers include Ram Shergill.

The first three-month course runs from 11 January to 29 March 2019. It requires a commitment of three days a week, with one compulsory on-campus day every Friday in Fulham, plus two days covering working opportunities and photo shoot assignments. The course costs £3650. londoncollegeofstyle.com

A smooth head Gitzo’s latest 2 Way Fluid Head is aimed at birdwatchers and wildlife photographers. Priced at £289.99, this is made from magnesium unit and has a payload capacity of 4kg, accepts Arca Swiss plates and is matched to Gitzo’s carbon fibre tripods. gitzo.co.uk EIZO’s latest The EIZO CG279X is the latest monitor in the ColorEdge CG series. Due in the shops from January 2019, it’s a 27in monitor that shows 99% of the Adobe RGB colour gamut and features a built-in calibration sensor. It comes with a monitor shade, too. Guide price is £1916. eizocolour.com

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The run up to Christmas is always a challenging time for pro photographers. It can be extremely busy but there will be quiet moments, too, making it the perfect time to plan for the future. In Professional Photo, issue 153, five successful photographers explain how their creative marketing strategies, such as shooting self- promotional videos and using film helped their businesses and profits grow. Issue 153 of Professional Photo is on sale from 6 December, at all good newsagents. Use the coupon opposite to buy one of two issues of Professional Photo from WHSmith and save £1 off the usual £4.75 cover price.

To The Customer: Simply cut out this coupon and hand it to your WHSmith High Street retailer to claim your copy of Professional Photo for £3.75 instead of the usual £4.75. This coupon can be used as part payment for issue 152 or 153 of Professional Photo on sale between 8 November and 2 January 2019. Only one coupon can be used against each item purchased. No cash alternative is available. Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer. To the WHSmith Retailer: Please accept this voucher as part payment of one copy of Professional Photo on sale between 8 November and 2 January 2019. This voucher is worth £1 plus a 2p handling allowance. The offer is valid to the consumer up to 2 January 2019 and must be returned to your clearing house to arrive no later than 5 December 2018 (issue 152), 2 January 2019 (issue 153). As your shop belongs to a multiple group, please handle in the usual way. This voucher is not redeemable against any other item and is only valid in the UK.

Offer subject to availability and while stocks last

DO NOT MINT RETURN *This offer is subject to availability and is redeemable at WHSmith High Street Stores only. Excludes Outlet Stores, WHSmith Online, ‘Books by WHSmith’ at Selfridges, Harrods, Arnotts and Fenwick stores, WHSmith ‘Local’ and all Travel Stores including those at airports, railway stations, motorway service stations, garden centres, hospitals and workplaces.

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DxO has introduced PhotoLab 2, a follow-up from its Optics Pro software. This editing solution includes DxO’s ClearView Plus tool and a new image management system called DxO PhotoLibrary. A big sell is DxO’s U Point technology that allows Raw and JPEG adjustments based on optical correction data and makes local image editing really easy with its Control Points feature. This software also features DxO prime noise reduction, one of the most effective NR solutions available. ClearView Plus is a dehaze, image clarity tool to enhance local contrast without creating halos where light and dark tones meet, and it can be used across the entire image, too. A smooth imaging workflow is the benefit of PhotoLibrary with its search engine, image selection and sorting features. Two versions of PhotoLab 2 are available, Essential and Elite, priced at £79.99 and

Olympus has it in the bag Olympus has worked with leading bag maker, Manfrotto, to come up with its new Explorer messenger bag. Tailor-made for the OM-D camera system and made from water-repellent fabric with leather trim and an internal tartan lining, it sells for £139.99. The main compartment has dividers and a detachable internal pouch. There is room for a 14in laptop, too, while if you need a tripod it can be attached to the bag’s underside.

Cut out and take to your local WHSmith High Street store.

It seems not a month goes by without Manfrotto introducing something new into its product line-up and this month is no different. The Pro Light Reloader H-55 is a solid, robust case that confirms to carry on luggage dimensions (55x35x22.5cm) and has a retractable, two-stage trolley handle. It's large enough for a DSLR with a long telephoto lens, plus a spare body and several more smaller optics. Its guide price is £289.95. The next new products are centre ballheads, the 490 and 492/492LCD.

News in brief

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

News

Steiner binos SkyHawk 4.0 is the name of Steiner’s new range of binoculars. Steiner’s top-class optics deliver crystal clear, pin-sharp images, so you can enjoy viewing your natural history subjects in stunning clarity. Handling is enhanced by the Distance Control System which means minimal movement of the focus control is needed to change from viewing a bird in flight at a far distance to a much closer subject. Four versions are available: 10x42, 8x42, 10x32 and 8x32, priced at £499, £469, £399 and £369 respectively. Each pair comes with a case, rain cover, lens caps and padded neoprene carrying strap. intro2020.co.uk

Retro Leica

PermaJet go pro Digital media specialist PermaJet has recently expanded its product range with seven new products aimed at professional photographers, fine art printers and photo labs. PermaJet has two dry lab papers, Satin and Gloss, and these are now joined by Pearl 240, Metallic 240, Prism 240, Artist 230 and Matt 230. These papers are available in sizes from 4in to A4 and are suitable for Epson, Noritsu and Fujifilm dry lab printers. Designed for commercial and fine art reproduction, there’s P4 100% Cotton Canvas 360 available in A3+ sheets and 17in to 44in rolls and P5 Bright White Matt Canvas 350, available in 24in to 60in rolls. permajet.com

Above Leica is renowned for its quality and craftmanship. For photographers in search of the perfect image, look no further than its range of coveted cameras.

The Leica M10-D is a throwback to the days of film. This 24-megapixel camera has a CMOS full-frame sensor and is the first digital M camera to have a mechanical exposure compensation dial and a fold-out thumb rest for secure onehanded shooting. Its fully metal body, made from die-cast magnesium alloy, accepts M-bayonet lenses and its ISO range is 100-50,000. The M10-D costs £6500, body only, and is available in-store now. The Q-P is new addition to Leica's range of compact cameras. It's a premium compact 24.2-megapixel camera with a full-frame sensor and fixed fast aperture prime lens, a 28mm f/1.7. The Q-P has a price tag of £4100 and comes with a leather strap and a spare battery. The D-Lux 7 sells for £995, boasts a 17-megapixel resolution and the lens is a 10.9-34mm f/1.7-2.8 ASPH zoom (equivalent to 24-75mm in the 35mm format). uk.leica-camera.com

Something for the bookshelf 52 ASSIGNMENTS: EXPERIMENTAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS GATCUM £12.99 This is a journal and photographic workshop filled with projects, tips and inspiration to make you think more creatively about your photography. Techniques covered include using film and digital as well as more radical ideas like photocopying and burning prints – heaps of inspiration for every type of photographer. thegmcgroup.com

52 ASSIGNMENTS: STREET PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN LLOYD DUCKETT £12.99 Give your street photography structure with this fantastic guide containing 52 commissions and concepts to make you think and work a little harder for more successful pictures. It is a great way to get inspiration and there are visual ideas and techniques aplenty to get you thinking. thegmcgroup.com

MOROCCO FROM THE AIR BY YANN ARTHUS-BERTRAND £24.95 Internationally acclaimed aerial photographer Yann ArthusB e r t r a n d turns his lens on Morocco. Breathtaking images of 100 previously unpublished images, from huge wind farms to brown fields of wheat and the lush green groves of palms and olives. thamesandhudson.com

NOOR: QUEEN OF RANTHAMBHORE BY ANDY ROUSE AND ADITYA ‘DICKY’ SINGH £40 Noor has been four years in the making and the end result is over 200 amazing pictures. Noor is a must for tiger lovers and fans of top wildlife photography. One book costs £40, but buy two from the website below and you pay £60. From 1 December it will also be available from amazon.co.uk. andyrouse.co.uk

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Tell us your club’s latest news, email: clubnews@photography-news.co.uk

Clubs

Camera club news

Here’s how to submit

We need words and pictures by 27 December 2018 for the next issue of Photography News, which will be available from 7 January 2019. If you want to submit, follow these guidelines: yy Write your story in 250 words or fewer. Include the club’s website, meeting times, what the event is, opening times, entrance costs – anything relevant. yy We need an image for every story. JPEGs, 2000 pixels max on the longest dimension, any colour space, credits should be included in your text. yy We DO NOT use posters or images with words on the image front. yy Before the above deadline, attach the text document and JPEGs to an email and send to clubnews@photography-news.co.uk

If your club has any news that you want to share with the rest of the world, this is the page for it. Your story might be about your club’s success in a contest, or a member’s personal achievements; it could be about a group outing you had recently or when the annual exhibition is on show. Any news is eligible for inclusion, so club publicity officers please take note of the submission guidelines (right) and get your stories in

Gateshead CC was established in 1910 and is still going strong. Gatehead’s show takes place at St Mary’s Heritage Centre, Oakwellgate, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, NE8 2AU, (next to the Tyne Bridge on the Gateshead side of the River Tyne). The exhibition runs from 13 to 15 December 2018, 10am to 4pm. Weekly meetings are every Thursday at 7.30pm from September to April in St Helen’s Church Hall, Belle Vue Bank, Low Fell, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, NE9 6BR. gatesheadcc.com

Welwyn Garden City PC has been going since 1937 and now has about 70 members. Its Winter Exhibition starts on 30 November and finishes on 12 January 2019 and is held at the New Maynard Gallery, Campus West, Welwyn Garden City, Herts, AL8 6BX. Opening hours are generally 10am to 10pm. The club meets every Tuesday evening at Mill Green Golf Club, WGC, from 7.45pm. welwynphotoclub.org.uk

The North Wales Region of the Royal Photographic Society presents a talk by Sue Flood, freelance wildlife and travel photographer, BBC filmmaker and author. It takes place at 2pm, 20 January 2019 at Craigy-Don Community Centre, Queens Road, Craig Y Don, Llandudno, United Kingdom, LL30 1TE. Sue Flood is an award-winning photographer, filmmaker, adventure travel leader and public speaker. Her work takes her all

Dunholme CC

over the world but she has a special passion for the wildlife and icy beauty of Antarctica and is one of the very few women who chooses to return again and again to this harsh and most demanding environment. Tickets are £8 for RPS members and £10 for non-members. Book online at the below address.

SPA’s annual On 13 October, the Surrey Photographic Association (SPA) helditsannualAGMandIndividual Print & PDI Competition. This AGM saw Kathy McLenaghan LRPS of Epsom CC, current President, pass on the baton, after her two year tenure, to Woking PS’s David Smith LRPS. The Individual Print & PDI Competition is the only annual SPA contest in which individuals from all 48 member clubs can enter their own selected images; two each in Open Print, Open PDI, Nature Print and Nature PDI. Judging involves local judges from SPA member clubs and medals are awarded for the winning image, and each judge’s

greatyarmouthphotographicsociety.co.uk/ rambouilletphotoclub.photos/spip.php?article19

surreypa.org.uk

Isle of Thanet PS

dunholmecameraclub.co.uk

Leigh-on-Sea CC Leigh-on-Sea CC meets every Thursday at the Leigh Community Centre, 71 to 73 Elm Rd, Southend-onSea, Leigh-on-Sea SS9 1SP. Meetings start at 7.45pm; the venue has disabled access. Leigh’s annual exhibition takes place at the Southend on Sea Central Library at the Forum from 31 January to 26 February 2019. leighcameraclub.co.uk

Thanet PS, a club covering the areas of Ramsgate, Broadstairs and Margate, held its annual exhibition at the York Street Gallery in Ramsgate last October with over 50 photographs showcasing the talents of club members. The club meets on Monday evenings at Ramsgate Football Club, Price’s Avenue, Ramsgate CT11 0AN, 7.30pm for 7.45pm start. isleofthanetphotographicsociety.co.uk

Dunholme CC is holding an exhibition from 26 November and runs until 6 December at Uncle Henry’s, Grayingham Grange Farm, Grayingham DN21 4JD. The exhibition is free and is open from 9.30am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm on Sunday. Approximately 80 prints will be on display in the Conference Room (situated just off the café area) covering a variety of subjects including landscapes, wildlife, and still life in black & white and colour. The club meets every fortnight on Thursday evenings from 7.30pm at The Old School, Market Rasen Road, Dunholme, Lincoln.

Great Yarmouth PS held a successful international exhibition in October in Yarmouth’s French twin town of Rambouillet. Entitled Yarmouth at 70, the exhibition celebrated the society’s 70th anniversary year and over 40 prints were on display at La Lanterne cultural centre in Rambouillet. The exhibition was hung by Iris Hafner and Michel Rohard of Photo Club Rambouillet.

Above Drama above the Brighton Pavilion won Richard Escott LRPS the Open PDI section in the SPA’s Individual Print & PDI Competition.

choice, in every category. This year, several awards were won by relative newcomers to this contest, including members of Old Coulsdon CC, Windlesham & Camberley CC, and Yateley CC, although most awards were won by the SPA’s most successful club, Godalming PS. The category winners were Godalming’s David Hughes ARPS who won the Best Nature Print medal for ‘Ermine’ and Mike Rowe FRPS who won the Best Nature PDI medal for ‘Arctic Tern Aerial Courtship’. The Open PDI section was won by Richard Escott LRPS of Molesey PC with ‘Storm over Brighton’ and the Open Print section was won by Jim Munday AFIAP of Yateley CC with his image ‘Port in a Storm’.

Great Yarmouth PS

Above Sue Flood is a regular visitor to Antarctica.

rps.org/events/2019/ january/20/wildlife-and-the-icybeauty-of-antarctica

Welwyn Garden City PC

Flood’s in Wales

Gateshead CC

Deadline for the next issue: 27 December 2018

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Awards Gear of the year

The Photography News Awards 2018 It’s time for you to recognise brilliant products and outstanding service in our annual awards. Your votes will decide the winners, so please check through our nominations and pick the products and services that you think deserve the ultimate accolade

You can take photographs with a pinhole in a biscuit tin, but the fact is the vast majority of us use digital cameras fitted with great lenses, often on a tripod, and we carry our kit around in a nice bag. When we get home we look at our shots on shiny monitors, edit in powerful software and then print on nice paper through photo-quality printers. The long and the short of it is that we need great quality kit – and that’s the motivation for our awards: to recognise great quality kit.

We’ve shortlisted products in key categories and then you get the chance to pick what you think deserves to win. Voting is done online and it’s free – you don’t even have to register to vote. The only categories where we haven’t done any shortlisting are in the service categories, such as Best Retailer – in those you nominate who you think deserves to win. (Where there may be more than one store, please nominate the name of the store group and the individual shop, please.)

To vote go to photographynews.co.uk, follow the Awards link and complete the voting form. You can vote in every category, but if you prefer to vote for just a few categories that is perfectly fine, too. It’s entirely up to you.

Closing date for votes is 22 February 2019

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Awards MACRO LENS Fujifilm XF80mm f/2.8 R LM OIS WR Macro Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5X Ultra Macro Olympus M.Zuiko ED 30mm f/3.5 Macro  Sigma 70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro Art Tamron SP 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 VC USD Voigtländer E-Mount 65mm f/2 Macro Apo-Lanthar

CONSUMER DSLR Canon EOS 800D Canon EOS 2000D Nikon D3500 Nikon D7200 Pentax K-70 Sony a68

ADVANCED DSLR Canon EOS 6D Mark ll Canon EOS 7D Mark ll Nikon D500  Nikon D850  Pentax K-1 Mark II Sony a77 II

PROFESSIONAL DSLR Canon EOS 5DS R Canon EOS 5D Mark IV Canon EOS-1D X Mark II Nikon D5 Sony a99 II

CONSUMER CSC Canon EOS M50 Fujifilm X-T100 Olympus PEN E-PL9 Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III Panasonic GX80

ADVANCED CSC Canon EOS R Fujifilm X-T20 Leica M10-P Nikon Z 6 Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II Panasonic Lumix G9 Sony a7 III

PROFESSIONAL CSC Fujifilm X-T3 Fujifilm X-H1 Nikon Z 7 Panasonic Lumix DC-GH5S Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II Sony a7R III Sony a9

WIDE-ANGLE LENS Canon EF 11-24mm f/4L USM Fujifilm XF8-16mm f/2.8 R LM WR  Nikon Nikkor AF-S 28mm f/1.4E ED Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 F Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM A  Sigma 14-24mm f/2.8 DG HSM Art  Sony FE 24mm f/1.4 GM  Tamron SP15-30mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2 Tokina FIRIN 20mm f/2 FE AF Zeiss Milvus 25mm f/1.4

STANDARD LENS Canon RF 50mm f/1.2L USM Fujifilm XF16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR Fujifilm XF35mm f/2 R WR Nikon Nikkor Z 24-70mm f/4 S   Olympus M.Zuiko ED 25mm f/1.2 PRO Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG OS HSM A Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM A Sigma 40mm f/1.4 DG HSM A Tamron SP 28-75mm f/2.8 Di III RXD Tokina opera 50mm f/1.4 FF

COMPACT/BRIDGE Canon PowerShot SX740 Fujifilm XF10 Leica C-Lux Nikon COOLPIX P1000 Panasonic Lumix LX100 II Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX95

TELEPHOTO LENS Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS III USM Nikon AF-S Nikkor 180-400mm f/4E TC1.4 FL ED VR Fujifilm XF200mm f/2 R LM OIS WR Nikon AF-S Nikkor 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR Samyang AF 85mm f/1.4 EF Sigma 105mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM S Sony FE 400mm f/2.8 GM OSS Tamron 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3 Di VC USD

MEDIUM FORMAT Fujifilm GFX 50S Fujifilm GFX 50R Hasselblad H6D-400c MS Hasselblad X1D-50c Leica S (Typ 007) Phase One IQ3 100MP

SUPERZOOM LENS Fujifilm XF18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR  Nikon AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Olympus M.Zuiko ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC HLD Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD

MEDIUM FORMAT LENS Hasselblad XCD 21mm f/4 Hasselblad XCD 80mm f/1.9 Fujifilm GF 110mm f/2 R LM WR Fujifilm GF 250mm f/4 R LM OIS WR TRIPOD: ALLOY 3 Legged Thing Punks Travis Benro Slim Travel – aluminium Kenro Karoo Compact Tripod (aluminium) 102 Manfrotto Befree Aluminium Travel  Nest Traveller NT-6294AK  Slik PRO 700DX

TRIPOD: CARBON FIBRE 3 Legged Thing Equinox Albert Gitzo Systematic GT3543LS Kenro Karoo Ultimate Travel Tripod (carbon fibre) 401C Manfrotto Befree GT carbon Novo Explora T20 Vanguard Alta Pro 2+ 263CGHT

ON-CAMERA FLASH Hähnel Modus 600RT  Metz 64 AF-1 Nissin Di700A Pixapro Li-ION580 MKII TTL  Pixel X900 Profoto A1 Rotolight NEO 2

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Awards INKJET MEDIA: PHOTOGRAPHIC FINISH Canson Infinity Baryta Platine Fibre Rag 310GSM – satin Fotospeed Platinum Baryta 300 Signature Hahnemühle Photo Gloss Baryta 320 PermaJet Photo Lustre 310

PORTABLE FLASH Broncolor Siros 400 L Elinchrom ELB 500 TTL Elinchrom ELB 1200 Interfit S1 PIXAPRO PIKA200 TTL Profoto B1X Profoto B10

EXTERNAL STORAGE DEVICE Drobo 8D G-Technology G-DRIVE mobile SSD LaCie portable SSD Samsung portable SSD X5 Western Digital My Passport Wireless SSD

INKJET MEDIA: FINE ART FINISH Canson Infinity Rag Photographique 310gsm Fotospeed Platinum Cotton 305 Hahnemühle William Turner 310 Hahnemühle Photo Rag Metallic PermaJet Photo Art Silk 290

COLOUR MANAGEMENT DEVICE DataColor Spyder5PRO+    Datacolor Spyder5CAPTURE PRO X-Rite ColorMunki Photographer Kit  X-Rite i1Studio

FILTER Benro 100mm filter system H&Y magnetic filter system Hoya Ultra-Pro family LEE Filters Reverse ND filter Marumi magnetic filter system SRB Elite filter system

BEST USED SPECIALIST RETAILER The market for second hand or (pre-loved!) imaging gear is growing, so whether you’re buying or selling you need a dealer you can trust. This is your opportunity to name your favourite used dealer.

PROCESSING LAB Which processing lab do you trust with your photos, albums or stationery? If they offer high quality and utterly reliable service at competitive prices, are they worthy of a PN award?

MAINS FLASH Broncolor Siros 400 S Elinchrom ELC Pro HD Interfit Honey Badger 320Ws Profoto D2

CONTINUOUS LIGHT Interfit LM8 18in Daylight LED ring light Nanguang RGB LED tube lights Rotolight Anova PRO 2 Bi-Colour

BEST RETAILER Whether you shop for your photo kit online or in store, nominate the photo retailer that has you going back time and time again.

SOFT BAG/BACKPACK Crumpler Kingpin camera bag 9000 Gitzo Adventury 45L Lowepro FreeLine BP 350 AW MindShift BackLight 30L Tenba Shootout 16L DSLR backpack Think Tank StreetWalker V2

ROLLER/HARD CASE Manfrotto ProLight Reloader Tough-55 LowLid Lowepro PhotoStream SP 200 Think Tank Airport TakeOff V2.0 T499 Vanguard Alta Fly 55T

PHOTO WEBSITE PROVIDER For gallery websites or full-service sites with clientproofing and a blog, which provider offers the best range of templates and customisation options together with top-notch customer service?

TRAINING PROVIDER From basic photo knowledge through particular tips and techniques to camera-specific training, in the classroom, studio or out on location, which provider offers the best learning experience, in your opinion?

MONITOR BenQ SW320 Pro 32in IPS LCD  BenQ SW240 24in Dell UltraSharp UP3216Q Eizo ColorEdge CG3218-4K 31in  Philips Brilliance 40in 4K Ultra HD LCD (BDM4037UW) Samsung 32in U32H850

The details INNOVATION Canon EOS R system L-Mount Alliance: Leica, Panasonic and Sigma Nikon Z system

MEMORY CARD PNY Elite Performance SDXC 512GB UHS-I  Samsung MicroSDXC PRO Endurance 128GB SanDisk Extreme PRO microSDXC UHS-I 400GB Lexar Professional 1000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II Sony SD SF-G TOUGH UHS-II

PRINTER Canon PIXMA PRO-100S DNP DS820A Epson EcoTank ET-7750 Fujifilm Frontier-S Mitsubishi Smart D90EV Tomy KiiPix

SOFTWARE Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC Serif Affinity Photo Portrait Professional 18 DxO PhotoLab 2 Capture One Pro

How to vote Go to photographynews.co.uk and follow the link to the awards to vote. It’s free and you don’t need to register. Voting closes on 22 February 2019. The results We’ll announce the results in issue 64 of Photography News, out from 12 March 2019, and we’ll present the awards to the deserving recipients at The Photography Show, at the Birmingham NEC, 16-19 March 2019.

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Landscape Photographer of the Year

Landscape Photographer The winners of one of the biggest photo contests have been announced. Join us for a tour of the best images Landscape Photographer of the Year 2018 overall winner © Pete Rowbottom

Ice Spikes, Glencoe, Scotland by Pete Rowbottom “I had set out to shoot the sunrise upriver and saw this unusual and dramatic formation of ice around the rocks; right then I knew I had my spot.” Pete wins the title and the top prize of £10,000. “When he [Charlie Waite, the founder of the Awards], told me I had won the entire competition, I could not believe it – I've won a category? No, the full thing. I was absolutely ecstatic, in fact far beyond that, I can't even put it into words. The call ended with Charlie congratulating me again and I don't mind admitting that I did a good few laps of the kitchen shouting for joy and some fist pumping. It didn't seem real; it was dreamlike. It is so hard to take in and it really was one of the best moments of my life. Utterly overwhelming and simply amazing.”

Young Landscape Photographer of the Year winner

Classic view runner-up

“I must have taken hundreds of shots, but it was this single exposure that I ended up feeling most satisfied with and that best told the story of that night.”

Land's End, Cornwall by Josef FitzGerald-Patrick “I found a good composition, featuring a nice rocky drop for my friend to jump from, with the Armed Knight rock and setting sun behind it. There I had it, our dream shot!”

Milky Way meets St Michael's Mount, Marazion, Cornwall by Mario D’Onofrio

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Landscape Photographer of the Year

of the Year – the results The Sunday Times Magazine Award winner

Network Rail Award highly commended © Dave Fieldhouse

Buttermere Bloom, Lake District, Cumbria by Stuart McGlennon “The area above Buttermere, in the Lake District, is a fantastic place for a walk with stunning views in all directions. I set up my composition and didn’t move for two hours; the conditions were truly stunning.”

Sleeping Giant, Battersea, London by Dave Fieldhouse “Feverish activity surrounds the famous chimneys once again, as developers and their many cranes turn this icon of the 20th century into a new community for those who can afford such an exclusive address.”

Lee Filters prize winner © Ceri David Jones

Morning Woodlands, Woodcote, Oxfordshire by Ceri David Jones “The dawn light in the morning mist provides a very atmospheric woodland shot, which is something I always find refreshing for the soul.”

See the show, buy the book The Landscape Photographer of the Year exhibition, hosted by Network Rail, is on the Balcony at London Waterloo station from now

until 3 February 2019, followed by a nationwide tour of some of Britain’s biggest stations. The accompanying book, Landscape Photographer

of the Year – Collection 12 (AA Publishing, £25) is out now. take-a-view.co.uk

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

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Lexar’s current line-up of memory cards covers all bases, so we have CompactFlash, CFast 2.0, microSDHC/micro SDXC and SDHC/SDXC. The card featured here is the Lexar Professional 1000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II card, a speed that gives a data transfer rate of up to 150MB/s. With still cameras offering incredibly fast continuous shooting speeds from their high megapixel count sensors, a fast card such as this Lexar one can help you keep the instances of buffering to a minimum, enabling you to stay focused on what's happening in the viewfinder. Once you have finished shooting, you need to get the images off the card. Here the collection of Lexar Professional Workflow Hub products is an ingenious modular download solution. It's a four bay hub, available with USB 3.0 (model HR1) or Thunderbolt 2/USB 3.0 (model HR2) interfaces and readers for all popular card formats: SDHC/SDXC, CompactFlash, CFast and CFast 2.0, microSDHC/microSDXC and XQD. You can use card readers of the same format or mix readers to suit the job in hand and you can also download images from several cards at the same time. Load the Lexar Portable SSD drive and you have the benefit of extra storage with fast read/write speeds and reliability of solid state drive flash storage. LEDs on the unit’s front tell you at a glance how much storage space you have left.

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Contact A comprehensive range of Lexar storage cards, USB drives and card readers is available and are distributed in the UK by Swains International, the country’s leading photo wholesaler. Its product line-up includes Lexar plus many more worldleading and most-recognised photo and video brands. swains.co.uk lexar.com

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Interview

Remembering Wildlife Profile

Margot Raggett has so far raised over £450,000 to help endangered species. This is her story PN: Can you give Photography News readers a little background about yourself? Are you a conservationist and nature lover first or is your background in photography? MR: My background is actually in marketing and public relations, which I worked in for 18 years until 2010. At that point I became disillusioned with the corporate world and having always had a love for nature and safaris, decided to try and pursue a career in wildlife photography. The conservation side of things came a little later. PN: What was the motivation for setting up Remembering Wildlife, and when did the idea come to you? MR: It all began early one morning in November 2014 when I was staying in a camp in Northern Kenya, on a photographic safari. We were woken up by the sound of hyenas going crazy and at first light went to investigate. We found a poached elephant, around 14 years old, his tusks still intact and with a poisoned arrow still in him. He was being eaten by the hyenas. The rangers speculated that poachers had shot the young bull and he’d bolted from them and given them the slip, only to die a slow, agonising death days later. His death was pointless – his tusks only were small even if they’d been successful in catching him – and I was beside myself with impotent anger. I decided to try and channel that anger into something positive, however, and started to

ask fellow wildlife photographer friends if they’d consider donating elephant images to a fundraising book if I were to put one together. Everyone said yes, and the very first person who came on board was my mentor Angie Scott, for whose support and encouragement I am forever grateful. PN: How many people are directly involved in the project? MR: In terms of direct support, I have an editorial team of three who help me to put the book together each year, one lady who helps me with some admin and also some admin support from Born Free. Otherwise, everything is pretty much done by me with the support of an army of volunteers, sponsors and supporters. In terms of photographers, across the three books (Remembering Elephants, Remembering Rhinos and Remembering Great Apes) we’ve now also worked with 124 different photographers, all of whom have donated their work for free. PN: How much have you raised so far? MR: At this stage I’m still waiting to hear our online sales for October, but from the launch alone we’ve raised £120,000 so far from Remembering Great Apes. This is on top of £330,000 raised by the first two books so far, so currently our grand total is £450,000. I’m really hoping to go over the half a million pounds raised soon.

PN: How was getting support from leading wildlife photographers? MR: It was much easier than I anticipated, actually. Having respected photographers such as Jonathan and Angie Scott and Federico Veronesi on board from the beginning gave the project immediate credibility, and then other photographers such as Shem Compion also helped by introducing me to some of the bigger names like Art Wolfe and Frans Lanting. Once they said yes, people started approaching me to offer me their work. Once we’d launched the first book – Remembering Elephants – to critical acclaim that also gave us even more credibility when we started to make the next two books. By that stage people knew we were producing a quality product and that they could trust us with their work. PN: Was it a challenge for the first book, Remembering Elephants? MR: The biggest challenge at the beginning was that I didn’t know 50 wildlife photographers (the number I had in my head I wanted to

From the launch alone, we’ve raised £120,000 from Remembering Great Apes Thanks go to... This year's Remembering Wildlife book was kindly sponsored by PhotoGuard, specialist providers of insurance for photographers and their equipment. photoguard.co.uk

contribute) to ask. But once we began, things started to snowball. I also wasn’t sure how our Kickstarter campaign would go and whether there would actually be enough support for the idea to raise the funds we needed. When we hit our total in just 12 hours that year, I realised we were on to a success. The other challenge I also had to face that year was being diagnosed with breast cancer on the day that Kickstarter ended. I worked through my treatment but initially I wasn’t sure how well I would be to complete the book. I share this now because I want to encourage others with similar diagnoses to realise it doesn’t need to be the end of the world, that you can still go on to achieve things you are proud of. PN: At the Remembering Great Apes launch evening you had a good number of photographers flying in, so you must be

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Interview

We’ve supported researchers and paid for camera traps to keep an eye on relocated rhinos

PN: Elephants, rhinos, apes – can you expand on how you’ve prioritised the species so far? MR: It has been an organic process for me. It started with elephants because of that young poached bull, as I explained. Then just after that book was finished I was lucky enough to get the chance to meet ’Sudan’, the last male northern white rhino left on the planet (he subsequently died earlier this year) – that had another profound impact on me, so I chose to do rhinos next. And then in year three it was having the plight of orangutans as a result of palm oil highlighted in a play I attended, that made my mind up to do apes next. There are so many species in dire need of our attention and support that it is difficult to prioritise one over another – I just simply have to use my instincts each time as to what is pulling my heartstrings the most at that particular moment. PN: You had some inspirational speakers at this year’s Apes book launch. How did you decide on the lineup? MR: Again, it is an organic process. Once I know what species I am concentrating

delighted with this support from abroad. Was that a surprise to you – how overseas photographers have embraced your project? MR: Indeed – we had 35 photographers attend this year and they came in from all over the world. I never expect or take for granted such support and all I can say is that it is completely overwhelming to me. I cannot stress how grateful I am to everyone who has supported me in so many ways. It truly is a team effort.

on then researching the campaigners and photographers who are known for those animals makes sense, along with recommendations from people. Ofir Drori, Tim Laman and Cheryl Knott were all suggestions made to me by friends and supporters, and I’m so thrilled they all agreed to take part. PN: Can you tell us a few ways in which the money raised has been used to benefit endangered species? MR: So far we’ve distributed the £350,000 from the first two books (it is a bit too early for apes yet, we’re still reconciling post launch). We’ve supported 15 projects in 13 countries and paid for everything from veterinary care for the victims of poaching to anti-poaching patrols, including aerial patrols and sniffer dogs. We’ve supported researchers and paid for camera traps to keep an eye on relocated rhinos. We’ve contributed towards relocations and we’ve also helped fund the building of schools in local communities surrounding game reserves. As I’ve learned, conservation needs to be holistic and there are so many approaches that need support.

PN: What are your most notable successes? MR: As the work of the conservation teams on the ground is often an ongoing and unending war, it is hard sometimes to pin down successes we can claim. But I am particularly proud that the anti-poaching patrols we helped to fund during the Mana Pools wet season last year reduced the poaching incidents to zero compared to at least 10 elephant deaths the year before. I always think back to that first poor poached elephant and think if we can stop another animal from suffering that same fate then that makes it all worth it. PN: When do you start planning for next year’s campaign? MR: Each year my answer to that question at this stage is the same. I just need to get to the end of this project and collapse and take a few weeks to recover before I can even think about committing another year of my life to another book. It is such a huge commitment from me and once I declare there will be a new book I am inundated with people wanting to get involved, so I’m very careful not to reveal any decisions until I make them. And that includes what species will be next, if there is another book. PN: Of which aspect of Remembering Wildlife are you most proud? MR: Something that I never anticipated and which has been a complete joy to me is the way the series has created a movement and a community of likeminded people, all striving

for the same thing. From photographers to volunteers, sponsors such as PhotoGuard to suppliers, everyone seems to be so proud and enthused to support the project, and I love that together we are greater than the sum of the parts. The fact that we’ve also sold 10,000 books which spread our message and raised £450,000 so far is also far more than I ever dreamed we would achieve when I started out. PN: How can Photography News readers get involved with Remembering Wildlife? MR: Watch this space! If there is another book we’ll be running a Kickstarter campaign again, which we’d hope people would want to support, and there will also likely be another public competition for 10 places in the book. People can subscribe to our mailing list via our website and that way they’ll be the first to hear when we do make any announcements. PN: What is your ultimate goal for your charity? MR: Our mission is to raise awareness of the plight facing a species and then raise funds to protect it. If I have the energy, we can continue to build on that mission and reach more people and raise more funds than ever – then I will be very happy indeed.

Contact

For more details about Remembering Wildlife please see the website. The three books – Remembering Elephants, Rhinos and Great Apes – are available to buy and you can also sign up for news of forthcoming projects and events. rememberingwildlife.com

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Feature Travel photography

The tribes of Vietnam Words by Graeme Green Images by Réhahn “The way I approach photography is through meeting people and spending time together,” says acclaimed French photographer Réhahn. “I can spend hours talking to people about their lives and culture. The more you spend time with people, the more you’re able to capture their real personality in a photograph.” Only going by his first name and often referred to as ‘the photographer who captures the soul’ of his subjects, Réhahn’s colourful, intimate portraits have earned him a huge international following, including 500,000 Facebook followers. He has published two books on Vietnam and The Collection, which contains ten years of his photography in Peru, India, Vietnam, Cuba and elsewhere. Originally from Bayeux in Normandy, France, Réhahn has lived since 2011 in the city of Hoi An, on the coast of Vietnam. He’s currently working on an ambitious project to photograph all of Vietnam’s 54 tribes. He has photographed 49 so far, with plans to visit more in 2019. This Precious Heritage project goes hand in hand with his museum in Hoi An, dedicated to Vietnam’s tribal costumes and artefacts, and other cultural museums that he funds with sales from his galleries. “I chose to become a photographer because I’m very curious about different kinds of cultures, ancient traditions, textiles and clothing,” Réhahn says, explaining what motivated him to start work on such a big project as photographing all 54 of Vietnam’s tribal peoples. “Living in Vietnam gave me this great opportunity to start a long term project. These cultures across Vietnam are changing fast, as the internet and new technologies reaches many of these villages. As a photographer, I have the opportunity to record and document these changes. Because I live in Vietnam, I have the possibility to go almost everywhere to research them. I can stay a week with them and interview the chief of the village. “My initial project was to find the 54 tribes, collect their traditional costume and open a free museum to show their beauty and diversity. The museum opened on 1 January last year.” Réhahn’s seven-year (and counting) photographic journey has taken him across the country. He usually enters villages, locates the chief (often with the help of a translator) and gradually gets to know Đu, the the people living there, from the smallest ethnic group in Vietnam, to the La H , who were previously known to be skilled hunters and who have no written language. Meeting the Ro Mam was one of several standout experiences that Réhahn remembers with affection. “I waited three years for authorization to photograph them. They only have 12 traditional costumes left. I was

Photography News catches up with acclaimed photographer Réhahn. His latest big project is to photograph all the tribes of Vietnam

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Feature © Réhahn

honoured to receive one, along with a pipe and a basket, to showcase their culture in my museum. The remaining 11 white costumes are kept by the Ro Mam as ‘treasures’, knowing that no one makes them any more.” Inspired by photographers including Sebastião Salgado and Steve McCurry, Réhahn’s approach means that he often spends days or weeks with tribes he’s photographing, or strikes up relationships and makes repeat visits. Photographs of a young girl from the Cham tribe has become a favourite with Réhahn’s fans. “I spent three days with An Phuoc, a little Cham girl with amazing blue eyes,” Réhahn says. “At first, her family wasn’t keen for me to take pictures but we spoke about their culture and I was invited to stay for lunch. They were happy to talk about their traditions and to share stories with me. On the second day, I came back and proposed to help this family and the girls. Sapa, An Phuoc’s older sister, wanted to be a photographer, so I bought her a camera. They’re now in my Giving Back project because the picture of An Phuoc is one of my bestselling photos. I bought a cow for the family and bikes for the girls. I visit them three times a year and I also invited them to stay in my house in Hoi An twice last year.” Spending time with the people he photographs is key to achieving such striking, original photos, Réhahn suggests. “The secret of a great portrait is a great interaction. I spend time with people and always try to know them before, to make them feel comfortable and to gain their trust. I’m a people person and it really helps to love your subject. In Cuba, I’ll smoke a cigar with the person before shooting. In a remote ethnic village of Vietnam, I’ll drink tea or eat fruit with the chief of the village. “A great portrait is the one that you’ll always remember,” he continues. “Each human being is unique and every detail counts. In my photography collection, I’ve got photos of a Vietnamese girl with blue eyes, an old lady with indigo dye on her hands, some old men with long beards… We often hear that eyes are windows of the soul, and I believe that’s true. Eyes really can tell a story.” Technical considerations are also key to making sure his portraits make an impression. “Large pieces of equipment, including lighting, would block people from acting naturally and I wouldn’t be able to get so much emotion, so I avoid that. I always use natural light and try to move the subject. If I shoot around midday, I’ll always try to bring the person to the doorway of their house to get the light from outside and a dark background. The result will be almost like a shoot in a studio, but without flash. “I rarely use more than ISO 1000, so if I shoot inside, I’ll ask my subject to sit near a window and it makes a really contrasty photograph.”

The secret of a great portrait is a great interaction. I spend time with people and always try to know them

Réhahn works according to a Giving Back philosophy. He previously gave a rowing boat to Madam Xong, who featured on the cover of his first book, and has also given people he’s photographed cows, bikes, cameras and other items to improve their lives. He has helped to provide education for several children, as well as paying for medical bills or house repairs for other subjects. He has also used sales from his galleries to fund the construction of a new museum for the Co Tu ethnic group in rural Tay Giang district, close to the Laos border, with whom he has a close relationship. “As a travel photographer, I wouldn’t be where I am without these people, so it feels

fair for me to give something back,” Réhahn explains. “I have a special relationship with many of my subjects. They become like a family and we meet every year. I don’t believe it necessary to transform every photo into a commercial transaction. Most of all, it’s about establishing a convivial and respectful relationship with the person we are photographing, so that the latter doesn’t feel like an object. Of course, if we make money from a picture then the subject deserves to get paid, but if it’s a travel photograph, a smile or a few words exchanged are often enough to make the moment with someone warm-hearted and sincere.”

Find out more For more on Réhahn’s photography, his Precious Heritage project, Giving Back and other projects, his museums or for prints of his work, visit rehahnphotographer.com.

Images Réhahn has been travelling around Vietnam, meeting and photographing the tribes for the last seven years, and the project is still ongoing.

Réhahn’s books, including Vietnam: Mosaic of Contrasts (Vol 1 and 2) and The Collection: 10 years of photography, are also available from his website. You can also follow him on Facebook (facebook.com/ Rehahn.Photography/) and Instagram (instagram.com/ rehahn_photography/)

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

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Profoto B10 review

Good things come in small packages Key specification Maximum flash energy 250Ws Energy range 10 f/stops in 0.1EV steps Recycling time 0.05-2secs Energy stability 0.2 f/stops TTL Yes HSS Yes Modelling light brightness 2500 lumens Sync and remote control range Up to 300m (flash triggering), up to 100m with HSS and TTL Bluetooth Yes, allows flash control with free Profoto app Battery capacity Up to 400 full power flashes/75 min of continuous light Battery charging time 90 min Dimensions 17.5x15x11cm (with stand adapter) Weight 1.5kg with battery and stand adapter

In some ways, the latest battery-powered TTL flash from the light shapers at Profoto is a perfect demonstration of how to combine power, functionality and portability. The Profoto B10 takes the compact nature of the B2 and combines it with the monobloc design of the more powerful B1X. The result is a batterypowered flash that offers TTL exposure control, high-speed sync (HSS) and 250Ws of flash power – in a compact shell that’s smaller than many telephoto zoom lenses. The B10 is powered by a rechargeable Li-ion battery that clips to the side of the unit. It can also run off mains power when plugged into the supplied charger. On the rear of the unit is a white-on-black LCD display that will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s used a recent Profoto light. It’s navigated using a pair of buttons and a rotate-and-push dial, which all feel superbly built. You can also control the B10 using the free Profoto smartphone app. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION The compact nature of the B10 makes it very attractive to photographers shooting on location. Applications range from editorial portraiture to high-end fashion and even interiors photography. B10 units are so small they can be hidden behind furniture to light up dark corners, or held by a colleague or assistant. Of course, you can put them on a standard lighting stand, too. The B10’s TTL exposure system makes shooting with flash simple. Just slip a dedicated AirTTL trigger (available for Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus and Sony) into your camera’s hotshoe, power up your B10 and you’re ready to go. Exposures are accurate and consistent every time, and the technology even makes it easy to blend together flash and ambient light. HSS allows shutter speeds well beyond your camera’s usual flash sync speed to be used, so you don’t have to compromise on aperture, shutter speed and ISO combinations just because you’re shooting with flash. Freeze mode shortens flash duration from 1/3300sec at power level 2 in normal mode to 1/15,000sec at the same power output level.

When using more than one B10, it’s easy to change the relative power of each unit from the AirTTL unit – simply allocate each B10 to one of three groups (A, B or C) then change the ratio of these groups with the easy-to-use controls. You can also control the flash-toambient lighting ratio in this way. A VERSATILE SOLUTION The B10 is compatible with over 120 Profoto lighting shapers, including the full Off Camera Flash (OCF) range, which gives location photographers the same kind of

creative power they are used to in the studio. Umbrellas, softboxes and beauty dishes can all be used, each one giving the B10’s output a different look and feel. The B10 hasn’t only been designed for photographers; its adjustable LED modelling lamp can be used for video work, too. Even the colour temperature of its light can be adjusted between 3000-6500K, helping you blend together artificial and ambient light. When you look at the Profoto B10, it’s hard to see how so much technology can be packed into this diminutive little unit. It’s perfectly possible to pack the flash alongside other lenses in the same bag in which you carry your camera, with a lighting stand and folded up brolly strapped to the side. Everything you need to shoot a professional editorial portrait is contained in a single bag – that’s a degree of freedom that opens up a world of creative possibilities for photographers, wherever they find themselves shooting.

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Interview

From above Profile

Photographer Tomas Sentpetery wanted to give his travel photography a fresh twist and that’s how his Look Deeper project camera about. He explains the thinking behind his project to PN

Below

London – Above

PN: Can you tell Photography News readers a bit about yourself please? What’s your background and what do you normally shoot as a professional photographer? TS: I am a Slovakian born photographer who came to the UK in 2004. I always had an interest in photography even from an early age. I started out shooting on film and then swapped for a digital point and shoot. In 2008, I bought my first DSLR and that’s when I started to take photography more seriously, devoting all my free time to taking pictures. I started to travel more and more and discover new places to photograph. That’s when I fell in love with landscape and cityscape photography. I still travel a lot but now most of my work comes from weddings and portrait-related photography. PN: What was your motivation behind the project? Is it a self-motivated project? TS: As a travel photographer, I’m always aspiring to adventure into the unknown and to experience something new. However, as the world gets smaller, it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce travel photography that is original and unique. The Look Deeper project came about through a collaboration with Nikon Europe to try and bring new light to popular travel destinations by revealing new and unique perspectives. As part of the project, I travelled to five countries, photographing above ground but also below the surface – the locations that travellers are less likely to explore. I wanted my image series to reveal the contrasting worlds that can be found in these locations and to encourage fellow travel photographers to go out and discover hidden worlds everywhere. PN: How much research do you do for your shoots? TS: I’m very thorough with my research. It obviously can take a while, but it’s worth it as it prevents wasting time on simple logistics like finding your way around and helps avoid nasty surprises such as discovering the monument you want to shoot is under renovation or closed on a bank holiday. However, my research doesn’t stop once my trip has begun. For example, once I’d captured the underground shots at each location, I’d continue to research the above-ground location. Throughout the Look Deeper project, I made sure to research sunset and sunrise in each of the locations, so I could time my visit to perfection and ensure I was able to capture those golden hour shots. PN: How do you choose the locations? TS: I use the internet a lot to identify more unusual locations to shoot and not just the obvious spots. I also take inspiration Images Tomas’s images explore the contrast between what’s above and below ground in five popular tourist destinations.

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Interview

PN: How many have you done now? TS: For the Look Deeper project, I visited five different popular tourist destinations in Europe including London, Spain, Krakow, Paris and Naples and photographed them both above and below ground. However, over the course of my career, I have been all over the globe and have travelled extensively in Europe and Asia to capture exciting images. PN: It must have cost you a great deal travelling around the world to so many different locations. Have you got sponsors for the project or is it self-funded? TS: My own trips are self-funded. However, I was lucky enough to work with Nikon on the Look Deeper project.

PN: What camera equipment did you use, and why? TS: I have my own Nikon D850 which is an amazing piece of kit. I have used Nikon equipment since 2008 and since then I have never thought of changing. For this specific project I used the D850 for the underground shots along with a range of FX lenses and for the above ground shots I used the Nikon D7500 with DX lenses. The D850 combined with the FX lenses performs exceptionally in low light and so was the perfect choice for this project when shooting underground. Its ISO range meant I was able to capture colour and detail when little natural light was available while still delivering crisp, sharp images. I chose to shoot with the D7500 above ground as it is lightweight and easy to carry when on my feet from sunrise to sunset. The adjustable monitor is also super useful and allowed me to focus and shoot from any angle. PN: Which lenses did you use, and what is your favourite lens/focal length? Did you use perspective control lenses?

The D7500 is lightweight and easy to carry when on my feet from sunrise to sunset

from other photographers’ work on social media. One thing I always make time to do is speak to the locals. You can’t beat their knowledge and you’ll be sure to discover places that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to find online. Often these places turn out to be better than anything you’ve researched beforehand.

Below

Paris – Above

Guadix – Above

and below

TS: For shooting below ground I used the D850 with the 14-24mm f/2.8G ED, the 2470mm f/2.8G ED and the 20mm f/1.8D. I don’t really have one that stands above the rest as they all come into their own depending on the conditions I am shooting in. However, if I had to choose just one then it would be the 24-70mm f/2.8D as it’s the most versatile and performs exceptionally well in low light. When shooting above ground with the D7500 I enjoyed using the AF-S DX 18– 300mm f/3.5–6.3G ED VR because of its focal length reach and compactness. However, I also used the AF-S DX 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED and AF-S DX 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR as they are both great travel lenses. PN: How did you light the underground scenes? Did you use off-camera flash? TS: On some locations I used an OCF; two in some cases. I also used a head torch in the Mail Rail tunnels below London to heighten the eerie atmosphere and create an almost supernatural light. Some locations were lit perfectly already so I chose not to use additional lighting to retain the natural ambience.

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Interview © Tomas Sentpetery

Below

PN: What were the technical challenges shooting underground? TS: Limited space and low light were a real challenge when shooting underground. Another challenge was making something plain look interesting, especially in the tunnels of the London Mail Rail and Aldwych Underground station. However, having the right kit certainly helped me, such as the option of the 14mm focal length on the 14-24mm f/2.8G ED lens. The low-light conditions meant I needed a tripod or if there was no space, a really fast lens. That’s where the 20mm f/1.8G ED excelled and combined with the great low-light handling of the D850 body, I could go to ISO 4000 and still get really good results.

Krakow – Above

Naples – Above

PN: What was your own personal favourite location/picture from your project? TS: My favourite underground shot was taken at the Wieliczka Salt Mines, Poland. I loved the look and atmosphere of the interior which is intensified by the knowledge that you’re walking through hundreds and hundreds of years of history – it was continuously mined from the 13th century until 2007. It felt a little like an underground town with grand rooms built for people to gather or pray in and statues carved out of the salt rock. Out of all the places I visited during the project, it had the biggest impact on me and looks great in photos! Closely following the Wieliczka Salt Mines is Guadix, Spain, and above ground, I would have to say Amalfi, Italy, which I revisited in July because I liked it so much. PN: Were there some locations that you could not include because of the lack of an underground option? TS: All of the locations were chosen because I wanted to explore the dynamic and contrast between the above and below spaces. In Europe, we’re spoilt for choice with many cities harbouring subterranean worlds which are just waiting to be discovered. PN: What was the most physically demanding shoot on this project? TS: As a landscape and travel photographer, I am constantly encountering challenges. Throughout the project, I needed to wake up early to capture the sunrise and then make sure I was positioned correctly for sunset as these are the best times for light. This combined with walking between multiple shoot locations can be very tiring. Then I had to count on good weather which unfortunately isn’t something anyone can control and can be incredibly frustrating when it’s not playing ball. You need a lot of patience and perseverance which can be emotionally as well as physically testing.

PN: What was your worst experience doing this project? TS: Apart from missing one of my flights, I had no bad experiences. I really enjoyed the project and hope to continue looking deeper and exploring Europe’s hidden subterranean worlds. PN: Have you finished your project, or is it still ongoing? TS: Yes, the project has now been wrapped up however there is certainly potential to further explore the hidden worlds of other tourist destinations in Europe and further afield. PN: Are you happy with what you have achieved?

I wanted to explore the contrast between the above and below spaces

Images Shooting underground posed challenges including limited space and low light, so Tomas often used off-camera flash.

TS: I’m really pleased with this image series and I hope I have inspired travel photographers to think differently about how they can photograph typical travel destinations. PN: What are your plans for your project? TS: I’d love to continue discovering the hidden depths of popular tourist destinations and exploring the unique perspective to these places that often get overlooked. I think that planet earth is stunning, and I want to try and capture as much of it as I can in my lifetime. PN: Can readers see more of your project? TS: More info about the Look Deeper project can be found at nikon.co.uk/en_GB/learn_explore/ look-deeper-travel-photography.page

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Interview

Aerial artist Profile

Lee Mansfield is a professional drone photographer who specialises in 360° sphere images. We talk to him about his techniques and how he prepares for his shoots © Lee Mansfield

PN: How did you get started in photography? Before you got your drone, what kind of images were you taking? LM: Since I was young, I have always had a camera with me – 35mm film then later a digital DSLR. Before the drone my photography was mainly landscapes and sport events – my children were very sporty and capturing high-speed action shots of my children gives me tremendous joy, knowing they love what they do and I love what I do.

which outputs anywhere between 60 and 150MB. The final image will print to size A0 (84.1x118.9cm). I have spent a long time mastering 360° photography and now I seem to have perfected it. Every 360° photo I create is not just a photograph – it’s a project. A lot of time, effort and skill go in to this style of photography.

PN: How do you choose the subjects for your images? We’ve noticed that for the 360° images there is usually a tall central subject, for example. LM: In Lancashire we have so many beautiful towers, buildings and landmarks such as Blackpool Tower, India Mill, Darwen Tower, Clitheroe Castle and Oakmount Mill. Being local to a lot of these towers makes it easy to plan with not a lot of travelling. Having such a high building or tower works really well with the 360°. Getting the right angle, position and height makes them good projects to work with.

PN: Colour seems like an important part of your style. How important to you is colour correction when shooting? Is it mostly a post-processing step? LM: It is always best to try aerial photography with good weather conditions. Fortunately, this year we have had a great summer that has allowed me to create some stunning projects. Sometimes when the weather is grainy or cloudy once I’ve stitched the final 34 images I will use colour correction and possibly HDR effects to adjust the background mood. PN: The lighting and scenery must change over the course of your shooting; how do you manage this at the time and in post-processing? LM: Due to the style of 360° photography some of the images will be of the sky, trying to get good weather is a key point. I do have many ND filters to reduce lens flare, exposure etc. I can also adjust the camera settings such as ISO, aperture and shutter speed live in the air from my controller. The DJI Phantom 4 PRO drone allows you to take full control of a lot of settings in real time. Post processing I use various software such as AutoPano for stitching and Affinity Photo, Nik collection, Darkroom 3 and Snapseed for editing and colour correction.

PN: Do you tend to head out shooting with a photograph in mind or do you look around for inspiration? LM: I do plan my photo shoots. A few days before, I check the weather and use Google Maps and Google Earth to check locations and parking. I also do a lot of research on towers, castles and historical landmarks – the Internet is essential to planning my shoots. PN: What are your ‘go to’ pieces of kit? LM: I use a DJI Phantom 4 PRO which has a fixed 1in, 20MP sensor which is also capable of recording video at 4K. When I heard that DJI was developing a sophisticated drone with a 1in camera sensor and capable

Every 360° photo I create is not just a photograph – it’s a project

Left Lee likes to shoot 360° images with a very tall central subject; in this case, Lytham Windmill.

of recording in 4K I had to invest in one. This is one of the best cameras available for a drone, giving pin-sharp imagery. It also has many modes including ‘sphere’; this mode takes 34 images at approximately 10.58°.

PN: How do you create the stunning 360° images? LM: Once I am happy with the height, position and angle I start the shooting procedure. I generally take four sequence shots at slightly different altitudes which works out

at 136 frames. From there I go back to base and look at all 136 images, select the best 34 images, stitch them together using AutoPano, align them up then fix any missed images. Next I adjust the colour, brightness, clarity and then process the image

PN: How long roughly can each image take in post processing? LM: Each image is a project in mind, there is time spent travelling to locations, setting up and getting the photos you need. Planning your time is important. I check parking, weather, hazards and NFZ (no fly zone areas etc). Once I have all the images then post-processing probably takes a lot longer than the travel and photos.

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Interview

PN: How do you know when an image is complete? LM: I have in my mind what I would like the final image to look like. If I am not happy then I will keep at it or scrap the project and go back to the location at a later date then recapture the images. I went through this method quite a few times when I was starting off. I seem to have mastered the 360° technique now which gives me more time to go to other locations instead of going back to the failed locations.

It really depends on the scene, building etc. The most I have spent on one edit is four hours; normal edits approximately one to three hours.

– he was very helpful. He gave me some excellent starting points and I booked his three-day course. The course was quite intense, with practical and theory, and writing your own operations manual was a challenge. I am now a registered PfCO (Permission for Commercial Operation) drone pilot which is governed by the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority). This allows me to fly my drone on a commercial basis as well as hobbyist.

The beauty with a drone is you can get the angles and height that you can’t with a standard camera

PN: Had you always wanted to get your drone licence? How did you go about getting hold of one? LM: I did quite a lot of research before buying the drone, creating a business plan and forming a limited company called Photo Pilot Ltd. Then online I met John Bridgett from a commercial drone training company called skeyetrain.co.uk © Lee Mansfield

PN: What are the challenges of shooting predominantly with a drone? LM: There are both pros and cons with drone and normal ground photography. The beauty with a drone is you can get the angles and height that you can’t with a standard camera. Commercially, drones are very useful in property (estate agents), construction, roof inspections, building survey and search and rescue. My DSLR normally comes with me too when I go out with the drone, as I may want to capture a quick snap with the camera without taking the drone out of the backpack and initialising all the checks before flight. Images Lee’s style works well with both urban and rural scenes. PN: How would you say using a drone has affected your style of photography? LM: Drones can give different angles and perspective to photographs, a slight elevation of any building such as a castle, a tower etc. gives your mind a complete different view. Some of my photographs are on show at The Picture House Gallery in Padiham and the Clitheroe Platform Gallery. I have a few exhibitions planned for next year. My style of 360° photography has had a lot of positive and encouraging feedback from the public and professional photographers. I doubt my normal photography would have the same amount of interest that my drone photography has had over the past six months. PN: You have a great range of both urban and rural landscapes – do you have a preference? LM: I love the country for landscape and around Lancashire there are so many beautiful locations for taking pictures. We are blessed with beautiful countryside and stunning landmarks in urban areas so I love both subjects.

PN: Do you think that your style is most effective on rural or urban scenes? LM: Really depends; I would say both. Some of my urban 360° photos such as Darwen Tower, India Mill and Blackpool Tower look stunning. The countryside is not good for 360°s but great for long panoramics which I can achieve very well with the drone. PN: Have you ever thought about using your expertise in using a drone and special effects for movie making? LM: Hmm, probably not. I prefer stills to video, I would like to get more involved in the property market aerial and ground photography via estate agents. That’s an area where I am looking to inject some of my time. I have taken quite a few aerial photos for the homes of clients who live in rural areas which have come out really well. PN: What advice would you give to our readers hoping to shoot similar subjects or try out this style of photography?

LM: The most important thing to learn is the drone code. If you are serious about drone flying get professional tuition or go for your drone pilot’s certification. When I first started I spent a lot of time at different locations then back home I’d edit and if I wasn’t happy I would go back and reshoot. Having the right drone, confidence and creativeness will help and it’s important to get plenty of practice in quiet areas. Practice at different heights, angles and position to give a totally different perspective to the 360° photograph.

Contact To see more of Lee Mansfield’s work, see the websites below. He can also be contacted on 078311 20700 photopilot.co.uk facebook.com/photopilotltd

Camera test Specs Price EOS R body with Mount Adapter EF-EOS R £2349.99; EOS R with RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM and Mount Adapter EF-EOS R £3269.99; RF 50mm f/1.2L USM £2349.99; RF 24105mm f/4L IS USM £1119.99; Mount Adapter EF-EOS R £99; Control Mount Ring Adapter EF-EOS R £199; Drop-in Filter Mount Adapter EFEOS R with drop-in circular polariser £299 Available from December 2018 RF 28-70mm f/2L USM lens £3049.99. RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro IS STM lens £519.99 Sensor 30.3 megapixels, CMOS Sensor format 35mm full frame, 6720x4480pixels ISO range 100-40,000 (expandable to 50 and up to 102,400) Shutter range 30secs to 1/8000sec, flash sync 1/200sec Drive modes 8fps with fixed focus, 5fps with AF tracking Metering system Multi-zone, centre-weighted, spot, partial Exposure modes PASM Exposure compensation +/-3EV Monitor 3.2in articulating touch screen, 2100k dots Viewfinder 3690K dot EVF Focusing Phase detect with image sensor. Dual Pixel CMOS AF Focus points 5655 points Video 4k 3840x2160 @29.97, 25, 24, 23.98p and 480Mbps and 120Mbps Connectivity USB 3.1, HDMI mini, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Other key features USB in-camera charging (with LPE6N and some chargers), Dual Pixel Raw support, .CR3 (Raw and CRaw) Storage media 1xSD slot Dimensions (wxhxd) 136x98x84mm Weight 660g body with battery Contact canon.co.uk

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Canon EOS R

With sales of mirrorless cameras seriously impacting on DSLRs, market leader Canon could ignore the opportunity no longer: its answer is a new system, the EOS R Words and images by Will Cheung Canon’s assault on the mirrorless full-frame market comes in the form of the EOS R, a 30.3-megapixel camera. But the EOS R is not just a new camera, it is at the vanguard of something very serious from the camera market’s leading player: it’s a new system with a new mount. A new lens mount is rarely greeted with whoops of delight from a brand’s loyal followers for very obvious (and expensive) reasons. Yet a new mount opens up boundless opportunities to the camera and lens designers, so while the existing Canon EF bayonet is perfectly good for today’s camera it has limitations too, hence we have the new RF bayonet. The diameter of both mounts is the same at 54mm but the RF mount has the shorter mount flange to image sensor plane distance of 20mm compared with the 44mm of the EF mount and has 12 contact pins (eight on the EF mount). The upshot of this is the opportunity of new lens designs, better optical performance, faster camera-lens communication and the option of using existing Canon EF/EF-S fit lenses via an adapter with no compromises. Canon’s optical designers are already flexing their creativity with the RF 50mm f/1.2 already available and tested in this review, and the RF 28-70mm f/2 which will be in the shops later in the year. Canon, ever mindful of its hordes of existing users, has made available an adapter so that most Canon EF/ EF-S lenses can be fitted and used with full automation and infinity focus. In fact, there’s not one adapter but three, so please check out the panel The EOS R with EF lenses in this review. The camera’s sensor is a 31.7-megapixel CMOS unit giving an

effective 30.3-megapixel resolution with an optical low pass filter to defeat moire patterns and false colours. It is thus very similar to that in the EOS 5D Mark IV, but the EOS R sensor has been updated and works with the DIGIC 8 processor compared with the DIGIC 6+. As part of this review, we took side-by-side comparison shots using the same lens on both cameras just to see if there were any performance differences, so check out the relevant panels on these pages. The EOS R’s control layout and design have a very Canon look, especially when viewed from the back, yet there are significant innovations and changes too. I think Canon users will soon find their way around the body. Physically, the body is slightly smaller than most APS-C DSLRs which of course is impressive considering that the camera is fullframe. However, if you’re going fullframe mirrorless with hope of saving space and weight, you’d be wise and check out the size and weight of your prospective lenses first.

The layout and design have a very Canon look yet there are significant changes too

Left Layout of the EOS R is clean and typically Canon in many ways, with the rear four-way pad and the metering lock and AF zone button on the right side. But there is innovation too, notably the new M-Fn bar placed to the right of the viewfinder eyepiece and for use by the right thumb.

The EOS R body is weather sealed and the body deep enough for me to get a firm, four-fingered grip. It feels reassuringly solid. The most obvious design differences compared with other Canon DSLRs are across the topplate. There’s no exposure mode dial just a MODE button at the centre of a rotating collar. Push the MODE button and the actual mode can be changed with the front or rear input dial. Do this and you will find the usual AV, TV, M settings but there’s more. Three C custom modes, an A+ mode and an FV setting which is Flexible-priority AE. In this mode, you can quickly scroll through aperture, shutter speed and ISO values using the rear command dial and then fine-tune each one with the front command dial. And you can do this easily with the camera up to the eye as each active setting is shown in the viewfinder. These modes are all relevant to shooting stills, but push the INFO button while the MODE button is active and you’re into a similar array of movie shooting modes.

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Camera test Performance: ISO Original image

The EOS R’s default ISO range is 50 to 25,600 with expansion down to ISO 50 and up to 102,400. This series of shots of the Church of St John Baptist, Cirencester was shot with the EOS R with the EF 24-105mm f/4 L (using the EF-EOS R mount adapter) on a Gitzo carbon-fibre tripod with the shutter released with the camera’s self-timer. (The purple hue was due to the lights of a fairground ride directly behind the camera position). All in-camera noise reduction was switched off and no NR was applied in the processing through Adobe Lightroom. Image quality is impressive with excellent detail rendition and minimal noise. Peering closely into the deep shadows of the ISO 800 image at 100% on a high resolution screen and you will see some very fine noise compared with slower ISO shots but it’s negligible. Noise is not an issue at ISO 1600 or even at 3200 either so

The sub menu LCD panel shows mode selection and you get the same detail on the rear monitor too. If you prefer, using the rear touchscreen to alter exposure mode is fine and pushing the MODE button to bring up the options on the monitor as well as on the top-plate LCD. The collar around the MODE button is deep and knurled for a good grip but I found getting at it to adjust settings needed a slight thumb position shift, to the right from where the thumb naturally rests.

if you need to venture into such high speeds for sharp pictures getting big, grain-free prints is not an issue at all. If push came to shove and you needed to use ISO 6400, in all honesty only the most critical photographers would quibble about the noise levels and the impact on fine detail. This is impressive stuff from the EOS R. Eventually, of course, noise does start to get more evident and while ISO 12,800 is still capable of very decent image quality the more obvious graining and detail loss is a factor and that applies even more so at the higher speeds. The EOS R uses a front illuminated CMOS sensor and it does show itself, with the DIGIC 8 image processor capable of an impressive high ISO performance. The scene was also photographed with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV using the same lens, again with in-camera NR turned off. Although both cameras have the same 30.3-megapixel

The EOS R body is weather sealed and the body deep enough for me to get a firm grip

ISO 100

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

ISO 6400

ISO 12,800

ISO 25,600

ISO 51,200

ISO 102,400

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV ISO 6400

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV ISO 12,800

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV ISO 25,600

Images High ISO performance from the Canon EOS R is very slightly better than the EOS 5D Mark IV’s. resolution the EOS R has an updated sensor through the DIGIC 8 image engine compared with the DIGIC 6+ of the EOS 5D Mark IV. Looking at the resulting files from both cameras revealed

This applies to the AF-ON button too, which to me should be where a new control called the M-Fn bar sits. Canon’s camera design ingenuity is second to none. I’ve always considered the large rear command dial on my old EOS 3 a truly brilliant piece of design. The M-Fn (multi-function) bar is Canon’s latest innovation. It is a touch swipe or tap bar placed to be quickly accessed by your right thumb. It can be assigned various shooting and playback functions. So, for example, it can be dedicated to altering ISO. Swiping to right increases the ISO value and to left sets a lower value with a scale appearing on the monitor and in the viewfinder showing you what’s going on. You can also set a lower and upper value which you access by a single tap on the left or the right end of the swipe bar. It can also be used as a focus check with a right swipe (or tap) showing a 5x and then a 10x magnified image and then a left swipe (or tap) taking you back to the normal viewing image.

little if any benefit of the newer camera in terms of overall noise levels at the higher ISO settings. A close look showed that the EOS R was very marginally better at handling fine detail,

although whether this would be appreciated even in a big print is doubtful. What it does show is that the EOS 5D Mark IV introduced over two years ago is still a leading full-frame camera.

Above This dimly lit Cirencester street scene needed ISO 12,800 for a handheld exposure of 1/25sec at f/4. In principle, the M-Fn bar and just setting it up at home before testing it seemed a great idea and as I was trying the camera’s ISO skills it made sense to try it to alter speeds. With ISO I did like swiping it to change values which was easy with the camera up to the eye. It was also

to change values just because it is right next to where thumb sat. With the right/left tap setting enabled I found I was constantly changing ISO when I didn’t intend too. What you can do with ISO is set upper and lower limits so the swipe motion works within that range. With the

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Camera test right/left tap option set, this means you can go straight to the set limits without having to go through the intervening values. The problem, for example, is if you select ISO 800 and then unintentionally hit the right tap which is set to ISO 3200 you find yourself at the higher setting without meaning to be. It proved annoying so I turned off the right/ left tap options but left the swipe working. Eventually, I gave up using the M-Fn bar for ISO and tried it for focus checking but then I found myself looking into a magnified image when I didn’t want to, so I just turned it off completely which is frustrating because this area of a camera is prime property. To be fair, Canon’s touch bar is a neat idea but to me it wasn’t usable. I’d be much happier with a simple command dial and a better placed AF-ON button. Perhaps I just time to appreciate it.

Above Image quality is very impressive. Here the 50mm f/1.2 was used at 1/125sec at f/2.8 and ISO 100.

Another control I’d like changed is the on/off control. Canon has kept it away from the on/off collar around shutter button idea – maybe because that’s where Nikon places it – but it seems the best place for it because it allows you to turn the camera on while bringing it up to eye and shoot with one hand. Canon has gone for a lens based image stabilization system, and it is true that over the years it has been effective. But times and expectations change so it is a bit of a surprise that the EOS R system also uses a lensbased system, especially bearing in mind that full-frame Sony and Nikon Z models use in-body image stabilization (IBIS). With the new R mount and its claimed superfast communication skills you might have thought IBIS would be present – but maybe that will come in future models. As it stands the EOS R relies

Canon’s touch bar is a neat idea but to me it wasn’t usable. I’d be much happier with a simple command dial

Performance: exposure latitude The exposure latitude of Raw files from the EOS R was tested in a variety of situations. This set of shots of Kew Gardens’ Palm House was taken on a clear sunny day with the EOS R fitted with the RF 24-105mm zoom. Manual mode was used and the scene manually bracketed from the starting exposure which was 1/500sec at f/8 and ISO 100. Full Raw mode was used in this case and the files were exposure corrected in Adobe Lightroom Classic.

Overexpose your Raws by +4EV and unrecoverable, flat highlights and strange colour casts will result, but at +3EV you can pull back a decent result with tone in the highlights and detail looking great too. There was a minor cyan colour cast in our test shot here but that can be defeated with editing. The +2EV and +1EV Raws looked the same as the correctly exposed shot, so this is a very decent performance with overexposure.

With underexposure, a similar high level of performance was seen, although noise was visible in the -4EV and -3EV shots. In the -4EV shot the noise did affect fine details and there were false colours in the shadow areas, and this was less evident in the -3EV image. Less severe underexposure was handled well and the recovered Raws looked fine with no noise, great tonal range and looked neutral.

-4EV

-3EV

-2EV

-1EV

+1EV

+2EV

+3EV

Original image

+4EV

Above Several exposure brackets in different lighting situations were shot on the EOS R. The Raws of this brightly lit scene responded well to both over and underexposure.

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Camera test The EOS R with EF lenses Canon has ensured you can use EF and EF-S fit lenses on the EOS R. You have the choice of three adapters: the Mount Adapter EFEOS R (£99), Control Ring Mount Adapter EF-EOS R (£199) and the Drop-in Filter Mount Adapter EF-EOS R (£299 with circular polariser). Canon is including the Mount Adapter EF-EOS R with EOS R body and lens kits. The Control Ring Mount Adapter features a ring to mirror the one on EOS R lenses and it can be customised to various camera features including exposure compensation, while the Drop-in Filter Mount Adapter means you can use small drop-in filters behind the lens to save space

Above The EF 100mm f/2.8 lens was fitted on the EOS R. The enlarged section shows there’s no quality loss.

Performance: Raw v CRaw and weight in the bag. The mount comes with a circular polariser while a variable ND and a clear filter are other options. All three adapters have metal front and rear mounts and are sealed against dust and moisture. I used the EF 100mm f/2.8 macro and EF 24-105mm f/4 L on EOS R with the Mount Adapter EF-EOS R with no problems at all. Autofocus was accurate and effective and the adapter itself is compact and light. Canon’s website tells you which EF and EF-S mount lenses the adapters are compatible with – I counted 31 EF primes, 22 EF zooms and 15 EF-S lenses. Third party lens compatibility is not known at this time.

RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM £1119.99

Specs

The RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM proved to be a capable standard zoom giving sharp images through its focal length range. At the 24mm setting the only two disappointing apertures were f/16 and f/22 where diffraction gave relatively soft images although some unsharp mask in Photoshop helped. At the wider apertures we saw good edgeto-edge sharpness even at f/4 while f/8 was the best overall aperture producing contrasty images packed with crisp detail. A similar performance was seen at 50mm although here f/22 was the only slightly disappointing aperture where the image lacked bite and contrast so detail looked

Price £1119.99

24mm

flat. At the other extreme, f/4 gave impressive sharpness and contrast at the centre and only dropped off slightly at the edges. Performance improved with stopping down until peak performance at f/8 and f/11 where the image across the frame was impressive. The lens gave its best at 105mm with fine detail looking excellent from f/4 onwards especially in the centre although the edges lagged behind slightly. That was also the case at f/5.6; f/11 was needed to take the high level of quality from the centre to the edges. 50mm

Optical construction 18 elements in 14 groups Aperture range F/4-22 Diaphragm blades Nine Filter size 77mm

Canon introduced its new Raw format, suffix .CR3, on its EOS M50 mirrorless camera launched earlier in 2018, to replace its existing .CR2 Raw format. An option of the .CR3 format is to shoot CRaw format, a compressed Raw format. The EOS R’s CRaw format gives files of around 22MB, compared with 35MB of full-size Raws so there’s around a space saving of around 30%. Smaller files means faster file handling too so if you want to shoot longer Raw bursts the CRaw option is the way to go. A smaller file means there’s less information to work with so there’s a potential negative impact to image quality. To see how much image quality suffered by using CRaw instead of full size Raws from the EOS R, I shot a number of scenes in both formats and then used Canon DPP and Lightroom to get the most from the files, before a close on-screen scrutiny. My shots included colourful scenes, very contrasty scenes and corrected exposure brackets, so a good mix of situations which would hopefully reveal any deficiencies in CRaw. After spending some time checking my

selection of shots at 100% and then 200% on-screen, I can say that shooting full Raw files does make a difference – but it’s tiny and you have to really look hard to see the benefits. Take a look at the example here of an English Electric Lightning XM135 at the Duxford Imperial War Museum. Both shots were taken on a tripod-mounted EOS R fitted with the RF 24-105mm f/4 zoom lens at 1/20sec at f/11 and ISO 800, underexposed by 3EV and exposure corrected in Lightroom. At 200% on-screen, peer closely and you can see that the rivets are better defined in the full Raw, but whether you’ll see any difference at 300ppi at 100% on a 22x14.9in print is a point of debate. For the majority of users, shooting CRaw makes perfect sense, giving you more shots per card as well as taking up less space in your archive. If you like striving for every last gram of quality from your Raws, often shoot in contrasty situations, have impeccable technique and use the finest glass possible, then use the full size Raw option. Canon has thoughtfully provided both options in the EOS R.

Raw

Minimum focus 45cm IS 5EV claimed benefit Dimensions 83.5x107.3mm Weight 700g

105mm CRaw

F/4

F/5.6

F/8

F/11

F/16

F/22

on a lens-based system so of the two lenses tried here the 50mm f/1.2 is IS-free while the 24-105mm f/4 has a claimed 5EV benefit. In my tests, I was shooting with the 24-105mm handheld indoors with and without IS switched on, at the 24mm and 105mm focal lengths with shutter speeds starting from 1/60sec down to 1/4sec. Assuming 1/125sec is a safe shutter speed at 105mm a 5EV benefit means getting sharp shots at 1/4sec. I didn’t achieve that. I got one out of five shots at 1/6sec pinsharp and two at 1/15sec while at 24mm I got four sharp at 1/15sec and three at 1/8sec. That is a respectable showing but not exceptional.

Autofocus proved responsive, smooth and very fast. I tried the face/ tracking and wide zone and found they worked well in most situations but try selective focusing and they struggle to lock on the subject or in a busy general scene picks the wrong subject to focus on. Of course, having on-screen touch focus does mean what the camera decides can be overridden but you need to be quick to avoid missing the shot. I spent more time in the smaller zone modes and most time in single zone AF modes – there are two, single point and pinpoint. The single point system works well, and the Touch & Drag feature

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Camera test Canon EOS R v EOS 5D Mark IV

Using the EOS R’s M-Fn control

The Canon EOS R and EOS 5D Mark IV both have 31.7-megapixel CMOS sensors and their effective resolutions both give 6720x4480-pixel files. With a two-year gap between them you wouldn’t expect the sensors to be identical and Canon says the EOS R has an upgraded sensor. The two cameras use different image engines: the EOS R uses the DIGIC 8 and the EOS 5D Mark IV the DIGIC 6+. Out of curiosity we shot the same scene with the same lens, an EF 24-105mm f/4 L – fitted on the EOS R with the EF-EOS R adaptor – and at a range of ISO values, from ISO 50 to their respective top settings. Both cameras were

Canon’s latest innovation is the M-Fn (multi-function) bar and that’s why it deserves an explanatory panel all of its own. This is a touch, swipe or tap bar placed to be quickly accessed by your right thumb. In other words, it is positioned in one of a camera’s most important areas and it can be assigned to a few shooting and playback functions. So, for example, it can be dedicated to altering ISO. Swiping to right increases the ISO value and to left sets a lower value, passing through other speeds as you do so. If you want to work quickly without scrolling through the intermediate ISO values you can set a lower and upper value which

fixed to a Gitzo carbon-fibre tripod with the shutter released with the self-timer. The resulting full-size Raws were processed identically through Lightroom Classic CC. Does the new camera outperform the oldie? Yes: the EOS R did an even better job showing fine detail and noise performance was better but we are talking small margins of difference and we’re deep into the scary world of pixel peeping. Put it like this, if you were hoping for a big difference in pure picture quality terms, then expect to be disappointed. Of course there are many other differences to sway your buying decision.

Above You can customise the M-Fn bar in the menu. you access by a single tap on the left or the right end of the bar. In practice, with the bar set to change ISO I found myself regularly adjusting speed when I didn’t mean to. I ended up shooting at inappropriate exposure values or the wrong ISO. For focus check a right swipe (or tap) shows a 5x and then a 10x

magnified image then a left swipe (or tap) takes you back to normal. With this feature set, several times I found myself looking at a magnified image instead of the full image, which was annoying. The M-Fn bar has potential but after using it for a while I turned it off completely. It obviously doesn’t suit my thumb position.

Canon EOS R

ISO 200

ISO 6400

Canon EOS 5D Mark IV

RF 50mm f/1.2 L USM £2349.99

Specs

The new RF lens mount gives the opportunity for high spec lenses such as this super fast aperture standard lens. It is a hefty optic that makes the camera/lens combination front heavy and there is no integral IS to help defeat camera movement. Its price and spec mean this is a top-end lens and it performs like one. There’s no point having a fast aperture lens if it delivers soft shots at its widest setting but there is absolutely no danger of that. This lens gives excellent resolution and contrast from f/1.2 onwards and that is across the whole frame.

Price £2349.99 Optical construction 15 elements in nine groups Aperture range F/1.2-16 Diaphragm blades 10 Filter size 77mm Minimum focus 40cm IS Not available Dimensions 89.8x108mm Weight 950g

Stopping down improves sharpness even further although it is true that the only reason to go for a smaller aperture is for depth-of-field reasons. And if you do want to shoot at f/16, you can do so in complete confidence with this lens because diffraction doesn’t impact sharpness much at all. With its price tag, this standard lens isn’t a mass appeal product. Its performance though is amazingly impressive so it is a shame that only a few people will get to enjoy its optical skills.

Original image

ISO 200

does mean you can use your thumb on the monitor to guide the AF point to where it is needed, and very quickly too. There are options with the Touch & Drag focus feature too. For example, if you prefer just to have the left side of the monitor active you can. The problem I found with Touch & Drag AF was that it seemed overly sensitive and I’d find the AF point in the corner of the screen and had been moved while I was bringing the camera up to the eye or moved by my nose. The touchscreen has two sensitivity settings, standard and sensitive so perhaps a less sensitive option would work better for me.

F/5.6

ISO 6400

Turning off Touch & Drag AF then means you need another method of moving the single AF point around and there is no focus lever or joystick. To do this you have to first push the AF selector button and then use the rear four-way pad to navigate the AF point to where it is needed. This two step operation can be cut down to one with the Direct AF point selection custom control which I had set to the up control on the rear four way cluster. A dedicated focus lever would have been nice though. Ultimately, the Touch & Drag option is best used to move the AF point around the screen at speed. There is a custom function to

F/8

F/1.2

F/2.8

F/11

F/1.8

F/4

F/16

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Camera test reset the AF point to the centre so I just dedicated that function to the movie record button, so just had to remember to dab that button as I brought the camera up to the eye. Continuous drive shooting on the EOS R is a pedestrian 8fps with fixed focus and 5fps with AF and AE tracking. A few years ago, sports photographers would have been ecstatic with such shooting speeds but not nowadays. The claimed 8fps was delivered by the camera so no problem there and in full Raw mode only, I got a burst of 35 frames until buffering. In CRaw I got over 50 shots without buffering while in Large JPEG that increased to 100, and a full buffer took 15-20secs to clear. To be fair that is a more than decent number of frames. These rates were obtained with a Samsung EVO Micro SD card.

Although some aspects of handling I had small issues with, there is plenty of great stuff to enjoy too. The EVF is excellent – bright, contrasty, high resolution and with little smearing during panning.

The flip out monitor is equally good in showing a lovely image and its flexibility is good too. The Q button lets you dive straight into key camera settings and alter values with a touch or two and the same goes for the Quick Control screen. There is also scope to customise the camera to your personal preferences too. In stills shooting 14 buttons or controls can be customised some with up to 41 options including off. Finally, just a word on the camera’s video skills. The EOS R gives Full HD and 4k video although with the latter there is a significant 1.7x crop which makes shooting in tight confines an issue – the 24mm focal length giving an effective 40mm. The AF in movie shooting is responsive and good at tracking moving subjects and the IS in the 24-105mm works well.

Verdict

Above left Astronaut Tim Peake’s Soyuz descent module capsule shot in Peterborough Cathedral using the 50mm f/1.2 lens at 1/125sec at f/1.2 and ISO 800. Above right Fairground ride. No image quality issues with the EOS R at ISO 3200 and an exposure of 1/60sec at f/6.3. Above Fotheringhay Church looking great in late afternoon light. A tripod mounted camera allowed an exposure of 1/50sec at f/10 and ISO 50. Right Crocuses in Kew Gardens. Getting a low viewpoint is no problem with the articulating monitor with the picture taken using the touch shutter. Exposure of 1/1250sec at f/4.5 and ISO 400. Below left Roundel in IWM Duxford. The joy of the 50mm f/1.2 lens. Indoors, little light, but shot wide open handheld at 1/10sec and ISO 100. Below right Peppers looked lifelike and nicely saturated with this straight out of the camera JPEG. Shot at 1/60sec at f/6.3 and ISO 200.

To be frank, I’ve been unconvinced by Canon’s commitment to mirrorless and the EOS M system comprised OK cameras with an uninspired lens range, but with the arrival of the EOS R system I feel Canon has finally embraced the mirrorless opportunity (threat!). The EOS R is without doubt a very fine camera and capable of brilliant-quality pictures from its 30.3-megapixel sensor but perhaps it’s held back by a few aspects of handling. The lack of IBIS, the M-Fn bar, the 4k video crop factor, the lack of a focus lever and the very sensitive touch monitor are things I noted but many users will disagree and that is perfectly right. One thing that is right is its price tag, especially to existing Canon users who can buy the body/EF-EOS R adapter kit for £2350 and start to enjoy mirrorless shooting immediately. When all is said and done, though, how you judge a camera is by the quality of the images it produces. On this point, with close to 2000 images shot for this review, I am very much impressed by the EOS R’s output. Features 22/25 Rich in features for the still shooter, the crop in 4k video is not so good Handling 22/25 The M-Fn bar isn’t great, the AF ON button is poorly placed, no focus lever and an over sensitive touch monitor are minor negatives Performance 24/25 Lovely images at low and high ISO speeds. Fine AF too Value for money 23/25 Any new system means serious commitment, and the EOS R is no different Overall 91/100 Canon’s first full frame mirrorless is good, but has a few flaws Pros Image quality, high ISO quality, AF speed, price, articulating monitor, EVF image Cons No IBIS, some handling niggles, M-Fn bar could be much better, no focus lever, one SD slot, cropped 4K video

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Christmas gifts Buyers’ guide

All I want for Christmas is…

If you want to give your photography a treat this festive season, you are probably perplexed by the plethora of choice out there. Let us give you a helping hand with our pick of what’s worth putting in your stocking this year PermaJet SnapShut

One the joys of home printing is the huge potential for producing unique ways of presenting your work in terms of paper finishes, weights and method. Take a look at PermaJet’s extensive collection of printing products which includes art papers, baryta options, canvas finishes and neat presentation methods. Give a gift that keeps on giving with the SnapShut, a glue-free folio where the pages can be effortlessly removed and added to over time. Whether it’s for a portfolio, a photo book or a family album, the SnapShut coupled with a choice of PermaJet’s Double Sided papers, which includes Oyster 285, Matt 250 and Portfolio, will make the perfect keepsake for your closest friends and family. The SnapShut is available in A5, A4, A3, A3+ and square formats, 8in, 10in and 12in and with 15mm (for up to 20 prints) and 25mm (for around 35 prints) spines. The rectangular formats are available in portrait and landscape and you have the option of cream or black leather effect finish. An A4 portrait SnapShut (15mm or 25mm spine) costs £26.95. permajet.com

Vanguard Alta Sky 51D

Vanguard’s prodigious collection of accessories includes a broad selection of gear-carrying solutions. One of the most versatile is the award-winning Alta Sky 51D, a backpack capable of accommodating one or two full-frame DSLRs, a selection of lenses and a 15in laptop and tablet with high levels of protection. The main compartment can be divided, the lower third being accessed from the bottom front while getting to the contents from the larger section can be done from the side, rear or above. The brightly coloured, high-visibility interior is also a great help for seeing what you have in the bag; no longer do you have to fumble around trying to find something by touch. Carrying comfort rates highly with uniquely designed shoulder straps, a waist belt, breathable back support and sternum strap, plus there are two large water bottle side pockets. Buy an Alta Sky 51D before 31 December 2018 and you get £50 cashback – its guide price is £249.99. See the Vanguard website for details. vanguardworld.co.uk

Octopus Minipod GP-03ST

It is a fact of photographic life that most people who carry a camera do not carry a tripod. That is because they are usually considered to be bulky, awkward to store and generally in the way when not in use. However, it’s accepted wisdom that using a tripod really does enhance the quality of your photographs. Now here’s a first-class solution to the problem: the Octopus Minipod. Firstly, it is small enough to tuck into your pocket, yet stable with flexible legs that allow it to be wrapped round a branch of a small tree, bicycle tubing, chair backs and legs etc. Its ball & socket head has 360° rotation and it can be used with virtually any camera and the professional Go-Pro, plus it comes with an adapter for mobile phones. It supports weight up to 3kg. At £12.99 the Octopus Minipod is an ideal Christmas stocking filler. kauserinternational.com

BenQ SW240 Pro 24in IPS LCD Monitor

Designed for photographers and supported by BenQ’s AQCOLOR technology, BenQ’s latest 24in monitor covers 99% of the Adobe RGB colour space and can be hardware calibrated to ensure accurate colour for photographers. The SW240 can display two A4 pages plus tool palettes on its 24in screen at a Full HD resolution of 1920x1200, to provide you with ample space to work. Its swivel mount means you can use the screen in landscape or portrait orientation and it comes with Palette Master Elements software. There are two USB 3.0 ports and a built-in SD card reader while for inputs there is DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort. As the frontrunner of the professional monitor industry, BenQ has never slowed down but sought out further improvement, especially in the respect of the quality of colour reproduction, viewing comfort and user convenience; which is evident in the SW240 which sells for £399. colorconfidence.com

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Christmas gifts

One Vision Imaging box frame

One Vision Imaging is a leading printing service, so whether you want big prints, photo books, wedding albums or fine art printing, there is a service to suit your needs however you want to show off your images. At this festive time of year the perfect gift and a great way to decorate any small space is One Vision’s Desk Top Box Frames, from £30. Often used for pictures of loved ones, kids, pets, parents and friends they can also be a reminder of your favourite place or simply your best shot. It’s a true photographic print mounted onto MDF with an anti-scratch matt print seal applied to the surface for protection. It’s then framed within a miniature box frame, perfect for desktops. There are five frame mouldings to choose from: dark brown, black, bare ash wood, distressed white wood and pine.

Sony SF-G Tough SDXC cards

SD storage cards are very good and most of us use them perfectly happily. If they have a downside, it’s their relative lack of physical robustness. This is what Sony’s latest range of SF-G SD cards addresses. The body of each SF-G card is a single moulding, not three separate components like in standard SD cards. This gives the card 18 times more bend strength, and obvious weak points have been eliminated, so no ribs and no write protection switch. SF-G cards are also waterproof to IPX8 standard so can be submerged up to 72 hours in 5m of water with no data being lost and dust-proof to IPX6 standard – the highest level of performance. The new cards can also survive a 5m drop. Toughness is one big selling point, but the SF-G cards are also very fast offering write speeds up to 299MB/s to cope with the latest high-resolution cameras shooting fast continuous bursts, and this helps avoid buffering too. A Sony Tough SF-G 64GB card costs £159 and the 128GB £295. sony.net

onevisionimaging.com

Panasonic Lumix G9

ThinkTank Lily Deanne

ThinkTank has a full range of camera carrying solutions, from wheelie cases and backpacks to pouches and shoulder bags. The Lily Deanne is a shoulder bag designed to fit professional camera gear. Full-grain Dakota leather flap and accents, metal hardware with chrome finish, blue liner and extensive pockets and compartments make this camera bag as functional as it is fashionable. There are three sizes to choose from. The Tutto, £262, is the largest and fits a standard-size DSLR with 70-200mm f/2.8 lens attached, two to five additional lenses, two flashguns along with a 15in laptop. In the middle comes the Mezzo, £219, which can fit a complete mirrorless camera system with three to four lenses or a standard-size DSLR with mid-range zoom attached, two to three additional lenses and a 10in tablet. The smallest is the Lucido, £175, which fits a standard-size DSLR with up to three small lenses and accessories or a mirrorless camera system with three to four lenses and accessories, along with an 8in tablet. All sizes feature a soft look and feel with clothing-safe materials. The main compartment has a high quality YKK RC Fuse zipper closure for long-term durability, along with a top flap that secures with rare earth magnets for quick, silent access. A wide pass-through allows attachment to a rolling luggage handle. There’s an adjustable, padded non-slip shoulder strap for comfort. Expandable side pockets fit a water bottle or sunglasses and a seam-sealed rain cover is included for downpour conditions. snapperstuff.com

Rotolight NEO2

Perfect for creatives of every skill level, the Rotolight NEO 2 is ideal to kick-start your photography for the new year. The world’s first on-camera continuous LED (2000 lux at three feet) with High Speed Sync flash capability, the Rotolight NEO 2 was voted by Photography News readers as Best Innovation 2017. A small light that delivers huge results, the ‘shoot what you see’ benefits of continuous lighting allow you to preview your image before shooting. Yet, with the added advantage of HSS flash (up to 1/8000sec) with zero recycle time, you have the power to capture those moments you can’t afford to miss. With all this functionality, the NEO 2 is still small enough to handhold, and, for a limited time, you get a free handgrip and Colour FX filter pack, saving £41. For photographers on the move who need a larger lighting set-up, the £1200 NEO 2 Explorer Kit consists of three units with PSUs, light stands, filters, and a luxury soft case. As part of the Rotolight Christmas sale, this versatile kit can be yours with a free Rotolight HSS transmitter worth £229 – triggers are available for Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus and Sony. Both offers are available at the Rotolight website and participating retailers until 31 December. rotolight.com

The Panasonic Lumix G9 is the ultimate outdoor and wildlife camera for stills, making it the perfect gift for the nature photographer this Christmas. Boasting outstanding mobility with ultra-highspeed response, the Lumix G9 achieves incredible image quality in photo shooting by elevating resolution, gradation and colour reproduction with its 20.3-megapixel Live MOS sensor without low-pass filter for maximum detail resolution. Nature moves fast, but the G9’s advanced highspeed burst mode locks in the blink of an eye and tracks continuously at 20fps Raw to ensure you never miss a shot, while 6K photo lets you select moments as stunning 18-megapixel stills. All this innovation, packed into a freeze, splash and dustproof streamlined body. Also available as a kit with 1260mm lens. Price is £934. panasonic.co.uk

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Christmas gifts

Lee Filters Reverse ND

Creativity Backgrounds Translucient

Creativity Backgrounds has just launched its new Translucient backdrop, a beautiful flexiglass option used to transform light. Use the Translucient to diffuse light in commercial and portrait photography, or as a backlit background. It can also be used as a tabletop backdrop, it offers a fine 75% light transmittance. It’s a beautiful option for a faux-window light, to provide soft luminescence for newborn photography or commercial models, gentle light for portraits and more. It’s ideal for film studios too. Because the Translucient is seamless and strong, it helps you give your subjects excellent and reliable backlighting for perfect silhouettes or softly lit portraits. You can even add netting in front of it for an instant window even in the darkest location. It really is a must for any studio. The Translucient background is also useable outside, so for the creative photographer it is a brilliant backdrop to have at hand. It is available in roll size 1.5m x 5.5m and comes in at £142.80. creativitybackgrounds.co.uk

Marumi Magnetic filter system

Marumi new 100mm filter uses magnetism to speed up handling and helps do away with filter slots so gives the ability of using several filters stacked together on wide-angle lenses with no vignetting or cut-off issues. The M100 holder, made from aviation grade aluminium costs £125.94 and comes with three adaptor rings, 72mm, 77mm and 82mm. With lenses of smaller filter thread you need step-up rings. Marumi has introduced 100x100mm neutral density, 100x150mm ND graduates including standard and reverse and a circular polariser. The square/rectangular filters come fitted in frames and these simply attach to the filter holder. If you are using extreme NDs, these go on the holder first so the foam gaskets on the holder prevent light seepage during very long exposures. The polariser can be used in conjunction with other filters no problem thanks to a clever design. The polariser in a simple threaded mount attaches to the adapter ring and can be adjusted to get the best effect even when a ND or graduate is in place. We have a full test on this exciting new system in this issue.

Hahnel PROCUBE2

Hahnel PROCUBE2 sells for £69.99 (no batteries supplied) and it is quite possibly the best battery charger you’ll ever buy. It’s versatile, ideal for travel and it works really well. It has a plate to charge four AA cells but the clever bit is that if you take this plate off, you can charge one or two camera batteries and most major models and brands are compatible. Different battery types are catered for by unclipping one plate and replacing with the appropriate one – it’s a simple, quick process and unlike the older Cube, it’s cable-less. The unit has intelligent control and there’s an LCD display that tells you how much capacity has been added during recharging which is great help if you are in a rush – 15 minutes of charging gives about 300mAh, enough for around 150 shots. It is available for Canon, Nikon, Olympus and Panasonic/Fujifilm and comes with UK, US and Euro plugs, a 12v car charging lead and there is a built-in 2.4A USB charging socket too.

kenro.co.uk

hahnel.ie

Controlling light with oncamera filters before it hits the sensor can make life much simpler in postprocessing and of course lets you achieve results that might not even be otherwise achievable. Taming extreme contrast with ND graduate filters is one commonly used example where a bright sky can be balanced with the usually much darker foreground for better looking results. Leading filter brand Lee’s latest innovation is the Reverse ND grad filter. Here, there remains a clear area across the lower half of the filter so as much light as possible from the foreground is recorded, but the area of maximum density is just above the horizon and not across the top of the filter as in the case of a standard grad filter. The design of this filter makes it possible to make the most of sunrises/sunsets where the area of greatest brightness is in that sky area just above the horizon and where the sky higher up is naturally dark, so what you get with a Reverse ND is a much better balanced sky. The Reverse ND is available in 0.6 (2EV), 0.9 (3EV) and 1.2 (4EV) strengths for Lee’s Seven5, 100mm and SW150mm filter systems, priced at £98, £137 and £150 respectively. leefilters.com

Profoto B10

Profoto is a lighting brand on a roll. With its B1X and B2 there are two options for off-camera, battery-powered location flash photography but with different concepts. The B1X is a studio size unit with an on-board battery while the B2 features really compact flashheads linked to the power pack with cables. Now comes the B10 which has an on-board battery but in a compact bodyform. As Profoto says, this is ‘a big light in a small package’. But its small size does not compromise features and power. It is a 250Ws light unit and that power is controllable in 0.1EV steps throughout its 10EV power range coupled with super-fast recycling – just 2secs at full power and a fully charged battery gives up to 400 full power bursts. The B10 has normal mode for general photography where you also get excellent colour temperature stability but there is the option of freeze mode where flash bursts can be as brief as 1/15,000sec. The B10 used with a standard trigger Air Remote trigger gives manual output but add an optional AirTTL wireless radio trigger and you have the option of TTL and high speed sync photography up to 1/8000sec with a potential working range of up to 300m. The point of lighting of course is to deliver beautiful effects; this is no problem for the B10 which is compatible with over 120 Profoto light shapers so any effect you desire is possible. The B10 is available as a single head for around £1410 and a Duo kit is also available. profoto.com

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Christmas gifts

Fujifilm XF10

Smart, small and highly capable, that’s the XF10, a new compact from Fujifilm, which sells for £449. This is a 24-megapixel APS-C format compact camera that weighs just 285g and is available in champagne gold and black. It features a top-quality fixed 18.5mm f/2.8 Fujinon lens, giving an equivalent field of view to a 28mm lens, and it features a digital teleconverter giving the view of a 35mm and 50mm lens – in the 35mm format. You can select the aspect ratio too, from the usual 3:2 to 16:9 or 1:1, while the lens’s ability to focus as close as 10cm from the camera means exploring close-ups is easy enough too. Other core photographic functions include an expanded ISO sensitivity range of 100 to 51,200, 11 Fujifilm Film Simulation modes, a built-in smart flash and 4K burst shooting which can take 15 shots in a second and you can then pick the best one. And last but certainly by no means least, it has Bluetooth so you can get your pictures on to social media very quickly or output them as prints using an Instax printer. fujifilm.eu

Hahnemuehle Photo Rag Metallic

BlackRapid Straps

Few current inkjet brands can match the long and very rich history of Hahnemuehle and its current range features papers for fine art and digital output. However, its latest addition Photo Rag Metallic illustrates that this brand has its eye very much on current photographic needs. The lustrous glossy metallic finish gives a shimmering effect that looks wonderful with classy portraits, landscapes and architectural shots. It works really well with monochrome images with rich shadows and sparkling highlights giving images rich in depth and contrast. It is a 100% cotton material with a lovely 340gsm weight and its base is a natural white, free of optical brightening agents. It is also acid and ligin free so has excellent keeping properties. There is a full test on this material in this issue. hahnemuehle.com

Serif Affinity Photo

Most photographers edit their shots, some more than others, so we can’t do without software. Serif’s Affinity is a powerful, fully featured software suitable for photographers from newcomers to professionals. Its Raw processor has a dedicated workspace which is versatile and allows precise fine-tuning to produce lovely files for further editing. HDR Merge and Panorama (shown in the screengrab here) are creative Raw options too. Then, once you get into editing you have such features as unlimited layers, adjustable layers, blend modes and mask layers plus all the usual retouching tools at your disposal. Its clean interface and intuitive handling make using this software a pleasure too. Affinity is available for Mac and Windows, and for desktop and iPad too. The desktop version is attractively priced at £48.99 (currently on special offer at £33.99) while the iPad edition, which recently had a big update, is available from the App Store at £13.99. affinity.serif.com

Lexar Workflow Hub

Lexar, recently acquired by Longsys, a Chinese company specialising in NAND memory solutions, has new cards and a workflow hub system to offer photographers and video makers the smoothest, most efficient workflow possible. The Workflow Hub system, available for USB 3.2 and Thunderbolt 2 is a four-bay modular system that allows simultaneous download of several cards and direct transfer onto the SSD drive if fitted. Swappable modules for all current card formats including CFast and XQD are available – and of course with this modular approach it means that when new card systems come on stream, an appropriate Lexar module will keep the system up to date. Lexar’s new SD cards perform at 1000x, which is a data transfer data of 150MB/s, which is ideal for shooting with the latest high-resolution, high-speed-shooting cameras and helps to keep the instances of buffering to a minimum. swains.co.uk lexar.com

Buy a camera and you get a shoulder strap and yes they do the job. But they are usually emblazoned with the brand’s logo and generally not great. BlackRapid straps, now distributed in the UK by a new business called PhotoTEQ, offer so much more in style, handling and general coolness. There is a wide choice of straps on offer from BlackRapid but it built its reputation on its sling, across the body, so called ‘pap’ straps so that is where we’ll focus. Several versions are available: the Curve Breathe, Hybrid Breathe, Sport Breathe (Left also available), Street Breathe and Double Breathe. To give you an idea of pricing, the Curve Breathe sells for £65 and the Double Breathe for £135 – Double because it can take two cameras, one hanging off each shoulder. The camera hangs down by your side but you can quickly bring it to the eye, with movable bumpers that limit amount of travel up and down the strap. Attachment to the strap is via the camera’s tripod socket and the latest fasten accessories ensure the camera is perfectly secure. The across the body concept might seem strange to start, but it’s comfortable, the camera can’t slip off your shoulder, it saves neck ache and is really quick to use. A BlackRapid strap would be a great, really practical present to any photographer. phototeq.com

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Camera test Specs Price Z 7 body £3399, Z 7 with 24-70mm f/4 kit £3999, Z 7 with FTZ adapter kit £3499, Z 7 with 24-70mm and FTZ adapter kit £4099. Lenses 50mm f/1.8 S £599, 35mm f/1.8 S £849, 2470mm f/4 £999, FTZ adapter £269 Sensor 45.7-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor Sensor format 35mm full-frame 35.9x23.9mm, 8256x5504pixels ISO range 64-25,600 (expandable to Lo1.0 ISO 32 and H1.0 51,200 H2.0 102,400 equivalent) Shutter range 30secs to 1/8000sec plus B, flash sync at 1/200sec Drive modes Fastest rate 9fps (12-bit, AE locked) Metering system Matrix, centre-weighted, spot, highlight weighted Exposure modes PASM Exposure compensation +/-5EV Monitor 2.1m dot tilting 3.2in touchscreen, 100% frame coverage Viewfinder 3.6m dot EVF Focus points 493 phase detect points in single AF covering 90% of the image area – usable in single-point, pinpoint, dynamic area, wide area, auto area Video 4K UHD 3840x2190 30p (progressive), 25p 24p. 1920x1080: 120p, 100p, 60p, 50p, 30p, 25p, 24p Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI-C, USB-C Other key features Five-axis image sensor shift IS Battery EN-EL15b (USB) rechargeable, ENEL15a can be used but with lower capacity and no USB recharging Storage media 1x XQD slot Dimensions (wxhxd) 134x100.5x67.5mm Weight 675g body with battery and card Contact nikon.co.uk

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Nikon Z 7 With its stated aim to be number one in the full-frame camera market, Nikon is pinning its hopes on the Z System starting with the Z 7 Words and images by Will Cheung A new camera system is a huge commitment for all concerned but with mirrorless cameras now outselling SLRs Nikon (and Canon) had to take decisive action, and not in any half-hearted way; so now we have 35mm full-frame mirrorless systems from them both. Nikon has announced two models, the 24.5-megapixel Z 6 and the 45.7-megapixel Z 7, with the latter available now and the former following on soon. (There’ll be a review of the Z 6 in the next issue.) Both cameras are externally identical, but one key difference is the price, with the Z 7 coming in at £3399 body only and the Z 6 at £2099. Of course, you’re not going to get very far with just a body, but if you already own Nikon F bayonet lenses you could potentially just buy the Z 7 with the FTZ adapter (£100 more when bought in the kit, £269 when bought separately) and enjoy full autofocus and exposure compatibility with 90 Nikon lenses. The Z lens mount has a 55mm diameter and a back flange distance of 16mm, a specification that means Nikon lens designers can get creative so expect to see some very exotic glass soon. For this test we had the 35mm f/1.8 S and 24-70mm f/4 S, while the 50mm f/1.8 S is also available. Standalone prices are £849, £999 and £599 respectively. The Z 7 is a 45.7-megapixel camera using a backside illuminated CMOS full-frame sensor with no optical

low pass filter. On the face of it, it is similar to the D850’s so inevitably comparisons will be made (and yes, we have, as you’ll see later) but the Z 7 has a different image engine, the EXPEED6 rather than the D850’s EXPEED5. One of the selling points of mirrorless is smaller bodyform so let’s talk size and design. Put the mirrorless Z 7 alongside the D850 DSLR and it’s dwarfed. But it’s not so small to feel awkward to get a stable grip or uncomfortable in the hand. The contoured right hand grip feels substantial and very SLR-like, and not that far different from the D850. Its shorter height might mean for those with bigger hands that your little finger has nothing to grip but it was perfect for my averagesized hand. Nikon SLR users will find the control layout and menu structure pleasingly familiar too, while those coming in from other brands will soon find their way around. Buttons are clearly marked, of a good size and protrude from the body enough so you can find and use buttons by touch without having to visually double check what you are pressing. For me, the on/off switch is in the ideal place, on a collar around the shutter button, so you can carry the

Put the mirrorless Z 7 alongside the D850 DSLR and it’s dwarfed

Left The Z 7’s control layout will be very familiar to current Nikon DSLR users and features such as a large, well placed AF-ON button and focus lever promote good, intuitive handling.

camera in the right hand and turn it on as you bring it up to the eye. Start up time is 1sec which doesn’t sound fast but it’s quick enough. Adjacent to the shutter button is the ISO, movie record and exposure compensation controls. Being able to adjust these settings while the eye remains at the viewfinder is very much a good thing. There is the option of committing the lens ring to exposure compensation and that is a better option, although you may prefer the latter to be used as an aperture or focusing ring. A small top-plate LCD info panel lets you keep an eye on key settings such as ISO and frames remaining from above, although this is only on show when the camera is switched on. The mode dial on the left-side of the body is locked in place so the centre button needs a press to allow the mode centre to be adjusted. Three user settings are available so you can quickly access settings that you might prefer for different subjects. So you can have a studio set-up, one for street and another for landscape for example. If you are looking at the top-plate wondering where the drive control is, you will find it on the back and adjusting it is via the rear input dial.

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Camera test Performance: ISO The Nikon Z7 has a BSI sensor so you’d expect a capable high ISO performance, and it is impressive. With expansion, equivalent speeds down to ISO 32 and up to ISO 51,200 and 102,400 are available too so that will be welcomed by long exposure and low-light shooters alike. This low-light scene was shot with the Z 7 fitted with the 2470mm f/4 S lens, the combination mounted on a Novo Explora T20 tripod and the shutter released in exposure delay mode. The camera’s high ISO noise reduction was turned off. The 14-bit Raws were processed on Lightroom with noise reduction set to zero. The base ISO 100 exposure was 3secs at f/8.

The same scene was also shot with a D850, again with NR off, in Raw and so on. Both cameras use a 45.7-megapixel BSI sensor while the Z 7 uses the EXPEED 6 image engine compared with the EXPEED 5 on the D850. Comparing the shots from both cameras showed that the Z 7 has better high ISO performance with around 1EV benefit. For more on their differences, see the panel Nikon Z 7 v D850 in this review. Results are lovely with smooth tonal range and no graining up to ISO 800 and even at this speed you have to look hard in areas of smooth dark tone to see any sign of graining and fine detail is crisp and sharply defined. There is barely any change at ISO 1600

and at ISO 3200 you can see grain at 100% in the shadows and you can see that fine detail has very slightly lost its edge. That said I wouldn’t have an issue shooting at ISO 3200 or even at ISO 6400 if the choice was a blurred image with little noise or a sharp one with some noise, which can be lessened in processing. I’m impressed with image quality at ISO 6400 and getting critically acceptable big prints out of files shot at this speed is no problem and the noise is fine and neutral in tone. Beyond ISO 12,800 and coloured noise is much evident and detail is impacted too. Venture further and you run into coloured noise, detail break-up and general degradation, as you would expect.

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This has the self-timer settings too. I use the self-timer a lot and being able to select it via the i button would have been good. There is plenty of customisation available. There are two function buttons adjacent to the lens throat. Both offer 22 options with button push only and 17 more when the function button is used together with a command dial. Six other body controls and two lens-based buttons can be reassigned to features. What features are available depends on the button, The AF-ON button, for example, has nine options including off, while the focus lever (Nikon calls it the sub selector) has two, or with centre push 18, or three with a push-and-command button. The two lens-based custom function options are dependent on the lens. Some will have a lens function button and the two I had for this test did not have such a control, while what is usually the focus barrel can also be reassigned to act as an aperture ring, focus barrel or, very usefully, as the exposure compensation control.

Push the i button on the backplate and you get a virtual panel of 12 camera features on the touch monitor; you can edit this too, from a total of 31 options. So if you want to call up Wi-Fi, exposure bracketing or adjust image size without using the menu, you can. The touch monitor also enables touch AF and touch shooting but you can’t move AF point by touch when the eye is up the finder and you have to use the focus lever. Perhaps this might come in the future via a firmware update because if it’s well implemented it is a very useful feature to have, and potentially faster to use compared with a focus lever. The touch monitor, which tilts up and down for low or above-thehead shooting, works very well and provides a crisp, bright viewing image for composition and image review. Push the DISP button and you can scroll through display options: an info panel, then the live image with two info options, a live histogram and electronic spirit level. Contrast and brightness is good too and if you find the default colour

Above Putting the Z 7 alongside the D850 makes the mirrorless size benefit very evident, and you can see the differences in the mounts too.

ISO 100

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

ISO 6400

ISO 12,800

ISO 25,600

ISO 51,200

ISO 102,400

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Camera test on the cool side a menu option lets you adjust the colour balance to suit your taste. The AF shot/touch feature can be turned on or off on the screen so no need to dig into the menu. Put your eye up to the camera and the monitor image swaps to the EVF. Nikon makes much of the image provided by the EVF and there’s no doubt that it’s impressive. There’s no smearing as you pan and even the finest detail is projected very nicely. By definition, a EVF image is going to be different from an optical image and the interaction will be different, but the Z 7’s image is bright, contrasty and generally excellent. Pushing the DISP again scrolls through viewing options. At least here, if you want camera setting info, all this is placed on a black background, above and below the image, but not on it. The Z 7 has just one card slot and that is an XQD slot. The XQD format offers very fast write times in excess of 500MB/s and potentially huge capacity, beyond 2TB. XQD cards are also more physically robust so significantly stronger than an SD card, and electronically more stable too, so the risk of data loss is said to be lower than other cards. The Z 7 will also support CFast Express

Above Low light and low contrast did not pose any problems for the Z 7’s autofocus system. with even faster write times with a firmware update in the future. The pros of XQD cards are many but never the less photographers (me included) have gotten used to the

belts and braces of dual card slots, and the Z 7 having both XQD and SD slots (as the D850 does) would have been nice. If there is a downside of XQD it’s

current cost. XQD cards are made by few companies and they are not mass market in the same way SD cards are, hence prices are high. You can buy 128GB SD/micro SD

cards for £30 and the same size XQD will be £190-230 depending on its specification. M series are slower and therefore cheaper compared with G series XQD cards. As a guide a 64GB XQD card in the Z 7 gives 650 uncompressed 14-bit Raws which are around 90MB each – capacity increases with lossless compression with files around 60MB each. Full size JPEG*s take up to 30MB of memory. The Z 7 does offer Raws of different sizes so you have the option of Raw L at 8256x5504 pixels, Medium at 6192x4128 pixels and Small at 4128x2752 pixels. Sizewise medium Raws are around 25.5-megapixels resolution and small around 11.3 megapixels. It is a handy space-saving option when you need the flexibility of Raw but don’t want to burn up your memory. You can also enjoy different image areas with the Z 7 and you have FX format at 36x24mm, DX at 24x16mm, 5:4 at 30x24mm, 1:1 at 24x24mm and 16x9 at 36x20mm. You can mix the two options, so shoot Raw S and enjoy the 1:1 format. Working in tandem with an XQD card does mean the Z 7 can handle the huge amount of data coming from the 45.7-megapixel sensor pretty well. The camera offers up 9fps in 12-

Performance: exposure latitude I shot lossless compressed 14-bit Raws with the Z 7. I did manual brackets as well as using the camera’s AEB system. The correct exposure of the scene here was 1/125sec at f/11 and ISO 100. Raws were exposure-corrected in Lightroom. Get it wrong by 4EV and there is little you can do with the Raw to recover it. You stand a much better chance with 3EV over. In strongly lit

scenes the highlights are still flat and bleached out but in lower contrast scenes the image is recoverable. The picture, literally, is much better at 2EV over. And tonally the recovered image looks fine – although skies pick up a slight cyan cast which needs to be resolved. The corrected +1EV shot looked identical to the correctly exposed shot. As usual Raws dealt with underexposure more effectively so

no problems with veiled highlights. There is noise though on the -3EV and -4EV shots. To be fair, it is very fine even on the -4EV shots so detail still looks impressive and the noise is neutral coloured so it can be processed out if needs be. There’s still noise on the -2EV shot but you have to be very critical to see it. All told, Z 7 Raw files have good exposure latitude tolerance specially with underexposure.

-4EV

-3EV

-2EV

-1EV

+1EV

+2EV

+3EV

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+4EV

Above We shot exposure brackets in a variety of lighting types, from interiors to brightly lit scenes such as this. Generally, the Z 7’s Raws showed good tolerance to exposure abuse and showed that highlights and shadows can be recovered well.

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Camera test Nikon F lenses on Z cameras The F mount dates back to 1959 and when the classic Nikon F came out. In the intervening years we have seen many modifications including AI-indexing, AE and AF, but the same basic F mount is the same now on Nikon DSLRs as it was nearly 60 years ago. That’s some feat of longevity. But there comes a point when the narrow F mount can do no more hence we have the new Z bayonet which has a rear flange distance of 16mm, is 65% slimmer than the F mount, and an inner diameter of 55mm, which is 17% wider than

the 47mm wide F bayonet. The Z bayonet is the largest mount in the 35mm full-frame market sector. The larger bayonet with such a short flange distance gives the company options with future IBIS developments, designing better performing short focus rather than retrofocus lenses, and going for high-spec products – Nikon already has a 58mm f/0.95 Noct S in development. The short back flange distance of the Z bayonet means it is no problem fitting existing Nikon F bayonet lenses while retaining infinity focus

and that’s what the FTZ adapter offers. This optics-free, weatherproofed adapter has a built in CPU and there are 11 contacts so it can chat with the camera and the lens. What this means in practice is that over 360 Nikon lenses can be attached to a Z body (and many more third-party lenses) and 90 current lenses give full AE and AF tracking compatibility. This degree of compatibility might not to apply to all third-party lenses. Sigma has recently announced that there is no problem with its current products. Tamron owners are less fortunate if you’re considering the Z 7 because there are, apparently, compatibility issues with Di/Dii II lenses.

I tried the FTZ with several Nikon G lenses including the 1424mm f/2.8, 85mm f/1.8 and the 70-200mm f/2.8 GII. You have to say that while the adapter does add a little size to the pairings, the combinations work very nicely in terms of AF and autoexposure. The foot of the FTZ has a tripod bush provided so no problem fitting the FTZ directly into a tripod which is a good thing although Nikon missed a trick here and it

could have designed the foot so it was also Arca Swiss compatible. For those with a few Nikon F lenses, it makes sense to buy the kit with the FTZ included because in effect it only costs £100 – it’s £269 when bought separately. It means you can enjoy your existing lenses until you replace them with the Z system equivalent when they become available. Indeed, you could just stick with your old lenses should you prefer.

Nikon Z 24-70mm f/4 S Nikon’s 24-70mm f/4 for the Z system gives good handling and while you know that the lens is on the camera, overall balance of the combination is very good indeed. For this test, the lens was tried at 24mm, 35mm and 70mm settings with the Z 7 mounted on a Novo Explora T20 tripod. The lens showed itself to be very capable throughout the focal length range and at most apertures. At 24mm and f/4, the centre of the image looked impressively crisp and that level of performance was maintained as you moved towards

the edges. In fact, the level of performance was so good that stopping down to f/5.6 and f/8 didn’t make that much difference to the centre although the edges looked more defined. Stopping down to f/11 and then to f/16 and f/22 did see a fall off in resolution as diffraction had an impact and f/22 is best avoided. At the 35mm focal length, a similar pattern of events followed, ie. impressive maximum aperture performance, some but not huge benefits with stopping down and a falling away of resolution at f/16 and f/22. F/8 is just about the optimum aperture at 35mm although

performance was pretty consistent throughout the aperture range. Maximum aperture at 70mm again delivered a very capable performance with good sharpness and fine detail nicely resolved and this was across the frame. Here, though, the benefits of stopping down were more evident and the centre and edges of the frame looked even better at f/8 and f/11 where images looked really impressive. However, I’d have no qualms shooting wide open at the 70mm setting – indeed, this applies to any focal length. Vignetting can be seen at f/4 at every focal length although it was not too significant and stopping down to f/5.6 got rid of it.

24mm

35mm

70mm

F/4

F/5.6

F/8

F/11

F/16

F/22

Autofocusing itself is swift, silent and sensitive in all sorts of lighting bit Raw shooting. Using a G-Series Sony XQD card (write speed of 400 MB/s) I got just shy of 10fps in 12-bit lossless compressed Raw. In 14-bit lossless compressed Raw, the rate was nearly 9fps and 19 frames before any buffering which took 15secs to clear. The 9fps shooting rate comes with AF tracking with set exposure. If you want both focus and exposure tracking the maximum continuous shooting rate is 5.5fps. That is pedestrian compared with what’s available but the Z 7 is a very high resolution camera and even a modest 5.5fps is enough for most users. If you want longer, flat out bursts go to JPEG* where I got a run of 37 frames before the camera slowed to 4fps.

The Z 7 has five-axis (pitch, roll, yaw, up and down) in-body image stabilisation offering up to a claimed 5EV benefit with S lenses. It also works with F bayonet lenses with VR fitted to the body with the FTZ adapter. The system worked very well. You can see its effect the moment you bring the eye to the viewfinder. The effect is very smooth too, without the erratic jerky movement you see in some image stabiliser systems. See the panel Trying IBIS to see how it performed. The Z 7’s AF system has 493 phase detect points – the Z 6 has 273 – which covers about 90% of the image area. You can use them in five ways: Pinpoint AF, SinglePoint AF, Wide-area AF (S), Widearea AF (L) and Auto-area AF. In the first four named modes you can move the active focus area around the image using the focus lever or with the touch monitor (except when the camera is up to the eye). Pushing the OK button, centres the AF point/ zone – a dot appears in the centre of the focus box to identify the AF point

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Camera test Nikon Z 7 v D850 The Nikon Z 7 and Nikon D850 have 45.7-megapixel, backside illuminated CMOS sensors but the image engine is different; the Z 7 has the EXPEED6 and the D850 the EXPEED5. It seemed a good idea to shoot some pictures with the cameras side-by-side using the same lens. We used a 24-70mm f/2.8 G on the D850 and fitted the same lens on the Z 7 with the FTZ adapter. We also used the Z 7 with its dedicated 24-70mm S lens. Uncompressed 14-bit Raws, were then processed in Lightroom with minimal processing so hopefully I was looking at images on a level playing field. The street scene (below right) was shot at ISO 100 using an exposure of 1/250sec at f/8. At 100% on-screen it was quite clear

Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 S that the Z 7 image was crisper than the D850’s and this was using the same 24-70mm f/2.8 G lens. The D850’s was still very good and some unsharp mask closed the difference gap significantly. The gap between the two Z 7 shots taken on the two lenses was much narrower. The definition of the new lens was very marginally better. However, to be honest you would be perfectly happy with any of the three images seen in isolation and it is only with very close direct comparison that you see the differences. We repeated the process but this time exploring the ISO performances of both cameras using the same G lens, the 2470mm f/2.8. No noise reduction, either in-camera or during

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processing was used. Here, we have shown images at ISO 800, 3200 and 12,800. To be honest, the Z 7 was noticeably superior from ISO 800 onwards with cleaner, lower noise images so detail looked really crisp, and that performance differential was maintained as you went up the ISO scale. Looking closely I’d say the Z 7 offers nearly a 1EV benefit, ie. the Z 7 at ISO 6400 gave results that were close or even slightly better to the D850 at ISO 3200. In the context of a comparison, the Z 7 came out best, but it is true that the D850 did very well in both image quality and ISO performance. The images from both can be improved even further with sympathetic processing. Original image

Z 7 with 24-70mm f/4 S

The 35mm focal length on the full-frame format gives a moderate wide-angle effect and many photographers use this focal length as their standard, ideal for general photography but also good for street, travel and people work. Such lenses usually come with a decently fast aperture so f/1.8 or f/2 is what you would expect. Physically, this lens is portable so no concerns as a regular partner with good balance and handling. Optically, this is a highperforming lens with impressive skills especially from f/4 onwards. At f/1.8 central sharpness was very good but it did fall away at the edges and corners of the frame. There was also noticeable vignetting at f/1.8 and this was obvious well into the frame. Stopping down got rid of this effect though and by f/4 illumination across the frame was very even. Image quality picked up even further with stopping down and by f/2.8 the edges had perked up considerably from what’s produced at f/1.8, and by f/5.6 and f/8 the lens was really on song and produced bags

of fine detail and high contrast levels. There was some performance drop off at f/11 and f/16 but nothing overly significant and there’s no problem stopping this lens down if maximum depthof-field is your aim. No issues surfaced shooting into the light and even a low sun in the frame did not create too much flare. All told, this is a high- quality medium wide-angle with the benefit of a very useful maximum aperture, even taking into account the vignetting experienced at this setting.

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Z 7 ISO 800

D850 ISO 800

Z 7 with FTZ adapter 24-70mm f/2.8 G

Z 7 ISO 3200

D850 ISO 3200

D850 with 24-70mm f/2.8 G

Z 7 ISO 12,800

in the centre. The active focus zone has a red outline and this turns green when focus is achieved. If the lens ring is set to focus then you can use this to manually adjust if necessary. Autofocusing itself is swift, silent and sensitive in all sorts of lighting and contrast situations. Face detection is offered too, but there’s no eye detection. I spent much of the time using single AF point with occasional forays into other settings.

D850 ISO 12,800

I found the single AF option coped with most situations and saw little need for the pinpoint option which seems too small. Being able to adjust single AF point size would be handy though the small wide AF zone option proved useful. AF responsiveness across the image area seems pretty even too so selective focusing at the edges of the frame was not a problem. The Z 7’s AF in normal mode is sensitive

Directly above The same scene was shot with the same exposure settings on the Z 7 and D850. Top is the Z 7 with its own 24-70mm f/4 lens and the two below are with the same 2470mm f/2.8 G lens on the Z 7 with the FTZ adapter and the D850.

down to -1EV. In even lower light, you need to set Low Light AF mode and you can AF down to -4EV – in this mode, the AF is slower but that is to ensure accuracy. For those into focus stacking, the Z 7 has focus shift shooting where you can take up to 300 shots with the camera making focus adjustments, from close to far, in steps that you decide automatically. Compared with the D850, the Z

F/1.8

F/2.8

F/4

F/5.6

F/8

F/11

F/16

Above The Nikon Z 35mm f/1.8 will be the ideal standard lens for many photographers, and a very good performer it is too. Handling complements the camera very well too.

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Camera test Verdict

Trying IBIS Nikon’s DSLR full-frame and APS-C systems feature many lenses with its VR (Vibration Reduction) system to help defeat camera shake. With video an important feature of the Z 7 and the opportunity provided by the larger Z mount, Nikon’s brought in body image stabilisation (IBIS) into its new system. IBIS in the Z 7, when a Z lens is attached, works in five-axes – pitch, yaw, roll, y axis (up/down) and x axis (side to side) with a 5EV claimed benefit. The camera’s IBIS system also works with F bayonet lenses. You get three axis VR with non VR F mount lenses with the benefit depending on the lens – with highspec fast aperture lenses such as the 105mm f/1.4E ED and 24mm f/1.4G ED a 5EV benefit is claimed. On VR equipped lenses you get three-axis AR – pitch, yaw and roll. Using the 24-70mm S lens and the 70-200mm f/2.8 on the FTZ adapter, I took five shots at each shutter speed from 1/60sec down

7 has gained the option of locking exposure on the first frame and a Peaking stack image option that produces a black & white image to let you check focusing after shooting. To test the exposure system, I used the Z 7 almost entirely in Matrix metering method, and used aperture-priority AE, program AE, and manual exposure modes. I had no serious exposure issues at all. To be fair, though, this was often because with live preview you could see some that scenes needed a small tweak and with the exposure compensation set on the lens control ring you could do this instinctively. I like the Z 7, I like it a lot. I know it is a glass half full way of looking at it, but there wasn’t anything about the Z 7’s layout or handling that I found annoying or that cost me shots. In my week with the Z 7 I shot around 1000 frames, and of course it is true niggles could very likely surface in time. A relationship with a camera is just like life – it’s all lovey-dovey to start with but it does not always stay like that. From my experience I liked what I saw and picture quality is first

Above This scene in Peterborough Cathedral was shot five times using the Z 7 fitted with the 24-70mm S at 70mm. In aperture-priority AE, the exposure was ½sec at f/10. In the ½sec series one frame was a total failure, two just about sharp and two were very sharp.

to 1/2sec at 24mm and 70mm on the standard zoom and both extremes of the telezoom. The system performed impressively although whether it hits the claimed 5EV benefit is debatable because it depends on the starting point as well as the individual. With the 24-70mm S, I achieved a very good success rate and at 70mm with the VR on, I got five razor sharp shots at 1/8sec, three at 1/4sec and two at 1/2sec (shown left). With VR switched off, I still got sharp shots at 1/8sec but success rate was generally much lower. This is very good going I think – although not in the league of the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II with the 12-100mm zoom but this is not comparing like with like. With the 70-200mm at 70mm and VR off, I got two out of five shots sharp at 1/8sec and turning on the lens’s VR doubled that hit rate. At 200mm, I got nothing sharp at 1/15sec without VR, but using it I got four out of five.

Nikon’s expressed objective with the Z System is to be number one in the full-frame mirrorless market. Sony has a good head start so only time will tell if Nikon will succeed and it needs to build up its lens range quickly if it is to stand any chance. The option of the FTZ adapter is very welcome and that will no doubt be embraced by existing Nikon system owners, but it isn’t ideal. Saving weight may not be the prime reason for people to go mirrorless but it is one of its appeals and sticking bigger existing lenses on a new smaller camera body seems counterintuitive. However, there is no denying that the Z 7 is a very good start and it is an impressive, highly capable camera. Nikon hasn’t rushed into mirrorless full-frame photography but now that it has, there is no denying that it has done a very fine job. I really enjoyed using the Z 7 and I think Nikon has got a great deal right. Image quality is among the very best, and the same goes for high ISO performance. It also handles well, the in-camera stabilisation system works very capably while the AF and AE system deliver spot-on pictures time after time. The Nikon Z 7 with the 24-70mm standard zoom and FTZ adapter is £4099. Whichever way you look at it, that is a serious, serious financial commitment, but it is a very fair price for what you get. Features 24/25 An extensive list of spec will appeal to the top-end stills photographers and keen video shooters Handling Impressive EVF, fast AF

23/25

Performance 24/25 Detail rich, sharp images, good at high ISO settings Value for money 22/25 The Z 7 is a serious investment, but it’s serious machine

rate too. It outperforms my D850 and that is a camera I regularly and happily make A2-size prints from. If there is any issue, it’s with lenses. The FTZ adapter is good but ultimately I’d prefer to use dedicated lenses. With the Nikon Z (and the same applies to the Canon EOS R) system in its infancy the lens options are currently limited. At least, Nikon has announced a lens road map so we know what’s coming and when.

Overall 93/100 Nikon’s first Z camera is a pretty formidable picture-taking tool Pros Image quality, high ISO performance, EVF, handling, FTZ adapter Cons One XQD card slot

Top Bags of great detail from the Z7 even at ISO 6400. Middle Another detail-packed scene shot in the late afternoon. Above left Accurate exposures even in tricky lighting. Above right The Z7’s VR system performs well. Left The 24-70mm f/4 Z showed itself to be a fine lens.

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests Imaging kit

First tests

We get our hands on the latest kit and share our first impressions – so you know whether or not to add it to your wish list Reviews by Will Cheung

Specs Prices 500GB £359.99, 1TB £629.99 and 2TB £1249.99 Capacities 500GB, 1TB, 2TB Sequential write speed 500GB: up to 2100MB/s 1TB/2TB: up to 2300MB/s Sequential read speed Up to 2800MB/s System requirements Mac OS Sierra (10.12) or higher Windows 10 64 bit RS 2 or higher  Macs and Windows PCs with Thunderbolt 3 ports (Not backwards compatible/not compatible with PCs only with USB interface) Interface Thunderbolt 3 Dimensions (wxhxd) 119x62x19.7mm Weight 150g Contact samsung.com/portable-ssd

Samsung Portable SSD X5 From £359.99 Every image-maker wants speed and reliability but that need is even greater for those shooting with the latest, very high resolution cameras and for video makers using 4K. File sizes in the video world can be seriously huge, but even in stills the need for a fast performing hard drive is equally important. The Samsung Portable SSD X5 is a very high performing, solid state portable hard drive, using Thunderbolt 3 technology and giving exceptional write/read speeds. Thunderbolt 3’s 40Gbps bandwidth is four times faster than USB 3.1, which is why its claimed read speed is 2800MB/s – 25 times faster than a conventional hard disk drive. Write speed is a claimed 2300MB/s on the two larger capacity models, and 2100MB/s on the 500GB version. To enjoy the benefits of the X5 you’ll need a Mac or PC with the Thunderbolt 3 interface. The X5 drive itself looks stunning, with a glossy finish and rubber slip mat. The metal housing can withstand drops from two metres and Samsung’s Digital Thermal Guard technology and an internal heat sink keeps the X5 from overheating, and working at an

optimal temperature. The unit’s casing does get warm in use so you know the heat sink is working, and it never gets hot in use. I tested our 1TB sample on a 2017 MacBook Pro 13in SSD laptop with Thunderbolt 3, a 3.1Ghz Intel Core i5 processor and 16GB of RAM, with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test software. A write speed of 1420.8MB/s was recorded and the read speed was 1326.3 MB/s. Not quite the claimed theoretical read/write speeds but they are rarely realistic, and the test figures are still very impressive. In a practical test using my MacBook Pro, 11GB of data was transferred over to the hard drive in 38 seconds, which equated to a write speed of 289MB/s. The return journey was over twice as quick and gave a read speed of 611MB/s. That’s an impressive showing. I used the X5 as my work hard drive over a couple of weeks and found it great company. I got the chance to take the X5 as my backup for my pictures on a 3500-mile (as the crow flies) holiday to Churchill, Canada. It went into my hold suitcase on the way out and came back in hand baggage. I had no problems with the X5 at all, and having such fast performance at my disposal saved so much time compared with my usual USB 3.0 hard drive.

Images Great looks, robust housing, the reliability of SSD and lightning fast performance – what is there not to like about the Samsung X5?

Verdict If you need an extremely fast speed, reliable workflow solution on the move, the Samsung X5 could well be it. It is blindingly fast and designed to perform in challenging conditions and withstand robust handling. Being a solid state drive gives much needed peace of mind if, like me, you’re paranoid about data loss. Its cost is high but you can’t put a price on lost work and time, and while the X5 is a serious investment it is a serious piece of kit, too. Pros Speed, SSD reliability, great looks Cons Price, needs Thunderbolt 3 endowed machines

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests Specs

Samyang 85mm ED UMC CS f/1.8 £319 Original image

Price £319 Format APS-C and Micro Four Thirds Mount Canon EOS M, Fujifilm, Micro Four Thirds, Sony E Construction 9 elements in 7 groups

F/1.8

Special lens elements 1 extra low dispersion, 1 high refractive element Coatings Ultra Multi Coating Filter size 62mm

F/2.8

Aperture range F/1.8-22 Diaphragm Nine blades F/4

Internal focus Yes Manual focus Manual only Minimum focus 65cm Focus limiter No Maximum magnification x0.17 Distance scale Yes, metric and imperial Depth-of-field scale No Image stabilizer No Tripod collar No Lens hood Supplied Weather-sealed No Dimensions (lxd) 80.7x67.5mm Weight 344g (no lens hood) Contact intro2020.co.uk

Images With its modest price tag, this fast aperture Samyang lens delivered a very capable performance at its best apertures including wide open at f/1.8. It’s compact and light too so handling is impressive.

F/5.6

We see a lot of top-end lenses tested in PN and of course very impressive some of these fast aperture, exotic glass, super-duper multi-coated lenses are. But the reality is that many are beyond the reach of keen hobbyist photographers, and I think this is where Samyang does such a wonderful job. It does have more expensive lenses in its range, especially now it has embraced autofocus, but it hasn’t forgotten its manual-focus, great-value-formoney roots. Mirrorless is very much on its agenda too which is where the Samyang 85mm ED UMC CS f/1.8 comes into the picture. Priced at £319, here is its latest fast aperture manual focus telephoto which is available in Canon EOS M, Fujifilm, Micro Four Thirds and Sony E fits. Of course, the lens’s effective focal length in 35mm format terms varies depending on what format you’re using, so around 135mm for the APS-C formats and 170mm for MFT. Whichever way you’re looking at it, this is a fast aperture telephoto eminently suited to portraits, landscape, street and general image making. Weighing in at 405g with lens hood in place and measuring around 80mm, this is a compact lightweight

Just choose the aperture to give the required depth-of-field effect

lens and an ideal companion for MFT and APS-C mirrorless cameras. My review sample came in Sony E fit and I used it on a Sony A9 with its APS-C cropped mode. On the A9 the lens looked undernourished. Its optical construction is nine elements in seven groups with one extra-low dispersion element to correct chromatic aberration and one high refractive element to control the light path through the lens. There are no aspherical glass elements needed due to the lens’s floating focus design. Samyang’s UMC (Ultra Multicoating) has been employed to counter flare and ghosting. Focus from infinity to the minimum focusing distance of 65cm took about one third of a whole rotation of the barrel. Half of that travel takes you from infinity to 1.3m so not much

travel is needed to cover the typical range of outdoor shooting distances. The 65cm minimum focusing on what is effectively a medium telephoto is very handy for close-ups and details in the scene. A deep, bayonet hood comes with the lens and this locks positively into position. At infinity focus, the front element is recessed into the lens’s body by about 1cm so in effect adding the supplied hood makes it even more effective for flare prevention. The aperture ring, from f/1.8 down to f/22 is firmly click-stopped in 0.5EV steps and the serrated edged ring makes aperture change easy and comfortable. The manual aperture means the view gets a little dimmer at smaller f/stops but getting the scene in sharp focus is simple enough. My images were all taken using Raw format and images processed in Lightroom with default sharpening applied. This lens impresses from f/1.8 with a fine performance across the whole frame with fine detail crisply picked out. Resolution does pick up and contrast increases with stopping down but not by that much because quality is already very high. I’d happily use apertures from f/1.8 to f/11 for critical results with f/5.6 being the best setting, and just choose the aperture to give the required depthof-field effect. Diffraction starts to kick in at f/16 and you can see sharpness falling away and contrast suffers. This drop in performance continues at f/22. With the wider and mid apertures more important for telephoto shooting this Samyang delivers where it counts the most. WC

F/8

F/11

F/16

F/22

Verdict Make no mistake, the Samyang 85mm ED UMC CS f/1.8 is a highly capable lens and a bargain at its modest price. It delivers a very fine optical performance at the apertures that matter for medium telephoto use. If you want selective focusing and a shallow depth-of-field this lens will do a great job and give impressive sharpness where it matters. If you’re an APS-C mirrorless shooter who wants critically sharp images from a competitively priced, fast aperture, manual focus telephoto, this is the lens for you – regardless of your budget. Pros Light, compact, good price, choice of fittings, optical performance Cons Manual aperture

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests Specs

Hahnemühle Photo Rag Metallic From £55.30

Prices & availability 25 sheets of A4 £55.30, A3 £109.30, A3+ £139.30, A2 £213.70. Also available 17in, 24in, 44in, 50in rolls in 12m lengths. 17inx12m rolls costs £170.50 Surface High gloss metallic Media colour Natural white Whiteness 88% Water resistance Moderate OBA content None Acid free Yes Thickness 0.47mm Weight 340gsm Contact hahnemuehle.com

Above The shimmering look of Photo Rag Metallic works brilliantly with these autumnal silver birches where the intricate detail looks superb. Few paper brands are held in such high esteem as Hahnemühle, a company that has been in the business for literally hundreds of years. So when a new paper is announced, it is worth paying attention. Launched last September is Photo Rag Metallic, a paper with a ‘silvershimmering’ surface, as described by the publicity leaflet. Call me a cynic if you want but when I read such marketing puff my hackles rise, so when I unpacked the sample pack of A3 that arrived for testing I was ready to tear into the copywriter. But do you know what, Photo Rag Metallic does shimmer in a silvery way so fair play to Hahnemühle. Viewed obliquely, the metallic shimmer is very evident, and face on – and depending on the lighting – you get a lovely and not overpowering sheen. The base is a mix of cream, off

white and faint silver (grey!) – the data sheet does say this material is free of optical brightening agents. Its 340gsm weight gives the paper a lovely heft and if you like papers with a high haptic value or a great touch, this one has it. A generic ICC profile is available from the Hahnemühle website. I made my own ICC profiles (one colour and one mono) using a X-rite i1Studio for my Epson SC-P800 printer with Epson inks. Once that was done I was ready to print, using my usual test files that includes a mix of mono and colour images. Prints emerge touch dry out of the printer, but I left them for a while before evaluating them under a daylight-balanced LED lamp. First thing that stood out for me was that contrast was high but well controlled and saturation impressive.

Above left This close-up of the paper’s surface gives you an idea of its textured, almost shiny surface. Above right A lovely painterly rendition of this autumnal scene by Photo Rag Metallic looks really pleasing.

Some colours looked larger than life, especially rich blues that came out looking very strong, and even subtle pinks and mauve came out well saturated. Looking through my test prints, and of course this is subjective, but I thought some subjects suited the material really, really well and some not at all. With most papers, you don’t get such an obvious dichotomy and so instantly too. But as I said it is very much a personal thing. One picture that worked really well was a colour landscape of silver birch trees (shown above), shot on a Fujifilm X-T2 with 55-200mm zoom. I love the intricate detail of the fine branches and I always thought it would look great printed out big. But prints of the scene I have made so far on other materials have not fulfilled my previsualisation. Until now. I thought Photo Rag Metallic did an awesome job, the paper’s shimmery finish gave me the look I wanted when I first saw the scene. The wispy finery of the birch branches looked perfect. Very pleasing. I was equally happy with another autumnal tree shot (yellow trees in the mist, shown here on the left) which looked really painterly and lovely. Less effective was a subtle monochrome image taken at London’s Tate Modern. It is a scene I know works well on fibre baryta materials but on this paper the highlights looked a trifle flat and the shadows lacked intensity. Mostly, though, I was delighted with how Hahnemühle’s latest arrival performed. It’s not a modest material and its bold colour reproduction needs to be used wisely and kept under control, but get it right and it’s happy days. WC

Above With a custom ICC profile, my standard test print looked nice and vibrant with a very healthy colour saturation.

The paper’s finish gave me the look I wanted when I first saw the scene Verdict Hahnemühle Photo Rag Metallic is not a cheap paper with a sheet of A3 working out at £4.37, so let’s make that clear. It’s also clear to me, and this is just my opinion, that it won’t suit every picture – or every photographer. But when the planets align, this is an amazing material. It is transformational and can give images a unique fine art look which other papers can’t match, so this is paper is well worth a try if ynt to give your pictures an extra special look. Pros Look, weight, image portrayal, rich saturation Cons Might not suit every subject or photographer

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests Specs Price £3699 Format 35mm and APS-C In the box LC-95 95 mm front lens cap, LF-4 rear lens cap, HB-84 bayonet hood, CL-M5 case Mount Nikon F Construction 19 elements in 11 groups Special lens elements Three ED, one PF (Phase Fresnel) AF motor Nikon Silent Wave Coatings Nano-Crystal, fluorine-coated front element Filter size 95mm Aperture range F/5.6-32 Diaphragm Nine blades Internal focus Yes Manual focus Yes, full-time override Minimum focus 3m Focus limiter Yes, full and infinity to 5m. Memory recall feature Distance scale Yes Depth-of-field scale No Image stabilizer Nikon VR with 4EV benefit, Sport VR mode Tripod collar Yes Lens hood HB-84 bayonet hood supplied Weather-sealed Yes Dimensions (dxl) 106x237mm Weight 1460g Contact nikon.co.uk

Nikon AF-S 500mm f/5.6E PF ED VR £3699 If your photographic interests include action, airshows and wildlife, to enjoy them means long telephoto lenses, at least 300mm, maybe longer. The downsides of long lenses are expense and bulk. The Nikon AF-S 500mm f/5.6E PF ED can be accused of being expensive, although it’s reasonable in the context of top long lenses, but it is remarkably compact for what it is, weighing in at just 1460g and measuring 237mm long without its hood. It’s less than half the weight and 150mm shorter compared with Nikon’s 500mm f/4 – different spec of course. If you need another comparison, it’s just 31mm longer but 90g lighter than the current 70-200mm f/2.8. Using one Phase Fresnel lens element has enabled Nikon to make the 500mm f/5.6 so compact. It is still a sizable chunk of glass of course but in context of super telephotos it’s tiny, making life so much easier when travelling, and there are significant handling benefits too. It’s handholdable for minutes at a time, for example. Fitted to a Nikon D850 the combination balances nicely and that encourages handholding too. VR is included offering a 4EV benefit so assuming 1/500sec is the minimum shutter speed for handholding, a 4EV benefit that means 1/30sec. I tested the VR on a D850 shooting sets of five shots on a calm outdoor day at shutter speeds from 1/60sec down to 1/8sec in 0.5EV steps.

Original image

F/5.6

F/8

On a D850, the 500mm lens performed well including in continuous AF. I managed nothing critically sharp at 1/8sec but success rate leapt to four shots looking pin-sharp at 1/15sec with the same result at 1/30sec. Given the focal length of this lens you have to be impressed with sharp handheld images at such slow shutter speeds if you have no other option. The VR feature has a Sport option, this for panning with moving subjects, and in standard VR there can be slight framing changes between shots in continuous shooting so watch for that. Autofocusing was very fast and silent. The lens on the D850 gave impressive AF accuracy when contrast was good. It struggled a little more when contrast was less good, say

on animal fur, as I found on a polar bear trip, so you need to find some contrast to lock on to. Overall, AF was very good and, as you need from such a long lens where depth-of-field is so shallow, it is highly responsive to framing changes and subject movement too. This lens’ other notable feature is Memory Recall. Using the Memory Set button you can register a focusing distance which you then recall by using any one of the four function buttons at the front end of the lens. The position of Memory Set means it’s usable with the right middle finger and that works fine once you get used to it. The four function buttons can be assigned as AF-L or AF-ON buttons as well as Memory Recall. High-quality performance at the wider lens apertures is crucial with long lenses, and in that respect you won’t be disappointed with this 500mm. It’s very good at f/5.6; that’s important as the lens will often be used at this value. It does get even better at f/8 and f/11 and fine detail is even better resolved. Long telephoto users rarely dip into the smaller apertures so this lens’s less good showing at f/22 and f/32 isn’t an issue but if you need top quality at a smaller value then f/16 is very capable. I tried the lens with Nikon’s latest x1.4 and x2 teleconverters too. With the x2 when the lens becomes an effective 1000mm f/11, AF was a little suspect and image quality is impacted, which is to be expected. Using the x1.4 to give an effective 700mm f/8 with very good image quality is an option well worth considering – that converter costs around £470. WC

Images The single AF point was aimed at the arctic hare’s nose and as you can see from the enlarged area, it was spot on.

F/11

F/16

F/22

F/32

Images For the test shots, the 500mm lens was fitted with an Arca Swiss tripod plate and fixed onto a Novo Explora T20 carbon-fibre tripod fitted with a ballhead. Shots were taken with the exposure delay mode, and the resulting Raws were processed through Lightroom.

Verdict This Nikon 500mm f/5.6 is an amazing lens. It is so small and very user friendly for its focal length, and delivers a remarkably good performance bringing extreme long telephoto photography within relatively easy reach. True, its maximum aperture is a modest f/5.6 when top-end models are f/4, but with the amazing ISO performance of modern cameras the necessity of fast apertures is not what it once was and of course it’s much cheaper than faster lenses. Pros Optical performance, very good VR, so small for its focal length, good price for the spec Cons Arca Swiss tripod foot would be good, 95mm filter thread

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests Specs Price £249.99 (£50 cashback if bought before 31 Dec 2018) Type Roller case/backpack designed for airline carry-on Key features Four-wheel roller case/backpack with single bar handle, rain cover Tripod Straps supplied Materials Anti-scratch, moisture resistant material, 3 Security Point System Colour Black Pockets Two external pockets, a large one for a 9.7in tablet Laptop/tablet compartment 14in laptop, 9.7in tablet External dimensions 34.5x22x55cm Internal dimensions 31x11.5x41cm Weight 3.86kg Contact vanguardworld.co.uk

Vanguard Alta Fly 55T £249.99 Travel broadens the mind, but it can be bad for the back, too. With the often prodigious distances you need to walk at airports nowadays, a good wheelie case can make your life so much more comfortable than a traditional backpack. And of course, it has to conform to hand baggage regulations of the airline you’re flying with. The Vanguard Alta Fly 55T (winner of this year’s TIPA Best Camera Bag Award) has the potential to be the ideal travelling companion. It conforms to current hand baggage size guidelines, has a set of four smooth-running wheels so is perfect for pushing along, and has straps to transform it into a backpack. Vanguard’s Alta Fly family comprises several models but only the 55T and 58T are four-wheel models, with the one we try here, the 55T, being the smaller of the two. Open the bag up and the laptop compartment is in the lid, and there’s a zipped securing mesh that helps to keep items in place during transit. The two zips for the main compartment can be locked together, and Vanguard even supplies a combination padlock for that purpose.

Left The bright interior helps you see what you have and find things, too. Padding in the dividers is plentiful so protection levels are high Centre An external pocket has room for a tablet, cards, batteries and other accessories Right A mesh keeps items in place and adds an extra layer of security. You can’t be too careful nowadays, and the bag’s design means the main compartment’s contents are as safe as you can make them. There are also two exterior side clips for extra security, and two internal clips to stop the lid opening right up. You don’t have to use them but they are available. Three external pockets on the lid are handy for small accessories, tablet and documents, while one houses the waterproof cover. On the side, a travel tripod can be attached with a foot pouch and retaining straps supplied – fitting a tripod could mean it is oversized in terms of hand baggage, so bear that in mind. The case’s bright interior helps you to see what you have and there are

plenty of dividers supplied. There’s capacity for a two-body camera kit, DSLR or CSC, with a few extra lenses. I loaded two Nikon full-frame bodies with lenses detached, and four lenses with no problem. This included the 70-200mm f/2.8 and the 500mm f/5.6 PE (tested in this issue) so if I went for shorter lenses I would be able to get even more in. One thing worth mentioning is that the bag gets shallower towards the top, which meant an upright fullframe body would not let the lid close. The camera kit, laptop and tablet weighed in total 12kg. I’ll happily admit that I’m not the strongest – a fully laden bag was just about OK for me to heave into the overhead locker,

helped by the two broad handles, but I wouldn’t want it to be much heavier. This is nothing to do with the case, of course, but what you own, so you need to consider this when packing. Wheeling the case around is a pleasure. The wheelset is high quality so running is smooth, on hard as well as carpeted floors, while the retracting handle locks at three levels to cater for different heights and whether you want to push or pull the bag. The bag’s alter ego means you can also use it as a backpack. The two wide shoulder straps are permanently attached to the top of the bag and clip into rings at the base, and when not in use can be tucked into the thin sleeve created by the padded back. Waiststraps and sleeves to cover the two wheels closest to your back can also be stored there. The Fly 55T is seen at its best as a wheelie case but it’s a decent backpack, too. The padded back does make it comfortable. For me, the raised section of the back padding suited my back perfectly and there’s a clip sternum strap as well. Generous shoulder strap padding also helps in the comfort stakes. Toting the bag around on your back is fine, but 12kg is 12kg and not something I’d want to do for too long, but having the option is very welcome. Basically, you’re ready when you’ve moved off smooth airport floors into the real world of cracked pavements, dusty or gravel trails and surfaces such as snow and ice. WC

Verdict Vanguard’s latest four-wheelie is a lovely bag, great to use and with decent capacity. Protection levels are impressive, both in terms of the day-to-day knocks and bumps and from straying fingers. With a price of £250, the Vanguard Alta Fly 55T can be recommended, and it’s built to last, too, so it should give many years of faithful service.

Top A robust wheelset is important and the Alta Fly 55T’s are high quality and smooth running. Left Fitted straps make the Alta Fly 55T dual purpose – it’s comfortable on the back, too. Right Single-pull handle has three lockable heights and stores flush with the bag’s fasica.

Pros Great wheels, backpack option, bright interior, mesh cover, good handle, high levels of protection Cons Depth at the top of the bag, quite weighty even unladen

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests

Marumi 100mm Magnetic Filter System From £125.94 Specs Prices and filter availability M100 Magnetic Filter Holder with 72, 77 and 82mm adaptor rings £125.94. Suitable for lenses 16mm wide Square 100x100mm ND4 (2EV), ND8 (3EV), ND16 (4EV), ND32 (5EV), ND64 (6EV), ND500 (9EV), ND1000 (10EV), ND4000 (12EV) and ND32,000 (15EV) £179.94; 100-150mm ND grads, ND4, ND8 and ND16 in soft, hard and reverse versions at £199.98 each; Circular polariser £114.96 Filter holder construction Avionic aluminium grade Glass Filters made from Schott 270 glass, and coated on both sides – low reflection, anti-scratch, antistatic, water and oil repellent Contact kenro.co.uk

The H&Y adapter system was good to use but it had one serious disadvantage: there was no place for the polariser in the holder AWB

1000x ND

There’s nothing like getting it right when you press the shutter button, hence on-camera filters remain hugely popular. If you need proof of that then look at the new names and recent innovations in the filter market. PN tested the H&Y magnetic strip filter system a few issues back, and very impressed with them we were too. To recap, the holder strips of a standard Lee (other brands available too) 100mm system holder are replaced with a set of magnetic adapters and then the Lee 100x100mm and 100x150mm filters are put in magnetic frames. Offer the framed filters to the modified holder and magnetism does the rest. The H&Y adapter system was good to use but it had one serious disadvantage: there was no place for the polariser in the holder. That said, H&Y’s own square filter system does offer a solution. Now, it appears that Marumi is collaborating with H&Y to bring out its own system that combines very high-quality glass filters with the benefit of magnetic attachment and factoring in the benefit of the polariser solution, The Marumi M100 filter holder is made from aviation-grade aluminium and its system means that it can be used on as wide as 16mm without cutoff. The holder has two screws that lock onto the adapter ring and a drive cog wheel, of which more in a minute. The M100 holder comes with three adapter rings, 72, 77 and 82mm – if you want to use the system on smaller diameter lenses you will need a simple step-up ring. Each adapter ring comprises two rings that work independently of each other. One screws onto the lens, the other has a thread to accept the polariser. This freely rotates and has a serrated rim which meshes with the holder’s cog wheel so when the two components are together, twiddling the drive wheel rotates the inner ring. Now fit the polariser in its ultra-thin nonrotating mount and this is how the polariser’s orientation is adjusted. The polariser’s very thin mount means it does not foul any grad or ND filter that is added to the holder; thus you have the option of mixing filters. The concept is neat but there are issues. Screwing in the polariser takes care; thin fingers definitely help but even thin fingers will inevitably brush the polariser’s surface. However, the advanced antigrease coating means you can just grip the filter’s surface. It’s counter-

150x100mm grad

Magnetism holds the Marumiframed filters firmly in position. intuitive because instinctively we are trained not to touch an expensive coated glass surface but here it is an option provided you give the touched surfaces a wipe before using. In the cold, you can use gloved fingers for the task so finger grease is not an issue. Holding the drive wheel keeps the rotating ring still while you attach or detach the polariser helps. Gravity can lend a hand too – lens facing up during attachment and facing down during removal. By comparison using NDs and grads is a piece of cake. The attraction is very strong so once in place it will stay there in normal use until you remove it – or catch it! A locking screw does hold the first filter in place so use that for extra peace of mind, or when using two filters together. When I was walking to another close by spot I did pack the filters away to avoid any expensive mishaps. One problem I had was trying to separate filters with gloves on – couldn’t do it. In the case of grads, moving them up and down even while they are attached is easy enough, while with the extreme NDs, the foam gasket on the holder stops any light intrusion during very long exposures. I tested the polariser, a selection of ND grads and extreme NDs, the 500x and 1000x. The optical performance of the filters is not an issue at all. There’s no image degradation compared with the unfiltered shot and I had no flare problems.

Verdict Marumi filters are optically first class and the option of using them in a system like this is very welcome. Take the frames off and they’d fit a Lee holder too. Attaching magnetic filters is fast, filters are held securely and operations like adjusting grads are fuss-free. The ability to use a polariser in combination with other filters is very handy once you get used to the process. Keen filter users seeking leading edge performance and versatility should check out this new system from Marumi. Pros Filters held securely, filters very high quality, fast in use, works with wide lenses, space saving Cons Polariser fitting/detaching is fiddly, filters pricey

With the extreme NDs, I did tests with auto white-balance and preset Kelvin values. For a streamlined workflow, I’d be happy shooting in AWB because both the 500x and 1000x NDs gave near neutral results, perhaps with a tiny warm tinge. The quoted filter factors were very accurate too. Impressive neutrality was evident with the ND grads so no issues with casts. Optical quality of the filters was overall very good indeed. No flare, no degradation of lens quality and excellent neutrality. The filters are expensive but are very, very good. WC

100x100mm ND 1

500x ND No polariser

Images The same scene was shot using a Nikon D850 in AWB and then with the Marumi 1000x and 500x extreme ND filters again with AWB. The filters give commendably neutral results.

With polariser

Images Marumi’s polariser gave neutral results and its advanced coating minimizes grease from fingerprints.

1 &2 The cog wheel rotates the inner adapter ring to adjust the polariser’s orientation. 3 If you want, the screw locks the first filter in place so it stays put and stays put if you have a grad fitted too. You can see the foam gaskets for use with extreme NDs. 4 Two rear buttons, one each side, lock the holder and adapter ring together.

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

First tests Specs Price £239 Type Backpack Key features Removable QuickShelf divider system, access from both sides, integrated trolley sleeve, ActivZone back panel, phone pocket, removable gear box Tripod Yes, straps supplied Materials High grade Nylon 66 exterior with water and abrasion resistant Carbonate coating, YKK weatherproof zips, metal clips Colour Black Weatherpoof cover All weather (AW) cover supplied Pockets Four external including for laptop and tablet Laptop/tablet compartment 25x40x1.5cm, accepts 15in laptop and large tablet External dimensions 29.3x20.8x48.7cm Internal dimensions 25.5x18x47cm Top compartment 25x15x15cm Weight 1.87kg Contact lowepro.com

Bottom left Access to the bag’s contents is possible from either side, and while the bag is hanging off the shoulder. Middle Broad, well padded shoulder straps make carrying the BP 350 AW comfortable even for long periods Right This is the QuickShelf set of dividers out of the bag. The shelf concept works well, particularly with larger items.

Lowepro FreeLine BP 350 AW £239 Lowepro bags and backpacks usually combine style and great usability, and the FreeLine BP 350 is no different. The bag’s exterior is made from super-tough Nylon 66, which is water and abrasion resistant. The finish is a lustrous sheen that probably suits urban rather than country use. I took the bag on a landscape shoot and it got rather muddy, but a damp cloth removed the dirt well enough. On each side there is a deep elasticated pouch, perfect for a water bottle, tightly rolled-up top or a mini tripod. There’s a small external pocket on the lid, too, fine for cards, batteries and lens cloths. A tripod can be attached to the back and retaining straps are fitted. There’s a grab handle on each side of the bag and one on the top, which helps handling. On the back there is a retaining strap for use with a handled suitcase. Accessed from the top is a laptop and tablet compartment with a protective flap to stop the two from rubbing. This is a good size, too, with capacity for a 15in laptop and large screen tablet. It’s what’s in the main compartment, accessible from the top and both sides, that’s innovative. There is a removable QuickShelf that folds flat and can be taken out, making the BP 350 AW a high-quality daysack – but it is this unit with its three Velcro-fit shelves that you can adjust to suit your kit. The top shelf makes for an ideal platform for your camera, which you can get at from the top, while access to the lower shelves is from the sides. It is a clever idea but you have to decide whether it suits your way of working. For a start, it helps if you have a good memory, so you can open up the correct side to get what’s needed. On one occasion I packed several small items on one side of the bag, hoping I’d remember to open the other side so that they wouldn’t fall out. I didn’t and they did. (This happened with the bag on the ground, so not a real problem.) Of course this is not the bag’s fault and just user error. Familiarity would obviously help, but I did find this bag – or the shelf system – suited several large items rather than a load of small ones. Lowepro does supply a removable gear box with the bag, which is fine for cables, batteries and screw-in filters and that helps, but small prime

lenses just roll about and I’d need more dividers to hold them in place. On your back, you can just ease the backpack onto one shoulder, so you can get at your kit from the side without putting the bag down. This does work because it’s usual to instinctively favour one side, so you shouldn’t expect to see your expensive lens rolling across the ground. Walking with a heavy backpack I find a sternum strap priceless for the sake of comfort. This feature on the BP 350 is a fail for me. It works well enough once in place, but it is a fiddle to engage and I had to look down to find the loop

to slide the buckle into. The tried-andtested two dangly straps, one from each shoulder strap, and a simple push-in clip to join the two together works brilliantly and can be done by feel and on the move, but here Lowepro went for form over function and the result is poor. Nothing wrong with the shoulder straps themselves – they are comfortable and the phone pouch is handy (it is bit of a squeeze for the iPhone X, though). The bag’s ActivZone backpanel does help with comfort so no issues there, apart from the usual sweaty back. WC

Above A high-quality product from Lowepro, as you’d expect – but some crucial details let down the whole, such as the fiddly and counterintuitive sternum strap.

Verdict The FreeLine BP 350 AW is a typically impressive and very well made Lowepro backpack that works well and looks the part, and has good capacity. The QuickShelf concept is interesting and works really well, especially with larger items, and it’s fast to customise for different needs so gives the bag great flexibility. For a premium quality backpack, the BP 350 AW is good value and worth checking out. Pros Looks great and cleans easily, fast access, removable QuickShelf concept works well for larger items, comfortable to carry, dual access Cons Sternum strap fiddly to use, dual access can be a liability, QuickShelf system less good for small items

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Technique

Camera School Camera School has been going since the very first issue of PN so it is taking a break. We finish this series with a look at how you can use white-balance to get colour-perfect shots, but also how you can get creative AWB

4000K

Above The camera’s AWB was accurate and gave this snowy twilight scene an attractive cool hue. Setting a lower K value (4000K in this case) produced a much more blue picture with a stronger, colder mood. With scenes like this, there is no real right or wrong – it simply depends on the mood that you want to evoke in your shots.

Words & pictures by Will Cheung The white-balance control of your camera is a very powerful feature and most us probably take it for granted, leaving the feature set to auto white-balance (AWB) delegating the responsibility of colour control to the camera. There’s nothing wrong in that at all because the AWB feature is usually very effective and so sophisticated it can deliver neutral results in all sorts of lighting types. It assesses the light in the scene and does its best to give a natural-looking result so a white subject comes out looking white. The human brain does a similar job and very effective it is too, keeping white subjects looking white in all sorts of different lighting. Most of us are probably unaware of it but the colour of light changes all the time depending on the time of day and the type of lighting. The colour of light is measured in Kelvin or K and without wishing to dig into the science of

AWB

colour temperature, the lower the value the warmer the light and the higher the value the more blue the light. Typical, neutral daylight is 5000-5500K, candlelight which is very orange might be 2000K while reflected light from a blue sky is around 10,000K. USING WB The camera’s AWB feature is very good at dealing with different lighting types but it is far from infallible and performance can vary from model to model too. Take pictures in typical domestic lighting and they can look orange; take shots in fluorescent strip lighting and they can look green; use the camera in shade and the results can look blue. Digital cameras have white-balance presets so if you find that the AWB is not giving a satisfactory result, the option is to use the appropriate preset. Presets on most cameras usually include shade, cloudy day, fluorescent lighting, electronic flash and tungsten lamps,

3200K

usually denoted by icons – a cloud for cloudy day, a ‘millipede’ for fluorescent lighting, a lightning bolt for flash and a bulb for tungsten are almost universally used examples. CUSTOM PRESETS But camera white-balance features have even more chances to fine-tune the result. There is the option of custom preset where you can set the correct balance very accurately for the lighting you’re shooting under. Different cameras work in different ways to do this and all you need is a sheet of white paper or piece of grey card. Hold the paper/ card in the same light as that being received by the subject, fill the frame and take a shot. On Nikons, taking a custom reading does not take a picture but just takes a reading. On Canons, you take an actual picture that you can select as your neutral target. If you want colour-accurate pictures, taking a custom WB reading is recommended but do

8000K

Images Use Raw format and you can play with white-balance to your heart’s content during processing, and because it’s a Raw file the original stays untouched whatever you do to it. Expressed another way, Raw processing is non destructive.

remember that you’ve set the camera up for that particular situation or lighting type. Changing lights or putting the subject in a different light means that custom reading no longer applies so you need to do another custom reading or go back to AWB. USING K There is another option available in most cameras and that is using the Kelvin or K feature – this is usually an option along with the other white-balance settings. The K feature works within a range, typically from 2500K to 10,000K and you directly influence the colour of the picture by manually selecting a value. Experience will help you decide which value to set so you need to experiment with different values in different lighting types. The cool thing is that with electronic viewfinders and live view monitors you can enjoy a real-time preview of the effect and you can adjust the K value until you get a look that you like. As a guide, setting a lower K value means the image looks cooler and more blue, while setting a high K value makes the picture appear much more orange and warmer. How you use the power of the K whitebalance setting depends on what you want to achieve from your picture. You could, for example, make a cold wintry scene even more cool-looking or if you want a very warm portrait, that is perfectly easy too. THE FINAL OPTION There is another way of working with creative white-balance control and that is if you shoot your pictures in Raw format. If you shoot JPEG format you need to get the effect right in-camera because there is not much you can do with the files produced. In Raw format, however, you can tinker with an image’s white-balance after the fact, so if you have existing pictures in the Raw format you can use your image-editing software to adjust white-balance.

Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Competition

Editor’s letter

It’s that time of year again

Welcome to our double Christmas special. If you like new kit, it won’t have been lost on you that mirrorless full-frame cameras is where it’s at. But, of course, all the new products might have left you cold, especially if you have already committed to APS-C or Micro Four Thirds. Or you might be one of the many who prefer optical viewfinders and that immediate, direct interaction you get with the subject. The way things are going with the amount of resource being pumped into developing better and better mirrorless products, it might well be the case that not long from now, DSLRs will be on the endangered list and we have to make do with what’s already here. That won’t please everyone. Speaking of endangered species and to take a brief detour, I went to the book launch of Remembering Great Apes. The Remembering Wildlife charity was set-up by wildlife photographer Margot Raggett and so far she has highlighted the plight of elephants, rhinos and now great apes. You can read more about the charity’s work and how she has enlisted the support of leading wildlife photographers from around the globe in this issue. Going back to hardware, I spent some time testing the latest cameras from Canon and Nikon. Both brands are late to the mirrorless party but their vast experience of camera design means their products are quite something and proved very good to use. I’m already a keen mirrorless user and have bought several Fujifilm X-Series cameras and enjoy using them very much, but I use my full-frame DSLR too, sometimes side-byside. I shot a wedding recently with one of each camera type around my neck switching between the two depending on the situation. Both camera

types have their pros and cons but in terms of usability they made a very good tag team. At this time of year we take a look at the past year but also into the future. Our yearly product Awards are launched in this issue where we give you the chance to recognise great kit. We draw up a nominations list and ask you to cast votes for what you feel are the best products across a very broad range of imaging categories. This is for products that are available new so includes new kit as well as stuff that has been around for a while. What pleases me most about our Awards is their breadth of coverage. Inevitably, some product groups are seen to be more glamorous than others so they grab the lion’s share of attention. It’s just like the Oscars where the best film and the best actor categories are the headline grabbers. In the imaging world, the best DSLR is always going to be more exciting to more people than, say, best tripod, monitor or colour management device. Yet they are as important as each other, and that’s why we have so many categories to ensure that what are perceived to be less important products get their day in the sun. So, check out this year’s nominations and please cast your votes. Finally, looking to the future, some of us make resolutions for the new year. Well, for what it’s worth, I always indulge but with little or no long term success. So this year, I’ve decided to keep it dead simple: I’m going to take more, better pictures than I did in 2018. That is suitably vague and subjective so I can't possibly fail. From all the PN team, may we wish you a Happy Christmas and a great start to 2019. See you in the new year.

WIN!

A Samsung memory card! Capture life’s magical moments across all devices with the Samsung EVO Plus 128GB microSDXC memory card with SD adapter offering read speeds up to 100MB/s and write speeds of up to 90MB/s. Samsung’s latest cards are also ultra reliable and are water, temperature, X-ray and magnet proof, so shooting in the most challenging conditions isn’t an issue. We have one 128GB Samsung EVO Plus microSDXC card with SD adapter worth £78.99 for the eagle-eyed winner. Complete the word search below, and you’ll find one word in the list that’s not in the grid. Email us on puzzle@photographynews.co.uk with that word in the subject box by 13 January 2019 and the winner will be randomly drawn from all correct entries received. The correct answer to PN59’s word search was Launches and the Samsung 128GB PRO+ card was won by Ms J Yates from Devon. samsung.com/uk/memory-cards

Next issue

PN62 is available from 15 January 2019

Advent Bows Cracker Fairy Fullframe

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Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

Advertisement feature Canon winter deals

Cashback from Canon If there was ever a great time to buy a top-quality Canon camera, lens or printer, that time is now. You have until 17 January 2019 to buy a Canon product and take advantage of these brilliant cashback offers With Christmas and new year looming, now is the perfect time to treat yourself, or a loved one, to one of Canon’s latest cameras, lenses or all-in-one printers. There is a broad selection of Canon products available under this current

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EOS 2000D

Specs

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EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM

Specs

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EOS M50

Specs

The EOS M50 is a member of Canon’s family of popular mirrorless cameras offering high performance and an exciting features list in a really portable package. Its 24.1-megapixel resolution sensor means you can Resolution shoot professional-quality still images at ten frames-per24.1 megapixels second if you are shooting action subjects, and if you enjoy ISO range making your own videos, the EOS M50 has 4K video 100-25,600 capability too. On-board Wi-Fi and NFC means you can (expandable to 51,200) share and back up your images wirelessly, and Bluetooth Shutter speed is available too. range The EOS M50 features one of Canon’s most innovative 30secs-1/4000sec and practical technologies: Dual Pixel CMOS AF means Rear LCD you get super-fast, accurate and responsive autofocus Vari-angle 3in capable of precise tracking of moving subjects. Of course touchscreen LCD with this is important for stills shooting but the system really 1040k dots comes into its own when Dimensions shooting video and takes away (wxhxd) the stress of keeping up with 116.3x88.1x58.7mm moving subjects. Weight The highly Body approx a d v a n c e d 387g EOS M50 is a state-of-the- art camera and this current offer of £70 cashback is CASHBACK a saving well worth having. Sensor size/type 22.3x14.9mm CMOS sensor

£70

PIXMA TS8250

Specs

The PIXMA TS8250 is one of Canon’s popular range of allin-one units and is ideal for the home user with its ability to copy, scan and print photographic quality images. It can Number of inks be used hardwired to a computer and has Wi-Fi, too, so you 6 ChromaLife100 inks can use it wirelessly and even print from your smartphone. Six individual ink tanks means when one colour runs Photo print speed Borderless 10x15cm out you only have to replace the empty tank, not the 17secs approx whole inkset. There’s plenty of potential with an impressive list of Maximum print size A4 output options too, including borderless photo prints. Maximum print size is A4 and the TS8250 accepts plain Direct disc printing paper and a broad range of Canon photo papers with finishes Yes such as glossy, lustre and platinum. Canon’s Removable Wireless Photo Stickers Yes, wired high-speed USB available too (RP-101) and M a g n e t ic Dimensions Photo Paper (wxhxd) 373x319x140mm (MG-101) are also Weight compatible. 6.6kg Last, but by no means least, this unit can print onto CASHBACK envelopes and printable CDs/DVDS. Print resolution 4800x1200dpi

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Photography News | Issue 61 | photographynews.co.uk

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