N-Photo Issue 38

free nikon skills disc

Photo magazine of the year!

Issue 38 • October 2014 £5.49 • www.nphotomag.com

full-frame

nikons The BIG FOUR on test

MAJOR NEW SERIES!

NIKON MASTERCLASS Michael Freeman presents the ultimate guide to lenses in our great new skills section

EXPERT ADVICE

Perfect weddings Pro tips for reportage-style photos home studio

desk-LAMP LIGHTING Superb still-lifes made easy MUST-TRY TECHNIQUES

We download every single picture we take. Whether it’s good, bad, indifferent or ugly, we download it to NASA and they keep it Donald Pettit, astronaut and photographer p78

be inspired

Stunning images from fellow Nikon fans p20

Nikon skills Fun photo projects & metering tricks p39

5 KILLER COMBOS!

■ Panoramas ■ HDR ■ Focus Stacking ■ Stop Motion Stills ■ Double Exposures

top Plug-ins

6 of the best Lightroom add-ons reviewed p106

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PRINTED IN THE UK

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THE

bride and joy

How do you shoot beautiful shots of the bride and groom on their big day? We paired up an N-Photo reader with pro wedding photographer Stuart Cooper to find out‌ 8

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Wedding photography masterclass

Name Stuart Cooper Camera Nikon Df ■ Stuart runs a successful wedding and portrait photography business in Hampshire with his wife, Anna.

He’s also part of the training team at Aspire Photography Training (www.aspirephotographytraining. co.uk), one of the country’s bestknown contemporary photography agencies, offering inspirational courses for enthusiasts and business-focused advice for pros.

Stuart runs a two-day fine-art weddings workshop for Aspire, covering techniques from creating naturally-posed shots to developing a sound digital workflow. www.cooper-photography.co.uk

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Name Laurence Sweeney Camera Nikon D7100 ■ Banking industry veteran Laurence lives near the beaches of Northumberland and has had plenty of opportunity to practice seascapes and long exposures.

However, he’d like to gain more experience in photographing people, especially weddings, family and other social situations.

He considers his range of lenses – from a Sigma 10-20mm through to a Sigma 70-300mm – to be on the budget side, but intends to purchase some ‘quality glass’ in the near future.

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Be inspired by six pages of stunning images from fellow Nikon users

01 Eyevolution

Russell Edwards, UK

With the help of a friend it took me more than 270 shots and two hours to capture this image. At times it was frustrating trying to balance the natural light with the off-camera flash (a Neewer TT660 Thinklite), and the closeness of the subject to the lens was problematic. However, our determination to capture the ‘perfect eye shot’ outweighed these frustrations. To me the microscopic fibres in the constantly moving iris resemble an alien planet, or a barren landscape.

www.rsephotography.co.uk Nikon D7100, Nikon AF-S 60mm f/2.8G ED FX Macro, 1/200 sec, f/6.3, ISO160

Special feature

Double vision

5 creative ideas to give you…

d o u b l e Add a new dimension to your digital photography by combining multiple images into a single photograph. We try out five techniques in one day…

hotoshop has a lot to answer for. It can produce artificially airbrushed celebrities, bizarre fabricated realities and some very dubious special effects. However, it can also help us capture the world around us in a way that was either impossible with traditional photography, or so difficult that you just wouldn’t attempt it.

Our stunning cover shot this month, reproduced here, was taken by regular N-Photo contributor Bhuminan Piyathasanan and created from two

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separate exposures – one at eight seconds (the sky) and one at 30 seconds (the foreground) – that were blended in Photoshop.

To prove composite photography isn’t solely the province of experts, we took a day out in the city of Bristol to try out five different techniques using everyday subjects, and then spent the evening assembling them in Photoshop. Like so many things in photography there’s an easy way and a hard way… and all the way through we’ve gone for the easy way!

five lessons to help you master youR nikon d-slr

01 Panoramas

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02 HDR

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03 Multiplicity

04 Double exposure

05 Focus stacking

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Double vision

v i s i o n

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Nikon skills

Ingenious recipes for stunning shots

Project one camera techniques

the mission ■ To get great portraits in bright sunlight

Find a place in the sun

time needed

■ 30 minutes

skill level

■ Anyone can do it ■ Some tricky aspects ■ Advanced technique

Kit needed

■ Nikon D-SLR ■ Model/subject

Know how to work the angles and you can turn a difficult lighting situation to your advantage, as James Paterson demonstrates

On a very sunny day the difference in brightness between objects in sunlight and those in shade increases, which results in more contrast. For faces, the hard direct light from the sun can be unkind. But this doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t go out and shoot portraits on a sunny day – we just need to know how to work the angles.

The traditional advice for photographers is to shoot with

Next issue…

the sun behind them, as this results in frontal lighting on the subject. But for portraits, if the frontal light is direct sunlight then there will be harsh shadows, and the subject will probably squint too. One way to fix this is to reverse the positions, so that you and your camera are facing the direction of the sun, and the subject has the sun behind them.

This potentially gives us three improvements in one. First, it throws

It throws the subject’s face into shade, making the light softer and more flattering, reducing the risk of harsh shadows emphasising wrinkles or less-than-perfect skin texture

Six fresh ideas for colour-packed autumn images

the subject’s face into shade, making the light softer and more flattering, reducing the risk of harsh shadows emphasising wrinkles or less-thanperfect skin texture. Second, it creates edge lighting, giving our subject a halo that emphasises the shape of the head and body. And third, it creates a nice separation between the person and the background.

One final note on safety: never look through your Nikon’s viewfinder directly at the sun. If you’re putting your model between yourself and the sun, use Live View for composing and checking focus. That way you won’t risk damaging your eyes.

Step by Step Here comes the sun

The world is your studio if you follow our six simple steps…

The sun is a wonderful light source for portrait photography, but you only have to think of inept holiday snaps to realise that you need to use it as thoughtfully as you would use an artificial light source like studio flash.

Here’s how to get the best results when you’re using sunshine as a light source for outdoor portraits…

Hard light

01 Make it early or late

When shooting subjects with the sun behind them, it helps if the sun isn’t too high in the sky, so shoot in the mornings and evenings when the sun is lower (especially in autumn and winter). At the day’s beginning or end sunlight becomes more diffused because of the angle of the earth’s atmosphere, so the light is softer.

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soft light

02 Don’t use direct sunlight

Don’t position your subject so that direct sunlight falls on their face. Hard light from the sun creates too much contrast, with hard, deep shadows. It can also lead to squinting and unflattering expressions. If possible, look for the shade of a building or tree, or try changing position so that the sun is behind the subject instead.

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This cormorant close-up was captured at the wide end of a 12-24mm lens on a Nikon full-frame camera

nikon know-how

LENSES: part 1

Your choice of lens helps to define your photographic style, as Michael Freeman explains

“Choice of lens is a matter of personal vision and comfort”. Those are the words of American photojournalist Mary Ellen Mark, and pretty well echo the way in which most experienced photographers feel about their lenses. And I do mean ‘feel’: the glass in front of the camera has more to do with defining a photographic style than it does with simply being convenient for a type of subject. It’s true that there are practical considerations in needing a

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wide angle for an interior view or a telephoto for wildlife, but for the vast majority of regular shooting, your choice of focal length depends on the visual effect it gives, and on what you feel comfortable with.

Most of us have some sort of relationship with particular lenses, and in some cases the lens has become very much a part of a photographer’s distinct style.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the master of street photography, used a selection of lenses when he was on paid

assignments for clients, but for his own work, which consists of his defining pictures, he used only a 50mm, for the simple reason that he firmly believed that his camera was “the extension of my eye”, and that 50mm gave him the view that he considered eye-like.

Other photographers have different styles. For instance, Annie Leibovitz said, “I look for images that are a bit different – a little surreal.

The normal lens is a challenge to me. I have to work to avoid getting

normal-looking pictures. My favourite lens is the 28mm because it gives me a different perspective with a minimum of distortions.”

Others go longer, and as we’ll see this month, lenses are personal.

Camera models come and go, but your choice of lenses is a part of your own particular way of making photographs. Focal length is usually the decision-maker, though as we’ll see in a later issue, there are also different designs of lens that can make the difference.

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YOUR NEW NIKON EXPERT

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In the first part of our full guide to lenses, Michael Freeman looks at focal length, angle of view and the impact of sensor size, as well as comparing primes with zooms.

Our series of Nikon Capture NX-D tutorials continues with a look at the complete suite of tools available for straightening and cropping pictures non-destructively.

Our resident expert answers all your Nikonrelated questions.

This issue: choosing a telephoto zoom, in-camera HDR, ND filters and better backlit portraits.

Nikon Know-How

Starting this issue, renowned pro and prolific author Michael Freeman joins the Nikopedia team to provide an exclusive monthly masterclass on all things Nikon.

Nikon software

Ask Chris…

lens choice

Prime lENSEs or zooms?

Should you stick with fixed focal lengths or plump for the flexibility of a zoom?

Zooms are both a convenience and a complication. Long gone are the days when squeezing a range of focal lengths into one lens led to sub-standard optical quality, and Nikon’s ‘professional set’ of 14-24mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm lenses enable you meet most conceivable needs with just three lenses (though admittedly heavy ones). The inevitable impossibility of correcting all distortion across the range by optical design matters very little, as most processing software will automatically correct for this.

Prime or fixed focal length lenses are making a comeback, however, bolstered for some by the appeal of

exquisite optical quality and character, and for others by being smaller, lighter and neater. A fixed focal length forces you to think more about the composition, and to use your feet to change it. Indeed, with all the other things going on in a shooting situation, you might even find that tweaking the focal length with a zoom ring is a choice too far.

Zoom lenses actually demand more attention from the photographer than prime lenses, because turning the zoom ring doesn’t just change the angle of view (see page 71), it also alters the style of the image. Some people find that challenge stimulating, but it’s a necessary consideration.

PRIME LENSES

ZOOM LENSES

What’s good ■ The best have top optical quality ■ Usually simpler construction, so less to go wrong ■ Smaller and lighter than a zoom covering the equivalent focal length ■ At matched quality, significantly less expensive than a zoom ■ Capable of wider maximum apertures at matched quality

What’s good ■ Uninterrupted, smooth choice of framing options across a range of lenses, from 14mm up to 200mm ■ Offer a range focal lengths in one lens, so more flexible ■ Optical quality of good zooms is up to scratch What’s not ■ Typically more distortion and aberrations than primes ■ Very cheap zooms sometimes compromise on optical quality ■ Individually much heavier lenses than their equivalent primes ■ Good quality zooms are expensive

What’s not ■ You have to move around more for framing (though this can be helpful) ■ Need more lenses in the bag to cover a range of focal lengths ■ Top quality primes can be really expensive (but that’s inevitable)

crop factor

FX, DX and focal length

A DX sensor has a ‘crop factor’ of x1.5.

Multiply the focal length of the lens by this amount to discover the ‘equivalent focal length’ – or the one required to give the same view as with an FX sensor

The size of the sensor in your camera makes a difference Nikon’s ‘full-frame’ FX sensor format has the same dimensions as a frame of 35mm film and when focal lengths are described as being standard, wide-angle or telephoto, it’s this format that everyone refers to.

However, the same focal length on a smaller-sensor DX camera behaves as if it were half as long again. So, a

28mm wide-angle lens on an FX camera would give the view of a 42mm focal length lens on a DX camera – not really wide-angle at all. Look at this the other way around and to get the equivalent of that 28mm wide-angle view, you’d need 18mm. Hence the term ‘equivalent focal length’ that’s often listed in a lens’s specifications.

Super-wide

Normal wide-angle

Standard

Mid-telephoto

Telephoto

Long telephoto

Super-telephoto

FX

Less than 20mm

20-35mm

40-60mm

70-100mm

150-200mm

300-400mm

500mm and more

DX

Less than 14m

14-23mm

26-40mm

46-67mm

100-140mm

200-250mm

350mm and more

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CLOSE-UP

The N-Photo interview

Chemical engineer Donald Pettit has spent more than a year in space on NASA missions. Keith Wilson spoke to the astronaut about star trails, the transit of Venus and why space cameras wear blankets… hen growing up in Oregon, Don Pettit loved taking pictures. He even used photography to help with his high school studies, and later when completing his PhD in chemical engineering. But taking pictures in space was just a dream until he decided to fill in an application to join NASA. That’s when his career really went into orbit…

As a child, did you want to be an astronaut when you grew up?

Yes and no. When I was a kid I saw [pioneering astronaut] John Glenn go up and I thought, ‘Wow! That’s really neat’, but then I got absorbed into science, math and engineering, and I didn’t think it was something that I could do until I graduated with my PhD in chemical engineering. I then thought, ‘Hey, I could do this’, and it just so happened that NASA was recruiting, so I put in an application.

CLOSE-UP

How were you able to use photography for your technical studies?

I started to get into technical photography at high school, where I’d take pictures through microscopes and through telescopes; I did astrophotography as an amateur astronomer. At college I had the opportunity to do technical photography for the chemical engineering department, so I’ve always figured out how to bring photography into whatever mode of living I happen to be doing.

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All images: copyright Donald Pettit/NASA

You became an astronaut in 1996. What place did photography have in your life?

Well, photography has been a mainstay in my life. When I was a little kid, maybe six or seven, I had a Brownie camera. I started using 127 film and I could only afford black-and-white, and I did all my own development and printing. I just loved photography. I graduated through a series of old film cameras and I would always do my own darkroom work. Any place that I happened to be or whatever project I was doing, I would always illustrate it with photographs, so it’s been a life-long passion.

DONALD PETTIT www.nphotomag.com

Star trails It took 70 photographs to make this fantastic star trail

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test team

The world’s toughest tests

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2

cameras

Full-frame SLRs Thinking of going large? Matthew Richards takes an in-depth look at the different options in Nikon’s current FX-format line-up 90

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FX-format SLRs

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THE CONTENDERS 1 Nikon D610 £1390, $1900 2 Nikon Df

£2300, $2750

3 Nikon D810 £2700, $3300 4 Nikon D4s £5200, $6500

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