preview: photo review sep-nov 2012 issue 53
DESCRIPTION
Preview: Photo Review Sep-Nov 2012 Issue 53TRANSCRIPT
ISSUE 53ISSN 1839-5899
PhotoReviewA U S T R A L I A
$9.95 Incl. GST SEP-NOV 2012 www.photoreview.com.au
ALEX WEBB & REBECCA NORRIS WEBB | In two mindsCHRISTIAN SPROGOE | From the ground up
REVIEWS
Nikon D800
Pentax K-01
Olympus OM-D
Canon 650D & EOS M
Sony A57, NEX F3, & R100
Plus six lens reviews
HOW TO
Sensor formats
Group portraits
Best printing papers
Ken Duncan’s image presentation tips
ISSUE 53ISSN 1839-5899
PhotoReviewA U S T R A L I A
$9.95 Incl. GST SEP-NOV 2012 www.photoreview.com.au
ALEX WEBB & REBECCA NORRIS WEBB | In two mindsCHRISTIAN SPROGOE | From the ground up
REVIEWS
Nikon D800
Pentax K-01
Olympus OM-D
Canon 650D & EOS M
Sony A57, NEX F3, & R100
Plus six lens reviews
HOW TO
Sensor formats
Group portraits
Best printing papers
Ken Duncan’s image presentation tips
Cover image by Alex WebbSee page 14.
Display your images on Photo Review’s gallery at www.photoreview.com.au.
For magazine submissions, send Don a link to your images [email protected]
14
26
05 Editorial
08 Trends This issue we look at some of the more unusual accessories developed for digital picture-taking.
10 Photo Challenge A beautiful spread of challenge’s ‘portal’ images – and a new challenge to be going on with.
INSPIRATION14 IN TWO MINDS:
ALEX WEBB & REBECCA NORRIS WEBB Photographic collaborations are intrinsically interesting, but they are particularly so when the collaborators are married.
26 FROM THE GROUND UP: CHRISTIAN SPROGOE It’s dirty, dusty work being a commercial photographer for mining companies, but it doesn’t show in the clean perfectionism of this man’s images.
INSIDE
contents
2 Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
Editor Don Norris [email protected]
Technical Editor Margaret [email protected]
Trade News Editor Keith [email protected]
Contributor Steve Packer
Creative Director Darren Waldren
Publisher David O’[email protected]
Publication Manager Pauline [email protected]
Accounts Manager Heather [email protected]
Media [email protected]
AdvertisingPhone (02) 9948 [email protected]
SubscriptionsOne year (4 issues) $29.00 including GST and delivery in Australia.See page 33 this issue or phone: (02) 9948 8600 or online:www.photoreview.com.au
Photo Review Australia is printed on Monza Satin Recycled Paper with ISO 14001 Environmental AccreditationPrinted by Pegasus Print Group
Design by itechne [www.itechne.com]phone (03) 9421 8833
Distributed by NDDPhoto Review website by itechne
All content in Photo Review Australia is protected under copyright and cannot be reproduced in any form without written consent from the publisher.
Photo Review Australia is published by
Media Publishing Pty LimitedABN 86 099 172 577Office 4 Clontarf MarinaSandy Bay Road, Clontarf NSW 2093 AustraliaPh: (02) 9948 8600 Fx: (02) 9948 0144 Em: [email protected] Review website:www.photoreview.com.au
INSIDER36 UNSCRAMBLING SENSOR FORMATS
Full Frame/FX, APS-C/DX, 4/3, CX or digicam? How to decide which camera to use for different tasks.
TECHNIQUE38 SHOOTING & EDITING:
PRODUCING GROUP PORTRAITS How to shoot and edit portraits of large groups of people.
42 OUTPUT: KEN DUNCAN’S IMAGE PRESENTATION TIPS Panorama and printing specialist Ken Duncan talks to Photo Review about galleries, printers, inks, print surfaces, framing, and the most appealing ways to present images.
47 OUTPUT: CHOOSING PRINTING PAPER FOR PORTFOLIOS We investigate the best and most cost-effective media.
BUYERS GUIDE
DSLRS51 NIKON D800
52 SONY A57
53 CANON 650D
MIRRORLESS INTERCHANGEABLES54 FIRST LOOK: CANON EOS M
56 SONY NEX F3
57 PENTAX K-01
58 OLYMPUS OM-D E-M5
ADVANCED
62 SONY RX100
LENSES59 OLYMPUS M ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12-50mm
F/3.5-6.3 EZ
59 0LYMPUS M ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 75-300mm F/4.8-6.7
60 TAMRON SP 24-70mm F/2.8 DI VC USD
60 NIKKOR FX AF-S 85mm F/1.4G
61 SONY DT 18-135mm F/3.5-5.6 SAM
61 CANON EF-S 18-135mm F/3.5-5.6 IS STM
NET EFFECT64 NET EFFECT
We throw a net across the ‘Net and present you with our catches of the day.
Aaron Riches
$36.00
35
Design by Impressive Print [email protected]
Distributed by Network Services
Pacesetter Satin Paper with
contents
3Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
Alex Webb, Boquillas, Mexico, 1979.
14 Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
Inspiration
In Two MindsA Q & A WITH ALEX WEBB AND REBECCA NORRIS WEBB, PARTNERS IN LIFE - AND PHOTOGRAPHY.
Photographic collaborations are intrinsically interesting, but they are particularly so when the collaborators are married. For the last dozen years Magnum photographer Alex Webb and poet-photographer Rebecca Norris Webb have conducted photographic and book-making courses and workshops in their native USA and internationally. During the first decade, they taught together, they critiqued and helped each other edit their work, but their personal projects were two separate streams.
15Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
Inspiration
COLLABORATION ON A PHOTOGRAPHIC PROJECT, IT SEEMS, NEEDED A LONG GESTATION.
Cuba, it turned out, would be the catalyst for their first combined photographic project. Alex knew that he wanted to create a book from his images but he also didn’t want it to be just another volume on the much-photographed island nation. As they talked and thought about the project, he and Rebecca gradually found themselves drawn to the idea of combining their photographic responses in a single work. The final result was Violet Isle: A Photographic Portrait of Cuba, which coincidentally was published at about the time they were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary.Two years have passed and Rebecca has just completed My Dakota, an elegiac series of images and words that arose in response to the untimely death of her brother. A year earlier,
Alex produced The Suffering of Light, a retrospective drawn from the last 30 years of his work. But the collaborative impulse hasn’t gone away.At the time of the following interview, Rebecca and Alex were away from their Brooklyn home base, working on a new collaborative project to document Rochester, New York, the birthplace of that most famous of photographic brands, the once mighty, but now bankrupt Kodak. Given the exigencies of the situation - the time difference between Sydney and New York and their intense shooting schedule - we opted for an email Q & A rather than the usual interview. I began with a few questions addressed to both Alex and Rebecca.
Alex Webb, Boquillas, Mexico, 1979.
Rebecca Norris Webb, “Roosters, Havana, 2008,” from the book, Violet Isle (with Alex Webb), 2009.
16 Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
Inspiration
When you think of your favourite image from the last year or so, how did it come about? (Was it: devised; pre-visualised; intentional in a general way; good luck; or a mixture?)
Alex Webb: My photographs are never the result of pre-conception, they are about exploration and discovery. I never know just what I am going to find when I walk out the door. That said, I walk out the door with some vague idea of the kinds of things that intrigue me, the kind of light that moves me. I try to put the odds as much in my favour as possible. But ultimately serendipity and the vagaries of the world have much to do with whatever it is that I manage to capture in a photograph on any given day. That uncertainty is part of what makes photography for me so exciting and so frustrating.
Rebecca Norris Webb: ‘Homestead Blizzard’ was a kind of collaboration between me and my home state of South Dakota’s legendary bad weather. Staying alone at a friend’s ranch, I’d awakened very
early one winter morning during the last year of the My Dakota project to work on one of the spare text pieces for the book. First thing, I headed to the window to check on the subjects of the piece – a pair of mating Great Horned Owls who were nesting outside my window in the dead of winter inside a snow covered juniper tree. Instead of catching a glimpse of one of the owls returning to its nest after a night of hunting, I was surprised instead by this mesmerizing blizzard.
When a potential photograph first catches your eye, what then tends to happen?
AW: Often, if I am alert, I respond immediately by photographing. If the situation is one that is ongoing, or if the parameters of the situation are such that I can hang out and continue to photograph, I do so. The ultimate decision as to whether I decide if the photograph ‘works’ is a long one: culling the work down from the first rough edit, to subsequent smaller edits, to the final choice of an individual
picture. Time is one of the best aides in the process: the more time that passes between the moment of photographing and the final edit the better. I feel I can be more objective about the work.
RNW: When I see an image that intrigues me for some reason, my response is to photograph it. Since I still use film, it’s often weeks later when I first look at the contact sheet. Maybe it’s the poet in me, but more and more I’m beginning to realize that this waiting period is more important that I ever realised. It’s hard to explain, but something happens to this image in my mind’s eye while I’m waiting for its unidentical twin – the image on the piece of film I photographed – to be developed. The image floats for a few weeks in the back of my mind, and all the while it’s being bathed in all kinds of associations – conscious and unconscious. So I guess you could say that two very different kinds of development are going on during this rich, fertile, waiting period, and both play a role in my final intuitive editing process.
Rebecca Norris Webb, “Storm Light,” from My Dakota (Radius Books, May 2012).
17Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
Inspiration
tips: shooting
shooting tips:
Producing Group PortraitsHOW TO SHOOT AND EDIT PORTRAITS OF LARGE GROUPS OF PEOPLE.
By Margaret Brown
Sooner or later, every photographer is sure to be asked to take a group photo, either at a family get-together or a reunion of friends and/or classmates or colleagues. It’s a daunting prospect and the larger the group you have to photograph – and the more diverse their ages – the more intimidating it can become.
Essentially, there are two problems to deal with. First, you must arrange the group so that each person’s face will be visible in the shot. Second, everyone has to look reasonable. We’ll deal with them in order.
Taking a sequence of shots in quick succession provides you with enough options to compile a group portrait that should satisfy most, if not all, of the subjects.
38 Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au38
39Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
tips: shooting
‘HERDING CATS’
Arranging groups of people for a group photo is a lot like herding cats; different people have different wants, needs and attitudes and you are expected to accommodate them. Some are happy to sit in the front row, while others want to hide; one person may want to be next to a particular individual, while another may prefer to be as far away from somebody in the group as possible.Being well prepared before you bring the subjects to the shooting site will help you to minimise potential chaos. Start by establishing where the shot will be taken. Open shade is usually good for portraiture, although a well-lit interior can also work well.Check the lighting and make sure the entire area is evenly lit. A patch of sunlight straying into the scene can produce blown-out highlights if the brightness range in the scene exceeds the camera’s recording range.Indoors, mixing fluorescent lighting with incandescent, halogen and/or daylight will almost certainly result in inaccurate colour reproduction. Even the most sophisticated white balance systems won’t be able to handle these combinations. Flash fill is probably the only effective solution.You may not be able to avoid all these problems so be prepared to do the best you can with the situation that confronts you. Set up your camera on a tripod – or if you plan to take the shot with the camera hand-held, mark out your shooting position.
Make sure you have enough working room to enable you to cover the group with a single shot, using a moderate wide-angle lens. Lenses wider than about 28mm can introduce unwanted distortions and should be avoided.Next arrange sufficient seating to allow at least one third of the subjects to sit down. Placing a row of chairs in front of a veranda will allow you to arrange the group in three tiers: on the chairs, behind them and lined up along the edge of the veranda. When there are children in the group, they’re usually happy to sit on the floor in front of the seated adults.Once your subjects arrive, act quickly and decisively. Organise them into groups and tell them where you’d like them to sit or stand. Clear directions, politely but firmly expressed can help you to cut through dithering and obstruction. The quicker you have everyone in place, the easier the next step of your task will be.
TAKING THE SHOTS
Once everybody is positioned, act quickly. If you dither, your subjects will become bored and restless. They’ll begin talking and stop paying attention to you and your chances of getting a shot in which everyone is looking at the camera will be reduced.When dealing with your subjects it’s important to act in a friendly way, without being either bossy or patronising. Speak loudly enough to be heard but
keep your voice low enough to make your subjects pay attention to you. Be specific when giving commands or asking anything of your subjects.There are plenty of ways to get people to look as if they are smiling, including the time-honoured ‘say cheese’. But, since they often produce unnatural expressions, it’s better to just say something that will make your subjects laugh (or smile).Take a sequence of shots in rapid succession – at least four; preferably six. Then, if you would like to change your shooting position, move quickly, repeat the exercise and take another sequence of shots. (Don’t use the camera’s burst mode as it will probably be too fast to ensure sufficient differences between shots.)
PROCESSING AND EDITING
We’re now at the most challenging step in the production process: combining the best parts of several images. Start by identifying the image with the fewest problem areas and note which ones can be fixed by replacing them with selections from the other images you’ve shot.Now scan through the other images you’ve taken, looking for ones in which the problem areas are not so difficult. These images will be used to source replacements for the areas you have identified.Open the replacement image and enlarge both images, setting your editor to display them side-by-side.
The problem areas in this image are circled. They include people looking away, faces partly hidden and unattractive expressions, all typical issues you could expect to encounter.
> The Problem
39Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au 39
On the Road to Gundagai, NSW
Ken Duncan’s Image Presentation TipsPANORAMA SPECIALIST KEN DUNCAN TALKS TO PHOTO REVIEW ABOUT GALLERIES, PRINTERS, INKS, PRINT SURFACES, FRAMING, AND THE MOST APPEALING WAYS TO PRESENT IMAGES.
42 Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
tips: outputting
Standing Ovation, Terrigal, NSW
What types of images generate the most interest in your gallery – and online?
People mainly buy images in our Galleries or online due to an emotional response to – or connection with – a specific image (or set of images). People generally like images that bring a sense of peace into their home or work space, or images that inspire a sense of awe.When it comes to landscape images, good seascapes are very popular. And when it comes to animal photography, certain animals are favoured over others. For example, not many people want to buy photos of hyenas or crocodiles, but most people love good photos of the big cats and elephants, giraffe, zebra, etc.
Is there a preference for certain types of landscapes – or horizontal orientation rather than vertical?
I don’t believe it is the format that makes a photograph saleable – it really comes down to
how strong the photo is. Often photographers are too close to their own work and they don’t accept enough input from other people who have what I consider a good commercial eye – people who don’t have any personal involvement in taking the image, but are able to judge it fairly to see if it creates some emotional connection for them.The fact that the photograph was technically hard to achieve doesn’t mean a great deal to a buyer if the shot doesn’t touch them. I recommend that photographers invite a selection team to give their opinion on what the photographer thinks are his or her best images. That team should include a majority of women as they are the principal buyers of art for homes or office spaces.Just because a photo wins a photographic award does not necessarily mean it is an image that will sell to the general public. For me, the greatest award you will ever receive as a photographer is when someone is willing to part with their hard earned money to have one of your works on display in their home or business.I think more photography awards should be judged
by art buyers rather than by fellow photographers.
Matching the paper surface to image type: does this change for different types of subjects?
It has taken me 30 years to get to the point where I now have what I consider the best presentation form for photography. I have personally done extensive research and testing as I have heard many claims made by manufacturers, but when you ask them to put those claims in writing as a guarantee, they will not do it.This is an area of great concern to me as I believe a photograph should be printed to the highest possible archival standards if it is to be considered collectible art. Because I’ve been doing this for over 30 years, I now know what lasts and what doesn’t.The trouble with many photographers is that they will make all sorts of claims about how long their work will last, but those claims are not based on real display conditions for photographic art.
43Photo Review AUSTRALIA ISSUE � www.photoreview.com.au
tips: outputting
worldofeos.com.au
Picture a World in Flawless Detail