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  • Canon announces the EOS C300 Mark III with 4K/120p dual gain output sensor, modular design

    As part of today’s ‘Imaging Unleashed’ virtual press conference, Canon has announced the Canon C300 Mark III, its latest Super 35mm cinema camera with a new Dual Gain Output (DGO) sensor and a modular design based on the same frame as Canon’s C500 Mark II.

    If the outside of the Canon C300 Mark III looks both different and familiar, there’s a reason why: it uses the exact same body as Canon’s C500 Mark II camera. This design not only allows for more modularity within the C300 line but also means all accessories designed for the C500 Mark II will also work with the new C300 Mark III. Canon has also added anamorphic desqueeze support for 2x and 1.3x lenses, as well as a user-swappable lens mount accessory that makes it easy to swap out lens mounts without the need to take it to a service center (it comes with an EF mount, but can also use EF cinema lock and PL mount lenses with the optional kits).

    An illustration from Canon’s virtual press conference that shows how each pixel on the sensor is split into two different diodes.

    At the heart of the C300 Mark III is a new 4K Super 35mm DGO sensor powered by Canon’s new DIGIC DV7 video imaging processor. The new DGO system allows the sensor to capture up to 16 stops of dynamic range by splitting each pixel into two diodes that simultaneously capture two images at different gain levels. Helpfully, this is a completely different ‘dual gain’ concept to the one used by most other camera makers, in which all the sensor’s pixels use one of two gain modes.

    These two diodes within each pixel are also used to power the phase-detection of Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS AF, which will now work at up to 120 frames per second (fps) with the new C300 Mark III.

    Also new is support for Canon’s Cinema RAW Light format, which Canon first announced alongside the EOS C200. The Cinema RAW Light format is a more lightweight version of its Cinema RAW format that captures Raw video data in files as little as 1/5th the size of a standard Cinema RAW file. Canon Europe has a great breakdown of its Cinema RAW Light capture format.

    The sensor is capable of recording 4K DCI/UHD video at up to 120fps, as well as 2K at up to 180fps with 4:2:2 10-bit XF-AVC recording. Canon has also included Canon Log 2 and Log 3 support, 12G-SDI output over a single BNC cable, timecode I/O, genlock input BNCs as well as User LUT support for applying custom LUTS in-camera and two CFexpress card slots.

    Without the included grip, the modular frame measures in at 183mm (7.2”) for both width and height and 149mm (5.9”) deep with a weight of roughly 1750g (3.9lbs).

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    Canon says the camera will be ‘available later in 2020’ with an estimated retail price of $ 10.999. The camera will come with 13 accessories, including a 4.3” LCD monitor, the GR-V1 grip, a BP-A60 battery, a battery charger and more. It is currently available to pre-order on Adorama and B&H.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Canon EOS R5: Go big, or go home

    The Canon EOS R5 is making waves thanks to its impressive video specifications. Not since the days of the 5D Mark II has there been this much enthusiasm from videographers around a Canon DSLR or mirrorless camera.

    Canon practically launched the DSLR video revolution. It owned the marketshare and, more importantly, the mindshare, of DSLR video enthusiasts, yet lost that momentum over the next few years. It often seemed as though video simply wasn’t a priority, or that Canon’s innovation had slowed and it was content to rest on its laurels.

    However, there’s a bit more to the story and it may help explain why we didn’t see much progress from Canon for a few years: and why it may finally be back and ready to go big.

    Cinema EOS

    It turns out Canon was almost as surprised at the 5D II’s success as a video tool as everyone else, something confirmed to me by Canon’s Senior Technical Advisor for Film and TV Production, Tim Smith, and that success helped solidify Canon’s decision to enter the cinema market.

    It turns out Canon was almost as surprised at the 5D II’s success as a video tool as everyone else.

    Over the next few years Canon took a side trip and developed an entire line of motion picture products, called Cinema EOS, which undoubtedly entailed a lot of risk, investment and innovation.

    It even built a technical center in Burbank, CA, in the heart of the Hollywood film industry. As Smith explained to me, that move wasn’t just so that Canon could support its Hollywood customers, but so that it could learn from its customers in Hollywood.

    Canon built a facility in Burbank, California, in order to forge relationships within the industry.

    Canon cinema products are well regarded and have been used for numerous feature films and TV shows. Strategically, Canon took a long-game approach by targeting up-and-coming filmmakers to build future market share. That strategy seems to have paid off, as evidenced by the cameras used to produce films appearing in prominent festivals like Sundance. It’s an impressive performance considering Canon wasn’t even in the business ten years ago.

    During these years, Canon’s seemingly forgotten, and sometimes maligned, DSLRs saw relatively few significant video improvements. Canon was still innovating; it was just innovating elsewhere. Unfortunately, it wasn’t sharing that technology and know-how with DSLR users, deciding they didn’t need it, didn’t want it, or that it might cannibalize Cinema EOS.

    Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera, the EOS R, had lackluster video specs compared to many competitors.

    Meanwhile, competitors jumped in. Panasonic, Sony, Nikon, and even Fujifilm – a company whose video once produced moiré so colorful it inspired technicolor fever dreams – all earned significant street cred with videographers.

    Headline features

    Which brings us back to the EOS R5. With the R5, Canon appears to have pulled out all the stops for video. On paper at least, it sets new class leading standards, something we haven’t said about a Canon’s main EOS line in quite some time. It’s difficult to believe that the R5 wasn’t heavily influenced by Canon’s experience developing cinema products.

    It’s worth emphasizing the ‘on paper’ part; we all know that spec sheets don’t tell the whole story and we haven’t tested the camera. We’ll do that, I promise, but assuming there aren’t any serious gotchas, let’s look at how the R5 potentially raises the bar for cameras in its class.

    On paper at least, it sets new class leading standards – something we haven’t said about a Canon DSLR or mirrorless camera in quite some time.

    The R5’s headline feature is 8K video. You may or may not need 8K video, but let’s acknowledge Canon for the technical achievement. After all, if it was easy other manufacturers would have done it already. From a marketing perspective, just having ‘8K’ on the box goes a long way.

    However, it looks like Canon is trying to do more than check a box on a marketing punch-list. The camera uses the full width of its sensor to record up to 8K/30p in 4:2:2 10-bit color using the H.265 codec. It will include Canon’s C-Log gamma and, for HDR capture, HDR PQ. Like the recent EOS 1D X III, it will also record Raw video internally.

    What’s more, Canon says that dual pixel autofocus works in all 8K modes, unlike some other models that don’t support this feature in the best video settings.

    The R5’s headline feature is 8K video, with dual pixel autofocus available in all 8K modes.

    We would be pleased to see these specs on a camera that shoots 4K, but Canon has done it with four times as many pixels. What’s possibly more impressive than resolution is what Canon must have done under the hood to pull it off. This level of video processing requires serious bandwidth and computing power.

    There are still big unknowns. One would expect a camera with these specs to generate a lot of heat and the R5 doesn’t appear to have a fan, something that’s common on high end video cameras. Heat, battery or card capacity will put a limit on it, and potentially not a very high one.

    4K video is standard at this point, but 4K/120p is notable. It’s the first time we’ve seen it on a mirrorless camera, and even the list of models supporting 4K/60p is relatively short. 4K/120p translates into 5x slow motion on a 24p timeline without dropping down to HD resolution and will be useful to a lot of people. It also raises expectations for other cameras.

    Notable callouts

    Not everything on the R5 is cutting edge. One notable area where it plays catch up with competitors is 5-axis in-body image stabilization (IBIS).

    Canon historically relied on lens-based IS, which isn’t surprising considering the EF lens system was originally designed for film cameras. In contrast, the RF-mount is an all-digital system with no film legacy. Even so, IBIS feels like it’s overdue. It’s hard to give Canon extra credit for adding it, but we warmly welcome it to the IBIS club.

    I’m pleased to see that R5 has dual card slots. It’s a pro-level camera and legitimately deserves two card slots. However, by making one of those a UHS-II SD card slot, Canon has essentially made the R5 a single card video camera, an odd choice for a camera with so much emphasis on video.

    Finally, let’s not forget that the R5 is also a stills camera, and one that should be competitive in resolution against the Nikon Z7 or Sony a7R III. Given the improvements we’ve seen in Canon’s sensors of late, we expect it will deliver great image quality, particularly when paired with the impressive RF lenses Canon has been turning out.

    The wrap

    In recent years, Canon has often been criticized for lack of innovation or for holding back video features to protect its Cinema EOS line. There’s some truth to that, and users have rightly challenged Canon to do better. It appears that with the R5 Canon is trying to do just that.

    This is the company that owned much of the early mindshare among DSLR video shooters. If Canon’s goal is to recapture the magic of the 5D Mark II in the mirrorless camera world, the R5 makes a pretty strong statement.

    If Canon’s goal is to recapture the magic of the 5D Mark II in the mirrorless camera world, the R5 makes a pretty strong statement.

    However, the landscape has changed since 2008. This is a crowded space with solid competition and it may be hard to convince some to return. Additionally, as impressive as 8K is, it’s simply not a priority for many. However, Canon has a habit of playing the long game, as evidenced by its Cinema EOS strategy, and it will be interesting to see how it plays this one.

    What may be most exciting is that Canon seems to have gotten its mojo back and is beginning to mix things up a bit. Even if you’re not a Canon user that should be good news: healthy competition results in better products for all of us.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Slideshow: 6th annual Fine Art Photography Awards winners and finalists

    6th annual Fine Art Photography Awards winners and finalists

    Last week, winners and finalists of the 6th annual Fine Art Photography Awards (FAPA) were announced. Dutch portrait artist Ewa Cwikla won $ 3,000 in prize money and the title of Professional Fine Art Photographer of the Year for her photo ‘Candy Smoke.’ Greek photographer Ioanna Natsikou was declared Amateur Fine Art Photographer of the Year. She received $ 2,000 in prize money for her series ‘Interlude in the Blue.’

    The competition received 4,300 entries from 89 countries across 20 categories including abstract, architecture, night photography, and travel. Winners and nominees were selected by a panel of international judges including Marietta Varga, Per Schorn, Simon Åslund, Julien Palast, Ekaterina Busygina, Per Kasch, Dainius Sciuka, Aleksei Boiko, and Salvatore Matarazzo.

    FAPA is now accepting entries for their 7th annual competition. In the spirit of discovering emerging talent, per the organization’s press release, it is open to professional and amateur photographers from all countries. This year’s full professional winners gallery and full amateur winners gallery are currently available to view on FAPA’s official site.

    Grand Prize, Professional Fine Art Photographer of the Year: ‘Candy Smoke’ by Ewa Cwikla

    Artist statement:

    Amateur Fine Art Photographer of the Year: ‘Interlude in Blue (Series)’ by Ioanna Natsikou

    Artist Statement: ‘Interlude in Blue’ is a body of work that portrays the female figure in personal spaces enclosed in a world of silence and desire, touching upon themes of loneliness, isolation and alienation.

    Through the repetitive process of ‘iteration,’ the viewer can see all these phenomenologically identical, yet different unidentified female characters unfold; an attempt to puzzle out, discover and understand the enigma and the complexity of identity; how many different personas can I/we be on the ‘stage’ of everyday life?

    This series seeks to engage the viewer in a private world of reverie and self-absorption.

    1st Place Winner, Professional Category, Abstract: Micro Images of Teepee Canyon Agate (Series) by Randy Fullbright

    Artist Statement: These images are an exploration of the varied and incredible patterns In Tepee Canyon Agate from South Dakota USA using a 10 power microscope objective and focus stacking to gain depth of field. I have always been amazed by the patterns in agate that are not visible to the human eye. When I discovered Micro Photography it opened up an entirely new range of possibilities and discoveries with my photography.

    1st Place Winner, Professional Category, Architecture: ‘Building Constructs (Series)’ by Tom Leighton

    Artist Statement: In my ‘Building Constructs’ series of work, my intention is to focus in on individual buildings, their architectural form and defining features, accentuating these elements through distortion and manipulation. This allows a freedom from concern for logistics and practicality, but the images are nevertheless a tribute to the minds that go into creating functioning superstructures, a celebration of the boundaries being pushed by the evermore gravity-defying architecture of the world.

    1st Place Winner, Professional Category, Wildlife/Animals: ‘Rays of Light’ by Nadia Aly

    Artist Statement: Rays of Light showcases the astonishing annual aggregation of mobula rays off the coat of Baja Mexico.

    1st Place Winner, Professional Category, Fashion: ‘The Fire Within (Series)’ by Tonya Polskaya

    Artist Statement: ‘The fire within’ is a story about emotions penetrating physical structure and setting blood vessels aflame. It is about adaptation to one’s self and the new habitat. The flame is a metaphor of purification and rebirth, and ascendance to one’s true self.

    Professional Nominee, Photojournalism: ‘Under High Tension (Series)’ by Alexandra Berger

    Artist Statement: The intention behind this series is not to show crime or poverty, this is obvious. The idea behind these photos is to generate empathy and understanding for people in other life situations and to break down prejudices against others.The series shows the daily life of a family living illegally in the electromagnetic field of overhead power lines in Playa del Carmen / Mexico.

    Flor and Romero, originally from Chiapas, have arrived 5 years ago, together with their 6 sons to ‘Las Torres’ a squatter settlement under high voltage towers in Playa del Carmen / Mexico. It is an area that has been invaded by 700 families in the right-of-way of the overhead electric power lines and spreads over 10 km. The series shows moments of their lives under this ‘charged’ circumstances.

    A life in a legal blackhole which makes it one of the most dangerous parts of the city, neither police nor ambulances dare to enter. Due to the Mexican law, that forbids housing under the electromagnetic field of the high voltage cables, the government doesn’t provide basic requirements, like water, electricity and a sewerage system.

    Giving up is not an option.

    Professional Nominee, Travel: ‘Way Back’ by Tuan Nguyen Tan

    Artist Statement: The Cham girl is returning home with herds of sheep in Ninh Thuan, Vietnam.

    2nd Place Winner, Amateur Category, Abstract: ‘Mar De Plástico’ by Agustin Busselo Ortega

    Artist Statement: The presence of plastic in the sea represents a serious problem in our habitat. The purpose of this photography is to represent the sea through plastic sheets, but from a creative point of view.

    Amateur Nominee, Fine Art: ‘Poetry of Death Valley (Series)’ by Marek Boguszak

    Artist Statement: Poetry of rocks and sand in Death Valley.

    2nd Place Winner, Amateur Category, Landscape: ‘The Girl on the Icelandic Horse’ by Lars Roed

    Artist Statement: The sun had set in the Wadden Sea. Suddenly out of nowhere the girl came on the Icelandic horse and rode out into the sea where there was low tide. Beautiful picture with insight into the infinitely changing moods and expressions of the Wadden Sea in Denmark.

    Amateur Nominee, Nature: ‘Tears of the Nature (Series)’ by Anna Kropf

    Artist Statement: The magic influence of the Water in the Nature.

    3rd Place Winner, Amateur Category, Night Photography: ‘Rushing (Series)’ by Dominique Weiss

    Artist Statement: Dominique created this series out of her passion for the dramatic landscapes of the Swiss alps. To her understanding, it is crucial to persevere this region that gives
    us air to breathe, water to nourish our bodies and beauty to caress our souls.

    Rushing portrays the speed with which our competitive society is racing through their lives.
    In rush we are barely able to hear our surroundings.
    In rush we are barely able to see what is in front of us.
    In rush we are barely able to comprehend what our behavior causes.
    Rushing not only blurs our sight, but all of our senses.
    We are numbly rushing into an unknown future…

    For this series Dominique travelled across Switzerland portraying dramatic landscape scenes to encourage people to see beyond their accelerated every day life routines. She suggests it is time to implement more harmony into our lives and respectfully treat them as one of our most important relationships.

    1st Place Winner, Amateur Category, Street Photography: ‘The Pursuit of Being and Belonging (Series)’ by Manuel Martins

    Artist Statement: Hi, my name is Manuel Martins, I’m a 27 years old Portuguese national living in Lisbon. With my street photography I like to create beautiful, surreal or even puzzling constructs, that have reality, it’s scenarios from our daily lives and light and it’s absence as prime matters. Along with this I also try to distill who I am, my life experiences, my feelings and perceptions of reality into the photograph itself.

    By nature I’m an introverted and shy person, and for those same reasons, I’ve never been able to fully understand society and find my place in it. That changed though, on the first time I picked up a camera and found street photography. This series then, ‘The pursuit of being and belonging,’ is my homage to street photography and what it means to me.

    Because when I’m out, slowly walking the pavement step by step, I not only pursue photographs, but also a way of belonging in our world, by being there with the camera on my hand, to tell my story and to show the hidden gems of our day-to-day world, those that many manage to disregard and so hopefully, bring some magic back to the viewer’s lives.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Books that made a difference: Camera Lucida (Roland Barthes, 1980)

    If you’ve never heard of Roland Barthes, congrats – clearly you were never forced to study structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstructionism or semiotics. Lucky you.

    It was as a semiologist that Barthes (b 1915 – d 1980) was best known, and in simple terms, semiotics is the study of signs, symbols and their meaning. For obvious reasons, academic texts that deal with semiotics (and structuralism, and post-structuralism, and deconstructivism) tend towards the abstruse. When the king of the deconstructionists Jacques Derrida (of whose work ‘abstruse’ would count as a highly charitable description) passed away in 2004, satirical website The Onion ran a single sentence headline: Jacques Derrida “dies”. That joke (and variations on it) are, trust me, the only funny thing that has ever come out of semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism or deconstructionism. Reading the work of certain semiologists is like trying to argue with a hungry 3-year old who has an MA.

    The reason I’m writing about Roland Barthes on DPReview is that Barthes was fascinated by photography, and wrote one of my all-time favorite books about it – ‘Camera Lucida’, published in 1980. Photography didn’t attract much academic interest until the 1970s and 80s, and ‘Camera Lucida’, alongside Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’ is among the most influential (and enjoyable) books of its period to deal with photography as a cultural phenomenon, not just in the obvious way, as an art and practise. You do not need to know anything about philosophy to read ‘Camera Lucida’ and you might actually enjoy it more if you don’t.

    Photography is an odd kind of art-form. You can’t ‘read’ a photograph like you can text (which is the kind of thing that annoys the hell out of semiologists), and being by its nature infinitely reproducible, a photograph doesn’t have the uniqueness of a painting. Consider also that to ‘make’ a photograph takes no training. In many circles, photography is still considered the poor cousin of ‘real’ art and it’s easy to understand why. Just remember Kodak’s famous slogan: “You push the button, we do the rest”.

    As Louis Daguerre said, the photograph “gives Nature an ability to reproduce herself”

    Barthes thought that photography is actually closer to theatre than to painting (because of its direct line of connection to life). He was not a photographer – “too impatient for that” – and had no interest in investigating photography as an activity. He wanted to get to grips with what photographs are and what makes them unique.

    In perhaps his most famous statement on photography (made before he wrote ‘Camera Lucida’) he suggests that the photograph is a semiotically unique, paradoxical artifact – unique because it is a “message without a code”. It doesn’t need a code (or shouldn’t) because in theory, the message of a photograph is reality itself. This is the photograph as a purely representational artifact – the product of light rays, entering a camera from the surface of a tiny corner of reality. As Louis Daguerre said, the photograph “gives Nature an ability to reproduce herself”. And he ought to know.

    That’s the theory, at least. The problem (the paradox) of course is that despite the fact that a photograph is a mechanically-created object, it’s very hard to imagine a photograph that isn’t highly coded. Everything from how a portrait subject is posed, to the photographers’ choice of background, or camera angle etc., can affect how we feel about a photograph, and ultimately what we take away from it. It’s actually very difficult to conceive of an example of what Barthes calls the ‘brute image’; a hypothetical photograph free from any kind of connoted meaning.

    One of a collection of images taken by a relative of my grandmother and grandfather on a honeymoon trip around England in late summer 1939 (you can read more about the project and see more images here).

    Because of when they were taken (just weeks before the outbreak of WWII) and how (they were shot on then-rare color film) they’re all rich in what Barthes called ‘Studium’. For me, the ‘punctum’ in this shot is my grandparents’ cat (bottom of the photograph, in front of the tent, facing the camera) which – apparently – traveled with them.

    In ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes suggests that there are two elements to every photograph. Borrowing from latin, he calls these the studium (‘study’ – think application or commitment) and the punctum (‘point’ – think puncture or prick).

    In simple terms, the studium is all the information which can be gleaned from a photograph which derives from the cultural context in which it exists. As such, the studium is experienced according to the viewer’s personal, political and cultural viewpoint. A good example of a kind of photography which is rich in studium would be traditional western photojournalism. Assuming you’re familiar with the culture in which they were taken, such photographs are pretty easy to ‘decode’ when we see them in our daily newspapers. We know what they are ‘of’.

    The punctum, on the other hand, is an element (or elements) of a photograph which don’t necessarily contribute to their overall meaning or intended message, but which grab or ‘prick’ us for some reason. Barthes gives the example of a 1924 photograph by Lewis Hine of a developmentally disabled child in a New Jersey institution, with a bandage on her finger. For Barthes, the ‘punctum’ is the bandage – an “off-center detail” which catches his attention and which provokes a “tiny shock”. The studium, in contrast, is “liking, not […] loving” – a “slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in [things] one finds ‘all right’ “. The bandage has nothing to do with the studium of the Hine photograph, but it interests him more.

    Most of us take pictures of places, people and things, without spending a lot of time thinking about their content beyond whether it appeals to us aesthetically

    This might all sound very abstract, but it’s actually a really useful way of thinking about how we take photographs. Try categorizing your own work by Barthes’ definitions. Are you someone whose photography is all about the studium? I suspect that most of us are. Most of us take pictures of places, people and things, without spending a lot of time thinking about their content beyond whether it appeals to us aesthetically. We can learn from photographs like this, but it’s generally (literally) surface-level stuff.

    The punctum is more valuable, says Barthes, because it’s unexpected. Uncoded, and more interesting. And to return to the comparison with painting, a punctum of the kind that Barthes describes could only exist in a photograph, because of the unique way in which photographs are created.

    By the time I was able to really know my grandparents they were old (and my grandfather died when I was in my early teens). For me, working on these images offered an amazing opportunity to encounter them them as young people. In Barthes words, I was “gradually moving back in time” with these people, both of whom are now dead.

    Thanks to a DPReview reader, I even know what happened to the car.

    Even in translation. Barthes is a great writer. He’s smart (obviously) but also funny. He’s wonderfully catty about types of photographs and photographers that he doesn’t like, and he correctly identifies one of the most creatively destructive traps that you can fall into as a photographer: thinking that just because you took a picture of something, it must be important. Ouch.

    To me, the main appeal of ‘Camera Lucida’ is that it’s much more than just an academic dissertation – it’s a deeply personal, very emotional book. Less philosophy in many places, and more biography.

    The latter part of the book, especially, contains some quite beautiful writing. This is highly unusual in a work of philosophy (trust me). Perhaps the reason for the switch to a less academic and more personal mode of writing is that while he was working on ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes’ beloved mother Henriette died. And after she died he went looking for her. Not literally, but emotionally, hoping to find the essence of her in family photographs.

    He talks about this process in terms of a “painful labor”, “gradually moving back in time with her, looking for the truth of the face I had loved”. He describes “straining towards the essence of her identity, […] struggling among images partially true, and therefore totally false”. What he was finding in the photographs, to his frustration, were merely “fragments”.

    And then, finally, he made a breakthrough. He found what he was looking for in a single photograph of his mother as a young girl. Among a mass of pictures of Henriette as an adult, it was in this photograph of a five year-old child – a child of course who he never met in life – that he truly recognised the person he had known and loved.

    Barthes doesn’t exactly admit defeat in ‘Camera Lucida’, but he does concede that maybe things are a little more complicated than he once thought.

    In the final chapters of ‘Camera Lucida’ (it’s a very short book, most chapters are little more than a single page) Barthes revisits his central premise of the studium and the punctum, and revises it, suggesting a third element. Specifically, another type of punctum, not of form, “but of intensity”. This second punctum is Time.

    In ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes the famous philosopher gives way to Barthes the grieving son. Yes, much of the first half of the book is more or less standard fare for someone with his academic preoccupations (and indeed it picks up from his earlier work on the same subject, exploring the photograph’s potential as a purely representational object) but he’s not just flexing his intellectual muscles for the sake of it. Barthes is writing about time (he has a wonderful description of cameras as ‘clocks for seeing’), memory, and death. When it comes to the ultimate challenge of ‘penetrating’ photographs to find their meaning, Barthes doesn’t exactly admit defeat in ‘Camera Lucida’, but he does concede that maybe things are a little more complicated than he once thought.

    A girl bathing by Stiffkey bridge, in Norfolk. August 1939. Looking at this picture I can’t help thinking who she is, what kind of life she had, and whether she’s still alive (if so, she must be in her late 80s or 90s now).

    ‘Camera Lucida’ may not make you a better photographer (it might actually make you pause before picking up your camera again!) but it will probably make you a more thoughtful one. There is a reasonably good chance, too, that it will make you cry. There’s a a lot of post-war Continental philosophy that might have the same effect, but for very different reasons.

    I hope that after reading my incredibly shallow analysis of it, you do read ‘Camera Lucida’. And if you do, I hope that it will remind you of the unique role that photography has in our lives, and of its power. Photographs let us travel back in time, and in that way they enable us to maintain relationships with people that we’ve lost. In the end, it’s a book about love.

    Is there a particular book which made a difference to your life as a photographer? We’d love to hear from you – and you might even get featured on the DPReview homepage. Leave us a short note in the comments and if you have a longer story to tell, send it to us, and we’ll take it from there.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Nikon P950 sample gallery

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    Check out our sample gallery from the Nikon Coolpix P950, the perfect camera for social distancing thanks to its 24-2000mm equiv. zoom lens.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • DPReview TV: Nikon P950 hands-on review

    Nikon’s Coolpix P950 features an incredible 24-2000mm equiv. zoom lens. But other than taking closeup photos of the moon, what’s this camera that looks like a small bazooka good for? Quite a lot, it turns out.

    Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new episodes of DPReview TV every week.

    • Introduction
    • An epiphany
    • Limitations of a huge zoom
    • Handling
    • Image quality
    • Battery life and startup time
    • Raw capture
    • Image stabilization
    • Flare control
    • Framing challenges
    • Electronic viewfinder (EVF)
    • Macro
    • Low light issues
    • Versus the P1000
    • The obligatory moon photo
    • Video capabilities
    • Chris needs a science intervention
    • Who's it for?

    Sample photos from this episode

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    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • The gear that changed my (photographic) life: the Canon EOS 10D

    This article was originally published in 2017 as part of our ‘Throwback Thursday’ series.

    A few months ago I wrote a short article about the Canon EOS D30. The D30 was a groundbreaking camera in its day, being the first ‘affordable’ DSLR and the first to feature a large-format CMOS sensor. Yes, its autofocus system was woeful, and the LCD display on the back was about as useful as making a sketch from memory, but back in 2000, everybody wanted one.

    I was definitely curious about the D30, but given that in 2000 I was a first-year undergraduate student, such an expensive camera was far beyond my reach. It would be another couple of years before I saved up enough money to buy my first DSLR, and the camera I eventually settled on was the successor to the successor of the EOS D30 – the counterintuitively named Canon EOS 10D1.

    The break with Canon’s previous naming convention was appropriate, though. The 10D was a substantially new camera compared to the models that preceded it, and it replaced the D60 with an almost indecent haste (the D60 had been on the market for little more than a year before the 10D came along). Compared to the plastic-bodied D30/D60 it was better built, featured a far superior rear LCD (with a usable magnification feature) offered a more rounded styling, closer in spirit to the EOS-1D series, and was much quicker in operation.

    The 10D was a thoroughly modern camera in 2003, and remained on the market for some time. Canon took the basic form factor of the D60 and modernized every aspect of that model’s performance and styling.

    The 10D’s DIGIC processor drove a blisteringly fast (ahem…) continuous shooting rate of 3 fps, operation was snappier, including reduced shutter-lag, and the 10D’s 7-point autofocus system was a huge improvement over the 3-point system in the D30 and D60, which seemed prehistoric even back then. Although the 10D’s 6MP CMOS sensor was based on the one previously used in the D60, Canon had refined the manufacturing process in the meantime. Consequently it offered slightly better resolution than its predecessor, superior noise performance and a wider ISO span, topping out at a grainy but usable ISO 3200.

    Remarkably, despite all of these improvements, the 10D was also $ 500 cheaper than the D60.

    Although it definitely wasn’t in the same ballpark as the EOS-1D in terms of speed or construction, the 10D beat the pants off Canon’s then-current pro sports model in terms of image quality. Significantly, the core specification of the 10D was close enough to the EOS 30 / Elan 7 that film holdouts didn’t have to feel too badly short-changed by the costly jump into digital.

    With the EOS 10D’s accessory grip attached, it was almost possible to believe that I was shooting with an EOS-1D.

    Almost…

    So, to recap – the 10D offered a very usable sensitivity range of ISO 100-3200, 3 fps continuous shooting, 7-point AF system, magnesium-alloy body shell and a substantial price reduction. In 2003, it all added up to a hugely desirable camera.2

    Canon EOS 10D Sample images (2004-5)

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    Because it was so popular, the 10D was pretty scarce for several months after its introduction. After saving up my wages for an entire summer (a story told in more detail here), I ended up purchasing mine from a ‘big box’ high-street retailer, because it was out of stock everywhere else – something I later came to regret.

    I decided to pull the trigger on a 10D for several reasons. In a rare attack of foresight, I determined that this digital thing probably wasn’t a fad, and with ambitions to become a photographer of some kind, it seemed sensible to dive in as soon as possible. And while previous DSLRs had felt like too much of a compromise, the 10D seemed to meet my most important criteria.

    As a budding theatre and live music photographer, I was hitting the limits of what I could do with film, both technically and practically. Technically speaking, high ISO film exposed in marginal light and processed at your average high-street pharmacy simply doesn’t look very good – especially if you’re talking about high-speed color emulsions. From a practical standpoint, development and printing turnaround times were a problem if I wanted to get images to people quickly. And forget about serious commercial work – by 2003, the magazines and websites I was interested in working for were increasingly insisting on digital file delivery.

    A typical monochrome conversion of a shot taken in the Assembly Rooms Theatre. The 10D’s highest ISO settings were grainy, but perfectly usable – especially when converted into black and white.

    The first quasi ‘commercial’ work I ever did was head-shots and performance images for Durham University’s student theatre. Student productions rotated every few weeks, and every production wanted some prints to display outside the theatre. I can’t remember the first production that I shot digitally (was it Harold Pinter’s ‘The Caretaker’?)3 but compared to film, it was vastly easier. Ironically, I was a sort of caretaker for the theatre at the time, since I lived in a small flat above the lobby. Being able to shoot a dress-rehearsal in the theatre, then head upstairs to make my edit and print the images – sometimes all in the same evening – was a revelation. I can’t remember how much I charged for my services, but I made enough over a couple of years to buy a couple of new lenses.

    And for a while it seemed like it was lenses that were the problem. Initially I had two lenses for my 10D. A 50mm F1.8 (of course), and a 24-70mm F2.8L. Later I added a 70-200mm F2.8L and a 17-40mm F4L (all purchased used). The 10D worked perfectly with all of them, except the 24-70mm. For whatever reason, camera and lens did not get on at all. Chronic back-focusing was apparent even through the 10D’s viewfinder, and this was before the days of AF micro-adjustment. The 24-70mm was simply unusable on my 10D, but it focused perfectly on other DSLRs that I borrowed from friends, or rented in an increasingly desperate attempt to figure out what was going on.

    A live shot from one of my first proper commissions – a major awards show tour that came through Newcastle in 2005 – not far from where I lived at the time. It looks like I benefited a bit from someone else’s flash, in this shot. Thank you – whoever you were.

    The retailer I bought my 10D from wasn’t particularly interested in helping, so I sent it back to Canon at least four times during the first year I owned it, shooting on film during the long intervals when it was away for service. Every time it came back as ‘up to specification,’ but the back-focusing problem remained. Finally, after a lot of back and forth, I send the 10D in with the troublesome 24-70mm, and was rewarded with a ‘fixed’ camera, complete – funnily enough – with a new serial number. Knowing what I know now, I should have sent the camera and lens back together in the first place.

    Even this frustrating experience wasn’t enough to dull my excitement at owning and using the 10D. It really was a fantastic camera at the time, and it helped me gain a footing in the not-at-all-lucrative world of performance photography. My first magazine commissions were shot with the 10D. I learned about the benefits of shooting Raw with the 10D (albeit rather belatedly). The first camera I ever had confiscated at a music venue4 was the 10D. It was my main camera for a couple of very formative years, before being relegated as a second body beside to the truly magnificent EOS-1D Mark II (which I’m hoping to write about at a later date).

    The 10D couldn’t do everything (it choked up when shooting several Raw files in a sequence, and in low light its off-center AF points were little more than decorative), but it opened up a completely new world for me.

    One of my favorite bands of the mid-2000s was ‘Hope of the States’. I probably photographed them more than any other band, for a while. This shot is from another awards show in London in 2005. Despite the off-center composition, most likely I used the central AF point for this image, since the 10D’s off-center points didn’t work very well at all in low light.

    And it’s a world I’m still living in. Without the 10D, there is no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t have become a music photographer, and if I hadn’t become a music photographer, I probably wouldn’t have ended up as a photography journalist. Whether or not that’s a good thing is something I’m happy to leave to the commenters to decide.

    Did you own a 10D? Let us know.

    Read Phil Askey’s review of the EOS 10D (2003)

    Canon EOS 10D Review Samples (2003)

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    1 – A note on Canon’s confusing naming convention. The ‘D30’ because it was a digital camera with 3 million pixels. The D60 because it was basically a D30 with a new 6 million pixel sensor. And the switch to 10D because – I assume – Canon and Nikon’s lawyers had a little chat.

    2 – In fact, just about the only people who weren’t singing Canon’s praises at the time were recent D60 owners.

    3 – The Assembly Rooms – it’s still there, and this being student theatre, there’s every chance that they’re currently staging a production of Harold Pinter’s ‘The Caretaker’, too.

    4 – It was all just one big misunderstanding. Specifically around two people’s definitions of the word ‘permission’.

    If you have a piece of gear that you’d like to write about, we’d love to hear from you – and you might even get featured on the DPReview homepage. Leave us a short note in the comments and if you have a longer story to tell, send it to us, and we’ll take it from there.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Chinese government rules in favour of Alpa in counterfeit cameras case

    Swiss camera manufacturer Alpa has won a case in the Chinese courts against a company that was making and distributing cameras and accessories copied from its own models. Chinese brand GuoZh has been told to pay damages to Alpa over its FY-2015 camera which is a direct copy of Alpa’s A12 series models. The company had copied the camera, backs and accessories and was selling under its own name, and had even started camera clubs for users of its copied products.

    Copied Alpa camera and accessories shown on the GuoZh website

    Some of the products produced by GuoZh were branded Alpa and sold as convincing counterfeits to Alpa users, while others were branded with the GouZh name and sold in China to potential Alpa users at a much lower price.

    It looked at one stage as though Alpa would not win its case as it hadn’t applied for protection under China’s complicated copyright law, but in the end the company was able to file a claim that Alpa cameras come under China’s ‘applied art’ rules that state that everyday objects can be seen as art.

    Genuine (left) and fake (right) Mamiya roll film backs

    According to an article on the case by Swiss newspaper NZZ GuoZh owner Guo Zhonggen was nonchalant during the final hearing and tried to give the impression that he owned the intellectual property, which helped move the judge to rule against him. At the end of the final of three hearings he was ordered to pay ‘six-figure damages’ and to apologise on his website, as well as to cease producing Alpa cameras and copies of them. At the time of writing though GouZh is planning an appeal and is still adverting it’s products on its website.

    Andre OIdani, Head of Products at Alpa, is quoted as saying “It’s a good feeling that you’re not powerless in the giant system of China after all,” according to NZZ.

    The case will give some hope to other photographic manufacturers that feel their products are being copied and sold cheaply by Chinese companies. The report in NZZ says that the Chinese courts are becoming more interested in copyright claims as China’s own products improve and become subject to copies themselves. Journalist Matthias Kamp also says that judges now have better training and are being paid better salaries, but none of the judges is independent as a communist party committee can always step in to have the last word in any case.

    For more information on Alpa cameras see the Alpa website.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • GoPro and VSCO lay off employees, change business models over COVID-19 pandemic

    Amid ongoing social distancing efforts, both VSCO and GoPro have announced major business changes resulting from the economic downturn. In a post on his LinkedIn account, VSCO CEO Joel Flory revealed that his company had to lay off 45 employees this week. The announcement was followed by a similar message from GoPro, which revealed that it will be reducing its number of employees by 20%.

    Many companies are struggling to stay above water as a number of states and countries implement lockdown measures. Many businesses have been forced to temporarily close down, and while others remain in business, a drop in consumer purchasing has left some companies struggling to keep their revenue up.

    In a post on his LinkedIn account, Flory said that VSCO had expected 2020 to be ‘a year where we would continue to forward invest into our business.’ However, things didn’t go as planned and Flory said, ‘Overnight our environment changed. We realize that we would need to shift towards running a self-sustaining business.’

    The company is giving its laid-off employees a minimum of two months of healthcare coverage and seven weeks of severance pay, according to Flory, who says that the company is also assisting them in other ways. VSCO plans to continue releasing new features this year, though details on what the company has planned weren’t revealed.

    GoPro, meanwhile, published its preliminary Q1 financial requests on April 15 and withdrew its 2020 guidance in light of the pandemic. The company said that it is restructuring its business model to focus on direct-to-consumer sales and that as part of its global restructuring, it plans to lay off more than 20% of its workforce.

    These layoffs will contribute to a $ 100 million reduction in operating expenses for the year, according to GoPro, which plans to shed another $ 250 million in operating expenses next year.

    Company CEO Nicholas Woodman said that GoPro’s distribution network has been hit by the novel coronavirus pandemic and that as a result, the company must expedite its shift to a ‘more efficient and profitable direct-to-consumer-centric business’ model this year, something GoPro had already been pursuing. ‘We are crushed that this forces us to let go of many talented members of our team,’ Woodman said, ‘and we are forever grateful for their contributions.’

    Though GoPro will primarily sell directly to consumers, the company says it will continue to make its products available through ‘select leading retailers’ in only ‘key regions’ for consumers who prefer to buy items indirectly and at physical stores. Other planned changes include reducing office space in five different locations, reducing its sales and marketing throughout this year ‘and beyond,’ as well as cutting spending in other unspecified ways.

    Despite the changes, GoPro said that it still plans to move ahead with its 2020 product roadmap, which will include releasing new software, subscriptions and hardware targeted at action camera and smartphone owners. Woodman has voluntarily decided to skip the remainder of his 2020 salary, according to the company, which says its Board of Directors has also made the decision to avoid any additional cash compensation throughout the remainder of the year.

    Via: PetaPixel

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

  • Slideshow: 2020 World Press Photo contest winners

    2020 World Press Photo contest winners

    The World Press Photo Foundation recently announced the results of its 63rd annual World Press Photo Contest. World Press Photo of the Year, Story of the Year, plus winners across all 8 categories were included in Thursday evening’s announcement. Nearly 74,000 images were submitted by 4,282 photographers. 44 winners, 30 which are recognized for the first time, hail from 24 countries.

    The jury, consisting of 17 professionals from 6 continents, selected ‘Straight Voice’ by Yasuyoshi Chiba (which was featured in our nominee coverage a few months back) as Photo of the Year. ‘This moment was the only peaceful group protest I encountered during my stay. I felt their undefeated solidarity like burning embers that remain to flare up again,’ says Chiba of his winning photo.

    ‘Kho, the Genesis of a Revolt’ by Romain Laurendeau, which documented the unease of Algerian youth that led to the biggest protest in decades, was selected as World Press Photo Story of the Year. ‘It was impossible for a part of me not to recognize myself in these young people. They are young but they are tired of this situation and they just want to live like everyone else,’ explains Laurendeau.

    Elsewhere, fans of the Tiger King docuseries on Netflix will recognize Kevin Antle in Steve Winter’s ‘The Tiger Next Door’ image, which won Second Prize in the Contemporary Issues – Stories category. All digital storytelling contest winners can be viewed on the World Press Photo homepage.

    Winning photographs and multimedia will be on display during year-long worldwide exhibition, which premieres every year in Amsterdam. The launch date has been postponed due to the current pandemic. Those interested in attending events can check in with the World Press Photo event calendar.

    World Press Photo Story of the Year: ‘Kho, the Genesis of a Revolt’ by Romain Laurendeau (France)

    Caption: Football fans gather in the street and sing during a match that is taking place behind closed doors due to violence, in Algiers, Algeria, on 22 November 2014.

    Story: Young people make up more than half of Algeria’s population, and according to a UNESCO report 72% of people under 30 in Algeria are unemployed. Pivotal moments in Algerian history, such as the ‘Black October’ revolt of 1988, have had angry youth at their core. Black October was harshly suppressed—more than 500 people were killed in five days—and was followed by a ‘black decade’ of violence and unrest.

    Thirty years on, the effects of that decade are still present. In a traumatized country, high unemployment leads to boredom and frustration in everyday life and many young people feel disassociated from the state and its institutions. In neglected working-class neighborhoods such as Bab el-Oued in Algiers, young people often seek refuge in diki—private places that are ‘bubbles of freedom’ away from the gaze of society and from conservative social values. But the sense of community and solidarity is often not enough to erase the trials of poor living conditions.

    In February 2019, the United States of young people from working-class neighborhoods again took to the streets in what became a nationwide challenge to the reign of long-time president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

    Kho (the word means ‘brother’ in colloquial North-African Arabic) is about the genesis of a revolt. It is the story of the deep unease of youth, who, by daring to challenge authority, inspired the rest of the population to join their action, giving birth to the largest protest movement in Algeria in decades.

    World Press Photo Story of the Year Nominee: ‘Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 Crash Site’ by Mulugeta Ayene (Ethiopia)

    Caption: Onlookers inspect debris at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 11 March 2019.

    Story: On 10 March, Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET302, a Boeing 737 MAX, disappeared from the radar six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa airport and crashed into a field, killing all 157 people on board. The impact was so great that both engines were buried in a crater 10 meters deep.

    A week after the crash, empty coffins were buried at a ceremony at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa, as victims were unable to be identified. Officials gave relatives bags of earth from the crash site. On 14 November, eight months after the crash, the site of the impact was covered and the unidentified remains of victims buried in rows of identical coffins.

    Comparisons were made with the crash of a Lion Air aircraft, also a 737 MAX, 12 minutes after take-off from Jakarta in October 2018. Countries across the world, initially with the exception of the US, grounded the 737 MAX. First reports showed that pilots had been unable to prevent the plane repeatedly nosediving, despite following procedures recommended by Boeing.

    It appeared that in both cases pilots were struggling to deal with an automated safety system designed to prevent stalling, which was repeatedly pushing the nose of the plane down. It seemed that the system was being activated, possibly due to a faulty sensor, even though nothing was wrong.

    It later emerged that American Airlines pilots had confronted Boeing about potential safety issues with the MAX. Boeing had resisted their calls but promised a software fix, which had not been done by the time Flight ET302 crashed. Planes remained grounded into 2020.

    Contemporary Issues – First Prize, Stories: ‘The Longest War’ by Lorenzo Tugnoli (Italy) for The Washington Post

    Caption: An Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) anti-mine team detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) found on the Ghazni-Kandahar highway in eastern Afghanistan, on 2 December 2019. IEDs are one of the leading causes of casualties among civilians and members of the ANDSF.

    Story: The Taliban made significant territorial gains and increased their influence in Afghanistan in 2019. Eighteen years after the US invasion, and five years since the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) have been responsible for securing Afghanistan, the Taliban control or contest around half the country, in some districts acting as a shadow government.

    Peace talks began in January appeared to be nearing agreement in August, but were scuppered by US president Donald Trump in September. Fighting escalated during talks as both sides tried to gain leverage, while on the ground the talks provided the Taliban with increasing political legitimacy. The frequency and spread of Taliban violence left the ANDSF overstretched and in some cases overwhelmed, with a high casualty rate.

    The escalation of the conflict also severely impacted the civilian population, resulting in high casualties, forced displacement, extreme insecurity, lack of access to education and a weakened public health system. A report published in June 2019 by the Institute for Peace and Economics named Afghanistan as the world’s “least peaceful” country, replacing Syria, though by early 2020 it seemed that a peace agreement was once again a possibility.

    Contemporary Issues – Second Prize, Stories: ‘The Tigers Next Door’ by Steve Winter (United States) for National Geographic

    Caption: Kevin Antle poses with his staff in a swimming pool they use in a tiger show, at his Myrtle Beach Safari entertainment facility in South Carolina, United States, on 30 April 2019. Tourists pay upwards of USD $ 399 each to join a morning tour, during which they play and are photographed with cubs.

    Story: Between 5,000 and 10,000 tigers live in captivity in the US. Roadside zoos and other businesses breed tigers and charge guests to pet and pose with them. Individuals also keep tigers as pets. By contrast, there are only 3,900 wild tigers in Asia and 1,659 in accredited zoos worldwide.

    Many of America’s exotic pets are not covered by the 1973 Endangered Species Act, which applies only to those taken from the wild, not those bred in captivity. Four US states have no laws on keeping big cats as pets, and in ten others, although a permit is required, once secured for a small pet it can be used to acquire a larger animal such as a tiger.

    By the time cubs bought as pets are four months old they become too large and dangerous to keep domestically, and are sold on, opening concerns that this feeds the highly lucrative illegal international trade in tiger parts. Investigations by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is tasked with enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, dropped by 92% between 2016 and 2018.

    In June, the US House of Representatives reprimanded the USDA for redirecting its focus from active enforcement to providing ‘teachable moment’ interactions with the public. A federal Big Cat Public Safety Act has now been proposed. It will address the gap in state laws and prohibit the private ownership of big cats, and ensure that if they cannot be returned to the wild, they can be transferred to accredited sanctuaries.

    Contemporary Issues – Third Prize, Stories: ‘Exodus’ by Nicolò Filippo Rosso (Italy)

    Caption: Migrants crowd onto a truck near the Colombia-Venezuela border, in La Guajira, Colombia, on 6 July 2018.

    Story: A political and socio-economic crisis in Venezuela, from 2016 onwards, led to an increasing outflow of migrants from the country. Venezuelans said they were compelled to leave for reasons of insecurity and violence, lack of access to food, medicine and essential services, and loss of income due to the political situation. Colombia feels the impact of this exodus most keenly.

    According to the UNHCR, by October 2019 approximately 4.5 million Venezuelans had left the country, of which 1.6 million were in Colombia. Others had moved through Colombia before going on to surrounding countries. Even though Venezuela officially closed its land border with Colombia in February, around 300 clandestine crossing points remained active. More than half of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia lacked regular status, and so had no access to health, education or legal employment.

    Charity organizations and NGOs helped supply people with medical attention and food, but many ended up in informal settlements or living on the streets. Early in 2020, the Colombian government announced two new Special Stay Permits that would allow more than 100,000 Venezuelans to stay and work in the country, and ruled that children born in the country to Venezuelan parents could acquire Colombian nationality, but vast numbers of people remain dispossessed.

    Environment – Second Prize, Stories: ‘Fading Flamingos’ by Maximilian Mann (Germany)

    Caption: Farmers harvest apples near Lake Urmia, Iran, on 14 September 2018. The region is known for its apple production.

    Story: Lake Urmia, in northwest Iran, once one of the largest salt lakes in the world, is drying up. In the 1990s, it was twice the size of Luxembourg, but intensified droughts and elevated summer temperatures have sped up evaporation. In addition, illegal wells together with a proliferation of dams and irrigation projects along the lake’s tributaries have diverted water to farm fields.

    Research by an international group of scientists conducted in 2014 showed that the lake had shrunk to about 12% of its size in the 1970s. In addition, environmentalists argue that a 15-kilometer-long causeway that cuts the lake in two, built in 2008, contributes to the drying as it inhibits water flow between the two sides.

    The exposed lakebed forms a vast salt desert that cannot support agriculture and is susceptible to salt storms which adversely affect surrounding agriculture, and cause eye, skin and lung disorders. Residents in the area, for whom the lake was once a leisure spot, are moving away. The desiccation also affects food sources for migratory birds such as flamingos, ducks and egrets.

    President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has pledged US$ 5 billion over ten years to revive Urmia, and the United Nations Development Programme is working with farmers to introduce more sustainable working practices.

    General News – Second Prize, Stories: ‘Chile: The Rebellion Against Neoliberalism’ by Fabio Bucciarelli (Italy) for L’Espresso

    Caption: Demonstrators resist water-cannon jets during clashes in Santiago, Chile, on 28 November 2019.

    Story: In the most extensive civil unrest in Chile’s recent history, people rose throughout the year in protest against economic inequality. Despite being one of the region’s most prosperous nations, Chile is the most unequal country in the OECD group of nations, according to a United Nations report. Just 1% of its population controls 33% of its wealth.

    The trigger for the unrest was an increase in subway fares instigated by President Sebastián Piñera on 18 October. A peaceful rally in the capital Santiago sparked further protests leading to a nationwide uprising. Demands grew to include comprehensive economic reform and the replacement of the constitution, which was drawn up during the reign of Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s and which created a legal basis for a market-driven economy and privatized pensions, health and education.

    Demonstrations grew in size—the largest comprising more than one million people on 25 October—and became increasingly violent. According to Human Rights Watch, the authorities used excessive force against demonstrators, including pellet shotguns that caused numerous eye injuries, and were accused of abuse, including rape, of people in detention.

    Women played a prominent role in the demonstrations, particularly after reports of human-rights and sexual offenses against female protesters by security forces. On 15 November President Piñera announced a referendum on a new constitution to be held in 2020, but unrest continued with demands for an inquiry into human rights violations during the protests and an immediate overhaul of the pension, health and education systems.

    General News – Third Prize, Stories: ‘ISIS and its Aftermath in Syria’ by Ivor Prickett (Ireland) for The New York Times

    Caption: Two men walk through a destroyed neighborhood in Raqqa, northern Syria, on 4 April 2019. Very few families returned to live in Raqqa after the city’s liberation from IS.

    Story: By early 2019, the territory held by the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria had reduced to a four-square-kilometer patch in the southeast, centered on the village of Baghuz. The IS retreat from northern Syria took place under the onslaught of the combined militias of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and supported by an international coalition of primarily US troops.

    As IS drew back, tens of thousands of people emerged from the enclave, many of them the wives and children of foreign IS fighters. Numerous IS fighters themselves surrendered or were captured. The Kurds were left with the conundrum of what to do with so many prisoners, many of them under 18 and orphaned or separated from their families. Then, at the beginning of October, US president Donald Trump ordered US troops out of northern Syria.

    On 9 October, Turkey—which regarded Kurdish forces on its border as a security threat, given the decades-long Kurdish insurgency against Turkey—invaded northern Syria, aiming to end Kurdish control over the territory. As Kurdish forces refocused their attention on a new opponent, the fate of the many thousands of prisoners grew even more uncertain.

    Long-term Projects, Second Prize: ‘Haf?z: Guardians of the Qur’an’ by Sabiha Çimen (Turkey)

    Caption: Students sing religious farewell songs, at their graduation ceremony from a Qur’an school in Istanbul, Turkey, on 23 April 2017.

    Story: Muslims who completely memorize the Qur’an are allowed to use the title ‘Haf?z’ before their names. They believe that whoever memorizes the holy book and follows its teachings will be rewarded by Allah and will rise in status in Paradise.

    The practice dates back to the days when illiteracy was widespread and paper and vellum were prohibitively expensive, so haf?zes were seen as guardians of the holy word, keeping it alive for future generations. The Qur’an has 6,236 verses, and memorizing is usually achieved by repetition and recitation.

    In Turkey, thousands of Qur’an schools exist for the purpose and many are attended by girls. Ranging in age from eight to 17 years old, most take three or four years to complete a task that requires discipline, devotion and focus. After graduating, most of these girls marry and have families but still retain the holy text word for word.

    The photographer attended a Qur’an school with her twin sister when they were 12, and so is able to reveal a world unknown to many. Her project follows the daily lives of boarders at Qur’an schools and shows not only their emotions as they try to memorize the sacred texts, but how they retain the dreams of young women their age, as well as the rule-breaking practices and fun of school life when they are not studying.

    Nature – Second Prize, Stories: ‘Pangolins in Crisis’ by Brent Stirton (South Africa) for National Geographic

    Caption: A man reaches for a pangolin that is about to be slaughtered and prepared for a meal in a restaurant on the outskirts of Guangzhou, China, on 4 January 2019. Pangolin meat at the restaurant sells for around US $ 376 per kilogram.

    Story: Pangolins are scaly-skinned mammals, and while sometimes mistaken for reptiles, they are more closely related to dogs and bears than anteaters or armadillos. They range through Asia and parts of Africa, and vary from the size of a domestic cat to over a meter long. They are solitary animals, meeting only to mate and produce a litter of one to three offspring, which are raised for around two years.

    Pangolin scales are highly prized in some parts of Asia for traditional medicine, and the meat is considered a delicacy. A 2017 report by Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network, states that pangolins are currently the most illegally traded animals in the world, with at least one million estimated to have been poached in the last ten years. All eight pangolin species are protected under national and international laws, and two are officially listed as critically endangered.

    Portraits – Second Prize, Stories: ‘Between Right and Shame’ by Tatsiana Tkachova (Belarus)

    Caption: Natalia (62) was pregnant at the time of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Although the baby was born healthy, she didn’t dare risk another pregnancy as she feared the effects of radiation. She also felt she could not cope with two children, so had an abortion the second time she conceived. Taken 22 April, 2018.

    Story: Belarus abortion laws allow termination on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, and in certain medical or social circumstances up to 28 weeks, which places them among the most liberal in Europe. Nevertheless, abortion is still a taboo for many women, and many are reluctant to admit they have had a termination. ‘No abortion week’ campaigns are held annually, and the decision to have a termination is often accompanied by a sense of shame.

    In this project, Belarusian women who have considered or undergone abortion tell their stories. The women had a range of concerns behind their decisions surrounding abortion—from contamination after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to fear of poverty, not wanting to be a single parent, or a background of sexual abuse. As their decisions were often made with difficulty, in this story they did not want to show their faces and their names have been changed.

    Sports – Second Prize, Stories: ‘The Gouandé Gazelles’ by Olivier Papegnies (Belgium)

    Caption: Bélassé Tchari (left), in Gouandé, Benin, gets up every morning to work in her field to feed her seven children. She works hard to put Virginie and her two sisters through secondary school and encourages their footballing ambitions. Taken 21 February, 2019.

    Story: The Gazelles de Gouandé from Gouandé village in northern Benin is one of 16 football teams set up across the country with the aim of giving young women more control over their futures through sport. The project, established by the Plan International organization, aims to empower women by promoting self-confidence, widening educational opportunities, and through advocacy against early marriage.

    Following the 2019 Women’s World Cup, there was an international surge of interest in women’s football, and projects like the one in Benin can be seen as part of a wider view of the power of sport to unify and spread social awareness. In January 2019, Benin hosted a delegation from FIFA, football’s international governing body, aimed at supporting a new sports strategy in schools, and Beninese president Patrice Talon announced plans for four new football schools, including one for women.

    Spot News – Second Prize, Singles: ‘Nairobi DusitD2 Hotel Attack’ by Dai Kurokawa (Japan)

    Caption: Women are evacuated as security forces look out for perpetrators of an attack on the DusitD2 luxury hotel and business compound, in Nairobi, Kenya, on 15 January 2019.

    Story: Five attackers threw bombs at vehicles in the parking area before entering the hotel lobby, where one staged a suicide bombing. At least 700 people were evacuated from the complex, with 21 killed and 28 wounded. The Somalia-based Islamist extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, releasing a statement that called it a response to US president Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

    The DusitD2 complex houses a number of international companies, and is frequented by government officials and foreign visitors, making it a target that would draw media attention. The attack and subsequent security operation lasted 20 hours, and ended with all five attackers being killed.

    Spot News – Second Prize, Stories: ‘Australia’s Bushfire Crisis’ by Matthew Abbott (Australia) for The New York Times

    Caption: Aluminum, which melts at 660.3ºC, has streamed from a burning car in Conjola Park, a town where bushfires razed more than 89 properties, in New South Wales, Australia, on 31 December 2019.

    Story: The annual fire season in Australia began early and was exceptionally severe—following months of record-breaking drought and fanned by strong winds. Far stronger wildfires than usual, mostly battled by volunteer firefighters, raged through New South Wales and Victoria as well as areas in South Australia and Queensland, laying waste to bushland and rainforest and destroying homes.

    By the end of January 2020, more than 30 people had been killed, 3,000 homes lost, and around 12.6 million hectares of land burned (nearly three times the size of the Netherlands). Wildlife was harshly hit. Local scientists estimated that up to one billion animals perished, and more than 50% of the Gondwana rainforest traversing New South Wales and Queensland was burned.

    In December, while the intensity and speed at which many bushfires were spreading increased, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison went on holiday to Hawaii, and was prompted to return only after the death of two volunteer firefighters. He continued to champion a pro-fossil-fuel policy and held back from linking the fires to the climate crisis.

    Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)