8 http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk
SonyA to E-mount
adapter released
A newA-mountto E-mountadapter,the
LA-EA5,hasbeenintroducedby Sony.It includesa built-inmotorthatenables
autofocuswith‘screwdrive’A-mount
lenses.It alsoworkswithSSM(Super
SonicwaveMotor)andSAM(Smooth
AutofocusMotor)lenses,withsupportfor
wide-areafocalplanephase-detectionAF
whenusingthelatestE-mountcamera
bodies.Thisincludessubject-recognition
featuressuchasReal-timeEyeAFforboth
humansandanimals,andReal-time
Tracking.It’sonsalenowfor£270fromthe
SonywebsiteSeebit.ly/newsonyadapter.
Nikon and Canon at The
Photography Show
Nikon has released its speaker line-up
for this year’s online Photography Showon 20-21 September. The company will
have three stands in its virtual hub: Nikon
Imaging, Nikon Sport Optics and Nikon
School. Speakers will include movie and TV
stills photographers, Jasin Boland and
Helen Sloan, along with new Nikon
ambassadors – food photographer Donna
Crous and wildlife photographer Andrew
Parkinson. Nikon School trainers will also
be running sessions. Canon, meanwhile,
has announced that landscape and travel
shooter David Noton will be a key speaker,
along with wildlife photographer Mark
Carwardine. You can also nd out more
about the EOS R5 and EOS R6.
Wildlife POTY shortlist
reveals some super shots
HIGHLY commended images from the
Natural History Museum’s Wildlife
Photographer of the Year (WPY) competition
have been released. There is a great variety
of pictures, including perching primates, fast
disappearing habitats and peeking possums.
This year’s competition attracted almost
50,000 entries from professionals and
amateurs across the world, and the overall
winners, including the Grand Title winners, will
be announced on 13 October.
For the rst time, the awards ceremony will
be conducted virtually from the Natural
History Museum’s famous Hintze Hall.
Winning images are selected for their
creativity, originality, and technical excellence
by an international panel of industry experts.
Among the Highly Commended images is
Hannah Vijayan’s shot of a brown bear pullinga sockeye salmon from the shallows of a river
in Alaska’s Katmai National Park (see her
image below). The greatest concentration of
bears – and tourists – is around the waterfall
at Brooks River, where viewing platforms
enable visitors to watch bears catching
salmon leaping up the falls. Hannah chose to
focus on a quieter scene and a different style
of shing. Another great image in the 15-
year old category is 13-year-old Arshdeep
Singh’s image of a douc, a critically-
endangered primate, caught in its lush and
verdant environment.
After the exhibition is unveiled at the
Natural History Museum on Friday 16 October,
the images will embark on a UK tour. Full
details of the shortlisted images and the
other activities surrounding Wildlife POTY can
be found at bit.ly/wildllifeshortlist.An outstanding
image by Hannah
Vijayan in the 15-
year old categoryA NEW version of Skylum’s Luminar
editing program is available for Windows
and MacOS, which is based on AI (arti cial
intelligence). Luminar AI incorporates the
machine-learning tools from Luminar 4 while
adding some new ones, which adds up to
quite a different editing experience. Rather
than seeing conventional tools and sliders for
parameters like contrast or brightness when
you rst open the program, you are invited to
try features like AtmosphereAI and SkyAI for
landcapes, with siimilar tools for portraits and
other genres. Luminar AI is available for
pre-order (£79) with ‘early-bird’ discounts. Full
details at skylum.com.Fully AI version of Skylum Luminar
The AI tools offer quick portrait enhancementsSony’s new LA-EA5 enables autofocus with
A-mount lenses that don’t have AF motors
Nikon and Canon are out in (virtual) force...