Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

Lens Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM Exposure 1/800 sec, f/2, ISO100 RUTH’S COMMENT “Jesse got our model, Charlotte, to sit on this railing with the bridge behind and the low winter sun creating a strong back light. Jesse told me to work on the composition first, lighting second. Using a wide-angle 35mm lens at f/2, and with Jesse’s guidance, I was able to include the bridge in the background for some shape and texture that was blurred but not too much. Jesse held the reflector to bounce light back onto Charlotte’s face, and we got her to move her hair to fall over her left shoulder to work with the backlight.”…

When the light levels drop and the cold seeps in, it’s tempting to put your Canon back in its bag and leave it there until spring. Brave the chill, however, and you’ll be rewarded with just as many stunning wildlife opportunities as the other seasons – perhaps even more! In this feature we’ll start by covering the best kit and camera settings for the job, then delve into fieldcraft. Shooting local is fine (provided you know what to look for), so don’t feel you have to jet off in search of polar bears. By developing a regular routine and also improving your stalking skills, you’ll really improve the hit rate of each of your outings. Team this wildlife knowledge with our Canon DSLR tips on techniques, and you’ll be ready…

Scenario 1: Backlighting SHOOTING directly into the sun is a great creative technique; rim lighting can be used to highlight feathers and fur, or steamy breath billowing out in the cold. Backgrounds should be dark and clear of distractions to highlight the effect. Shoot with a lens hood, or use one hand to shade the camera lens. To avoid underexposing the subject, measure the light hitting the animal with spot metering mode. Scenario 2: Low-angle sun IN WINTERTIME, the sun arcs lower in the sky, bathing everything in a warm light which is even more prevalent early and late in the day. These ‘golden hours’ are the best times to photograph animals foraging for food, but because sunlight is weaker in winter you may have to boost your ISO levels…

Photographing bubbles is a fun way to experiment with your Canon camera. But rather than shooting outside and dealing with the elements, we’re going to use a simple setup at home and a fast Canon lens to capture some inspirational images. We’ve set up a simple black background roll over a table next to a large window for some nice side light. As we’re using a fast 50mm f/1.4 prime lens at a wide aperture of f/1.4, our depth of field (DoF) is going to be very shallow – ideal for capturing sharp bubbles, but then lots of blurred bubbles for a beautiful bokeh in the background. When using a shallow DoF, focusing needs to be spot on, so we pre-focussed on a washing up bottle on blocks for the…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http:/bit.ly/pp_134_5 THE MISSION Learn to combine a portrait with NASA’s images of an astronaut’s helmet, stars and planets! Time needed 45 minutes Skill level Intermediate Kit needed Photoshop Elements There are lots of free images out there to download, but few sites come close to NASA’s for sheer quality. Search for ‘NASA Images’ and you’ll find a huge array of photos of stars, nebulae, galaxies, planets, astronauts and more. Many of these images are high res, and they are free to download. As such, we can make use of these incredible images to create a composite that is out-of-this-world. We’ve supplied a starting image here of our chiselled astronaut, but why not use one of your own portraits? All you need is a photo of somebody against…

01 FORT UNION NATIONAL MONUMENT Fort Union is in a remote part of New Mexico and free from light pollution. The wagon made an ideal foreground subject. Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM Exposure 25 secs, f/2.8, ISO6400 A BEAUTIFULLY clear, star-filled night sky is one of the most amazing sights to see on Earth, but it’s becoming increasingly rare. As cities expand and the number of artificial lights increase, night skies are becoming brighter and gradually wiping out all trace of the stars. This doesn’t just prevent us from seeing starscapes, it has negative consequences for human health, for ecosystems – and wastes a huge amount of energy. Harun Mehmedinovic and Gavin Heffernan wanted to make this phenomenon more widely known. They realized they could do this through…

JOIN IN THE FUN! One of the great things about photography is being able to share your view of the world. In this issue, Chris Williams transforms his living room into a studio, and we visit Stephen Dalton’s eight-acre broadleaf woodland. We want your photos and stories! For your chance to show off your images in PhotoPlus, send three to five high-resolution JPEGs, along with a brief synopsis – explain why you took the shots, the location, whether they’re part of an ongoing project or a one-off shoot, and anything else unusual or interesting. Also include Canon DSLR, lens and exposure details. Email photoplus@futurenet.com Online www.facebook.com/photoplusmag www.twitter.com/photoplusmag Post PhotoPlus: The Canon Mag Future, The Ambury Bath BA1 1UA, UK 01 THE BLACK HAT Lit with large softbox and snoot on…

Just because you can shoot in 4K, doesn’t mean you have to output your movie in 4K. Instead, you could downsample the resolution in video software so that it will play back in Full HD (albeit with a slight vertical crop). Downsampling can produce a sharper-looking image, in the same way that downsampling a still image in Photoshop does. Alternatively, rather than downsampling the entire 4K image, you could use the extra resolution headroom for creative editing instead. For example, you could crop a Full HD section from the 4K scene and use this to track a subject’s movement or pan around an existing scene. You could also move the Full HD framing to counteract camera shake – effectively getting some post-shoot image stabilization and still have a movie with…

Time-lapse is a great way to reveal a world that normally goes unseen, and is a technique that’s effective for capturing the movement of stars in the night sky, the rise and fall of the sun and moon and the growth of plants. Canon has been rolling out an in-camera Full HD time-lapse movie option in its recent DSLRs, including the EOS 77D and 5D Mark IV, with the 6D Mark II also boasting a 4K time-lapse mode. The good news is that the camera does all the hard work for you, timing the shot, automatically taking them and then saving the finished time-lapse movie to the memory card. You’ll find the Time-lapse movie function in the red Shooting menu, although the options available to you vary according to the…

Lightroom CC 2018 It’s Lightroom CC, but not as we know it, as Lightroom heads for the cloud The new Lightroom CC is a bold move by Adobe. For years we have dreamed of having all our photos available everywhere at full resolution, and editable on all our devices, but Lightroom CC now makes this dream a reality. Cloud synchronizing is possible in the old Lightroom, now rebranded as Lightroom Classic, but only up to a point. In the Classic version, you can share lower-resolution DNG versions in Collections chosen for cloud synchronization, but your full-res images remain on your local disk drives. Any editing you do on other devices is synchronized back to your desktop as processing instructions, but you can’t access your full library remotely, or full-resolution images.…

THE CONTENDERS Many of us got into Canon DSLR photography with an entry-level camera like the Canon EOS 1100D or 100D. They’re fairly inexpensive to buy, simple to use, and deliver good image quality. But they’re also quite basic. As your skills grow and your technique improves, it’s only natural to want something more sophisticated, that gives you more creative freedom and greater potential. Canon obliges with many models to choose from. That’s just as well, because the same camera certainly won’t suit everyone. Size matters to some, or rather the lack of it. If you’re the sort of photographer who likes to have a camera handy whenever you’re out and about, it’s good to have something that won’t weigh you down. It’s equally important if travel photography is your…

The 77D is much bigger than the M5 but handling feels less cramped and more natural on its DSLR body. It’s only 113g heavier, making it relatively compact and lightweight. A new-gen 24.2Mp Dual Pixel image sensor teams up with a DIGIC 7 processor to enable the biggest sensitivity range of any APS-C format camera, topping out at ISO25,600 (ISO51,200 in expanded mode). The touchscreen has full articulation, thanks to Canon’s ‘vari-angle’ design. It’s brilliant for shooting movies and stills in Live View, from the trickiest of angles. Movie capture also benefits from 5-axis, sensor-shift stabilization for steady handheld results, and there’s also a trick time-lapse movie mode. Worth considering as an upgrade from a beginner DSLR, the 77D has a secondary info LCD on the top panel, which enthusiast…

Packed into a casing that was part magnesium alloy and part polycarbonate, the original 6D was Canon’s only ‘enthusiast’ rather than ‘professional’ grade full-frame SLR. It looked and felt very much like a full-frame version of the 70D, and the updated Mk II bears a striking resemblance to the 80D. The Mk II addresses the 6D’s shortfalls. Most notably, the 11-point autofocus module with just a single cross-type point at the centre has been replaced with a 45-point system (all cross-type) in which 27 points work at f/8. The sluggish 4.5fps continuous drive rate is boosted to 6.5fps, the megapixel count is increased and the sensor now has Dual Pixel AF, while the image processor is two generations newer. NFC and Bluetooth are added to Wi-Fiand GPS, and the rear…

When you’re trying to nail the definitive moment in fastmoving sports or wildlife photography, it’s usually best to fire off a rapid burst of shots. The less time that elapses between each shot, the greater your chances of success. High frame rates are therefore the order of the day, and the 1D X Mk II wins out with a staggering 14fps (frames per second) drive rate, rising to 16fps in Live View mode. What’s more, the memory buffer is large enough to accommodate unlimited shooting in JPEG mode, and up to 170 shots in raw quality mode. For an all-action hero in the APS-C format camp, the 7D Mk II stands out with a 10fps drive rate, again with unlimited JPEG capture but this time with a 31-shot limit in…

Battleship build quality ensures that the top-of-theline pro EOS-1D X Mk II can take the knocks of the most arduous professional lifestyle. It’s also a stunningly fast camera, with a blistering continuous drive rate of 14fps, rising to 16fps in Live View mode. Couple this with superb autofocus tracking and metering for even the most erratically moving subjects, and you have the ultimate camera for sports and press photographers. High shooting speed is enabled by dual DIGIC 6+ processors, and by the image sensor being a modest 20.2Mp. That’s lower than in any of the other cameras in the entire group, but isn’t bad news, as discussed at the bottom of the page. There’s no shortage of resolution when it comes to shooting movies because this camera is capable of…

THE NO.1 MAGAZINE FOR CANON USERS! FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… •Wire-shadow portraits •Creative lighting on nudes• The Instagram look •Create collages in Lightroom •How to use Canon's new Macro Twin Lite flash PLUS ALL THIS... •Gear of the Year: A review of all the best kit we tested in 2017 •The Apprentice: Great travel photography in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates •Profile: Landscape photographers Ted Leeming and Morag Paterson ISSUE 135 ON SALE 9 JANUARY * Content subject to change PhotoPlus Canon Skills VIDEO DISC…

APPRENTICE NAME: RUTH PRESSWOOD CAMERA: CANON EOS 750D RUTH is a 38-year-old Accounts Manager for a local company based in Bath. She got her first camera when she was just 10 years old and has been a keen amateur photographer since. She bought her first Canon DSLR, an EOS 450D, after her second child was born in 2009, then in late 2015 she upgraded to a new EOS 750D. Ruth likes taking family portraits, but wanted to learn how to break out of the auto modes and gain more control of her Canon. CANON PRO NAME: JESSE WILD CAMERA: CANON EOS 5D Mk IV JESSE is a professional commercial and portrait photographer. He started as an assistant photographer in London in 1995, and became a professional portrait photographer in 2001,…

NEXT MONTH MIDDLE-EASTERN TRAVELS RUTH’S COMMENT “I really enjoyed my time with Jesse and Charlotte. Before the photoshoot, I’d always been a sucker for sticking with auto modes and my 16-300mm superzoom, so it was great to use only 35mm, 50mm and 85mm prime lenses and learn to control my aperture shooing in Av and Manual mode! I was really happy with this shot of Charlotte and love the contrast between her white coat and hat, and their contrast with the background. It definitely works best in black and white.” JESSE’S VERDICT “Even by half-way through the day when we got this portrait, Ruth had already gained confidence with her camera settings, which meant she could quickly react to grab this close-up shot after Charlotte had walked across the bridge.…

Avoid moisture misfortune DRAMATIC changes in temperature cause condensation, and moisture and electrical circuitry don’t mix. Before racing to edit shots after a shoot, keep your DSLR in its bag for an hour or so when you bring it indoors. You could leave it in a porch for a more gradual temperature change (and grab a hot drink while waiting). 01 CANON DSLR An obvious bit of kit to point out... but in an ideal world it’s best to use a model with weather-proofing and a fast continuous shooting speed. 02 TELEPHOTO LENS Long zoom lenses with a wide maximum aperture are ideal. Teleconverters can be used to increase a lens’s focal length. 03 CLOTHING Cosy, waterproof and rustle-free materials are key here. Layer up your clothing for added warmth,…

WILDLIFE can be elusive at the best of times, but during the colder months when animals are well-camouflaged or simply sheltering from the cold, you’ll need to do plenty of research to make sure you’re in the right place at the right time. It’s important to pinpoint when a species is likely to be in your chosen location – you don’t want to turn up and wander aimlessly with your Canon. A quick internet browse or search through wildlife reserve pages will tell you what you need to know. Why not make a trip of it? Visit national parks or go global for a chance to document varied species and backdrops. Set up a hide POPULAR nature reserves often have dedicated photo hides. While these are great for predictable visitors,…

Photographers are forever playing around with, enhancing, modifying and experimenting with light for different dramatic effects. Here, we’ll show you how to generate vibrant colours from a cheap plastic ornament lit up by a laptop screen. The effect itself is called cross polarization, and our tutorial will guide you step by step through the process, including assembling the equipment. Cross polarization has largely been forgotten about in the digital era. It’s actually a scientific application that finds weaknesses in clear glass and plastic, but it yields rainbow-like results that look great when put to creative use. We recommend going for really tacky Christmas decorations here – the cheaper the plastic, the better! To get started, you’ll need a polarizing filter to screw onto the front of your lens – if…

Video also online http://bit.ly/pp_134_6 THE MISSION Transform a portrait by blending with textures Time needed 30 minutes Skill level Intermediate Kit needed Photoshop CC Photoshop Blend Modes let you create all kinds of wonderful effects, especially when used in combination with images of textures and surfaces. We simply drop the texture on top of an image, so that it sits on a separate layer above, then we experiment with different layer blend modes until we hit upon one that we like. Here are a few of our favourites: Lighten, Screen, Darken, Multiply, Overlay, and Soft Light. From here, if we like we can go on to blend other textures, or use layer masks to control which parts of a texture layer are visible. We can even delve into Photoshop’s 3D…

“When we started researching the impact of light pollution on animals, we discovered that fireflies have lost up to 90% of their habitat and so have retreated to the last remaining dark areas. The Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee has protected fireflies by forbidding the use of street lights. So I went there to grab shots of this firefly sanctuary. “On the outskirts of the park, I found cabins that are inhabited so I grabbed this time lapse shot of one of those cabins. Then I used the StarStaX app to stack the stars above the cabin, but I also wanted to show the fireflies to give you a sense of how many there were.”…

01 KINGFISHER A laid-back picture showing a Kingfisher surrounded by the shady open spaces of Rookery Pond Lens 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 Exposure 1/1000 sec, f/6.3, ISO1600 02 ROOKERY BLUEBELL The upper end of the wood decked with bluebells in Spring Lens Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Exposure 1/13 sec, f/13, ISO400 03 WHITE ADMIRAL A shot showing this fabulous butterfly flying in Rookery Wood Lens 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens Exposure 1/250,000 sec custom flash setup, exposed Velvia film 04 FENCE SPIDER An ultra close-up (m=x4 on the camera) of this spider in Autumn Lens Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Exposure 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO100 PROJECT INFO NAME: Stephen Dalton LOCATION: Sussex MISSION: To show the rich diversity of wildlife in an area of Rookery wood across the seasons and…

A though we photographers can record pictures as Raw files and freely adjust image processing settings such as white balance, sharpness and noise long after we’ve stepped away from the camera, the option to record video in Raw doesn’t exist in the EOS DSLR line. The EOS Movie file options – MOV, MP4 and MJPEG – are equivalent to JPEGs, in that they’re a ‘finished’ format with all the image processing settings compressed into them before they’re saved to a memory card or streamed from the camera’s HDMI port to a screen. Naturally this means that getting the settings right in-camera is important, as it’ll be harder or impossible to make changes later. Picture Style is a good place to start as this can dramatically affect the whole look. The…

The 5D Mark IV records 4K footage using the Motion JPEG (MJPEG) code. As the name suggests, each frame of video is compressed as a separate 4096 x 2160 JPEG, so you can see why 4K eats memory cards for breakfast! One of the benefits of this high-resolution format is that you can extract individual frames from a video and save them as JPEG images. These pictures are recorded in the 17:9 aspect ratio of 4K DCI video, but they have a resolution of around 8.8MP – and when you consider you have 25 or 30 frames per second to sift through, you can pick out the precise moment in a sequence. If you’re planning on taking advantage of this incredible ‘burst rate’, it’s worth setting up your camera with…

Ask Brian! Confused by your Canon DSLR? Email EOSSOS@futurenet.com Macro photography is a challenging activity, particularly the battle with limited depth of field (DoF). How you overcome the DoF problem depends on your subjects. For static subjects, you can use focus stacking to increase the depth of field. But for shooting moving subjects, focus stacking doesn’t work. You need to carefully consider and plan the background, particularly for natural macro subjects. Using available light makes the background the same brightness as your main subject, which might not sufficiently separate them. A small reflector is good to start with – you can use it to redirect light onto your main subject. Using flashgun light brings new challenges. The light needs to be close to the subject, yet not get in the…

01 3 Legged Thing Leox £216/$225 www.3leggedthing.com THIS no-compromise travel tripod can support a whopping 30kg: overkill for most scenarios, but translates to a useful 10kg limit with the legs splayed to 80º for low angle shooting. Five-section legs and a two-section centre column enable a 1.31m max height, yet collapse down to just 350mm. There’s also a detachable monopod feature, and the removable rubber feet can be swapped for optional spikes or claws. 02 Broncolor Siros L £1,280/$2,050 www.broncolor.com NOW for some Christmas lights, though you’ll need a big tree. The Siros L is a wireless studio flash that comes in 400Ws and 800Ws variants. Both are powered by a rechargeable Li-ion power pack, with enough juice for up to 440 full power flashes. There’s integrated Wi-Fifor smartphone control,…

The diminutive EOS M5 compact system camera (CSC) does away with the reflex mirror to enable a remarkably slimline build. Unlike with some rivals, Canon hasn’t downsized the image sensor, instead maintaining the APS-C format of many SLRs. Indeed, the M5 has the same superb 24.3Mp Dual Pixel CMOS image sensor as the 80D, coupled with a latergeneration DIGIC 7 processor. The M5 is the only Canon CSC to sport a viewfinder, fed directly from the image sensor. The high-resolution 2.36Mp OLED display gives a super-sharp view and, unlike with an SLR’s optical viewfinder, gives a live preview of the effects of exposure and white balance settings. The diminutive build makes the M5 ideally suited to travel photography and casual, daily use. Even so, it’s not short on features, and…

As you might expect, the 5DS and 5DS R really make the most of their superior megapixel count, leading the way in our lab tests with the best scores for resolution. However, while this is true at low sensitivity settings, resolution is merely average at ISO 1600 and above. Other high achievers for resolution include the 80D in the APS-C camp, and the full-frame 5D Mk IV and 1D X Mk II cameras. That’s no mean feat for the 1D X Mk II, considering it’s relatively low in megapixel count.…

Originally launched in 2009 and still in production, some doubted that Canon’s ‘professional’ APS-C EOS 7D would ever be updated. The 7D Mk II edition finally came along in 2014, packing a slew of upgrades into a similarly tough magnesium alloy body. Key advancements include a 65-point wide-area autofocus system with ‘intelligent’ tracking in AI Servo mode. Go-faster frills include the most rapid continuous drive rate of any camera on test (bar the mighty 1D X Mk II) at 10fps. This comes complete with sufficient buffer depth for unlimited shooting in JPEG quality mode, until you run out of room on your memory card. Speaking of which, there are dual slots for CompactFlash and SD/ HC/XC cards. DIGIC 6 image processors are also doubled up, to enable the rapid throughput…

It’s a testament to the accuracy and consistency of Canon cameras that, if you take the same shots with each of the different cameras on test, the results look very similar in terms of colour rendition. This remains true in wide-ranging lighting conditions, using the auto white balance setting in each camera. In terms of lab results, the 77D is closest to perfection, closely followed by the 5DS/S R and 1D X Mk II.…

It’s notoriously difficult to find a camera that ticks every line on every wish list of every photographer, but the 5D Mk IV comes closer than perhaps any other camera on the market. Its 30.4Mp image sensor is sufficiently high in resolution to deliver extremely detailed images, while still enabling a reasonably brisk continuous shooting rate of 7fps, and manageable file sizes for uploading, processing and editing. The camera is beautifully built to a fully professional-grade standard but without the increased size and weight of the 1D X Mk II. The incredible 61-point autofocus module makes all 61 points available at f/8 and, to make the most of action shooting, there’s a fast 1/8000 sec shutter speed on hand and sufficient buffer space for unlimited JPEG shooting. Unlike the 5DS,…

More megapixels isn’t always a better option. Cameras like the 5DS and 5DS R generate images with enormous file sizes, so they eat up storage space and Raw files take a long time to process. There’s a bigger concern for low-light interior or night photography. Cramming extra megapixels onto an image sensor means each photosite that corresponds with an individual pixel is physically smaller, with less light-gathering ability. Images taken with high ISO settings are likely to have grainy image noise that’s much more noticeable. The 50.6Mp 5DS and 5DS R have a relatively low maximum sensitivity of just ISO6400. By contrast, the 20.2Mp 1D X Mk II boosts the standard range to a whoppingly impressive IS051,200.…

APERTURE TAKES THE LEAD “LET YOUR aperture take the lead when taking portraits with fast prime lenses,” advises Jesse, “I’d get Ruth to set a wide aperture around f/2 using Aperture priority mode so she can blur the backgrounds. I explained that she needed to expose for the skin tones, and to use exposure compensation if she needs to brighten or darken her shots. I did get Ruth to switch to Manual mode to fix her exposure at times when it was jumping around in Av mode, as both Evaluative and Centre-weighted Average metering modes were struggling as the sun kept coming in and out.” AF POINT SETUP WHEN shooting with such wide apertures, your focus needs to be spot on, otherwise your model’s eyes or face can be out…

01 SILBURY HILL BY PHILIP SELBY COMMENDED – ADULT YOUR VIEW Silbury Hill forms part of a complex of Neolithic monuments near Avebury in Wiltshire and, at 39 metres, is the tallest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe. During the winter months, the rising sun brieflflflflfly illuminates the underside of an old bridge spanning the often-dry upper reaches of the river Kennet, adding a warming splash of colour to the scene on this cold, frosty morning. Lens Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM Exposure 1/4 sec, f/14, ISO100 02 GRAND UNION CANAL BY CHRIS FLETCHER COMMENDED – ADULT YOUR VIEW Early on an autumn morning along the Grand Union Canal in Solihull. There was a low mist and the sun was coming up behind the trees, which gave me some…

Wide aperture TO CREATE a shallow depth of field and make your subject ‘pop’ from a busy background, you’ll need to set a wide aperture number. Although most affordable telephoto lenses have small maximum apertures in the region of f/5.6-6.3, it’s still possible to get soft backgrounds. Shoot from a location where the background is a considerable distance away from the subject and use the longest focal length to compress the background as much as possible. If a Canon EF 400mm f/2.8 telephoto prime lens, for example, is too expensive to buy, consider hiring one out for a specific trip instead. A fast aperture will be a benefit when natural light levels fall at the end of the day. Al Servo autofocus WHEN focusing on flighty animals, it’s best to…

New projects with video guides Follow our Canon DSLR walkthrough guides and Photoshop editing videos 44 Cross-polarisation Embrace the festive season and create a vibrant light show with the help of a few tacky decorations 52 Pro product photos Learn how to shoot high-end product photo on a budget with simple lighting and Photoshop skills 58 Special lighting effects Combine a portrait with a set of space photos in Photoshop Elements for futuristic sci-filighting 48 Blowing bubbles Get creative with depth of field for some colourful shots of bubbles with added bokeh 56 Feed your foodie Take mouth-watering and professional pictures of food with the right lighting and styling tips 60 Creative textures Blend textures and use 3D lights with photos in Photoshop to achieve incredible effects 62 Lomography effects…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http:/bit.ly/pp_134_1 01 POLARIZING FILTER The polarizing filter is key to creating the cross-polarization effect – no surprises there! We screwed a 72mm Hoya Circular Polarizing Filter on to the front of our lens, then rotated it to create the final effect. 02 CLAMP OR COUNTER You might need to use a clip or clamp to hold oddly-shaped plastic objects steady in front of the screen. We didn’t need to do that here, as the bottom of our Christmas tree was flat and stood up on its own. 03 LCD MONITOR A computer or laptop monitor is the perfect background and light source for this project, as it has the polariser built in! Make sure you position the screen directly behind your subject at the same height. 04…

THE MISSION Learn to capture professional shots of tasty treats Time needed 30 minutes Skill level Intermediate Kit needed Compact lens • Edible subject Food photography is one of those genres that’s very easy to get wrong (but easy to get right with some know-how). In this project we went for a subtle festive feel, with mince pies as our subject. But the tips we’re dishing out can be applied to most treats. Use the ideas as food for thought, rather than a set of strict rules to follow. To get started, you’ll need a surface to style on, food of your choice and a few props to hand. We all know that quality lighting is vital on any shoot, but if you pick the wrong type for food, the…

THE MISSION To add a lomo-style effect to your shots Time needed 15 minutes Skill level Easy Kit needed Lightroom 5 or later Thanks to Instagram, Photoshop filters and trendy pop-up camera shops, the Lo-filook has become increasingly popular (again) in recent years. You can achieve this retro film look in one of two ways: either by getting your hands on an old camera, or by manipulating your images in the digital darkroom to mimic a similar effect. In this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to edit your images to recreate the lomo look – think oversaturated colours and heavy vignetting. Although this style is definitely a matter of taste (and not one that will suit everyone), the techniques involved can still be used to sharpen up your Lightroom…

All of Canon’s current DSL Rs feature Full HD 1080p video recording, but their imaging sensors are packed with many more pixels than the 1920 x 1080 pixels needed for Full HD resolution. Take the 5D Mark IV for example, which is capable of capturing still images at a resolution of 6720 x 4480 pixels. Full-frame sensors like the 5D’s make it easier to get a shallow depth of field to give movies a more cinematic look, but that quality would be lost if the sensor was simply cropped to give Full HD resolution. To get around this requires some technical sleight of hand called ‘pixel binning’ often used by camera engineers to enable the full width of the full frame sensor to be used. Pixel binning achieves the lower…

Lens Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM Exposure 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO100 Get critiqued! Email photos to EOSSOS@futurenet.com with the subject ‘Rate My Photo’ Beautiful butterfly CHARLIE HORSEY, CHELTENHAM SAYS… I’ve recently upgraded from a PowerShot camera to the EOS 700D and find the tips I pick up from PhotoPlus helpful. I took the picture of the butterfly whilst hiking on holiday. Since I had the kit lens with me, I couldn’t get too close to the butterfly, so I opted for a wider view, making use of the sun as a backlight for the subject. I used Aperture priority mode on the camera to blur the background. I’ve edited the photo in Photoshop. BRIAN SAYS… I really like the lighting on the butterfly. There’s enough strength in the sun…

SIGMA SPECIFICATIONS FULL-FRAME COMPATIBLE YES EFFECTIVE FOCAL LENGTH (APS-C) 38.4-112MM IMAGE STABILIZER YES MINIMUM FOCUS DISTANCE 0.37M MAX MAGNIFICATION FACTOR 0.21X MANUAL FOCUS OVERRIDE FULL-TIME FOCUS LIMIT SWITCHES NO INTERNAL ZOOM NO INTERNAL FOCUS YES FILTER SIZE 82MM IRIS BLADES 9 WEATHER SEALS YES SUPPLIED ACCESS ORIES HOOD, SOFT CASE DIMENSIONS (DIA X LENGTH) 88X108MM WEIGHT 1,020G PRICE £1,400/$1,300 Canon made strides with the Mk II edition of its flagship 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, launched six years ago. It’s sharper and has a tougher build. However, it’s expensive to buy at around £1,700/$1,900, and lacks image stabilization. By contrast, stabilizers are included in both of the new competing Sigma and Tamron lenses, which also feature excellent build quality and high-grade optics, while undercutting the Canon on price. A standard zoom is…

One of the main complaints people have about Photoshop, apart from the fact you can only get it on a subscription plan, is that it’s too difficult and complicated. Experienced Photoshop users would probably argue with that, but Adobe is nevertheless trying to reassure novice users with a new Learn panel that walks you through some basic image-editing operations. They really are basic, but perfect for someone coming to software like this for the very first time. New ‘rich’ tool tips that appear when you hover the mouse over a tool also help, and some of these feature animated GIFs that demonstrate how the tool works. Improved masks and selections Other new features include improvements to the Select and Mask tool to make selections more accurate and realistic, and an…

Wonderfully versatile, the 80D is properly good at just about everything. It’s a year older than the 77D and has an older DIGIC 6 processor, but still looks and feels bang up to date. The controls, ergonomics and overall handling are much more in keeping with an enthusiast-level camera, complete with bigger, more comfortable grip areas and a smarter layout of direct-access controls for important shooting settings. The 80D has a higher megapixel count than the 7D Mk II, yet matches its standard sensitivity range of ISO100-16,000. It also has the same, fast maximum shutter speed of 1/8000 sec, great for freezing action, albeit with a slower yet respectable 7fps continuous drive rate. The top panel LCD is bigger and shows more detailed settings than in the 77D, and the…

Based on a mighty 50.6Mp image sensor and dual DIGIC 6 processors, the 5DS is designed to be especially rigid, with a particularly smoothaction shutter unit. It’s all in pursuit of delivering spectacular image resolution, with minimal degradation from camera vibrations. The 5DS R version goes further still, cancelling the anti-aliasing effect of the low-pass filter for even greater resolving power. This comes with slightly more risk of moire patterning and false colour. The AF system has 61-points, of which 41 are cross-type and five are dual cross-type for ultimate accuracy. Even so, it’s a shame that the image sensor doesn’t feature Dual Pixel AF, which would have been great for Live View shooting. A hidden cost in upgrading to a 5DS or 5DS R is that you need scarily…

Fitted with a premium quality lens, there’s no beating the 5DS or 5DS R for retaining ultra-fine detail and texture in images. This enables you to create extra-large format prints that maintain spectacular levels of detail, sufficient to withstand scrutiny at very close viewing distances. You can also crop images very severely while, again, preserving exquisite detail for really crisp, sharp-looking smaller format prints, or for on-screen viewing.…

You can tackle any type of photography with a 5D Mk IV and be assured of excellent results. It’s the ultimate all-rounder, but if you can sacrifice full-frame trappings in favour of APS-C, the 80D is much less expensive. For action sports and press professionals, the 1D X Mk II reigns supreme, but the APS-C format 7D Mk II is highly capable, more affordable, and has the advantage of extending your telephoto reach. For landscape, macro and types of photography where capturing fine detail is paramount, the 5DS or 5DS R is the best buy, whereas the 6D Mk II has a wider appeal and offers the best route into full-frame photography on a tighter budget. For travel and everyday shooting where a compact and lightweight build is preferred, the…

Limited back issues of PhotoPlus print editions are available on our MyFavouriteMagazines secure store at http://bit.ly/getphotoplus. But whether you’ve got an iPad, Android, Kindle or Nook tablet, or iPhone or Android smartphone, you can download PhotoPlus back issues from the following digital edition options: • Got an Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch? Get the free PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine app in the App Store or at bit.ly/photoplus_app then browse through our back issues or subscribe through the app. • Kindle Fire or Nook HD? Simply search for PhotoPlus on Amazon’s Newsstand or in B&N’s Nook store. • Android/Google Play? Go to bit.ly/photoplus_googleplay to subscribe to PhotoPlus on your Android device. • Windows or Mac? Use Zinio to read PhotoPlus on your laptop or desktop computer! Go to bit.ly/zinio_photoplus where…

To search for past tests and articles, download our PhotoPlus index which dates all the way back to issue no.1. Get it at downloads. photoplusmag.com/photoplusindex.xls What a twit-ta-woo! I loved the astrophotography Apprentice article in issue 133, and my two favourite subjects to shoot at night are wildlife and starry skies, so here is a photo combining both – a barn owl on a tree branch on a moonlit starry night. I was hoping to get some shots of the aurora; however, I was more than pleased to catch the owl. The moon was about 3/4 full, low in the sky, and perfectly lighting the bird. On the down side, the only lens I had with me was my Tamron 15-30mm on a Canon 6D – not ideal for getting…