Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2019 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

Our Apprentice this issue learns to take great shots of castles from morning to sunset Page 8 Sometimes when photographing landscapes you’ll wish you had a focal point to anchor your shot. This is why I love shooting castles as they can instantly lift your landscape compositions and add an extra element to draw people’s eyes into your image. This month inside PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine, Canon pro Drew Buckley takes our Apprentice around some great castles in south Wales, showing them how to capture different viewpoints and push his Canon kit, and filters, to their limits! Learn more from page 8. This issue we also look at how to improve your outdoor photography, from landscapes to city shots, showing you how to capture the best exposures with your Canon…

RONNIE COMMENT There was really only one location at Caerphilly where I could take a picture of the castle and have the sunset in the same frame. I’d eyed up this location earlier in the day – it was one of the walkways that takes you into the inner castle grounds. I took this picture just after the sun dipped below the horizon which created a wonderful colour palette in the sky. Throughout the day I realized my filters have been holding me back, so I’m going to invest in a good set filters like the Lee set Drew kindly let me use – just don’t tell my wife about my next purchase! DREW’S VERDICT Ronnie had a positive attitude and was willing to try new things throughout the day.…

If the thought of using multiple images or layers to merge scares you, don’t worry: there are other more simple solutions to enhancing your images to reveal a far greater tonal range. It’s all down to using the Shadows and Highlights sliders in editing software, which offer quick fixes to any images when there’s high-contrast areas. The best thing about these techniques is, handled correctly, they can make photos instantly look great, without looking unreal like some OTT HDRs. Again we’ll show you two options, one using the Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom editor, and one using the main workspace available in Photoshop Elements and Photoshop (and other editing software). SHADOWS & HIGHLIGHTS 1 Boosting cityscapes This epic cityscape shot was taken at a typical amateur hour – during the middle of…

Castelluccio, Monti Sibillini National Park, Umbria, Italy. 17:09pm. 18 May 2008 Friends who lived nearby until the quake destroyed their home told of the huge gash which now scars Monte Vettore Lens Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Exposure 1/40 sec, f/8, ISO100 The village in this picture doesn’t exist anymore, or not at least as we see it here. It’s just a pile of rubble now, like so many in this region we know so well. In October 2016 a series of major earthquakes struck here where Umbria and the Marche adjoin high in the Apennine mountains, and Castelluccio was, near enough, at the epicentre. Friends who lived nearby until the quake destroyed their home told of the huge gash which now scars Monte Vettore, the flank of which…

Sharpness is one of the first things we check for when examining a photo, whether it’s one that you’ve taken or when pixel-peeping online. And it’s really no surprise with the advent of high resolution cameras like Canon’s 50.6Mp 5DS and 5DS R DSLRs. Any slip of focus or camera-shake can become evident in your shots. But this month I’m here to tell you that sharpness isn’t the be all end all. Of course a slight amount of camera-shake can be frustrating if you’re trying to get a perfectly pin-sharp picture. But intentionally injecting a little motion blur with the right vision can give you a dramatic boost that is much more effective at grabbing the viewer’s eye than a static, perfectly sharp photo. Over the course of this project…

There’s an entire miniature world out there just waiting to be captured – zooming in reveals tiny details that are easily overlooked under normal circumstances. All you need to get a similar shot to the one above at home is some water, a glass container, a splash of cooking oil and a colourful sheet of paper you can use as a handy backdrop. Because oil isn’t soluble in water it floats to the top and, as it reflects light differently to water, it creates fantastical patterns you see here. This technique isn’t an exact science so you’ll never take two identical pictures, but part of the appeal is not knowing what you’re going to get. It’s great fun to play with different amounts of oil or change the background colours.…

01 OPEN YOUR PICTURES Go into Photoshop Elements and head to Open, then find the landscape with a dull sky that you want to replace and open it. Next, you want to go to File>Open and load up one of the skies in your sky library folder, on your disc or download (see bottom left of page 60). 02 COPY AND PASTE THE SKY IN With the sky open in Elements, hit Ctrl/Cmd+A to select it, then Ctrl/Cmd+C to copy it and Ctrl/Cmd+W to close it down. Now back in the landscape shot hit Ctrl/Cmd+V to paste it in. The sky picture will now most likely need to be resized… 03 RESIZE THE SKY Hit Ctrl/Cmd+T to put the sky layer into Free Transform mode, then hold shift and drag…

One of the hardest things to comprehend about the war in Iraq and Syria is the use of civilian ‘human shields’ by ISIS fighters to protect themselves as they move from one position to the next. In this photograph, taken in July 2017, Iraqi special forces care for an unidentified young boy who was carried out of the last ISIS controlled area of Mosul’s old city by a man suspected of being a militant. Ivor explains: “The soldiers believed the man had used the boy as a human shield in order to try and escape as he did not know the child’s name and claimed that he had just found him walking alone in the street. One of the soldiers agreed to adopt the young boy, given that they knew…

01 THE SOUP STALL A chef measures out noodles at his sprawling food stall in Bangkok Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM Exposure 1/320 sec, f/4, ISO2500 02 CONTRASTING BUDDHA The black buddha stands out in a line of shimmering gold statues Lens Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8L USM Exposure 1/100 sec, f/2.8, ISO100 03 THREADING THE NEEDLE A motorist precariously makes his way through narrow market stalls Lens Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8L USM Exposure 1/250 sec, f/2.8, ISO400 04 ANOTHER WORLD A rua hang yao glides across the Andaman Bay just off Phuket Lens Canon EF 28-70mm f/2.8L USM Exposure 1/500 sec, f/16, ISO400 Thon Buri was par for the course as me and my family explored Bangkok on a two week trip around Thailand. Our trip just happened…

01 PLACE A CONTROL POINT Download curves_start.CR2 file (link above). Go to View>Edit image window. Click on the Tone Curve tab, and click to place a control point on the middle of the curve (input level 128 for both the X and Y boxes). You can also type in the values. 02 BRIGHTEN IT UP As you drag the control point upwards you give the midtones a brighter output level. The underlying histogram graph will slide towards the right to show the presence of more highlights. Drag so that X is 104 and Y is a brighter 195. 03 REDUCE SHADOW CLIPPING Place another control point near the bottom left of the curve to tweak the shadows. Drag it so that X is 30 and Y is 85. This remaps…

The flash output is normally set automatically to provide a balanced exposure between the subject and the background. But, as with normal metering, it can be fooled into pumping out too much light when faced with a dark subject, and not enough light when the subject is very pale. You may also prefer a more subtle or in-your-face result, in this case you can dial in some flash exposure comp. You can do this in the camera menu and the Quick Control Screen; some cameras have a dedicated flash exposure comp button – press this and turn the Quick Control Dial. If you’re using an external Speedlite, then you can also set the comp – up to +/- 3 stops in ⅓ increments – on the flashgun. Unlike some camera…

A MORE useful alternative, perhaps, to having to keep the shutter release half-pressed when using FTM, is to override the factory setup for the controls and assign the autofocus and metering/shutter release functions to different buttons. You can do this in the Custom Functions menu. On the 1300D, you can have the shutter release button lock the exposure when pressed halfway, while the autofocus is activated by pressing the ‘*’ button on the back of the camera. The ‘back button focusing’ technique can be tough, but is well worth practicing. Magnifying the Live View display at a selected AF point makes manual focusing easy, but it’s not always convenient. It can be harder to discern what is and isn’t in focus using the standard focusing screen of a DSLR viewfinder,…

Is it possible for spot metering be linked to the AF point? Keith Thompson, Plymouth BRIAN SAYS… When spot metering is used, EOS cameras don’t automatically lock the exposure when the focus locks. In fact only evaluative metering locks the exposure when the focus locks in One-Shot AF. You’ll need to use the camera’s exposure lock button, the one with a * icon on it. Some cameras, including the EOS 6D Mark II, EOS R and EOS RP have a custom function that changes this behaviour, and you can choose which method automatically locks the exposure with the focus. You could also consider using exposure lock with hold, if your camera has it. This would let you lock exposure from your subject initially then recompose and take photos all with…

Most of us like to travel light. Any outing is likely to be more pleasurable without a cumbersome tripod in tow. Indeed, conventional tripods tend to be big, heavy and unwieldy, so we often leave them at home, making them completely useless. By contrast, travel tripods are made to be compact and lightweight. However, they have a reputation for being flimsy, relatively unstable and too small to enable a comfortable operating height for heavier setups. The new breed of travel tripods aim to give you the best of both worlds. The vast majority have legs that swing upwards for stowage, so that the head is encircled by the feet. This reduces the folded height by around 8cm to 10cm. Some models also include as many as five sections in each…

A decade ago, the Giotto’s company launched a series of Vitruvian tripods, named after Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing, The Vitruvian Man. As in the drawing, the legs swing upwards but, in the case of the Giotto’s tripods they swung up, adopting a vertically upright orientation. The trick was, by fully extending the centre column before swinging the legs up, the tripod head no longer extended beyond the length of the legs, making the carrying size smaller. Another trick of Vitruvian tripods was that you could unscrew one of the tripod legs, detach the centre column, and join the two to use as a monopod, complete with ball head. Both facets of the design have been adopted in the majority of current travel tripods.…

All of the tripod kits on test come with ball heads, so the quality of the head is an important buying consideration. Smaller, more lightweight tripods tend to have a lower max load rating. For example, it’s 4kg for the Benro Slim Travel and Vanguard VEO 2 GO, and 5kg for the SIRUI T-005. All of these have small ball heads but still perform well with the payload they’re designed for. The Benro head lacks an independent panning lock, which is featured in the Sirui and Vanguard heads. The other kits with 8-10kg load ratings have chunkier, more heavy-duty heads. All feature independent panning locks and, apart from the heads supplied with the Kenro Ultimate Travel and Manfrotto Element Traveller Big kits, these larger ball heads have adjustable friction dampers.…

CANON PRO NAME: DREW BUCKLEY CAMERA: CANON EOS 5D Mk IV Drew is a professional photographer based in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Making a living from photography, Drew happily turns his hand to all sorts of genres with landscapes, wildlife and weddings to name but a few. He runs workshops throughout the year and been published in a wide range of publications. Drew wrote and took the images for his book titled Photographing South Wales, so he knows a thing or two about the locations we had lined up! www.drewbuckleyphotography.com APPRENTICE NAME: RONNIE RUSSELL CAMERA: CANON EOS 7D Mk II Ronnie is 58-years old, lives in Ireland and has been a keen photographer for the last eight years. In recent years he’s got into food photography, landing assignments and shoots for local…

First you should bracket your exposures to capture three images with a mixture of shadow and highlight tones. For this we’ve used a tripod, plus Live View to aid composition, and Auto Exposure Bracketing (use AEB in your camera’s menu). We generally set ours to +2-stops and -2-stops to get a good range. For these scenic shots, use a wide-angle lens and an aperture of around f/11, or f/16, for good depth of field so your whole scene is sharp from your feet to the far distance. You can use Av or Manual mode, whichever you prefer. HDR Merge software With your three bracketed Raw images, make any initial edits without changing the Exposure values. Then with your JPEGs you can use software like Photoshop’s Merge to HDR Pro or…

In this technique, we’ll show you how to do some clever Raw image editing by using double digital graduated filters in Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom – all by simply enhancing a single Raw image! In this example, we’ve opted to use a sunset photograph. To get the best out of digital grads, ideally you’ll want landscape images that have straight horizons. Take one Raw standard exposure, making sure you capture some detail in the highlights in the sky, and shadows on the land. It’s important to use a tripod and a narrow aperture for good depth of field, also use a low ISO of 100 for the best quality when it comes to processing and pushing your Raw image’s tones to their limits. Edit in the essentials We’re working…

01 COPY IN THE PORTRAIT Open the supplied images into Affinity. Go to the portrait and hit Cmd/Ctrl+C to copy, then go to the frame and hit Cmd/Ctrl+V to paste. Next, go to the Layers panel and rename the layers as ‘face’ and ‘frame’. Drag the ‘face’ layer to the bottom. 02 CONVERT TO MONO Highlight the bottom layer, then click the circular Create Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Black and White. Click ‘Picker’ in the settings and drag left or right over parts of the image to control the luminosity. 03 ADD A WET TEXTURE Copy-and-paste wet_plate_2 in. Next, go to the Layers panel, click the blending mode drop-down menu at the top and choose Overlay. Lower the layer opacity to 60%.…

01 SERENITY The moment Paul finally felt content after years of recovery Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM Exposure 1/200 sec, f/4.5, ISO100 I have dealt with addiction and depression for many years and my wife has dealt with bipolar and anxiety for many too. We’ve helped each other over our nine years of marriage and photography has played a big role in that, giving me a way to fully express how I feel. I turned to photography as my therapy, deciding to take part in the 52 week challenge, where you take a new creative photo every week. I started a blog online and posted images to document my mental health. The image The Voice Within is about the voice that I hear due to my condition, and…

I love the fact that most commissions start with, ‘I don’t know if you can photograph this but…’ Professional photographers reveal their top six tools of the trade they couldn’t shoot without My past careers in geology, engineering and academic research were driven by a fascination in how things work, so as a pro photographer I was always going to lean to the more technical side. My first camera was the Canon EOS-1Ds and its larger sensor just made it easier to shoot wide with lenses like the Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM. A love of large prints and my testing work with printer manufacturers pushed me to my current 50Mp Canon EOS 5DS body. The wider you shoot, the more you’ll get in the image, but the trade-off…

If the colours don’t look right in an image, you can probably point the finger at the white balance setting. Canon’s Auto White Balance does a decent job in the majority of situations, but it can struggle under some types of artificial lighting and when there’s a single, strong colour in frame. If you set the Picture Quality to Raw, however, then you’ll be able to tweak the white balance – or opt for a different setting – when you process your photographs. That being said, there are some situations where it pays to override the auto setting in-camera. When you shoot JPEG, for instance, then the white balance is ‘baked’ into the image when it’s taken. You can alter the colours later in editing software, but as you’ll be…

£99/$119 A previous winner of our travel tripod tests, the Benro GoPlus Travel FGP18A is one of our favourites. This new model in the iFoto ‘FIF’ range has the same maximum load capacity of 8kg and, while it doesn’t reach such a lofty height or feature a pivoting centre column, it’s lighter, folds down to little more than two-thirds of the height, and is half the price. Like some of the other latest travel tripods, the new Benro has five-section legs and a two-section extending centre column, both of which enable a small folded height. In this case, it’s just 35cm, although that’s still 3cm longer than the Benro Slim Travel and Sirui tripods on test. The flip side is the iFoto has a greater maximum operating height of 148cm…

Up-market tripods are usually made from carbon fibre instead of aluminium. They have a more luxurious feel, a smarter looking finish, and can be slightly more resistant to vibrations. Carbon fibre can also feel less cold to the touch but, then again, most tripods of either material tend to feature comfort padding on at least one leg. The main advantage of carbon fibre is that it’s more lightweight than aluminium, giving it a clear advantage for ‘travel tripods’. But that’s not the whole story. Although the weightsaving can be substantial in full-sized tripods, it’s much less noticeable in small travel tripods. For most kits available in both aluminium and carbon fibre options, the latter only usually saves around 200g in weight, little more than 10 per cent. Considering the carbon…

All of the tripods on test have legs that can be locked at multiple angles to the centre column. In most cases, three lockable angles are on offer, although the Benro Slim Travel only has two. It’s good to have the option of using alternative leg angles when shooting on uneven terrain, or when there are obstacles in the way. For example, you might need to use one or two legs in a nearhorizontal orientation and place the feet on a wall or table to get into your desired shooting position. Also, by splaying the legs to a wider angle when shooting at low heights, you can increase stability and reduce the risk of the tripod toppling over. Using wider leg angles also gives you a lower min shooting height,…

The Benro GoPlus Travel FGP18A is a top performer with the usual attractions, plus the addition of a pivoting centre column. Unlike the system featured in the Kenro Ultimate Travel, its design lets you lock the centre column at a large number of angles through a full 180-degree arc, rather than just at regular upright and horizontal boom positions. A pivoting centre column can be helpful for extreme close-ups with macro lenses, and for shooting with ultra-wide or fisheye lenses. However, the Benro and Kenro tripods weigh in at around 2kg and, given the more lightweight nature of most travel tripods, there’s a greater risk of them toppling over when using the centre column as a horizontal boom.…

Fairly small and light, but with a notable load rating, excellent rigidity and superb versatility, Benro’s new iFoto is a perfect compromise between compactness and usefulness. It’s a great performer and undercuts most competitors for price. The Manfrotto Element Traveller Big is another solid performer and similarly inexpensive, although it doesn’t fold down as small. Manfrotto’s Befree 2N1 is poorer value at twice the price in the UK. The Kenro is an attractive proposition, if you want a pivoting centre column, but is larger and more weighty. The Novo has a similar size but is lighter, thanks to its carbon fibre rather than aluminium, and it’s top value for a sturdy carbon tripod. For a really down-sized travel tripod, the Vanguard takes top honours for performance and handling. Like the…

Choosing lenses Key factors to watch out for THE MAIN factors to consider in a lens are its focal length, maximum aperture, and whether or not it’s full-frame compatible. We’ve categorized lenses by focal length range – from wide-angle to telephoto. The larger a lens’s maximum aperture, the ‘faster’ it’s considered to be – allowing you to control depth of field more, and offering better options in low light. Zooms are more flexible than primes, but tend not to have such fast maximum apertures. Full-frame lenses will also work with ‘crop-sensor’ EOS DSLRs, but crop-sensor lenses aren’t compatible with full-frame cameras. WIDE-ANGLE ZOOMS TELEPHOTO ZOOMS STANDARD ZOOMS SUPERZOOMS WIDE-ANGLE PRIMES STANDARD PRIMES TELEPHOTO PRIMES MACRO Contacts Canon www.canon.co.uk Peleng www.digitaltoyshop.co.uk Samyang www.samyang-lens.co.uk Schneider www.linhofstudio.com Sigma www.sigma-imaging-uk.com Tamron www.tamron.co.uk Tokina www.tokinalens.com…

HOT SHOT#1 RONNIE’S COMMENT For our first shot Drew and I picked this part of the dilapidated Coity castle to use as the focal point – it looked like it was erupting up and out of the ground! I use a narrow aperture of f/16 and the yellow buttercups worked well as a good dose of colour in the foreground. But the bright sky was a bit problematic, so we used graduated ND filters to get a consistent exposure across the frame and stop the sky from blowing out. Lens Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS US M Exposure 1/25 sec, f/16, ISO100 SWITCH OFF ‘IS ’ WHEN USING YOUR CAMERA ON A TRIPOD CANON’S lens-based Image Stabilization is great for allowing you to get sharp shots at shutter speeds slower…

01 NIGHTDRESS WITH TRANSPARENCIES BY RUBEN PEREZ NOVO 1ST ADULT WILDLIFE This technically excellent image, taken by Ruben, perfectly captures the transparency of the butterfly’s wings against the sparkled bokeh backdrop. The lighting approach is unique for wildlife photography while also showing expertise and skill, making for a wonderfully surreal perspective of the insect. Lens Canon EF-M 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM Exposure 1/160 sec, f/3.5, ISO125 02 ONCE UPON A TIME BY ERIKA VALKOVICOVA 1ST ADULT WILD LANDSCAPE “The nights are magical during the midnight sun season, when the floating icebergs are painted in soft shades of pink, orange and yellow,” says Erika, who captured this on her Canon EOS 5DS R from a boat in Ilulissat Icefjord, Greenland. The low sun has injected a warm colour cast onto this…

For this shot taken at 2am, the stars were at their brightest, but there was no way we could capture the near-pitch black foreground cliff, or use torchlight to paint the faraway sea stacks! So we needed to take two exposures. For the land we reduced our ISO to 1600, for quality, and opened the shutter for a full five minutes. It’s amazing what such a long exposure can reveal in the darkness. Then for the starry sky shot we shot at ISO4000 and took a 30 secs exposure – any longer and the stars would become blurred. 300 SECS, f/2.8, ISO1600 30 SECS, f/2.8, ISO4000 Exposure blending in Photoshop Open your two Raw images in Photoshop or Lightroom and make basic adjustments, keeping the white balance the same. Mask…

Seen in close-up, the world reveals all kinds of hitherto unnoticed details, colours and textures. We can use an array of tricks to enhance these close-up details. We’ll explore a few options for doing so in this project. To start off, we’ll experiment with different focal length macro lenses. A typical focal length for macro lenses is around 100mm, but you can also find more unusual lenses like the 15mm wide-angle macro used for the snail photo seen above. It’s a crazy lens that’s a real challenge to use, but offers a captivating perspective for close-up photos. As well as altering our perspective, we can also experiment with lighting. On a bright sunny day, like the one we were fortunate enough to have, there’s plenty of light to play with,…

01 ZOOM LENSES While a wide-angle lens, such as the EF 16-35mm f/2.8, is great for big scenes, I used the EF 24-105mm f/4 mid-range lens as it’s ideal for zooming in on the most colourful parts of the sunset, such as the sky and end of the pier for our final shot. 02 TRIPOD FOR SHARP SHOTS Always take your tripod with you so you can use slower shutter speeds and compose more accurately when using Live View. Also use your camera’s spirit level in Live View to ensure the camera is perfectly level to avoid wonky horizons. 03 MANUAL MODE Use Manual exposure mode to set your aperture and shutter speed. On a fullframe camera I usually shoot around f/16, but on crop-sensor Canons, like a 7D Mk…

TURN ON the Panning scene mode by turning the Mode dial to its SCN (Scene) position. Not all Canon cameras have this feature but if yours does, like the 6D Mark II, you’ll be able to go into the Quick Menu and set the Scene Mode to Panning. NOW YOU can fine-tune the settings, changing the effect to low, medium or high to tweak how much movement is in your image. You also have the ability to adjust the brightness of the shot, the drive mode and the AF point selection. SETUP 1 GO ABSTRACT WITH YOUR LANDSCAPES Intentional camera movement (ICM) is a great way to achieve a shot full of colour and motion. The technique involves panning the camera from side-to-side using the horizontal control on your tripod…

01 USE SELECT SUBJECT Go to Select>Select Subject. If it needs tweaking, grab the Quick Selection tool from the toolbar and either paint to select missing areas, or hold Alt and paint to subtract parts of the initial selection. The tool will seek out and snap onto edges as you paint. 02 ENTER SELECT AND MASK Once you have a decent selection, you can go to Select>Select and Mask to improve it. Go to the View dropdown on the right and choose the view that offers the most contrast from the original backdrop. Here the ‘On Black’ view clearly shows us the nasty edges. 03 INCREASE THE RADIUS This will better the selection along hard edges, like the body, but not the hair. Get the Refine Radius tool from the…

01 CAR BOMB AFTERMATH Soldiers of the Iraqi special forces survey the aftermath of an ISIS suicide car bomb that reached their lines in one of the last areas to be liberated in east Mosul Lens Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM Exposure 1/160 sec, f/11, ISO400 IRISH-BORN photojournalist, Ivor Prickett, is settling back into his New York apartment, having just flown back from Syria where he was covering the war against ISIS for the New York Times. On his latest foray to the war-ravaged country, Ivor documented the supposed last stand by ISIS in their battered desert enclave of Deir ez-Zor. Just over two weeks earlier, American forces declared the battle a success and the war against the extreme Islamic state to be over, their caliphate defeated. But with…

In this edition of Digital SLR Essentials we explain all you need to know about making your camera a little less auto A Canon camera is a complicated device, stacked with auto features designed to make life easier, but it doesn’t always get things right… Thankfully, there are numerous ways to override those pesky auto features. Exposure compensation is perhaps the most familiar way to take back control. Available in three of the Creative Zone modes – Aperture Priority (Av), Shutter Priority (Tv) and Program (P) – this allows you to make an image up to five stops brighter, or darker, in ⅓ stop increments. The way you make adjustments varies across cameras: you can spin the Quick Control Dial on some EOS bodies, while others require you to press…

Canon’s autofocus system is certainly fast when there’s plenty of light available, but there will be times when you may need to override the autofocus system and touch up the focus manually by hand (and eye). For example, if your photo has a detailed background or foreground, or the subject is small in the frame, then the camera may focus on the wrong part of the scene. When the camera is close to a subject, or you’re using a large aperture, the depth of field (the front-to-back sharpness) will be so narrow that even a subtle autofocusing error will be obvious when the photograph is enlarged. You won’t find a manual focus button on the body of an EOS DSLR, nor a setting in its menu. Instead, you need to…

THE LOCK button can help you avoid inadvertently overriding the camera’s settings. Positioned near the Quick Control Dial on those cameras that have one, this switch allows you to deactivate the dial’s function – it will still rotate, but it won’t alter any setting. This can be useful for preventing any accidental exposure compensation adjustment when you’re carrying the camera on your shoulder. You can also customize the Multi-function feature, allowing you to deactivate other functions such as the Main Dial and the touchscreen, if your camera has one. The camera will warn you that the lock is active when you try to use that function. Take control Customize the LOCK button By dipping into the yellow Set-up menu on your DSLR…

01 3 Legged Thing Docz2 Mini tripod and monopod stabilizer in one! £50/$TBA www.3leggedthing.com THE ORIGINAL Docz was a foot designed to add extra stability to a monopod. The new Docz2 has been made more versatile as it can also double as a mini tripod. The secret has been to swap the 3/8in-16 mounting point for a 1/4in-20 thread that can screw into a Canon’s tripod mounting point. An included 3/8in-16 adapter retains compatibility with existing monopods, while the 1/4in-20 mount now allows the monopod leg from 3 Legged’s Leo, Punks Brian, and Corey tripods to be fitted. 02 Canon RF-mount 400mm, 500mm and 600mm lenses New super-tele RF-mount lenses coming £TBA/$TBA www.canon.co.uk ACCORDING to leaked patents, Canon is working on three super telephoto lenses for its R-system, headlined by…

FEATURES 01 The fixed petal shaped hood precludes the use of filters without a specialist adaptor. 02 The overall physical length of the lens remains fixed throughout the zoom range. 03 At shorter zoom settings, the front optical element nears the forward end of the hood. 04 Autofocus is neither as quick, nor as quiet as in competing lenses with ring-type ultrasonic drive. 05 Tokina’s usual push-pull focus ring enables switching between autofocus and manual focus. 06 There’s a focus distance scale positioned beneath a viewing panel. 07 A rubber weatherseal gasket is featured on the mounting plate. Tokina has focused most of its attention on wideangle lenses over the years, earning a good reputation in this sector of the market. Surprisingly, the first lens in the new series of…

We measure the maximum operating height of each tripod and its folded height for carrying. We also measure the combined weight of each set of tripod legs and head, using electronic scales, and measure the diameter of all leg sections, from the widest to the thinnest, using electronic digital callipers. We check the ease of use, smoothness and precision of all available adjustments in each set of tripod legs and heads. This ranges from adjusting leg sections and pivot facilities (where available), to the locking mechanism of the ball head, as well as independent pan and friction damping adjustments, where fitted. To check overall stability, we shoot with a wide range of DSLR camera bodies fitted with wide-angle, standard, telephoto and macro lenses. We look for good resistance to flexing…

A time-honoured tradition for carrying a tripod is to strap it to the outside of your photo bag. It’s a neat solution but can be awkward if the tripod catches on obstacles when you’re in confined spaces, and you might fall foul of carry-on restrictions when flying. Some of the latest designs are so small that you can fit them inside a bag, neatly solving the problem. When folded, the outright shortest tripods in this test group are the Benro Slim Travel and Sirui T-005, which measure a mere 32cm. The Vanguard VEO 2 GO is only a single centimetre larger and the Benro iFoto 19AIB0 comes in at 35cm. The largest tripods in the group are the Kenro Ultimate Travel and Novo Explora T5, at 48cm and 47cm respectively.…

Multi-angle legs help reduce the min shooting height, but the limiting factor is where the centre column touches the ground. So, the min height is the height of the centre column, plus the ball head. A two-section extending centre column can reduce the min operating height. Better yet, the Kenro Ultimate Travel, Novo Explora T5 and Vanguard VEO 2 GO kits are supplied with a short, stubby ‘low angle adaptor’. You can attach this to the tripod head and use it instead of the centre. You can remove the centre column in the SIRUI tripod and attach the head to the spider. For lower shooting, invert the centre column in all of the tripods, apart from the SIRUI, and shoot between two of the legs with the camera upside down.…