Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

HOLIDAYS OF A LIFETIME Learn to have a brilliant holiday and capture great travel photos with our big Canon skills guide this issue. Canon cameras are like buses. You wait ages for one to turn up, then two arrive at once. But the two new EOS cameras to launch this month have been worth the wait. The new Canon EOS 90D is an all-new APS-C DSLR aimed at enthusiasts who need a fast machine to capture sports and wildlife. With headline specs including a new 32.5Mp sensor, 10fps, 45 AF points and DIGIC 8 processing power, plus uncropped 4K video, it’s a big step up from the old 80D. This isn’t speculation – I can confirm the new 90D is a powerful upgrade after testing it at an exclusive Canon…

LOFOTEN in Norway is full of iconic views, but this one took me by surprise. I waded into the freezing fjord to capture a mirror image of the mountain. I’VE photographed Rutland Water in every season and under every lighting condition, but this sunset was one of the most special I’ve ever witnessed. SENJA is overlooked in favour of Lofoten, but Norway’s second biggest island has its perks. This shoot provided perfect golden leaves and skies.…

01 MANGART ROAD BY SANDI BERTONCELJ Sandi has captured this amazing image on the Mangart Road in Slovenia, getting a high perspective down onto the road and waiting for a biker to ride into the exact position of the frame he wanted before taking the picture. He shot in the golden hour for elongated shadows and bags of drama. The striking composition and beautiful warm golden tones make it our winner this month! Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM Exposure 1/250 sec, f/4, ISO100 This month’s Inspirations features our ‘Road Trip’ Photocrowd competition. Our favourite image wins a Manfrotto Pro Light RedBee-310 backpack (worth £160), and a selection from our top ten choices get published. The theme for the next competition is ‘Sports Day’, enter and vote at www.photocrowd.com…

Back before breakfast You may be on holiday, but getting up and out soon after first light is the best way of getting great travel pictures – and still enjoying a family holiday. Just sneak out before everyone wakes up for a quick photo excursion! An early start means better light without harsh shadows, and without the kids or your partner hassling you to hurry up! Simply time your jaunt so that you are back to have breakfast with your companions, then catch up on sleep by the pool later. Beat the crowds The most photogenic places in the world are frequently those that attract the most tourists. Getting an early start pays dividends, as you can get to historic sites and landmarks before the coaches arrive, so you’ll get…

Go HDR for better tones When faced with high-contrast scenes on your travels, very bright highlights and dark shadows, your camera won’t be able to capture the whole gamut of tones in a single exposure. Rather than decide what detail will be lost to blown highlights or blacked-out shadows, take an HDR sequence that covers the entire tonal range in a succession of shots. This can be done quickly and easily using your camera’s Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) feature; in most cases, setting it to a three-exposure bracket of-2-stops, level and +2-stops will give enough coverage to get all the variation you need. You can shoot handheld if you don’t have a tripod, as HDR software will automatically align the frames when you process the files. Shoot into the light…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_157_1 01 FILL THE BALLOONS Our balloons are a mixture of the normal bomb-like variety and the longer type used to make animal shapes for kids – not strictly speaking meant for water, but fine. We used warm water and a paddling pool beneath the subject to catch the splashes. 02 SET MANUAL EXPOSURE Set your Canon to Manual mode for this project and use a shutter speed long enough to give you time to drop the balloon, 2-3 secs should suffice. Our camera is at 2 secs, f/5.6, ISO100. The long shutter speed means the shot needs to be taken in total darkness. 03 CONTROL THE LIGHTING Two Speedlites are used to light our subject here. The first is placed to the left of the camera…

MANY sound triggers, like the Hahnel Captur Pro sound trigger, not only enables us control the sensitivity of the device to sound – so that it can either fire on detecting a faint noise or a heavier sound – but also lets us add in delay. So we can set it to go off a couple of hundredths of a second after the sound, or whichever moment best captures the splash. Hahnel Captur receivers are attached to both of our Speedlites. These sync wirelessly with the sound trigger. Once the sound trigger is activated we can open the shutter on the camera and drop the balloon. As we’re in darkness when the shot is taken, only the flash registers.…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_157_3 Floating food stacks are very popular in both food photography and restaurant advertising at the moment. This trick shot requires a cunning combo of shooting skills and Photoshop techniques. We begin by setting up a series of precarious wire platforms for each item in our burger to photograph. Then we remove the stack and shoot an empty frame. Next we piece together the frames in Photoshop and remove the wires at the edges of the photograph. However, we are still left with little visible parts of the wire that the food is resting on – ruining the illusion. To fix this, we will need to make use Photoshop’s powerful Patch tool to retouch the wires and finesse the image. It’s easier than it sounds, and there’s…

WHEN IT comes to placing the food, arrange them in such a way that they don’t look too flat against the wires, as this’ll give the game away and just look boring. Look for ways to obscure the wires too by, for example, draping the lettuce over it. IT CAN be tricky to get the wires completely taught, which makes them wobble when the food is placed. To tighten the wires we wedged cardboard into the light stand. We also used cardboard to control the spacing of the different platforms.…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_157_4 If I said landscape photography, you’d probably think of luscious wide-spanning vistas and beautiful panoramic imagery, but this month I’m going to show you how you can break the rules by using a telephoto lens with a big zoom. The 50mm focal length is generally accepted as a ‘standard’ view, as it’s similar to what the human eye can see. Any lens with a focal length number lower than this is therefore considered to be a wide-angle, which is why they are preferred for landscapes as they can fit more of the scene onto the camera’s sensor. Any lenses with a focal length higher than 50mm are generally considered to be telephoto and these can work brilliantly for landscapes too – you just have to think…

01 OPEN YOUR IMAGE AND DUPLICATE IT Bring up Photoshop Elements and go to File>Open then navigate to the image on your hard drive you want to use, or the provided Vintage_start.jpg start file. Now go to Window>Layers to see the Layers panel and hit Ctrl/Cmd+J to duplicate your layer. 02 ADD SOME REALISTIC GRAIN On your duplicated layer we’re going to add some grain to make it look authentically aged. Go to Filter> Noise>Add Noise and then in the panel that appears set the Amount to 15%, the Distribution to Gaussian and make sure Monochromatic is ticked, then hit OK. 03 CREATE A COLOUR FILL LAYER Head back over to the Layers panel, this time clicking the Create new adjustment or fill layer icon and choosing Solid Color from…

Affinity offers many useful tools for retouching. The healing and clone tools are ideal for removing marks and imperfections, while the tonal tools make it easy to boost tones and add impact to the eyes of a subject. Each of these adjustments can be made on separate layers, which gives you the option to tone things down if an enhancement looks overcooked or unnatural – a common pitfall with retouching. One of the best features is the Frequency Separation command, which effectively splits the image in two. The lower layer holds the low frequency detail, which includes tones and colours – in the context of a face, it’s basically the skin tones. By contrast, the upper layer has the high frequency detail, which includes all of the more subtle textures,…

“I have been visiting the dalmatian pelicans at Lake Kerkini, Greece, for the past eight years, documenting them for a book that I’m writing. Two years ago, severe cold weather hit this part of Greece, highly unusual and not seen for a generation. In January 2019, the cold weather hit again, and the lake began to freeze. A juvenile was swimming through the slush, and I saw a beautifully simple image of the pelican creating its own path. I borrowed a Canon EF 100-400mm Mark II from a friend and the zoom aspect was perfect for composing the image, pre-focusing on the pelican, recomposing and taking a single shot. It is a significant image for me. Not only does it show the hardships of a bird that is better suited…

01 OPEN START FILE Open your Raw .CR2 file. Our interior image has a mix of warm tungsten light and cold daylight. The camera’s AWB setting has compromised between cooling tungsten and warming daylight. We can fine-tune the colours manually. 02 CUSTOM WHITE BALANCE Grab the eyedropper tool and click on the orange back wall to cool down the warm tungsten light. This creates more neutral looking colours for the back wall, but the day-lit areas now look too cool and also suffer from a green tint. 03 FINE-TUNE THE SETTINGS Set the White Balance drop-down menu to Color Temperature. Manually set the slider to 3300 K to cool the tungsten light without making the daylight too blue. We’ve reduced the green tint by setting the Magenta (M) slider to-4.…

LONG LENSES can soon become unwieldy with one or more adapters attached. This, along with the loss of light and AF that results from using certain types of add-ons, means it’s often a good idea to fit your rig on a tripod so you can focus manually. An Arca Swiss-style quick release system makes it easy to balance your lens and camera, as, unlike a fixed position quick release system, you can loosen the clamp and slide the lens’s tripod mount plate backwards or forwards. It’s worth using a plate and clamp that have physical ‘stops’ on them, to prevent your kit sliding to the floor if you forget to tighten up the clamp.…

01 Canon EOS M6 Mark II All the tech of the new EOS 90D, but it’s a smaller, cheaper mirrorless camera £869 / $849 (body only) www.canon.co.uk THE EOS M6 Mark II packs the same 32.5Mp APS-C sensor as the EOS 90D (see page 94), and it shares its DIGIC 8 processor. Canon is positioning this as a mirrorless ‘street’ camera and a vlogging tool, and it’s got perfect credentials for both. It has a 3-inch tilting touchscreen, detachable electronic viewfinder and uncropped 4K video capability (on previous Canon consumer cameras, the field of view in 4K video mode has been substantially narrower), so the angle of view of your lenses stays the same when you switch between stills and 4K. Another impressive feature is the rapid 14fps burst shooting…

We set up and use lighting kits with all of their supplied accessories. The build quality and operation of all component parts are checked, along with all of the available features and functions. We test the complete power range of each flash head and LED panel, with a standard reflector fitted, measuring the intensity of output at a distance of one metre, using a Sekonic flash/incident light meter. The results are given in f-stops required for an exposure, using an ISO of 100, which also equates to the Gn (Guide number, metres/ISO100). For flash heads, we also measure the recycling speeds, at all major increments through the power range. TTL flash metering and HSS modes are tested, where available, using the flash kit supplier’s optional remote triggers. All lighting kits…

Just as with a regular flashgun, the stamina of the batterypowered flash heads in this test group depends greatly on the output power you’re using. For example, when driving a single Elinchrom ELB 500 TTL head at its min power setting, the power-pack will last for as many as 28,000 flashes before it needs recharging. Turn up the heat to max output power, and the battery will run flat after about 400 flashes. The Phottix Indra500 TTL can also deliver 400 max-power flashes from a fully charged battery. It’s a more generous 430 flashes for the Honey Badger Unleashed and a more meagre 200 flashes for the Profoto B10 Plus. Naturally, you can buy extra batteries to swap while on location.…

An advantage of studio flash heads is that you can use modifiers like brollies, softboxes and honeycomb grids. Sold as the LM8 100W Monolight in the UK, and the Studio Essentials 100W LED Monolight in the USA, this Interfit constant LED lamp has a similar design to a flash head and comes complete with a standard Bowens S-type mount. You can therefore attach the same range of accessories. The lamp plus a pop-up softbox costs £180/$200. A twin-lamp kit that includes lighting stands as well as softboxes is also available, at £400/$400. With a 500W equivalent output and good 95+ CRI, the lamp has a daylight colour balance and is dimmable with a stepless control.…

THE NO.1 MAGAZINE FOR CANON USERS! FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… How to focus stack landscape images Learn to control depth of field Create a tornado in a glass Photoshop Elements, Adobe CC and Affinity Photo PLUS ALL THIS… The Apprentice: Canon pro Drew Gibson teaches you how to take exciting motorsports shots Super Test: Fast 35mm primes Photo Stories: Formula 1 action The Interview: Portrait shooter of theatre stars, Simon Annand ISSUE 158 ON SALE 15 October…

Letter of the Month The PhotoPlus newsletter (13/8/19) alerted us to a vulnerability in the Picture Transport Protocol (PTP), as implemented by Canon, to transfer pictures from the EOS 80D over its USB cable, or remotely via WiFi to a networked computer. Canon has moved swiftly to verify the faults and produce a firmware update which fixes it for the EOS 80D. So is that it? What about the other 29 models also affected, including the EOS R and my own EOS 5D Mk III? The impact of this vulnerability is large, but its probability of happening is low. However, the current response is just too little, too late. Dave Taskis, Hornchurch Thanks Dave, you can read Canon’s official response at: www.canon.co.uk/support/product-security We also contacted Canon UK, but they could…

CITY BREAKS TO GREAT GETAWAYS In our big Canon skills guide this issue we arm you with all the techniques you need to take great travel photos wherever you go! We’d all be travel photographers if we could, paid to criss-cross the globe and take stunning photographs of exotic locations. For most of us however the reality is we get away once or twice a year, and have to squeeze in our photography while keeping our partner, kids, friends and so on happy. Over the next 10 pages you’ll find plenty of practical tips and real-world advice to help you take great shots on holiday, without spoiling the trip for everybody else, and so you don’t have to sacrifice fun in the hotel pool for an afternoon spent shooting ruined…

Selecting the best aperture for the shot You don’t always need to ensure the entire scene you’re shooting is sharp from front to back for an image to be successful. In fact, the opposite can often be true. By using a wide aperture of f/5.6 (rather than a narrower aperture of f/11) when taking a photo of these flowers, for example, we created a shallow depth of field. This ensured the main sunflower appeared sharp but the background blurred. This helps to maintain focus in the right place – on your subject. Alternatively, for coastal scenes such as the above, we actually wanted to use an aperture f/11 to ensure the whole scene was sharp. Vary your focal length It’s amazing how much difference your choice of focal length makes…

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A water balloon can be a wonderful prop for action portraiture. Inspired by the portraits of photographer Tim Tadder, the exploding balloons look almost like wigs or hats of water when frozen mid-blast. But aside from all the watery fun, this project is also an exercise in lighting. In order to freeze the fast action of the water, we need to go beyond what our shutter speed can achieve, and instead make use of flash duration. Put simply, this is the length of time the burst of flash takes, and with the right lights and settings, we can make it as fast as 1/10,000 sec or more. As long as there’s no other light influencing our exposure, the flash duration effectively becomes our shutter speed, allowing us to freeze the…

DROPPING WATER bombs from above is a great way to create a bursting splash, but it can quite literally be hit-and-miss. We found it helped to have a head torch to check our aim beforehand. Of course, sometimes the balloons don’t burst like this! AS WELL as dropping water bombs from above, we also tried laying longer balloons along the head then popping them with a pin taped to a stick. Once shot, it’s easy enough to remove the pin in Photoshop with the Spot Healing Brush.…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_157_2 ISO is the sensitivity of your Canon DSLR’s sensor to light, and is also the third ingredient in the ‘exposure triangle’, along with shutter speed and aperture. We pick low ISOs when we’re shooting in bright light, and we increase the setting, mostly, the more the light levels drop. If you’re shooting with your camera attached to a tripod, and a slow shutter speed setting is not an issue, then keep the ISO as low as possible – ISO100 for example. Only increase the ISO when you need to adjust your other settings – a classic case is when we need our shutter speed fast enough for shooting handheld, so any movement of our camera and lens in our hands won’t cause a blurred photo. This…

01 HANG THE BACKDROP Begin by setting up, and consider the background – we used a dark blanket so the backdrop would be completely black. Alternatively, you could arrange a scene with more context – perhaps a kitchen worktop or a dinner table would work well. 02 PLACE TWO STANDS Set up two light stands (or any other vertical stands) either side of the table like this, parallel to one another. You might also want to weigh the stands down to prevent them from shifting, or lash them together under the table to lock them in place. 03 CREATE WIRE PLATFORMS Using a roll of thin wire, wrap a piece around the stands to make a thin platform, then cut the wire and continue making more platforms for each ingredient…

01 ON THE WIRE After taking the main shot of the stacked food, we also fired off a few more frames while holding gherkins and onions on another piece of wire. This gives us a bit of extra variation in the heights of the food. These bits are then combined a little later on in Photoshop. 02 AN EMPTY FRAME Once we had taken the food shots, we removed everything and took a frame of just the table and backdrop. This is handy for removing the wires later in Photoshop – we can combine the food shot with the empty scene and use a mask to hide the wires, again, later in Photoshop. 03 DOLLOPS AND SPLASHES Finally, we try out a few frames while squirting mustard and dropping dollops…

01 SET UP ON A TRIPOD Landscapes are one of the few genres in photography where you have the luxury of time. So for any landscape shots it’s best to set up on a tripod to eliminate camera-shake for long exposures, and also make it easier to fine-tune your composition. 02 GET A GOOD FOOTING Some larger telephoto lenses have a tripod mounting collar and foot. This is to help you balance the camera and lens over its central point of gravity, rather than exert stress on the lens mount so attach your lens to the tripod with the foot if it has one. 03 SWITCH OFF IS Image stabilization is handy for reducing camera-shake in telephoto lenses, but when you’re locked off on a tripod these systems have been…

BEFORE AFTER With a few simple Photoshop layering skills you can create all kinds of fantastical composite images like our fairy scene here. This is created using a range of effects and compositing techniques. To begin, we’ll isolate our subject with a selection (kick-started by the useful ‘select subject’ command) and then make a cut-out. This way, we can bring in a set of wings – copied from a bird – and position them behind the body so it looks as if they are attached to her back. This kind of compositing is best done with a combination of selection tools and layer masking. We’ll make use of the powerful Select and Mask command to do both at once. After adding our fairy-like wings, we’ll go to create a pattern…

01 FREQUENCY SEPARATION Open portrait_before and press Cmd/Ctrl+J to duplicate the background layer. Go to Filters> Frequency Separation. In the dialogue box, choose a radius that just blurs the textures in the face and leaves gentle transitions between tones. Click Apply. 02 REMOVE UNEVEN TONES You’ll see two new layers in the Layers panel. Click the tick next to High Frequency to turn it off for now and target Low Frequency. Grab the Healing tool. Alt-click to sample near to a blotchy patch of skin, then paint to remove it. Continue working over the face. 03 SOFT COLOUR TRANSITIONS The Clone tool is ace for tweaking the Low Frequency layer. Grab it from the toolbar then hit 2 for 20% opacity. Again Alt-click to sample a clear part of the…

Ellie’s career began in marketing and advertising, where she worked for several international organizations and ran her own marketing consultancy. In 2007, she began to focus on her passion for wildlife photography, and this led to her becoming a full-time professional in 2016. Her work has been awarded in numerous international competitions, including three consecutive years in the Festival de l’Oiseau, Natures Best and British Wildlife Photography Awards. She is a judge for the RSPCA Young Photographer Awards. Ellie is in her eighth year as a tour leader with Natures Images, one of the UK’s leading wildlife photo tour companies. She is also a co-leader for NatureBG, one of Europe’s most respected herpetologists. www.ellierothnie.com www.natures-images.co.uk Next issue: Simon Annand, one of the UK’s leading portrait photographers…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_157_8 01 COLOUR CAST Our unprocessed Raw start image looks far too cold due to a blue colour cast caused by an inappropriate in-camera white balance preset 02 BASIC PANEL You’ll find the white balance presets and options in the Basic panel. 03 ONE-CLICK PRESETS You can experiment with white balance settings by clicking on the drop-down White Balance menu. The Auto preset is a good place to start. When you choose a white balance preset a little tick appears next to it. 04 IN-CAMERA SETTING The white balance preset that you selected in-camera is indicated by a little camera icon. Here we can see that our photo was captured with a Tungsten preset that’s designed for shooting in warm indoor lighting conditions. Due to this inappropriate…

WHILE THERE is one official mount adapter that allows you to attach EF and EF-S lenses to an EOS M camera, there are four adapters available for the EOS R and RP: a standard one, a version that includes a lens control ring similar to the one on RF lenses, and two options that feature drop-in filter mounts (one is supplied with a variable neutral density filter, the other with a circular polarizing filter). The R bodies have a full-frame sensor, so if you attach an EF-S lens to the adapter then the camera will automatically crop the image to match the smaller picture projected by the lens. There are a number of third-party manufacturers producing mount adapters as well, allowing you to use lenses from other camera systems on…

Extension tubes are a great way to dabble in close-up photography without having to buy a macro lens. These hollow tubes don’t do anything fancy, but simply increase the distance between the back of the lens and the camera’s imaging sensor. This enables the lens to focus closer than it normally can, which increases the magnification of the subject. Extension tubes don’t contain any glass, so the price is relatively low and, more importantly, image quality isn’t affected by these gadgets. Some side effects of using extension tubes are a loss of light and infinity focus – in other words, you won’t be able to focus the lens at a point in the distance. That’s not a major problem when you’re looking to shoot creative close-ups, it just means you’ll…

I like to photograph judo, but cannot get enough ISO to freeze movement when using the EOS 800D’s Sports mode. Can you help?Ryan Freeman, Sittingbourne BRIAN SAYS… The Scene modes do help to get better photos suited to the subject, however there is a limit to the ISO range, ISO6400 for your EOS 800D. The only way to get access to the increased ISO your camera offers, is to choose a creative mode, such as Shutter Priority (Tv). Select Tv mode on the mode dial, then go to the shooting settings menu, and change the ISO auto limit to 25,600. Make sure the camera is set to ISO Auto. You’ll need to select a suitable shutter speed to freeze motion, I suggest 1/250 sec or faster and see how the…

Mostar Bridge DANNY HUDSON, PETERBO ROUGH SAYS… On a recent trip we crossed the border to Bosnia to visit the city of Mostar that was very badly damaged during the war in the early to mid ’90s. The ‘Stari Most’ or ‘Old Bridge’ in the image is hundreds of years old but was destroyed by mortar blasts during the war. It was lucky enough to be rebuilt early this century. To get the shot, I climbed the minaret of a nearby mosque and used my Canon EOS 200D. I used Lightroom to bring out the early evening tones and pull out some detail in the foreground. BRIAN SAYS… A good travel shot, and well done for taking the extra step of climbing the minaret for the different viewpoint. To my…

It’s been pretty quiet on the DSLR front as Canon’s mirrorless cameras have been grabbing the headlines for months, while DSLRs seem to have been heading slowly into the history books. But now we have the new Canon EOS 90D. The rumours and stats have been leaking steadily for ages. But we can now confirm the spec upgrades include a new 32.5Mp sensor with more resolution than any other APS-C camera; uncropped 4K video for the first time in all of Canon’s camera range; 10fps continuous shooting (11fps in Live View); and a Dual Pixel CMOS AF system that makes the EOS 90D as fast and as flexible as any mirrorless camera – but with the bonus of an optical viewfinder too. Purely on specs alone, the EOS 90D looks…

To adjust the power setting in conventional studio flash heads, you increase or decrease the voltage to which the capacitors are charged. When they discharge to give the flash output, greater levels of charge result in a more intense flash. A major advantage is that colour temperature should remain constant throughout the power range. Battery-powered flash heads are dropping variable voltage control in favour of IGBT (insulated-gate bipolar transistor) tech. As used in flashguns, this acts as an ultra-high-speed switch for turning power on and off. The capacitors are fully charged and the transistor controls the duration of the output. At the minimum power setting, the pulse of light will be short.…

DSLR CAMERAS ENTRY-LEVEL CANON EOS 4000D CANON has stripped everything down to its bare essentials for the 4000D, and it’s a great if basic DSLR for beginners, and at only £329 (body), it’s the cheapest new EOS DSLR. Sadly, it’s let down by a cheap kit lens, that’s tough to tolerate, so we suggest buying the better IS lens. TESTED IN ISSUE 140 PRICE: £299/$N/A Sensor 18.0Mp APS-C CMOS Viewfinder Pentamirror, 0.8x, 95% ISO 100-6,400 (12,800 expanded) AF 9-point (1 cross-type) LCD 2.7-inch, 230k-dot Max burst (buffer) 3fps Memory card SD/SDHC/SDXC CANON EOS 2000D (REBEL T7) THE 2000D is a better-spec Canon camera than the 4000D, but comes with a step up at its RRP current price. It’s arguably worth the extra, but that puts it in a difficult spot,…

Limited back issues of PhotoPlus print editions are available on our MyFavouriteMagazines secure store at http://bit.ly/getphotoplus. But if 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 appintheAppStore or at thenbrowsethroughourback issues or subscribe through the app. Kindle Fire or Nook HD? Simply search for onAmazons Newsstand or in B&N’s Nook store. Android/Google Play? Go to tosubscribeto onyourAndroiddevice Windows or Mac? Use Zinio to read onyourlaptopordesktop computer! Go to whereyoucanbuyback issues or subscribe. isalsoavailableonMagzter, PocketMags and PressReader. BACK ISSUES AVAILABLE ON YOUR TABLET, PHONE, PC OR IN PRINT Issue 155 August 2019 MASTER YOUR CANON LENS Learn how to get the…

GO INTO MANUAL MODE MATTY often uses Manual mode on his Canon 5D Mark IV, especially when shooting towards a sunrise or sunset, which will be very bright and leave your camera struggling to meter correctly. Matty set up Kim’s camera in Manual using f/11 to give him a decent amount of sharpness and depth of field in each image, an ISO of 100 for the best image quality and a shutter speed of 1/160 sec. But he’ll keep an eye on this and change it after checking each exposure to make sure it’s spot-on. SETUP ON A TRIPOD LANDSCAPES are one of the few photographic genres where you can slow things down and take your time, so a tripod is always handy for helping you fine-tune compositions and creating…

Lens Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Exposure 65 secs, f/8, ISO 100 MATTY’S COMMENT I knew Kim was going to be a great sport on the day from the moment he was more than up for getting up at the crack of dawn to shoot the sunrise. He was inquisitive and hopefully I cleared up some of his camera conundrums throughout the day. His Canon 1300D DSLR is about as entry-level as it gets and he saw a notable difference in my full-frame 5D Mark IV and 17-40mm f/4L lens as well as the high-end Nisi filters I was using, so hopefully this will encourage an upgrade if he feels limited by his kit. It was lovely to have the chance to shoot seascapes with Kim around my hometown Newcastle.…

The perfect sunset No holiday album is complete without the perfect sunset. With the golden colours, it’s all too easy to think that all you need to do is press the shutter, but to get a great shot, there are a few key techniques. First, get out of any auto modes, as your camera will try and expose for the shadows, which will leave the sky washed out without any colour. You need to expose for the powerful highlights and bright sun, so instead take control and shoot in Manual mode, set the ISO to 100, and an aperture around f/8, then set the shutter speed so that the sky is colourful and the foreground elements are dark. Better exposures and colours Maximize the sunset colours by including water in…

Old Town, Prague, Czech Republic. 08:21am. 9th December 2013. There are some things in life that don’t change: cameras have buttons too small to be used with gloves, politicians never answer direct questions, I lose a lens cap on every trip, and taxi drivers the world over drive like Hamilton on a low fuel/fresh tyres qualifying run. I'm trying to take comfort from the inevitable reconfirmation of that last undeniable truth, but physical and mental comfort are elusive as we hurtle through Prague. I turn to observing how affluent and Western the streets look. There are BMWs, Mercedes and Audis parked everywhere; it’s a far cry from my first visit when the occasional knackered Škoda or Trabant were the only vehicles chugging about. In 1991 Wendy and I drove across Europe…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_157_1 01 DARK ROOM The room needs to be completely dark at the moment the shutter is triggered. If there is any ambient light it’ll cloud our exposure and cause motion blur. So shoot in a room that can be blacked out, or at night outdoors – easier for the clean up! 02 SPEEDLITES We’ve set up two. When the room is dark the shutter speed becomes irrelevant – it’s the flashes that determine the length of an exposure. This allows us to freeze the water, as Speedlites have an incredibly fast flash when used at lower powers. 03 SOUND TRIGGER We’re using a Hahnel Captur Pro to detect the sound of the bursting balloons and fire our Speedlites. It transmits to receivers attached to each Speedlite.…

01 USE A LOWER POWER On a typical Speedlite the flash duration is around 1/400 sec at full 1/1 power, but speeds up to 1/20,000 sec at the lowest power. So a low power is better for freezing action, but this means you may need to open the aperture or increase the ISO to compensate – or use more flashes. 02 DIFFUSE THE LIGHT The Speedlite angled towards the subject’s face is fitted with an umbrella softbox. This softens and diffuses the light, which is more flattering for faces. A white reflector placed opposite the flash to the right of camera bounces side light back into the shadows on the subjects face. 03 GEL THE BACKDROP The flash aimed at the backdrop has been fitted with a coloured gel, which…

01 HOW TO ADJUST ISO There are a couple of ways to set the ISO on your Canon DSLR. You can either use the ISO button on the top panel of your DSLR or use the Q button and navigate to ISO setting on the LCD. A typical range will start at ISO100 and go up to ISO6400 or 25,600 depending on your Canon EOS DSLR. 02 LOW ISO When shooting in daylight you’ll want to keep the ISO setting as low as possible. The optimum ISO setting is 100, at this point it will produce highest image quality results possible. If you’re taking images on an overcast day you may need to push the ISO up to the 400 or 800 point to compensate for the lower light. 03…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_157_3 01 PLACE A SPEEDLITE We used two Speedlites to light our burger. The first is set on a light stand (using an umbrella Speedlite holder) to the left and slightly behind the burger, fired into a Wallimex umbrella softbox, and angled so as not to accidentally spill on to our dark backdrop. 02 ADD A SECOND FLASH The second Speedlite is placed in front and to the right of the subject and fitted with a silver umbrella. A wireless trigger is attached to the other Speedlite, and this one is set to optical slave mode (S1), so it detects the other light and triggers at the same time. 03 CONTROL THE OUTPUT Both Speedlites are set to Manual. The frontal light is at 1/16 power, and…

AFTER the shoot the next stage is to remove the wires in Photoshop, then add in any extra bits like the mustard and ketchup dollops here. To do this we begin by masking out the edges of the wires, using the empty frame to fill in the gaps. However, there will also be places where the wires obscure the food. This requires precise retouching with the Patch tool to cover up the wires by sampling nearby pixels. Once done, we can drop in our extra bits and then finish off by subtly reshaping the food with the Liquify command so that it looks perfect. USE THE LASSO Open the images of the burger and empty scene, drag the burger in to the other image. Grab the Lasso tool and select…

BEFORE AFTER In recent years the photographic market has been flooded with super-sharp lenses and high resolution cameras, so we’ve become accustom to seeing amazingly clean images even with entry-level Canon DSLRs and mirrorless bodies. You can expect old film images to be optically imperfect, full of grain and have some pretty funky colours too, but this is all part of their retro appeal that’s all the rage right now on various social media platforms! So this month we’re going to show you how to edit your digital image files to add some of these imperfections back in using Adobe’s budget image editor – Photoshop Elements. Although you can still follow along if you’re using the full version of Photoshop CC. Make sure you back up your images so you…

01 CUT OUT THE SUBJECT Open comp_before and go to Select>Subject. Next go to Select>Select and Mask. Increase Radius to improve the selection, then choose Output to: New Layer with Layer Mask and hit OK. Highlight and reveal the bottom layer. Then open the bird photo. 02 ADD A WING Use the Move tool to drag in the bird. Hit Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform and move the wing, then go Select> Select and Mask. Get the Quick Selection tool and paint the wing to select it, then use the Refine Edge brush. Then, set Output: Layer Mask and hit OK. 03 COPY AND FLIP Duplicate the wing layer with Cmd/Ctrl+J, then hit Cmd/Ctrl+T to transform. Right-click and ‘Flip Horizontal’ and position the second. Highlight the mask thumbnail on the layer, get…

If you’ve ever looked at a photo and wondered what you can do to bring it to life, ON1 Effects 2019 has the answer – in fact it has hundreds of them in its library of preset photo effects, with inspirational looks for landscapes, people, urban shots, architecture and more. You choose a look, click a button and it’s applied right there. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though, because you can even modify each of these preset effects and even create your own. Each preset is built using one or more of ON1 Effects 2019’s 27 powerful filters. You can mix and match filters in any combination, and each filter comes with its own in-depth adjustments. To use ON1 Effects 2019 as a standalone program, launch it and drag…

01 TAKING THE PLUNGE A Japanese macaque, better known as a snow monkey, beats the winter cold by relaxing in the waters of a hot spring Lens Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM + 1.4x III converter Exposure 1/800 sec, f/7.1, ISO800 IT’S THE Wednesday after the Blue Dot Festival at Jodrell Bank, a location better known for its giant radio telescope, but for Ellie Rothnie it was a chance to pitch a tent and party with friends in a perfect setting for mixing science with electronic music. “It’s an odd combination, but you get all these professors and lecturers from all around the world talking about plastics in the ocean and climate change. They’re great communicators – scientists with personalities.” By contrast, headline act Kraftwerk seemed less engaging. “I…

01 PUP PAPARAZZI A rapid shutter speed freezes the water as Gypsy splashes around Lens EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM Exposure 1/2700 sec, f/6.3, ISO640 PROJECT INFO NAME: David Parkin LOCATION: Sheffield MISSION: Capture some wonderful pictures of his beautiful rescue dog, Gypsy KIT: Canon EOS 5D Mark III, EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM, EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM www.djpphotography.net It’s a dog’s life After rescuing Gypsy from a lamp post six years ago, David has made it his mission to capture her new happy life My Photo Story relates to our Irish Setter called ‘Gypsy’ and her new life as a rescue dog. She was tragically tied to a lamp post and left six years ago now, but the good news is she’s come such a long…

Tilt-shift lenses are useful tools for shooting architecture and landscapes, as they allow you to shift the position of the lens to prevent buildings from appearing to lean backwards, and tilt the plane of focus to render more or less of a scene sharp. But that versatility and engineering comes at a price: an arm and a leg. There are, however, a small handful of lens mount adapters that allow you to turn lenses designed for medium format cameras into tilt-shift lenses on EOS DSLRs. Take the Fotodiox Pro TLT ROKR range of adapters (https://fotodioxpro.com): these let you fit vintage Pentax 6x7, Bronica SQ, Pentacon 6 and Hasselblad V-Mount lenses on EF/EF-S mounts, and tilt and shift them when required. While some of theses lenses are expensive even when bought…

Advanced EOS cameras like the Canon EOS 5D Mark III/IV, 7D Mark II and 1D X Mark II use the idea of AF cases to refine how the camera responds to specific subject movement. Each AF case is simply a preset for the group of three focus system parameters; tracking sensitivity, acceleration/deceleration tracking and AF point auto switching. What’s not commonly known is that the Canon EOS 80D, 6D Mark II and EOS R also have these same AF tuning parameters, individually accessible with custom functions, rather than grouped in to AF cases. If you photograph birds in flight, air shows, or motorsport, it helps to do detailed optimization of these AF settings. Remember you’ll need to use AI Servo AF for moving subject tracking AF. Take AF Case 3…

THERE’S almost no limit to what you can achieve with Photoshop, especially when it comes to reproducing traditional filter effects, but some tricks still require the real deal. Polarizing filters are a prime example, as software can’t replicate their ability to filter the light waves that make it to your camera’s sensor. The result is better colour saturation with richer, bluer skies that make a landscape image pop. Sure, you can boost colour and contrast in post, however a polarizer is unbeatable at reducing glare, especially on the surface of water. This enables your camera to see deeper underwater, revealing fish and rocks that would otherwise be obscured by reflections. Another benefit is that blown highlights are minimized, and therefore you can shoot a more balanced exposure and enhance shadow…

£653/$750 Elinchrom’s D-Lite flash heads and kits have earned a somewhat legendary status over the years, and rightly so. Build quality is excellent, they’re easy to use, and they deliver superb performance. Complete kits are available with premium quality softboxes or brollies, robust lighting stands, wireless hotshoe-mounting triggers and smart padded carrying cases. The D-Lite RX One head is ideal if you want to use wide apertures for shrinking the depth of field, whereas the kit we chose for this Super Test is based on a pair of D-Light RX 4 heads, the most powerful in the range. It’s supplied with a 66cm square softbox and a 56cm octagonal softbox, as well as a translucent deflector. The supplied EL-Skyport Transmitter Plus radiofrequency trigger enables remote adjustment of flash head settings…

The two mains-powered kits recycle in about half a second at the lowest power, and 1.3 seconds after a full-power flash. The battery powered flash kits recycle almost instantly at low power settings. At the top end of its range, the Elinchrom ELB 500 takes 2 seconds to recycle, but this goes to 2.8 seconds in ‘eco’ mode, which stretches battery. The Phottix Indra500 TTL is the slowest at 4.8, but you can boost it to 2.7 seconds in ‘fast’ mode which drains the battery quicker.…

As well as avoiding the need for a trailing sync cable between your camera and a flash head, a wireless trigger typically enables you to alter the power output of one or more flash heads remotely. You can get even more versatility when using a Canon-dedicated remote trigger with one of the battery-powered flash kits on test. They enable TTL flash metering, so that power output is set automatically, very similar to when using a flashgun. High Speed Sync also becomes available, so that you can use fast shutter speeds exceeding the flash sync speed of a camera. This can often be necessary when shooting outdoors under bright sunlight. Preferred triggers are the Phottix Odin II TTL (£125/$125) for the Elinchrom ELB 500 and Phottix Indra500 kits, the Interfit HSS…

30 Canon cameras at risk of ransomware Canon issues initial firmware and advisory following a major camera security alert for 30 vulnerable products. This is the story is talked about in the Letter of the Month above. More information on DigitalCameraWorld.com via quick link bit.ly/canon_ptp Photographers WAN T Canon’s Eye Controlled Focus back The photographic public reacts: eye-tracking AF has been missed – but people with glasses have reservations. More information on DigitalCameraWorld.com via quick link bit.ly/canon_focus Canon’s ultra-fast RF 35mm f/1.2L pro lens – coming to the EOS R in 2020? The latest wide-aperture professional lens for the Canon EOS R system has been revealed: the Canon RF 35mm f/1.2L USM. See more on DigitalCameraWorld.com via quick link bit.ly/canon_rf35…