Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2020 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

AMAZING ASTROPHOTOS A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… discover how to take starry sky photos that are out of this world! This issue we prove to you how easy it can be to capture awesome astrophotos. It may seem complex, but the right Canon kit, key exposure settings, and a good location free of light pollution is all you really need. This issue our Apprentice spends a night out with Canon pro photographer Chris Grimmer shooting starry skies, and even uses a telescope for some stunning shots of galaxies. See page 8. Canon has also been busy this month launching a camera bag full of new gear: we preview the new Canon EOS 850D beginner DSLR, there’s also a new RF 24-105mm budget offering, as well…

Whether you’re photographing a tiny newborn, a toddler or an older child, our essential tips will help you take your family photographs to the next level. Discover which lenses to reach for in particular portrait scenarios; which Canon camera settings to use; how to get the most out of little ones; and how to take the most flattering and memorable family photographs they’ll be proud to display. Learn everything you need, and more, to confidently take beautiful images of families – photographs that will be cherished for years to come. Louise Downham Canon EOS 5D Mk IV Louise, 37, has been a Canon user since she was 10. She’s based in London, and has been a full-time family photographer for eight years. Her portfolio is enormous (there are 4000 photographs…

Great reasons to subscribe now! ✔ Get 2 fantastic bookazines Teach Yourself Wildlife Photography Top tips for garden wildlife, photographing in zoos, bird portraits, bug safaris and lots more Professional Photography Collection David Bailey, Martin Parr, Steve McCurry and Sir Don McCullin are among the top pros featured in this fascinating volume ✔ Great savings Subscribe from only £13.50* and get your issues delivered to your door, plus 2 fantastic bookazines worth over £30 ✔ Free Video Disc Each issue, you’ll receive a Video Disc packed with fantastic photo projects to improve your skills Option 1 Quarterly subscription £13.50* • 3-4 issues of PhotoPlus print edition delivered Option 2 6-month print subscription £27 • 6-7 issues of PhotoPlus print edition delivered • Expert PDF handbook • 20% off entry to…

There are three parts to this fun smoky portrait project. The first two stages involve shooting the smoke and portrait. Capturing the first shot is easy, we just need to photograph a person side-on in profile against a clean, light backdrop. You may even already have an image that would be perfect (if you just want to test out your Photoshop skills, you can use the portrait we’ve supplied). As for the smoke images, if you like you can skip this stage and use the smoke brushes we’ve supplied with project files – see download link below left. But it’s more satisfying to make your own. All you need is a Speedlite and an incense stick or vape. Within a few minutes, you can capture a range of unique smoke…

OPEN A smoke shot in Photoshop, go to Image> Adjustments>Desaturate (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+U), then Image >Adjustments>Invert (Cmd/Ctrl+I). Next go to Image>Adjustments> Levels (Cmd/Ctrl+L), hold Alt and drag the white point inwards to ensure the backdrop is totally white. GRAB THE Rectangular Marquee tool and drag a selection over the smoke. Go to Edit>Define Brush Preset. Give the brush a name and click OK. The new brush will be instantly selected when you grab the Brush tool, and you’ll find the tip at the bottom of the list of brushes.…

Toy photographers are master illusionists. They suspend disbelief by making their subjects seem alive, or by fooling the viewer into thinking they’re not looking at a pint-sized plaything. This niche genre of photography is becoming increasingly popular, especially on social media and here we’ll show you how to create a photo with that same creative energy. Manufacturers are making better figures than ever before and social media has provided photographers with a platform to reach the masses. Two of the biggest names in the toy photography game, Mitchel Wu and Johnny Wu (no relation), have a combined following of over 130,000 on Instagram alone. So how do you go about turning a plastic action figure into an epic cinematic still that’d make Michael Bay blush? The answer is light. We…

01 OBJECT REMOVAL GUIDED EDIT Open an image into Elements 2020 and go to the Guided mode, then, in the Basics tab, click on Object Removal to start. Then Brush or Lasso over the offending item and use the Add and Subtract buttons to fine-tune your selection and hit Remove Object. 02 SMOOTH SKIN While working on a portrait click Enhance>Smooth Skin for a fast way to retouch. You’ll see the face selected with a blue circle, then drag the Smoothness slider to the right until the skin of your model is smoothed to your liking. Click OK to apply. 03 SELECT SUBJECTS THE EASY WAY For an easy way to select a subject go to Select>Subject and it will automatically select it. Though you may want to tidy it…

Affinity Photo by Serif offers a wide array of colour correcting tools. We’re going look at some of the best options, from white balance adjustments to powerful selective colour tweaks. Along the way we’ll encounter many of the most useful colour tools and settings in Affinity Photo. Whether you have a photo with a colour cast, a portrait with unnatural skin tones, or a colour temperature mismatch, these techniques described are sure to help. We’ll use Adjustment Layers to make a series of colour tweaks here. These allow us to make our changes on separate layers, so we can always go back and tweak things later if need be. At first we’ll use the White Balance command. This lets us correct the yellow cast in our original photo by using…

LIKE MANY of my generation, I first became aware of the work of Susan Meiselas through her powerful images from Nicaragua, during the late 1970s, when the Sandinista revolutionaries toppled the military dictatorship of President Anastasio Somoza. As well as her close proximity to the fighting, what made Susan’s pictures captivating was the beautiful colour palette of her Kodachromes, depicting revolutionaries hurling Molotov cocktails and masked fighters posing against vivid street murals. There was a poetic quality to her war images that seemed unique for the time. Her fellow American journalists and photographers certainly thought so: in 1979 she was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal for ‘outstanding courage and reporting’ by the New York-based Overseas Press Club. Forty years have elapsed since that accolade, so I feel compelled to…

Professional photographers reveal their top six tools of the trade they couldn’t shoot without “For most images I’ll merge together anywhere between 80 and 150 images” I often get my subjects from an insect collector, or find them in the window box. With warm weather you can also find them on leaves in the park. I first clean them and make sure they’re free of dust, which can take up to an hour, using air and brushes. I then place the subject in a white semitransparent tube that I can direct my flash lights towards. To get super close I use my Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x macro lens, which gives me a reproduction ratio of 5:1, that’s five times larger than real life! I mount my camera to a…

Canon has launched the new Canon RF 24-105mm f/4-7.1 IS STM, a smaller, lighter and affordable kit lens ideally suited to the Canon EOS RP mirrorless camera for a compact travel setup. With its wide focal range the RF 24-105mm F4-7.1 IS STM is a versatile lens equipped to capture a range of different scenes and subjects in high quality, making it a useful all-rounder lens. Weighing just 395g and 89x77mm, the RF 24-105mm F4-7.1 IS STM is small and light – compared to the RF 24-105mm F4L IS USM that’s chunkier at 700g and 84x107mm (understandably so as it has a constant f/4 aperture). With the RF 24-105mm F4-7.1 IS STM strapped to the EOS RP it’s combined weight of just 880g (the EOS RP weighs 485g including memory…

To test real-world performance, we use lenses in all sorts of lighting conditions, for indoor and outdoor shooting scenarios. We check for good build quality, handling, smooth and precise operation of all controls, and we test the speed and the accuracy of autofocus. We typically test full-frame compatible EF lenses on a range of full-frame and APS-C format bodies, whereas EF-S lenses that are designed specifically for APS-C format bodies are only tested on cameras like the EOS 90D and 7D Mark II. EF-M and RF lenses are tested on respective EOS M and EOS R type mirrorless bodies. In-camera corrections for chromatic aberrations and peripheral illumination are disabled throughout all testing, to better reveal the true performance of each of the lenses on test. We also run a full…

£589/$599 Bucking the trend, this lens is the only one here to feature a constant-aperture, in which the widest aperture of f/4 remains throughout the entire zoom. It’s therefore at least one whole f-stop faster than any other lens on test, at least at the long end. Whereas the stabilized version (considerably more expensive) is now in its second generation, this one remains unchanged since its launch back in 1999. The lens is finished in Canon’s trademark off-white, frequently used in large L-series lenses to reduce heat build-up under the sun. AF is courtesy of a traditional ring-type ultrasonic system and, typical of 70-200mm constantaperture zooms, both of the zoom and focus mechanisms are fully internal. The upshot is that the lens doesn’t extend in length at any zoom or…

Thanks to smaller image sensors, APS-C format cameras have a ‘crop factor’ that boosts the effective focal length by 1.6x, compared with full-frames. You could therefore use a 70-300mm or 100-400mm tele zoom designed for a full-frame body on your APS-C format camera and get an effective zoom range of 112-480mm or 160-640mm. That takes you into super-tele territory, without the need to use a huge, heavy, and expensive lens.…

£329/$449 Unlike Sigma, Tamron still markets its superlatively inexpensive non-stabilized 70-300mm zoom, but the Di VC USD edition is better in every way. For starters, it has a more exotic optical path that features LD (Low Dispersion) and XLD (eXtra Low Dispersion) elements, and a much better AF system that’s based on a ring-type ultrasonic actuator, rather than a basic electric motor. Unlike in the earlier lens, focusing is internal, so the front element doesn’t rotate. Build quality is superior, but lacks the weather-seals built into most of Tamron’s recent lenses. And finally, it boasts the addition of image stabilization, or VC (Vibration Compensation) as Tamron calls it. Launched at the beginning of the last decade, this was the first Tamron lens to feature ring-type ultrasonic AF, or USD (Ultrasonic…

A part from the general-purpose RF 24-240mm f/4L IS USM ‘superzoom’ (£845/$899), there’s currently only one tele zoom lens for EOS R cameras. It comes in the compact shape of the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM which, at 89.9x146mm and 1070g is small and light for a 70-200mm f/2.8. It’s also rare for this class of lens in featuring an extending inner barrel, rather than having a fixed physical length. Even so, it’s no ‘budget option’, with a hefty price tag of £2699/$2699. For EOS R and EOS RPs, where you’re likely to be looking for compact and reasonably priced lenses that are a good physical and financial match for the camera, one of the full-frame compatible lenses here would be a good fit, along with an EF-EOS R…

Letter of the Month I’m a member of a small local camera club here in Lisburn (Northern Ireland), where we have monthly competitions on various topics. For the January topic title of ‘All Things Round’ I eventually decided to put my own twist on something simple and dust off Photoshop. I employed my limited skills for lighting, composition and post-processing and remarkably (in my opinion) the result wasn’t crap. Delighted in my final image, I submitted my image. What could possibly take the shine of my effort… Sitting down with my copy of PhotoPlus (issue 162) and what do I see? A tutorial on how to achieve ‘MY’ Genetically Modified Fruit image! There goes my kudos for artistic originality. Anyhow, I’m glad to see that after reading the article, I’m…

APPRENTICE NAME: COLIN BRAY CAMERA: CANON EOS R COLIN is an avid nature and wildlife photographer from Norfolk and regularly goes photographing at Pensthorpe, his local nature reserve. He’s been shooting for over a decade, picking up a Canon EOS 1000D as his first DSLR and progressing later to a 5D Mark III. However, he’s recently made the switch to mirrorless, investing in Canon’s EOS R, so we’ve teamed him up with astro photography pro Chris Grimmer to show him how to get the most out of it, even in pitch-black conditions. CANON PRO NAME: CHRIS GRIMMER CAMERAS: 70D & 500D 70D converted to shoot full spectrum astro and 500D Infrared converted IN 2015 Chris was shortlisted for the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year and was shortlisted twice for…

ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA THE Elephant Trunk Nebula is a part of a large Nebula region in the Constellation of Cepheus. I used two bandwidth filters to capture light solely from hydrogen and oxygen and had an exposure time of around four hours. HALF MOON THE 50% illuminated moon, an object we all think we are familiar with and have spent our entire lives watching in the night sky. But the familiar object hides craters, valleys and mountain ranges revealed here by my telescope. ROSETTE NEBULA THIS is a six hour exposure of the Rosette Nebula. It’s a large Emissions Nebula in the winter Constellation of Monoceros, which surrounds a central cluster of hot stars. These push the gas away leaving heavy dust behind.…

LENS PICK 100mm Macro f/2.8 01 Camera settings for close-up portraits For close-up baby portraits, use Spot metering with the focus on the baby’s eyes as you’ll want the eyes to be perfectly exposed. I find it best to use a single AF point. Utilize a wide aperture and prime lenses to create lush background blur – I tend to use f/2 for my close-ups. You may find it helpful to shoot in Aperture Priority mode while you become familiar with apertures, shutter speeds and ISO – use Manual mode when you’re comfortable with the variables. 02 Position the nose away from the camera A common mistake some people make is photographing newborn’s faces looking up their nostrils. You wouldn’t do this for an adult, so don’t do it to…

Mupe Bay, Jurassic Coast, Dorset, England. 14:42pm. 3 January 2020. Mupe Bay is a magnificent and secluded part of Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, made extra special by the fact it’s only accessible on foot when the Lulworth Range Walks are open. The firing ranges which surround Mupe Bay are home to the British Army’s Armoured Fighting Vehicle Gunnery School, all of which lie within an official Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. That may seem incongruous, but actually the Ministry of Defence has proved a highly effective protector of this Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1940. While a few burnt out tanks co-exist with grazing sheep and spent ordnance pockmarks the landscape, the coast itself is scenic and untouched. Although only two miles from the tourist hotspot of Lulworth Cove, Mupe…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/photoplus163 01 INCENSE STICK Set up an incense stick vertically using a piece of Blu-tack on a table. Place a dark backdrop behind the stick for the backdrop. Once lit, gently blow or fan the smoke to create interesting shapes. If you don’t have an incense stick, you could try using matches or a vape. 02 FLASH LIGHT Place a Speedlite behind the incense and off to one side. Angle the flash so that it’s trained on the stick – we don’t want the light spilling onto the backdrop. Set the flash to manual and begin by choosing 1/8 power. If the Speedlite has a zoom feature, set it to a wide angle for maximum spread. 03 CANON CAMERA Set up the camera opposite the stick. A…

01 CONVERT TO MONO Open the portrait into Photoshop. Duplicate the background layer with Cmd/Ctrl+J, then go to Image>Adjustments>Black and White. Use the controls to tweak the look. We’ve chosen the Red Filter preset from the dropdown to lift the skin. 02 WARP THE HEAD Go to Edit>Transform>Warp. Hold Alt and click a series of vertical points down the face, then click another point near the back of the head to add an extra column. Hold Shift and drag a box over the points over the back of the head, then drag them to the side to stretch it out. 03 WHITE FILL LAYER Go to the Layers panel (Window>Layers) and click the new layer icon, then go to Edit>Fill, set Contents: White and hit OK. Next, click the Add…

This month I’m going to show you how to give your wildlife images a high-end studio look and you won’t even need expensive flash heads, modifiers, or large studio spaces to pull it off. It’s just as well really… animals aren’t known for sitting still for any period of time, let alone in front of a camera in a studio! Instead, we went to Slimbridge Wetland Centre in the UK, and made use of the harsh single light source from the sun to create deep shadows and bags of contrast. Then it’s just a case of using software to complete the low-key effect by converting the image to mono for moody fine-art photos. Soft light is often favoured for people and pet portraits, but a harsh single light source, like…

01 STRIKE A POSE Superheroes are known for their dramatic poses, and we couldn’t think of anything more dramatic than the famed superhero landing. We used an action figure of Iron Man, which boasts good articulation, making it possible to set it in place. 02 HULK SMASH Iron Man’s suit is pretty tough and he’s probably going to land with a thud. Use grey card to represent concrete, and draw cracks to show where he’ll collide with the surface. Tiny squares of card can be stuck to it, representing broken bits of concrete. 03 USE THE RIGHT LIGHTS Continuous lights are ideal for this sort of work as you’ll want to take a series of images in quick succession, which isn’t practical with a flash. We mounted two Lume Cube…

Sharpening is an essential part of imageediting, but it often leads to confusion over what tools to use, when to sharpen and how much to apply. As such, it can be helpful to think of sharpening as part of a wider workflow, as we’ll do in this tutorial. Along the way we’ll perform initial sharpening and noise reduction in Lightroom, then take our image into Photoshop for retouching to remove the distracting leaf. Then we’ll round-trip back to Lightroom for final sharpening. As such, our workflow involves two distinct sharpening stages, one at the beginning and another at the end. The first stage is often called Capture sharpening. This involves general sharpening to correct for inherent softness in the image, or to crisp up important details. It’s best done in…

01 SET THE WHITE BALANCE Open the image into Affinity. If it’s a Raw image use the White Balance controls in the Develop Persona (see box). For JPEGs like this, head to the Layers panel in the Photo Persona. Click the Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom and choose White Balance. 02 CLICK ON A NEUTRAL Go to the White Balance dialogue and click on ‘Picker’, then click over an area that should be neutral, like the edge of the grey spoon. If it isn’t right, keep clicking over different areas to try to find a neutral spot to sample from, or try tweaking the sliders manually. 03 COLOUR JUDGING TRICK When adjusting white balance a temporary saturation boost can help you judge things. Highlight the bottom layer, then add…

Photo essays from PhotoPlus readers and professional photographers alike Back in 2016 I lost my job and had to find a way to make some money. It seemed like a good opportunity to get into photography full-time, but my camera was a 40D which was pretty old at the time. I bought it back in 2008 at the annual Canon Roadshow in South Africa. I’ll never forget the moment one of the speakers told us, “folks, don’t be scared to push these cameras!” It stuck with me when I switched to a Canon EOS 1100D, still an entry-level camera, but I was dying to see just how far it could be pushed and how capable it really was. So, in 2016 I started doing a few corporate functions and portraits to make…

CANON EOS SOLUTIONS PAGE 80 How to get that vintage Hollywood look in DPP WITH PhotoPlusEXPERT BRIAN WORLEY CAMERA EXPERT Brian has unrivalled EOS camera knowledge after working for Canon for over 15 years. He now works as a freelance photographer and photo tutor in Oxfordshire. DIGITAL EOS ESSENTIALS PAGE 82 Control colour for creativity or corrections WITH PhotoPlusEXPERT MARCUS HAWKINS PHOTO EXPERT Marcus has more than 30 years of photography experience. A former editor of our sister publication Digital Camera, he has written about photography for Canon and Jessops, and uses a Canon EOS 5D Mk IV. EOS S.O.S PAGE 88 Brian answers all of your tricky Canon questions WITH PhotoPlusEXPERT BRIAN WORLEY CAMERA EXPERT…

Say hello to the new Canon EOS 850D / Rebel T8i, the new beginner/enthusiast DSLR, a lightweight, versatile and connected 24-megapixel machine, powered by Canon’s latest speedy tech, and with 4K movie capability. The Canon EOS 850D / Rebel T8i is the successor to the one-off Canon EOS 77D (like an EOS 750D / Rebel T6i, but with small top LCD plate), and EOS 800D / Rebel T7i, both launched back in early 2017. Canon sticks with the same size 24.1-megapixel Dual Pixel CMOS APS-C sensor as we’ve seen in the Canon EOS 250D / Rebel SL3 and actually a fraction less megapixels than the older Canon EOS 800D / Rebel T7i. It also retains the same 45-point autofocus system, all cross-type AF points for better and faster autofocus accuracy.…

CANON has announced development of the new mirrorless EOS R5. This guns-blazing professional camera will boast 8K video, 20 frames per second continuous shooting, dual card slots and Canon’s first ever in-body image stabilization (IBIS) system. Time will tell, but we believe the R5 will have a 45-megapixel sensor – making this a formidable tool for high-end action, stills and video. Canon says the IBIS is. “a newly Canon-developed, in-camera image stabilization system – which works in combination with the lens stabilisation system, making sure that whatever the situation stills and video content captured is shakefree.” The EOS R5 will officially be capable of shooting continuously at 12fps using the mechanical shutter and 20fps electronically. Pricing and launch dates TBC.…

THE CONTENDERS…

£299/$299 Designed for APS-C format DSLRs, this and other EF-S lenses can also be used on APS-C format and full-frame bodies, via the respective EOS mount adapters. Larger and heavier than the EF-M 55-200mm lens on test, this one has more traditional DSLR-type styling, with physical switches for AF/M focusing modes and stabilization on/off, as well as chunkier rubberized grips for the zoom and focus rings. Although nearly 50 per cent heavier than the EF-M 55-200mm, the EF-S adds an extra 50mm in telephoto length, with an overall zoom that’s equivalent to 88-400mm in full-frame terms. It also has a faster aperture rating, shrinking to f/5.6, rather than f/6.3, at the long end. Similarities between the two lenses include fast and virtually silent stepping motor-driven autofocus and 3.5-stop image stabilization.…

£449/$499 The Mark II edition of this lens could barely be any more different to its predecessor. As well as a redesigned and upgraded optical path featuring new specialized UD elements, the exterior has a more modern look and feel and the internals are overhauled. The old version of this lens contained a dated AF system that was audible and sluggish in operation. The front element also rotated during focusing, which impaired handling and made the use of filters like circular polarizers and ND grads a chore. The new lens features a revolutionary Nano USM AF system, which is incredibly rapid for stills, while enabling smooth focus transitions as a stepping motor system for video capture, as well as being almost completely silent in operation. Focusing is now fully internal,…

£679/$609 In days gone by, Sigma and Tamron were renowned for their third-party 70-300mm zooms, which delivered good performance while heavily undercutting the cost of own-brand alternatives. They also dabbled in smaller tele zooms for Canon APS-C formats, but they’ve fallen by the wayside. As part of its ‘Global Vision’ line-up, Sigma has reinvented the budget tele zoom in the shape of this 100-400mm Contemporary lens, while Tamron followed hot on its heels. This lens measures 86x182mm and weighs 1160g, making it shorter, but marginally heavier, than the competing Tamron. That said, it’s just 100g heavier than the Canon 70-300mm L-series on test. The Sigma is the only one of the three for which there’s no optional tripod mounting ring. The optical path includes four SLD (Special Low Dispersion) elements,…

Especially on APS-C cameras, where the tele power of these lenses is effectively boosted by more than 50 per cent, it can be hard to avoid camera-shake with handheld shooting. The rule of thumb is that you’ll need a shutter speed of at least the reciprocal of the ‘effective’ focal length, for sharp shots. Shooting with a 300mm lens on an APS-C body (480mm effective), you’d need a minimum shutter speeds of about 1/500th of a second. Image stabilization typically enables you to shoot at shutter speeds of 3.5 to 4-stops slower.…

When choosing a ‘budget tele zoom’, the price is an important consideration. Canon’s latest 70-300mm is affordable, well built, delivers ultra-fast AF, highly effective IS and excellent image quality, while also being compact and light to carry. It’s our top choice for APS-Cs and full-frames, as well as for EOS R and RP cameras via an EOS mount adapter. If you’ve traded up from an APS-C format DSLR to a full-frame, you may feel short-changed in tele reach, now that you no longer have the 1.6x crop factor to boost the focal length. In this case, the Sigma or Tamron 100-400mm might feel a better fit, despite being pricier to buy and heavier. There’s little to choose between the two, in overall performance and image quality, despite the Tamron delivering…

BULB MODE IN MODES like Manual and Aperture or Shutter Priority, the max shutter speed you can shoot at is 30 seconds. We’ll use Bulb mode, which allows you to use a remote shutter release to keep the shutter open for as long as needed – several minutes for astro work. We also pushed Colin’s ISO to 1000 on his EOS R and opened the aperture to f/2.8 to let in as much light as possible. RAW POWER WE WENT into the settings of Colin’s EOS R and set it to shoot CR3 Raw files, as these will contain loads more exposure information than simple JPEGs, and you need as much data as possible to play with when shooting in poorly lit conditions. We also switched off any image stabilization…

01 DUSSEHRA KALI ON AIR BY VASANTH S This contest-winning capture from the Dussehra Hindu festival is immersive with its striking central composition and use of a wide-angle lens – you feel like you’ve been transported to India. Impressively, Vasanth was able to freeze the moment the figure jumped up, making them appear to levitate. He’s also retained detail in the sky that could have easily been blown out. Lens Samyang 14mm f/2.8 ED AS IF UMC Exposure 1/1600 sec, f/8, ISO400 02 MUNDARI CATTLE CAMP BY JOE BUERGI Joe tells us: “I took this image on a 2019 trip to South Sudan. We mainly went for the Mundari Tribe. The Mundari are cattle herders who live along the White Nile. This image was taken on a photo stroll in…

LENS PICK 50mm f/1.2 06 Do: get down to the baby’s eye level Getting to your subject’s eye level almost always creates more intimate and expressive photographs than shooting from a standing position. This can be a challenge with babies that aren’t being held. Lying them on a bed is a great way to have them at a lower level, whilst still being able to move around them easily. You’ll need to be on your knees for this – if you have knee problems, try using a pad or cushion for support. 07 Do: keep making eye contact, and smiling Babies are reassured by smiling faces – keep popping out from behind the camera so the baby can see you smiling. Do also put the camera down and make eye…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/photoplus163 LIGHTING THE BACKDROP A single off-camera flash lets you create all kinds of different portraiture looks – you can fire it from one side, above, below, or behind your subject and the angle of light will give you a multitude of looks. But as well as directing it at your subject, you can also train it on the background, like we’ve done. By lighting the backdrop we blow it out to create a high key look like this. Some of the light will spill back onto the subject, creating subtle backlighting that lifts the edge of the face. 01 USE A LIGHT BACKDROP Position your subject in front of a light backdrop for a high-key look. We’ve used a roll of paper, but a simple white…

VIDEO ALSO ONLINE http://bit.ly/photoplus163 I love how camera tech keeps making our lives easier! Time-lapse videos are a great example. Not long ago the only way to create time-lapses on our Canon camera was to take thousands of stills over several hours, using a remote control with an intervalometer to take the images at set intervals. We’d then use Photoshop to edit and piece them all together in a painstakingly time-consuming process to create a video! Thankfully the latest Canon cameras – from an EOS 80D or later – now have built in time-lapse movie modes to make the whole process a lot easier and quicker, as it stitches the images together in-camera to create a lovely, seamless time-lapse video. Which is great, as it means you can create fantastic…

01 BRIGHT DIRECT LIGHT Photograph your subject in direct sunlight to capture bright highlights and welldefined shadows. Look for dark backgrounds, shrouded in shadow as this will make the editing easier. Exactly how much negative exposure comp you use will vary depending on the light. 02 USE A LONG LENS As is the case with most wildlife photography, you’ll want to use a long lens. We used the Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM C. This super-telephoto zoom lens afforded us plenty of reach, so we could capture close-up portraits of our elusive, sometimes faraway, subjects. 03 WILDLIFE HIDE A wildlife hide helps keep you hidden from the view of animals, however, animals at wildlife parks are generally more accustomed to seeing people around, so are less likely to be…

Photoshop Elements is the budget version of Adobe’s Photoshop CC. It shares many of the features of its bigger sibling, but more importantly can be brought outright. It retails at around £75, so could be the better option for you if you don’t like the idea of a subscription. Adobe release a new version each year with new and improved features, so we’ll be looking at what’s changed in the most current Elements 2020, allowing you to unlock its full potential. Targeted towards beginners and enthusiasts, Elements has a Guided mode that shows you how to make specific tweaks, there’s also the Expert mode which unlocks features such as Layers, Layer Masks and Adjustment Layers–all powerful features borrowed from Photoshop CC. And all make it possible to merge images to…

01 PREPARE THE VIEW Get the shot into Lightroom Classic, then go to the Develop Module. After making some tweaks in the Basic panel, go to the Detail panel. Click the Before/After view at bottom left, then zoom in close to the image. A 100% view is best for judging sharpening. 02 APPLY CAPTURE SHARPENING Begin in the Detail panel by upping the Sharpening Amount. Next, Adjust the Radius, which sets the distance from edges in which the sharpening occurs. A low radius is usually better for high-frequency detail like the lizard skin. We’ve set Amount 90, Radius 0.9. 03 SET DETAIL AND MASKING The Sharpening Detail slider controls how much fine edges are sharpened. High amounts can amplify noise. Masking lets us correct this. Hold Alt and drag Masking…

In 2018 I set out to photograph industrial buildings and landscapes in black and white and it’s since become a genre I’ve fallen in love with. The main reason that I prefer working with the monochrome medium is that the viewer won’t be distracted by bright colours or objects that you don’t want them to be–the focus goes solely on the composition. I also prefer long exposures, compared to totally pin-sharp images taken with a fast shutter speed. A long shutter allows me to add movement and drama to the image–it feels like I’m getting more creative. It also gives me the chance to show the viewer something they can’t see with the naked eye. Long exposures work fantastically with black and white imagery, as they have an almost ethereal…

WITH PhotoPlusEXPERT BRIAN WORLEY CANON PRO Brian is a freelance photographer and photo tutor, based in Oxfordshire. He has unrivalled EOS DSLR knowledge, after working for Canon for over 15 years, and is the perfect man to help you master Canon’s software. Hollywood movie style in DPP Create the vintage black and white feel synonymous with old Hollywood movies In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create vintage style black-and-white photos using the tools in DPP. For the authentic look you’ll need to apply some of the ways of the skilled darkroom workers to finalize your photos. Choosing the Monochrome Picture Style is one part of the process, but also consider how your photo is taken. In this example a small LED light was used to light the model. Being…

Ask Brian! Confused with your Canon DSLR? Email EOSSOS@futurenet.com Ever since I read my first book on photography there’s been one rule for sharper photos that always holds true–keep everything still. For the times you hand-hold the camera, the rule is to use the reciprocal of the focal length to avoid the chance of camera shake. So, if you use a 100mm lens, then you’ll need 1/100 sec shutter speed, and for a 500mm lens 1/500 sec. But with the advent of hi-res digital sensors and larger screens we’ve stopped judging the sharpness of a 10x15cm print. My 24-inch monitor is 50cm wide and there’s 1920 pixels in those 50cm. Zoom in to 1:1 on a 24Mp image and it’s like looking at a print that’s 1x1.5ms. It’s no surprise…

The Canon EOS Ra is not the first camera modified specifically for astrophotography. Occasionally, camera makers do produce ‘astro’ versions of their leading cameras, and the EOS R is a good candidate, thanks to its vari-angle screen, mirrorless Live View operation and – for those that have the budget – some of those super-fast RF lenses. From the outside, the EOS Ra is indistinguishable from a regular Canon EOS R (apart from the badge) and the differences are all on the inside. All camera sensors have infra-red filters to restrict the spectrum of light captured by the sensor to visible wavelengths, but the filter on the EOS Ra’s sensor has been specially modified to transmit four times as much HA (Hydrogen Alpha) light. This extended red sensitivity means the EOS…

£249/$349 Although it lacks the retractable design of Canon’s EF-M 11-22mm and 15-45mm lenses, this telephoto of the trio is nevertheless compact and lightweight, at just 61x87mm and 260g. As with the EF-S 55-250mm lens for DSLRs, this lens for mirrorless cameras has a plastic mounting plate, but that’s no bad thing, as it helps to keep the weight off and is still robust. Typical of EF-M lenses, the design is very clean-cut. There are no physical switches on the barrel, choices for auto/manual focusing and stabilization on/off being catered to with in-camera menus. These systems are taken care of by a fast yet virtually silent stepping motor for AF, and an optical stabilizer unit with a 3.5-stop rating, complete with auto panning detection. During panning, stabilization is only applied…

With most budget telephoto zooms you can expect a little barrel distortion at the short end of the zoom range, negligible distortion at mid-zoom settings, and minor pincushion at the long end. Most of the lenses in this test group follow a very similar path in these respects. The two main exceptions are the Sigma and Tamron 100-400mm lenses. With their longer range of focal lengths, these two lenses exhibit minor pincushion even at their shortest zoom setting, getting slightly worse as you extend through the zoom range.…

£1199/$1349 Stretching back to the days of 35mm film SLRs, 70-300mm lenses have always been a popular choice. Something of a novelty, this L-series lens elevates the 70-300mm zoom to a loftier position. Indeed, compared with Canon’s latest super-high-spec EF 70-200mm f/4L IS II USM lens, it’s almost as expensive in the UK and even pricier in the USA. At its core, the 70-300mm L-series lens has the same variable f/4-5.6 aperture rating as most other direct competitors. It also features an extending inner barrel, so the physical length of the lens grows as you sweep through the zoom range. As such, handling characteristics are almost the same. Up-market optical highlights include dual UD elements, plus Super Spectra and fluorine coatings. The four-stop image stabilizer has physically switchable static and…

For most of the lenses in this group, lateral aberration is more noticeable at the short end of the zoom, especially towards the corners of the frame. This can often be seen as coloured fringes around high-contrast transitions, like dark tree branches against a bright sky. Fringing often dies away at mid-zoom and returns to a lesser extent, towards the long end of the zoom. With some lenses, like the Canon EF-S 55-250mm and Tamron 70-300mm, fringing is slightly worse at the long end rather than the short end.…

£699/$799 A third heavier and larger than Tamron’s 70-300mm lens on test, this lens goes toe-to-toe with Sigma’s 100-400mm. It’s almost identical in terms of zoom and aperture, but the Tamron focuses closer at 1.5m, with a slightly larger 0.28x max magnification ratio. Both lenses have ring-type ultrasonic AF systems and four-stop stabilizers, with switchable panning modes. Whereas the Sigma has a three-position AF limiter switch for locking out the short or long end of the range, the Tamron has a single ‘Limit’ position on the AF/MF focus mode switch. When engaged, this can limit the AF range on one side of the current focus distance position or the other. As with the Sigma, an optional USB docking station is available, this time in the shape of Tamron’s TAP-in Console.…

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