Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2021 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

CANON PRO NAME: JEAN PHILIPPE ‘JP’ BAUDEY CAMERA: CANON EOS 5DS R WITH MORE than three decades in the food industry and 20 years as a head chef at some of the UK’s top restaurants, JP has a love for food few can match. 12 years ago he suffered from a heart attack, after which he retired from cooking. He jokingly says it’s the best thing that could have happened, because that was when he turned to his passion for fine dining into a new vocation as a food photographer. www.fayditphotography.com APPRENTICE NAME: JANE CHAMPION CAMERA: CANON EOS 6D MK II BRISTOL-BASED Jane has worked as a catering manager at various restaurants and pubs for over 25 years, so it’s fair to say that like JP, she has a strong passion for food. She’s…

FRONT VIEWS 01 SHUTTER BUTTON The shutter button triggers the camera’s shutter, which exposes the sensor to light that enters through the lens. A half-press of the shutter triggers the autofocus and locks the metering. 02 POP-UP FLASH The camera works out the strength needed for the flash by metering the subject. You can also dial in more or less power with flash compensation. A lower power is often useful outside: it creates a fill light that subtly lifts shadows. 03 ZOOM RING Zoom lenses have a barrel ring that lets you adjust the angle of view. Rest the underside of the zoom ring in the palm of your hand with the fingers on the right and thumb on the left for an easily adjustable grip. 04 EXPOSURE COMPENSATION The…

THE RULE OF THIRDS Divide the scene into three and place important points on the intersections This is a classic technique that works well when the scene has a single, easily definable subject. Place the subject on a point where the lines meet in the image. Visually, this is often more interesting than plonking it in the middle of the frame. For landscapes, place the horizon line on a third. Like all rules on composition, don’t be afraid to break it if it leads to a more interesting image. USE LEAD-IN LINES Look for lines that point towards your subject Straight or bendy, you’ll find lines everywhere you look: roads, rivers, fences, walls, trees, skies, and so on. The viewer’s eye will naturally be drawn along these satisfying lines, so…

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GET IN CLOSE TO BUBBLES A macro lens is helpful for this project as it allows you to fill the frame with the bubbles, but if you don’t own one then a standard zoom should be able to get you in pretty close (especially if you blow the bubbles up fairly large). If this doesn’t work for your lens then, instead of blowing bubble planets, you could try pouring some of the bubble mixture into a small circular dish. Then just poke the straw into the mixture and blow to create a larger half-bubble, which should make it easier to fill the frame. 01 FASHION A LIGHT-TENT Either use a piece of A3 or tape together two sheets of plain A4 paper, then roll it to make a long cylinder.…

01 INTEGRATED GREY CARD Swap out your regular lens caps for these nifty replacements that have a built-in white balance dome, so you can take reference shots for a more accurate white balance and better colours when you’re editing back home. 02 COLOURFUL BODY & LENS CAPS Why stick with the stock black caps for your lenses and camera body? Fotodiox make colourful caps that add a bit of personality, that way you know what gear is yours and can also make specific kit easier to find in the dark. 03 DRILL & DRILL BITS You’ll need a basic drill and a drill bit about 1cm in diameter to make the hole in the middle of your body cap to create a pin hole lens, as well as some aluminium…

To get a true feeling of spring into your landscapes, you need a sense of warm sunshine and a good dose of blue in the sky. But straight out of your Canon EOS camera, rural scenes can be a bit flat, with a lack of warmth in the colour balance and overly bright skies. To address this, Photoshop is equipped with the awesome Levels adjustment, which can be used to control the contrast and colour balance within your shots. Handily, Photoshop Elements, the budget version we’re using here which doesn’t require a monthly subscription to Adobe CC, also shares the very same Levels palette. What’s more, by using Levels via an Adjustment Layer, you can use a Layer Mask to choose which areas of your picture you want to apply…

01 CHOOSE AN EXISTING PROFILE Navigate to your image in Adobe Bridge, then right-click it and ‘Open in Camera Raw’ (this works for JPEGs too). You can begin crafting your custom profile by using an existing one (go to the Profile Browser and choose a look), we’ve used Artistic 08. 02 MAKE YOUR CHANGES Make any changes you like to the image to create your tonal look. The Color Grading panel is a good place to start. Try tinting the shadows and highlights in various ways. We’ve shifted the shadows to blue and the highlights to yellow. Keep tweaking until you’re happy. 03 THE NEW PROFILE BOX Click on the double circle icon in the toolbar. Hold Alt and click the New Preset icon to open the ‘Create Profile’ dialog.…

Photo essays from PhotoPlus readers and professional photographers alike I take most of my images at or before sunrise. This is a very special time of day for me, not just because of the light, but the peace and solitude. The world feels large when you’re the only person around. In midsummer I get out of bed around 3:15am. I am slowly getting used to it, but even in midwinter I still tend to wake up in the middle of the night even now. The photographs that you see here were taken on different days at various locations around Somerset. I plan my visits to coincide with peak activity for the various species and when they are in the best condition to photograph. The images were taken at Chew Valley Lake,…

Configure your camera Use EOS Utility to set up your camera’s Picture Styles, flash, IPTC data and more! EOS Utility is a multi-use tool for Canon EOS cameras and is part of the software tools for your EOS camera, let’s look at some of the capabilities that will make setting up your camera easier. From synchronizing the time and date, to controlling your Speedlite flash, EOS Utility takes it’s utilitarian name and gets on with configuring. When you are taking photos your camera embeds the date and time automatically, but what if the time is incorrect. Use EOS Utility to synchronize the camera time and date with your computer either on demand or automatically. You can also use EOS Utility to install customized Picture Styles that can be accessed in…

Your camera may offer an alternative option for working up your images in Creative filters. Like Creative Assist, the Creative filters can be found in the blue Playback menu, and the filter effects can be applied to JPEGs and Raw files (with a JPEG version of the filtered Raw file being created). Creative filters can also be added ‘live’ to JPEG photos and videos while you shoot them. If you’re using a DSLR, you’ll need to set the camera to Live View mode in order to see the effect. The downside of using Creative filters while you shoot is that the camera only saves the file with the Creative filter effect applied. The effects include somewhat gimmicky treatments such as Toy camera, Miniature and Fish-eye. You can adjust the strength of…

Choosing to work up your Raw files manually gives you access to a Raw processing screen, where you’re able to carry out some basic adjustments by selecting the on-screen buttons. You can tweak the brightness – although you won’t be able to be make swingeing changes to the exposure – change the white balance and try a different Picture Style, as well as fine-tuning the parameters of a Picture Style to further customise the look of your photo. The preview image will change to reflect any adjustments you make, and you can always revert to the original picture if you don’t like it. Other essential adjustments include lens corrections, noise reduction and Auto Lighting Optimizer (ALO). You can also choose the colour space and the image quality of the JPEG…

GuruShots is billed as the world’s leading photo game. It’s an online platform conceived to give global exposure to people who love taking photographs. GuruShots members start out as Newbies and compete with other photographers to win challenges, increase their ranking on the site and eventually progress to coveted ‘Guru’ status. Challenges are voted on by Gurus and the wider GuruShots community, and there’s a fresh challenge – like ‘Dusk till Dawn’ – everyday. Winners receive prizes from GuruShots’ sponsors, including Lowepro, Kodak and Lensbaby. Check out www.gurushots.com to find out more.…

THE CONTENDERS Canon EF-M 28mm f/3.5 Macro IS STM £309/$299 Canon EF-S 35mm f/2.8 Macro IS STM £379/$349 Canon RF 85mm F2 Macro IS STM £649/$599 Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM £499/$599 Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM £969/$1299 Sigma 70mm f/2.8 DG Macro Art £449/$569 Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro £359/$569 Tamron SP 90mm f/2.8 Di VC USD Macro £649/$649 Being stuck at home doesn’t seem so bad with spring here. New life is popping up all around, from garden flowers and plant life to the bugs that live on and around them. A whole new world of photo opportunities is right on your doorstep, available to shoot without any need for travel. But to make the most of extreme close-up photography, you’ll need…

As with distortion, levels of colour fringing are very minimal with the macro lenses in this test group. Lateral chromatic aberration is generally negligible, even towards the extreme edges and corners of the image frame. Naturally, this can be automatically corrected in-camera or when editing raw files in Digital Photo Professional, when using recent and current Canon cameras with own-brand lenses, as well as with the Sigma 70mm Art lens.…

DSLR CAMERAS PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED What to look for Canon EOS cameras Canon splits its EOS DSLR lineup into entry-level, enthusiast and pro ranges; the 4000D is the most basic, the 850D and 77D for intermediates, the 80D and full-frame 6D Mk II for more advanced enthusiasts, while the 7D, full-frame 5D and 1D lines have pro-level features. With more expensive models, expect greater handling, more robust build quality (weather-sealing and magnesium-alloy shells), more advanced features, and full-frame rather than APS-C image sensors. Over the page, we also have the full-frame EOS R mirrorless cameras, the EOS RP as an ‘entry-level’ and more affordable option, the EOS R and R5 for serious photographers. Plus not forgetting Canon’s smaller compact system (also mirrorless) APS-C EOS M camera range.…

THE NO.1 MAGAZINE FOR CANON USERS! FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… ▪ Flowers with UV light ▪ Time-slice scenic shots ▪ Panoramic photos ▪ New imageediting guides in Affinity Photo, Photoshop CC and Photoshop Elements and Lightroom! PLUS ALL THIS… ▪ The Apprentice: How to take great automotive action photos ▪ Pro interview: Laura El-Tantawy, award-winning British/Egyptian documentary photographer ▪ Super Test: Top home photo printers starting at only £80 ISSUE 178 ON SALE 27 APRIL 2021 Content subject to change…

01 AXEL TOWERS BY INGE SCHUSTER Inge has captured a brilliant shot of the Axel Towers in Copenhagen, making great use of the available light and swooping curves of the architecture. The base of the building is in deep shadow, which acts perfectly to frame the towers and lead the eye in, almost like a vignette. There’s a brilliant range of tones in the shot from the deep shadows, sky and bright reflective windows, but Inge’s done a fantastic job of making sure all of the detail was retained. Lens Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM Exposure 1/320 sec, f/6.3, ISO800 02 RELAX IN THE CITY BY SIMON HADLEIGH-SPARKS Simon’s shot of the Riverwalk House, designed by architect Stanton Williams, in Millbank Vauxhall Bridge in London, works well in black and white.…

APERTURE Adjust the lens to allow more or less light through When you focus on a point, there is an area in front and behind the point that also appears sharp. This is the depth of field. It can be partly affected by the lens aperture. A wide aperture lets more light in and produces a limited plane of focus. A narrow aperture restricts the light and records a greater plane of sharpness. Aperture sizes are referred to as f-numbers, like f4, f/8 and f/16. f/2.8 IDEAL FOR… PORTRAITS Use a wide aperture to create dreamy background blur (bokeh) when you want to emphasize your subject. f/8 IDEAL FOR… CITIES & BUILDINGS A medium aperture is great for shooting buildings in daylight, and achieving focus throughout the image. f/16 IDEAL FOR… LANDSCAPES For…

Your choice of lens can really affect your composition WIDE-ANGLE LENS Shorter lenses fit more scene in the frame The angle of view of a lens is determined by its focal length. Wide-angle lenses have a focal length of 24mm or below, and allow you to fit more of a scene into the frame, so they’re useful for shooting landscapes or architecture. But wide-angle lenses exaggerate perspective and create distortion when used too close to a subject, which can be unflattering if you’re shooting people close-up. The exception would be if this look was a deliberate aesthetic choice. TELEPHOTO LENS Longer lenses get you closer to distant subjects A telephoto lens (anything above a focal length of 85mm) produces a tight angle of view. This allows you to zoom in…

Mount Cook, New Zealand. 25 July 2012 Being woken by an earthquake, or shall I say ten seconds of house-shaking, plate-smashing earth tremors, gives you a new feeling of utter insignificance. As Rachel and I board the plane from Tokyo to New Zealand, the whole experience is still at the forefront of my mind. It’s enough stress for one day, but with just 45 minutes to make the connection to Christchurch, the stress levels in Auckland Airport are as large as the queue in front of us. My wife saves the day and we are sprinting to our flight connection gate. We have two weeks to travel around the South Island. With our luggage loaded into our conspicuous lime green ‘Juicy Van’, the first stop is Lake Tekapo via the…

When seen close-up, soap bubbles are a sight to behold. Vivid colours swirl across the surface in an elegant dance that has to be seen to be believed. The play of colours and textures make them look like planets. As such, a bubble makes a fantastic subject for a vibrant abstract photography project. What’s more, you’ll probably have everything you need for this already around the house. We can make our bubbles using a straw and a homemade bubble mixture. With a little care, it’s possible to blow up the bubble and let it dangle from the end of the straw to form a glowing orb of colour. Then the lighting is key. We need a flash to freeze the motion of the swirls and pick out fine details. The…

01 REMOVE THE STRAW Removing the straw will make your bubbles look more planet-like. Open the images into Photoshop then grab the Content-Aware Move tool. Set Mode: Extend in the options then drag a selection over part of the bubble next to the straw. Move and rotate the area to cover the straw. 02 HEAL THE HOLES The bubble will reflect anything nearby, so it’ll show the holes in the front of the tube and the opening where we poke the straw. If you want to remove these either paint with the Spot Healing Brush tool, or make a selection with the Lasso tool then go to Edit > Content-Aware Fill. 03 BOOST COLOURS We can use the tonal tools in Camera Raw/Lightroom to enhance the colours and textures of…

01 RECOMPOSE FOR IMPACT Copy the Background layer with Ctrl/Cmd+J and then hit Ctrl/Cmd+T to enter Free Transform mode. While holding the Ctrl/Cmd key, pull out the corner handles to level up the horizon and recompose the frame so the balance is better. Hit Enter when you’re happy. 02 SELECT THE SKY Select the Lasso tool and draw around the sky to make a Selection. In the Tool Options bar, click Refine Edge and then move Feather to 140px. This will soften the edge of the Selection, so any changes blend in with the rest of the image. Click OK to apply. 03 DARKEN THE SKY At the top of the Layers panel, click the Adjustment Layer icon and choose Levels. Move the Highlights slider to meet the edge of…

The Pen tool may not be the easiest to master, but it offers so much control. It’s ideal for tracing around objects with hard, curved edges, like the campervan we’re using here. In this project we’ll explain how it works, and show you how to transform a mundane car park shot into a vibrant cut-out. By tracing around the vehicle with the tool we can conform precisely to the outline of the shape. This is where the Pen tool proves its worth. It has many other uses too, however, from making smooth, intricate shapes to creating all kinds of designs. Working with the Pen tool takes time to master, but is well worth it and, with experience, it will soon become second nature. The tool lets you place anchor points…

In 2014 we bought a house in Pepperell, Massachusetts, a few miles from the Nashua River. As fate would have it, one day as we were strolling in our new neighbourhood, one neighbour was selling a used canoe at a yard sale, and so we bought it. About 10 minutes into our trip down the Nashua river I saw my first great blue heron standing in the river 25 feet from us. Further down river we found osprey, bald eagles, double breasted cormorants, green herons, and many other species of ducks, swans and geese and my passion for bird photography began. Weather permitting, we are on the river every weekend and I always have my camera with me. When I first started photographing birds I was using a Canon EOS…

DON’T OVERLOOK THE UTILITIES Canon cameras and software are tightly integrated, and making the most of the combination is helpful for many photographers. Here we’ve touched on just four elements of the partnership between cameras and EOS Utility, there are quite a lot more for you to discover, including custom white balance settings and adding additional lens correction data. 01 SYNCHRONIZE CAMERA’S TIME AND DATE Connect your camera and choose camera settings from the main window, then choose date/time/zone setting, one click will sync your camera. Even better use the preferences to synchronize your camera with your computer every time you connect the camera, you even get a reminder when summer or winter time ends. 02 INSTALL CUSTOM PICTURE STYLES Picture Styles determine how your camera processes photos. You can…

I can invariably end up cropping my images to tidy up the framing, usually subtly, but sometimes more significantly – such as when I want to create a square crop from a full-size Raw. You can only crop JPEGs in-camera, which you can do by selecting the ‘Cropping’ option that’s available in the blue Playback menu of many models. You can also choose the Cropping option when you’re reviewing images, by pressing the Q button to activate the Quick menu and selecting the on-screen button. You’ll be able to set the cropping frame size, aspect ratio, position and either the orientation (vertical or horizontal) You’ll be able to crop the image according to the aspect ratios available in the camera – 3:2, 16:9, 4:3 or 1:1 – but you can…

Ask Brian! Confused with your Canon DSLR? Email EOSSOS@futurenet.com Back button AF is one of the most asked about topics in this mag, but from the questions there’s a lot of confusion too. You can only use it when the camera mode is P, Tv, Av, M, Fv or Bulb. Before EOS cameras had AF-ON buttons, back button AF swapped AE-lock and autofocus (AF) activation between AE-lock and half-press of the shutter. Cameras with AF-ON buttons simply add an alternative button on the back of the camera that can be used to control when AF is active. The problem is that it takes time to reprogram your thumb to press the back button for AF, whereas you are always going to press the shutter to take a photo. Remember that…

01 Irix Edge IFH-100-Pro Irix adds a polarizing filter to its ultra-wide filter holder £TBA/$190 https://irixlens.com IRIX’S PREVIOUS IFH-100 holder was designed to be as thin as possible to reduce or eliminate any vignetting with ultra-wide lenses. It had slots for two square filters but not for a polarizer. The new Irix Edge IFH-100-PRO, however, adds a drop-in circular polarizer. This is good news for landscape photographers, as a polarizing filter can help darken blue skies and cut through reflections in water to enhance colour saturation. You need to rotate a polarizing filter for each shot to get the optimum result. 02 Profoto Pro-11 2400 AirTTL This is “the world’s fastest flash” £12,995/$16,995 https://profoto.com PROFOTO HAS unveiled what it is calling “the ultimate flash” – the Profoto Pro-11. This power…

This is Canon’s one and only dedicated EF-M macro lens for EOS M cameras, and it has a surprisingly short focal length, equivalent to shooting with a 45mm lens on a full-frame camera. Typical of EF-M lenses, it’s compact and lightweight, tipping the scales at just 130g and featuring a retractable design. Although small, the lens packs in a lot of features. STM autofocus (AF) is great for stills and video capture, and there’s a hybrid image stabilizer which corrects for x-y shift as well as the more usual angular vibrations. It’s effective in general shooting but less so for close-ups, and no substitute for a tripod in full macro shooting. Speaking of, the lens features an extra ‘Super Macro’ mode, which boosts the max magnification from 1.0x to 1.2x.…

Macro lenses are generally designed to be high-precision technical optics. As such, they’re usually ‘flat field’ lenses that have no field curvature, so if you shoot a flat object from front-on, the whole of the surface covered by the image frame should be rendered sharply. Similarly, distortion is usually very minimal or virtually non-existent, especially with macro lenses that have a focal length of 60mm or more. Macro lenses with shorter focal lengths, like the Canon EF-M 28mm and EF-S 35mm tend to exhibit slight barrel distortion.…

Canon hasn’t yet launched a dedicated full macro lens for the EOS R range of cameras so, if you want full 1.0x magnification, you’ll need to use one of the lenses in this test group via an EF EOS R mount adapter. Our top choices would be the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, or the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro on a tight budget. The Tamron SP 90mm f/2.8 Di VC USD Macro is also a great choice, although the latest firmware only makes it fully compatible with EOS R and RP cameras. For a lens that works well as an all-rounder, look no further than the Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM, at around £509/$499. It’s a compact yet competent lens that’s great…

MIRRORLESS CAMERAS PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED What to look for Canon EOS mirrorless cameras When it comes to choosing mirrorless EOS cameras over DSLRs, there are pros and cons to consider. Canon’s full-frame EOS R cameras are packed with the very latest tech including IBIS, Animal AF and 20fps via the electronic shutter in both the EOS R5 and R6. Without the mirror, R bodies are smaller than their DSLR equivalents (but only a fraction lighter). Compared to Optical Viewfinders on DSLRs, using an R’s Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) is slower to focus due to lag and refresh rates, yet focusing via Live View with AF points all over the touchscreen is better. EOS R cameras can also use the next gen Canon RF lenses and their superior image…

Letter of the Month We don’t normally write in to any magazines, but wanted to express our thanks for keeping us sane and inspired during the recent lockdown. We decided to subscribe to PhotoPlus late last year, but it was last issue (April issue 176) when Canon photographer Damian Waters showed how to take better landscape photos over a 12-hour period. We’ve been getting out at first and last night, before and after working stuck at home indoors, and it’s been a welcome relief, and massively rewarding to try and capture some of scenes on Hampstead Heath in nice light. We’re not quite ready to share with you yet though! So thank you PhotoPlus, keep giving us reasons to get out and take photos, even if it is currently restricted…

One of the best things about digital photography is that it’s so easy to take up, yet it offers untold depths if you choose to progress your Canon camera skills. Anybody can take a picture, and almost everyone you know has a camera in their pocket, but all it takes to separate the real enthusiast from the occasional snapper is a little extra photographic knowledge. Our Canon Crash Course focuses on the fundamentals of photography, and will benefit everyone from beginners to enthusiasts who wants to get the most out of their Canon EOS camera… let’s go! YOUR CANON CRASH COURSE PART 1 CAMERA ANATOMY Your guided tour to what all those buttons actually do… PAGE 30 PART 2 UNDERSTANDING EXPOSURE The three factors that decide how a photo looks…

THE EXPOSURE TRIANGLE How aperture, shutter speed and ISO work together in perfect harmony Imagine that aperture, shutter speed and ISO are three sides of a triangle. If you alter one, you have to compensate by adjusting at least one of the other two. For example, a wide aperture and a short shutter speed might produce the same exposure as a narrow aperture with a longer shutter speed, but the resulting images will look different. Widening the aperture allows more light through, so you compensate either with a short shutter speed to keep the flow of light brief, or a low ISO to make the sensor less sensitive to the light that hits it. The longer the shutter is open, the more light shines through. To prevent overexposure, compensate either…

HOW TO VIEW OUR VIDEO GUIDES ONLINE ALL OF OUR NEW PHOTO PROJECT AND IMAGE-EDITING VIDEOS CAN BE VIEWED ONLINE VIA THE WEB LINKS ON PAGES 44-58! New projects with video guides Follow our Canon camera walkthrough guides and Photoshop editing videos VIEW THE VIDEOS WHENEVER you see this icon you’ll find an accompanying video to watch online so you can follow along. You can view the videos on a smartphone, tablet or computer. See the links on the project pages.…

Get your camera and lighting right to capture colourful soap bubbles 01 STILL CAMERA A tripod will help to keep the camera steady and free your hands to hold the straw. Alternatively, you could place the camera on the table instead and use a book to prop the lens up. It also lets you keep the focus in the right place. 02 OFF-CAMERA FLASH We used two Speedlites here, but if you only have one then that’ll do, as long as you can trigger it off-camera. Use a wireless trigger, or set the Speedlite to optical remote mode (called S1), then use the pop-up flash to trigger the off-camera flash. 03 PAPER TUBE This paper tube is made from two sheets of A4 paper. The paper acts as a diffuser,…

THE MOST fascinating thing about this whole technique is watching the bubbles change over time. It turns out that bubbles have a rather varied lifespan. When newly made, the surface can look rather dull. But after a few seconds something wonderful begins to happen. The coloured bands start to sink from top to bottom, swirling around on the surface as they shift downwards. This is the time to gently blow to make the coloured bands dance around and mix together in the most amazing way. The colours then fade and the bubble reaches old age, but it’s not finished yet. Now we’ll see an equally beautiful display of black dots and lines that frolic over the surface and slowly drop down, leaving parts of the surface clear. Unfortunately not all bubbles…

It would seem that there’s a never-ending sea of accessories on the market available for your Canon EOS camera, but there’s one particular item that I can guarantee every photographer owns, and this is, of course, the humble lens and body caps that came with your camera. That is unless, like me, you constantly lose them! So this month I wanted to take an ordinary object, like a lens cap, and make some easy adjustments to turn in into something much more extraordinary. For Canon cameras with a system that lets you swap lenses, such as an EOS DSLR or mirrorless, you’ll have three caps in total: a ‘lens’ cap which snaps onto the front of the lens to protect the front element, a ‘rear’ lens cap, which protects the…

01 PLAN YOUR IDEA TikToks don’t have to be a massive production. Some of the most popular videos are shot on a smartphone. But, if you love getting creative, why not experiment with using your Canon EOS. A shot list will help keep you organized too! 02 SET YOUR VIDEO SETTINGS When using your Canon set the frame rate at 24p and the shutter speed to 1/50 sec to keep your footage looking smooth, then adjust your aperture and ISO until it’s bright enough. Remember to shoot in the portrait orientation for TikTok. 03 MAKE YOUR EDITS You can certainly edit on a desktop program. However, there are smartphone apps that can make the edits you need, such as Splice, Filmm or GoPro App. Not only are these apps easy…

Profiles are one of the most useful features in Photoshop CC and Lightroom. Essentially they are a set of looks that you can use to kick-start your image editing or try out different tonal effects. They’re applied to your image using the Profile Browser, which is available both in Photoshop’s Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom Classic CC. Not only can you make use of the 50 or so built in profiles on offer, you can also In this way custom profiles are similar to Lightroom Presets. But profiles are superior in a few important ways. Firstly, your custom profiles have a built-in strength slider, so you can make the tonal effect stronger or weaker depending on the image. And unlike presets, profiles work independently of the tonal settings or sliders…

01 TIDY THE VAN Start by tidying up the image and remove any distracting reflections. Grab the Clone tool and use it to remove distractions from the paint-work. Clone to add to the wheels where they are hidden behind the pavement like our example image – hold Alt to target a nearby area then paint to clone pixels. 02 BEGIN A CURVE Grab the Pen tool and zoom in on the van, click to add an anchor point. Click again to add another along the edge, and click-drag outwards if you want the line to curve. You can hold Cmd/Ctrl to adjust the anchor points. Holding space while adding an anchor point lets you tweak the position. 03 TRACE THE OUTLINE Trace around the edges of the van. If you…

HOLED UP in his room in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, Timothy Allen is waiting for news of his transfer to another hotel in the neighbouring city of Dubai. This trip to the warm sunshine and high rise cities of the Gulf states is a rare respite from the freezing winter skies and silent hedge-lined lanes of his home in rural Wales. But, as we talk screen-to-screen via the powers of Zoom, I wonder if he really has found relief from COVID’s smothering reach? Apart from a large cliché picture of camels and orange sand dunes on the wall behind him, he could be speaking from any airport hotel cell at Heathrow or Gatwick. So, how’s it going, Tim? “It’s like everything is 20 or 30 times harder to organize,…

In-camera processing How to work up your images without needing your computer Taking a photo and saving it to the memory card doesn’t have to be the end of the story until you’re back at your computer. Depending on which EOS body you’re shooting with, you’ll be able to process your Raw file or edit your JPEG in-camera to give your picture a new look. While you’re unlikely to want to fine-tune a fine-art landscape or studio portrait this way, it’s useful for working up a travel shot or a family shot to share online. It can also be interesting to see how an image you’ve taken will look with a different crop or colour treatment while you’re out. All EOS cameras allow you to edit a JPEG to some…

Advanced Canon EOS cameras such as the EOS R, EOS 90D and EOS 6D Mark II give you the option of processing your Raws during playback. You can access this by pressing the Q button to bring up the Quick menu when a Raw file is displayed on the screen during playback, or dip into the blue playback menu, select ‘RAW image processing’ and choose an image from there. When you select Raw image processing during playback, you’ll be given a choice of automatically processing the photo according to the camera settings used when it was taken, or customizing the way the file is processed. Of course, you don’t get the level of adjustment that you do when using dedicated software on a computer. You can’t adjust the shadows and…

YOU WILL be unable to view the histogram when you carry out in-camera Raw image processing, which can make it tricky to judge the true effect of any adjustments you make to Brightness and ALO – particularly if the brightness of your screen is at its highest setting. One trick is to activate Highlight Alert in the blue Playback menu before you start your Raw adjustments. This will cause any areas of the image that are risk of being overexposed to blink on the display – as shown in the sky here. Reducing the Brightness level can restore detail in these areas, although as it’s a global adjustment it means the rest of the picture will get darker too.…

Get critiqued! Email photos to EOSSOS@futurenet.com with the subject ‘Rate My Photo’ Woodpecker PAUL NORRIS, ROYSTON SAYS… Having never seen or captured an image of a woodpecker in the wild, I set myself this challenge. I set up my tripod and used my EOS 80D and 70-200mm f/4L IS. This shot is taken from a series of 30 shots captured in high-speed drive mode. The woodpecker landed at the back of the bird feeder station and kept hiding itself behind the post. I used single point focus on the woodpecker’s eye to ensure the image was sharp. The Raw image has been heavily cropped, as I couldn’t get closer. I boosted brightness and contrast with saturation to the greens and reds, then burned the dark feathers in. BRIAN SAYS… That’s…

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 and handling, smooth and precise operation of all controls, and we test the speed and 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 Canon 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, this better reveals the true performance of each lens on test. We also run a full range…

For full-frame and APS-C DSLRs, the Canon 100mm L-series lens and Tamron 90mm are practically perfect macro optics. Both deliver ace image quality and have hybrid image stabilizers along with robust, weather-sealed build quality. The Canon lens is a bit sharper in general shooting but the Tamron draws level for close-ups. It also produces almost no distortion, while there’s a slight barrel effect from the Canon. There’s also a big difference in cost, the Tamron being much less expensive. On a tighter budget, the Sigma 105mm lens is the one. The RF 85mm is a superb, multi-purpose lens for EOS R-series cameras, but only offers 0.5x rather than the full 1.0x max macro magnification of every other lens in the group. The EF-M 28mm is a useful general prime for…

Limited back issues of PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine print editions are available on our new MagazinesDirect.com secure store at www.magazinesdirect.com/photoplus-magazine-single-issue 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 or iPhone? Get the free PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine app in the App Store or at bit.ly/photoplus_app then browse through our back issues or subscribe through the app. • Kindle Fire or Nook HD? Simply search for PhotoPlus on Amazon’s Newsstand or in B&N’s Nook store. • Windows or Mac? Use Zinio to read PhotoPlus on your laptop or desktop computer or via the app! Go to www.zinio.com and search for PhotoPlus where you can buy back…