Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

Top reasons to subscribe now! ✔ Great savings Subscribe for 12 months and get your 13 issues delivered to your door, just choose between the three options below ✔ Vanguard Range 32 bag The Vanguard Veo Range 32M messenger bag will fit your camera with lens attached, 1-2 lenses, a flash and accessories along with a 13-inch tablet and a travel tripod. Option 1 Annual Digital Subscription £50 13 issues of digitaleditionforyourdevice Instant digital access Available on iOS or Android Gift not included with Annual Digital Subscription Option 2 Annual Print Subscription £54 13 issues of printedition Delivery to your door included in the price Free Vanguard messenger bag worth £70! Option 3 Annual Premium Subscription £69 13 issues of printeditiondeliveredtoyour door 13 issues of PhotoPlus digital edition for your…

We often hear portrait photographers talk about underexposing the ambient light, then using a flash to pick out the subject. It’s a technique that can result in wonderfully atmospheric portraits with bold skies. So we thought, why not use the same method to create a bold landscape? This way, we can underexpose the scene for a dramatic evening sky, then pick out parts of our scene with flash. The problem is – like the neolithic burial chamber here – subjects in landscape photos tend to be larger than people, meaning that a single flash may not be big enough, or strong enough, to light the entire thing. Thankfully, there’s no need to bring along an arsenal of flashes. One of the advantages to landscape photography is that – apart from…

01 COMBINE AND ALIGN Highlight the images in Adobe Bridge that you want to blend together, then go to Tools>Photoshop>Load Files into Photoshop Layers. Go to the Layers panel and shift-click between top and bottom to highlight them. Go to Edit>Auto-Align Layers, choose Reposition and hit OK. 02 MASK AND REVEAL Hide all but the bottom layer, then reveal and highlight the layer above it. Hold Alt and click the Add Mask icon in the Layers Panel to add a full black mask, then grab the brush tool. Choose a soft-edged brush tip and paint with white to reveal the part of the hidden layer that you want to use. 03 BLEND THE LIGHT Carry on working your way up the layers (change the layer order if necessary), adding masks…

01 TRIPOD A tripod is an essential tool for landscapes. These will help you take your time to get the perfect composition, eliminate camera shake from hand-holding your Canon camera and also make it possible to shoot super-long exposures with ND filters. 02 CANON EOS CAMERA Avoid compact and bridge cameras and, instead, opt for one of Canon’s EOS full-frame, or APS-C, bodies to get the best image quality. It doesn’t particularly matter if you have a mirrorless or DSLR, this is more down to personal preference. 03 LENS CHOICE Wide-angle lenses have a focal length below 50mm (roughly what the human eye sees). Wide-angles, like a 16-35mm are synonymous with landscapes, yet you can get good results with telephoto lenses too, so be sure to experiment! 04 LOCATION A…

here’s plenty of great opportunities to catch beautiful portraits this summer, but if you want to enhance your images, one of the best skills you can learn is how to retouch the skin. Luckily, there’s a method I’m going to show you in Lightroom that is fast, effective, and surprisingly simple. The Spot Removal tool in Lightroom Classic CC is an easy way to edit out flaws. Whether your model happened to have a bad breakout on your shoot, or you just want to remove some flyaway hairs, the Spot Removal tool can be a lifesaver when an otherwise amazing portrait has some small imperfections. The Spot Removal tool is equally as handy for removing dust sensor spots from landscapes, too. The Spot Removal tool replaces any area that you…

01 CREATE THE BASE Make a new document (File>New) or use a photo as a base for your painting (we used a blurred image here). Make a new empty layer for your painting. Grab the Brush tool and choose a colour. Click on the butterfly icon in the tool options at the top to enable symmetry painting. 02 PAINT WITH SYMMETRY Choose Mandala, then set a number of segments for your painting. Start painting with the brush tool and you’ll see paint appear in several places at once. If you’re using a mouse try increasing Smoothing to 100% in the options for smoother lines. Experiment with different colours and brushes. 03 EXPERIMENT WITH BRUSH SETTINGS Click on the brush panel icon at the top and experiment with brush settings. Check…

TO MANY followers of his photo work, Clement Kiragu is better known as Clement Wild, one of Kenya’s best-known wildlife photo safari operators. Based in Nairobi, Clement worked in advertising for ten years as an art director before choosing to devote his life to photographing the wildlife of his beautiful homeland. In a normal year, Clement would be leading multiple tours of eager photographers from overseas across the open grasslands of the fabled Maasai Mara, where lions, leopards and cheetah prey on zebras, gazelle and wildebeest. Instead, COVID-19 means safaris have ground to a halt, but that’s not enough to stop Clement moving – in fact, he’s moving house! It might feel like this interview is being randomly scheduled somewhere between the practicalities of unpacking boxes marked ‘kitchen’, ‘living room’…

Since early childhood I have been interested in wildlife and the natural world, and from my early teens photography and the two have been my passion ever since. I enjoy looking for new and different challenges in my photography and to see and photograph Humpback Whales bubble-net feeding has been high on my wish list – I feel it’s one of the natural wonders of the world that everyone should see. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts in Alaska, I decided to carry out more research and felt the best way to achieve my goal would be to track the herring and krill shoals, which the whales would feed on. To do this I was able to hire a boat and split the cost with some other like-minded photographer friends.…

Guided mode IF YOU’RE using a beginner-friendly camera like the EOS 250D, then the menu display is set to Guided by default. It’s worth keeping Feature guide enabled until you’re familiar with all the important options, as this will briefly display a description of each function. Once you get used to the camera, you can upgrade to the Standard coloured menus by without descriptions – you’ll find this customization under Display level settings. You won’t be able to see the My Menu tab (explained to the right) unless Standard is set. Greyed out WHEN YOU scroll through the menu, you may notice that some options are greyed. This means that the function is incompatible with another one that’s active. For example, you are unable to select Auto Lighting Optimizer when…

Our Canon expert Brian explains how to use Canon’s free Digital Photo Professional to sort your shots DPP is often thought of as a great tool for extracting amazing image quality from Raw files, but it is also a great way to manage a growing archive of shots. DPP applies your rankings to the shots, saving them in the Raw files and filters your collection according to how you prefer to search. You might have considered DPP for processing your photos, as it does deliver amazing results from Raw files, often more readily than other software tools. But with a growing archive of images you benefit from DPP’s organization features, especially if you buy more storage instead of deleting old, unused, files. To work quickly through large numbers of pictures,…

01 Canon EOS R3 More updates from the sporty mirrorless £TBC www.canon.co.uk CANON HAS confirmed new specs for the upcoming Canon EOS R3 sporty pro mirrorless camera, including new AF for tracking motorsports, autofocusing down to-7EV, oversampled 4K video, 8-stops of in-body image stabilization (IBIS), a fully articulating screen, dual memory card slots, and the same battery and optical Smart Controller joystick from Canon’s EOS-1D X Mark III flagship sports camera. “The EOS R3 takes object-tracking to another level – adding AF tracking for motorsports including racing cars and motorbikes,” says Canon. We’ve also spied that the R3 will possess a top screen, a wired ethernet connection and an extralarge electronic viewfinder; no doubt to accommodate the new Eye Control Focus system that enables you to move AF points with…

Thanks to the 1.6x crop factor of APS-C format EOS M bodies, the 22mm focal length of this lens equates to 35.2mm in full-frame terms. It gives the same 63-degree viewing angle as using a 35mm lens on a full-frame camera, perfect for everyday photography. Despite having a fast f/2 aperture rating, the ‘pancake’ design enables it to be the smallest and most lightweight lens in the group. Given the slick build of EOS M bodies, the camera and lens combination is quite stealthy, especially when composing on the rear screen. The STM (Stepping Motor) autofocus system is quick and quiet, and manual focusing benefits from an optional focus peaking display, featured in all current EOS M cameras. An aspherical element in the optical path helps to reduce the physical…

All of the prime lenses on test have a modest viewing angle, so you wouldn’t expect to see much distortion. That’s borne out in our lab test results, which have impressively low figures throughout. Tested on a full-frame camera, the results for the Canon EF 24mm is a little worse than for some competing lenses, but not the Samyang 35mm. However, the distortion is effectively reduced when using it as a street lens on an APS-C format body. The Sigma zoom lens has noticeable barrel distortion at its shortest focal length and the Canon RF zoom is far worse.…

Much smaller and more lightweight than the popular RF 24-105mm F4L IS USM standard zoom, this one is much more convenient for all-day shooting. Naturally, it has a slower, variable aperture rating compared with its constant-aperture sibling, shrinking to f/7.1 at the long end of the zoom. As such, it’s slower than any other lens in the group, but that’s not a deal-breaker for general shooting, as Canon’s EOS R-series cameras will perform at high ISO settings. Speaking of close-ups, you can capture great detail with the 0.5x magnification ‘Centre Focus Macro’ facility. Other neat features include a 5-stop image stabilizer but, unlike with the RF 35mm lens here, there’s no extra, customizable control ring. In this case, the 24-105mm zoom is fitted with a ‘Focus/Control’ switch, so you can…

There’s a diverse range of manual-focus lenses from South Korean manufacturer Samyang, also badged as Rokinon lenses in the USA. The vast majority of them have no built-in electronics whatsoever, so you can’t control the aperture from the camera body, nor shoot effectively in Program, Shutter Priority, or scene modes. Instead, you need to dial in your required aperture via the lens’s own aperture ring, and the viewfinder image gets progressively darker with narrower aperture settings. Something of a rarity, this lens does have built-in electronics in the Canon-mount ‘AE’ version, enabling both camera-driven aperture control and operation of the focus confirmation lamp. The focus ring has a long rotational travel and operates with smooth precision. Zone focusing is enabled by the focus distance scale and depth of field markings…

If you’re out shooting for the day, carrying a tripod around can be a pain. And if you’re trying to shoot discretely in an urban context, handheld photography is the order of the day. All of the prime lenses in our test have fast aperture ratings that enable quick shutter speeds in most conditions, without the need to bump up ISO sensitivities too far. Even so, you might well need to use a medium or narrow aperture to gain extra depth of field, when you want to keep near and far areas of a scene rendered sharply. Image stabilization can make all the difference between getting the shot and missing it, especially if you want to keep shooting when the sun’s gone down and the night lights come on.…

This Tamron prime lens for full-frame DSLRs matches the f/1.8 aperture rating of Canon’s RF 35mm for mirrorless cameras. It’s smaller and lighter than the f/1.4 competitors, although it’s still more than 50 per cent heavier than the Canon RF lens. As well as native mounting on DSLRs, you can use it EOS R-series bodies via an EF-EOS R mount adapter, but only from serial number 014146 or firmware 3.0 and, so far, only with EOS R and RP models. The Tamron doesn’t claim any macro credentials but nevertheless focuses closer than most 35mm lenses, down to 0.2m instead of the more usual 0.3m. This enables a more generous 0.4x maximum magnification factor. Another similarity with the Canon RF lens is that the Tamron features an optical IS or VC…

PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED 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 £300 (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: £300/$N/A Sensor 18Mp APS-C CMOS Viewfinder Pentamirror, 0.8x, 95% ISO 100-6400 (12,800 exp) AF 9-point (1 cross-type) LCD 2.7-in, 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…

THE NO.1 MAGAZINE FOR CANON USERS! FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… ■ Portraits with flash and gels ■ Canon's new EL-1 Speedlite in action ■ Landscape photo skills ■ New image-editing guides in Affinity Photo, Lightroom & Photoshop CC PLUS ALL THIS… ■ PhotoPlus Apprentice: Join us on a shoot on the streets of London for some cool outdoor portraits ■ Canon School: Part 3 of our series ■ Super Test: We test eight of the latest lightweight tripods so you don't have to! ISSUE 181 ON SALE 20 JULY 2021…

APPRENTICE NAME: ADRIAN THOMAS CAMERA: CANON EOS 6D Mk II HEREFORD BASED Adrian has been a keen photographer for nearly 30 years. He’s been a hospital manager most of his career and first became involved in healthcare photography, but over the years has dabbled in other genres, like portraits and weddings. The pandemic was the catalyst that made him go back to his love of landscape and nature photography. He’s written to us as he’d like some help reigniting his passion and expanding his Canon camera know-how. CANON PRO NAME: BILAL HUSSAIN CAMERA: CANON EOS 5D Mk IV BILAL IS a photographer and dental surgeon who loves nothing more than to unwind outside with his Canon camera. He’s taken pictures from deep-sea diving to soaring Cessna planes, and has a…

01 WINNER LEADING THE WAY BY TERRY WITTER This fantastic capture from Terry scoops up first place in our sports photo competition this month! Terry’s creative vision and use of a slow shutter speed to blur the water and other swimmers made it stand out from the crowd. We also love his composition, which reveals the hoard of swimmers competing and the chaos in the water. He’s caught just the right moment where the lead swimmer has popped his head up and all of the others are face down, so it makes him an obvious focal point. Lens Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Exposure 1/10 sec, f/13, ISO100 02 KNOCK OUT BY DOMINIC BEAVEN Dominic’s caught a knock out of an image! He’s been lucky enough to have the…

Deadvlei, Namibia. 08:05am. 5 September 2019 As a landscape and travel photographer I upgrade my tripod about every six or seven years. Despite the fanciest of carbon fibre designs, I now realize I am going to have to spend a lot more if I want to upgrade to the ultimate photographic tripod – a helicopter! I've always dreamed of photography adventures from the air. This was long before the convenience of small motorized wasps began offering this bird's eye perspective at a much cheaper cost, while ruining the soft sounds of a dawn shoot at the same time. Drones are thankfully banned in Namibia’s national parks, but you can take a dawn chopper ride over the Namibia desert for the ultimate experience. Without a doubt this has to be one…

01 TRIPOD In order to paint a scene with our flash we need to take a series of frames in perfect alignment, so a tripod is absolutely essential to keeping the camera fixed throughout your exposure. We composed our scene on the tripod so that we could see the sky through the gap in the stones. 02 FLASH We need to light our subject in segments with a flash. A Speedlite or outdoor flash unit is ideal for this. The flash is triggered wirelessly from the on-camera transmitter. If using a Speedlite, you can use a wireless trigger or set it to optical remote and trigger with your camera’s pop-up flash. 03 CAMERA SETTINGS We need a consistent exposure in our shots, so we use Manual mode. Set the shutter…

AS WELL as vibrant sunset images the flash painting technique also works very well for bold black and whites. What’s more, by removing the colour we don’t need to worry about any colour temperature mismatches between our flash and the ambient light. One of the simplest ways to create a bold black and white landscape is with the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop. After combining your set of flash-lit frames, make a merged copy of all the layers with the keyboard shortcut Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E then go to Filter> Camera Raw Filter. Go to the Profile Browser and hover over the different black and white presets to see which works for your image, or fine-tune the conversion with the B&W Mixer panel, then finish by boosting the contrast. NEXT MONTH COLOURED GELS…

With the advent of digital imagery and websites now enabling us to zoom right in on images to ‘pixel peep,’ we’ve become slightly obsessed with megapixels, image quality, and getting the sharpest possible shots. Perfection isn’t the be-all and end-all though – you can get fantastic images by introducing distortion and flare when used with the right corrective vision. For a flare effect you’ll need some basic photographic kit, such as a Canon EOS DSLR or mirrorless camera with manual and semi-automatic modes, as well as a lens. A 50mm prime lens for portraits will work best, yet you’ll get great results even with a kit lens. Shooting towards the sun with your lens hood removed is one way to introduce flare into your shots – this will create a…

01 SELECT THE SPOT REMOVAL TOOL You can find the Spot Removal tool just below the Histogram dropdown menu in the Toolbar. It’s the second tool from the left, just after the Crop tool. Alternatively, you can simply press ‘Q’ on your keyboard to make the tool active instead. 02 CHOOSE ‘CLONE’ OR ‘HEAL’ The Spot Removal tool’s ‘Clone’ option will exactly replicate an automatically selected area of your photo onto the area you want to fix. Meanwhile, the ‘Heal’ option will give a more subtle, blended option that will match the colour and tone of the surrounding area. 03 MAKE TOOL ADJUSTMENTS Adjust the Size slider, or use the [ and ] keys to control how large you want the brush to be. The Feather slider will dictate whether…

A touch of motion blur can create a sense of action with vehicles and other moving objects in your photos. Shooting for panning blur involves using a fairly slow shutter speed (usually around 1/100 to 1/20 sec depending on the speed of the object), then panning the camera in sync with the object. If the timing and panning is right, the object will come out sharp and the background will be blurred by the movement of the camera. However, it can be tricky to get it perfect in-camera. So if you want to add the motion blur effect to images afterwards, Affinity Photo offers a host of useful tools. In this project we’ll show you how it’s done. For a realistic panning blur effect we need our car to be…

Amboseli National Park is often called ‘The Land of Giants’ because of its large population of free-ranging elephants. When the dry dusty earth is constantly trampled by hundreds of animals it provides a stunning setting during the ‘golden hour’ just after sunrise. “One beautiful warm morning in March 2016, we were just starting our game drive when I saw these zebras chasing each other in what looked like a fight,” Clement recalls. “The zebras were blowing so much dust it almost looked orchestrated. That, combined with the backlit scenery of Amboseli’s vast landscape, was breathtaking, like a scene from The Lion King. The sunrise was spectacular and I quickly took some shots as the car came to a standstill.” Clement was fortunate to witness this spectacle for ten minutes. “Males…

Professional photographers reveal their top six tools of the trade they couldn’t shoot without “You can usually catch me at any major automotive event, as I’ll shoot anything with four wheels” I am an automotive photographer and a Canon Explorer of Light and have been shooting car images professionally for more than 15 years. I’m also the official photographer for the Formula Drift motorsport series and the famous Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Growing up, I was always into cars. From Hot Wheels toys, to radio control cars, and eventually actual cars, as soon as I was old enough to get my license. I live and breathe cars and surrounded myself with all things automotive starting from a very young age. I picked up photography after high school and naturally…

Unless you want to regularly display your images on a TV screen or print directly from your camera, then the blue Playback menu is probably the one that you’ll spend the least amount of time in. There are some useful features in there that can make life a bit easier when you’re out and about shooting though. Activating the Highlight alert function can save your bacon (and exposures), as it will cause any areas of an image that will be potentially overexposed to flash in the display when you review the picture, enabling you to reduce the exposure for subsequent shots. You can also change the playback histogram from brightness to one that shows the individual red, green and blue (RGB) colour channels. Sometimes the brightness histogram doesn’t give you…

While the core camera functions are collected under the familiar red, blue and yellow tabs, there are a couple of additional coloured menu tabs available on Canon’s more advanced bodies: orange and magenta. These are chiefly used to house the extensive control configurations and parameter adjustments that would make the other menus too unwieldy to get through. So, while the autofocus options of entrylevel cameras are found in their red Shooting menus, there’s a dedicated magenta AF section for EOS bodies with more enhanced and complex focusing setups. These cameras also have a set of orange Custom Functions tabs, rather the customization options being part of the yellow Set-up menu. When it comes to configuring the autofocus on top-end bodies, such as the EOS R5 and EOS R6, the range…

ORGANIZING YOUR PHOTOS IS KEY Sorting your shots helps you to readily locate your best work, though few people would say they enjoy doing it. I’d also suggest organizing your images, in folders when you put them on the computer. I use a date system, so have folders 2021-01, 2021-02 through to 2021-12. You could even use EOS Utility to do the sorting for you. 01 SWITCH ON MULTI-FUNCTION PREVIEW DPP has a multi-function preview that speeds up workflow. Go to Tools>Preview screen display settings and select multi-function preview. Now double-click on the first image and navigate through the shots with left and right arrow keys. Learn a few keyboard shortcuts for a faster workflow to zoom in, show exposure warnings and AF points. 02 RATE YOUR SHOTS The key…

CHOOSING the best monitor is important. It’s crucial that you get a proper rendition of the detail, colour and contrast in your shots. When it comes to size, you might think that bigger is better, but 27-inch screens tend to be a size/quality sweet spot. It’s a good compromise between screen space and a comfortable working distance. Conversely, with resolution the more dots the greater detail you’ll be able to see. Cheaper screens tend to max out at Full HD (1920x1080) res. That’s fine in a smaller screen, but at larger sizes (20-inch and above) you’ll start to see the dots. With high-resolution 4K or ‘Retina’ screens, you don’t see the pixels. Colour gamut refers to the range of colours the monitor can produce, and is measured by two industry-standard…

Compared with the EF-S 24mm pancake lens for APS-C format DSLRs, this full-frame compatible lens has the same diameter, but is more than twice as long and twice the weight. Still, it’s compact and manageable at 68x56mm and 280g. It has a more conventional build, based on 11 optical elements rather than just six used in the pancake. One aspherical element is included and Super Spectra coatings are applied. Another similarity is that the aperture is based on a 7-blade diaphragm, and the aperture rating of f/2.8 is the same. One major difference is that this lens uses a ring-type ultrasonic AF system, rather than a stepping motor. Typical of the breed, it has a focus distance scale, along with DoF markings for f/11 and f/22. With a mechanically linked…

Canon’s ring-type ultrasonic and ‘Micro USM’ lenses have a mechanical coupling between the MF ring and the focusing motor. The same is true of lenses that feature more basic electric AF motors. In all of these examples, when you switch from AF to MF focusing, electrical power is cut from the motor and you can move the focusing elements by turning the MF ring. It’s a different situation with STM lenses. The only way the focusing elements can be moved is with electrical power from the host camera body. There’s, therefore, no mechanical connection between the MF ring and the focusing elements. Instead, the focus ring is coupled to the motor electronically. As you twist the ring one way or the other, the movement is registered, measured and the relevant…

One of the key attractions of a full-frame mirrorless is that it enables optimum image quality in a compact and lightweight package. The RF 35mm follows suit with slimline dimensions and a weight of just 305g. It’s smaller and lighter than the EF 35mm on test for DSLRs. As usual for lenses with stepping motor AF systems, there’s no focus distance scale or DoF markings. However, a distance scale, focus peaking and focus guide options are all available in the shooting displays of Canon’s R and RP bodies. Indeed, both AF and manual focusing work well when using these cameras’ electronic viewfinders or vari-angle rear screens. Further highlights include a short minimum focus distance that enables 0.5x macro magnification and a 5-stop ‘hybrid’ image stabilizer that’s great for both regular…

As well as the EF-M 22mm and EF-S 24mm APS-C format pancake lenses reviewed, there’s also an EF 40mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens for full-frame DSLRs. It has the same dimensions as the EF-S 24mm, at 68x23mm, and is a mere 5g heavier. When using the 40mm on a full-frame body, the viewing angle is almost the same as when using the 24mm lens on an APS-C body, at 59 degrees and 57 degrees respectively. Naturally, that’s a little narrower than using a preferred 35mm lens on a full-frame camera, or the EF-M 22mm on an EOS M mirrorless APS-C format camera. Given the similarities in design between Canon’s EF-S 24mm and EF 40mm pancake lenses, it’s little surprise that they deliver almost identical performance. Slight differences are that extreme…

Although this Sigma Art lens has the same f/1.4 aperture rating as its 50mm and 85mm stablemates, it’s comparatively compact and lightweight, measuring 77x94mm and tipping the scales at 665g. That makes it smaller and lighter than the competing Samyang manual-focus lens. Typical of Sigma’s Art prime lenses, it has a fast and whisper-quiet ring-type ultrasonic AF system, with the usual availability of manual override. For manual focusing, the generous rotational travel of the focus ring enables fine and precise adjustments. While the focus distance scale can be a bonus for manual focusing or setting the hyperfocal distance, depth of field markers are only applied for f/16, which makes zone focusing impractical. The complex and high-tech optical path includes two aspherical elements, one FLD (Fluorite-grade Low Dispersion) element, and four…

Canon’s EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM and EF 24-105mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM are both good options as lightweight all-day standard zooms for full-frame DSLRs, the latter commonly being sold as a kit lens option for the EOS 6D Mark II. However, both of these lenses are now being listed as obsolete in some world regions, so the writing’s on the wall. We’d go for the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 DG OS HSM Art lens, which is our favourite standard zoom for full-frame DSLRs. Sure, it’s heavy at a smidge over a kilogram, but it has a faster f/2.8 aperture rating that remains available throughout the zoom range, and retains optical IS. Performance and image quality are fabulous in all respects, and build quality is highly impressive as well.…

MANUAL MODE: 160 sec, f/11, ISO100 TO BEGIN, Bilal put Adrian’s camera into Manual mode and set a shutter speed of 1/160 sec to remove camera shake while shooting handheld. An aperture of f/11 was used for a decent amount of sharpness throughout the scene, and an ISO of 100 would deliver the best image quality with low levels of noise. Manual mode will also let Adrian lock the settings in, which means they don’t change between frames even if the light is slightly different. HISTOGRAM BILAL ADVISED Adrian to always check his images on the rear LCD of his Canon camera to ensure that they’re sharp and correctly exposed. He brought up the histogram on Adrian’s camera in the playback mode to check the exposure – if the histogram…

Sometimes you just need a quick tip to solve your Canon photography problems. It could be as simple as changing your exposure mode on your Canon EOS camera, perhaps adjusting your autofocus setup, or maybe using a different focal length. Of course, there are plenty of other ways you can quickly improve your photos, it might be a white balance tweak, or working more on compositions. In this issue’s big Canon techniques guide, we’ll look at all of these key areas, plus lots of other fast fixes to help you get your photographic mojo back… 01 Manual mode The big benefit of Manual exposure mode is that your camera can’t alter the exposure settings once you’ve dialled them in. You set the aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and your exposures…

OFF-CAMERA FLASH Off-camera flash is a wonderful technique for outdoor photography, whether shooting scenes like this, or for portraits. As well as a flash, all you need is a wireless flash trigger and receiver. Many Speedlites and portable units, like the Godox AD300 here, are capable of off-camera TTL, so you can leave the flash to work out the right power for you. However, to keep things simple, it’s often easier to set the flash to manual power, then simply take a few test shots or use a light meter to determine the correct output for your subject or scene. 01 UNDEREXPOSE THE AMBIENT Before turning on the flash, we first work out an ambient exposure that results in a dramatic sky. As we are shooting into the setting sun,…

Landscape photography is one of the most popular genres with our PhotoPlus readers. It’s a brilliant way to get out in the great outdoors, explore new locations and practice your hobby with your favourite Canon EOS camera. So this issue we’ve started a new series aimed at helping you to improve your own landscape photos. We’re kicking off with composition and how to utilize what you have. The great thing about landscape photography is that you can take your time to really perfect the composition of your shots, unlike wildlife or sports where you often have to compose your shot with lightning fast reflexes. In part one of this series I’ll run through some of the key points to think about when composing your shots – from using the classic rule of…

01 GET A PRISM Triangular glass prisms can be found for just a few pounds on popular online stores like eBay and Amazon in different shapes and sizes, making them an affordable way to drastically change the look of your portrait pictures. 02 CHOOSE THE RIGHT LENS A 35mm focal length is a good choice for cameras with an APS-C sensor, while 50mm is better for tight portraits on a full-frame body. The wide apertures of these primes are usually around f/1.8, making it easy to blur out the prism. 03 DIAL IN THE SETTINGS You’ll be holding the camera in one hand and the prism in your other, so dial in the settings before you shoot. Go into Manual mode and set an aperture of around f/2, a shutter…

Photoshop’s Brush tool is full of hidden delights, and in this project we’ll explore one of our favourites to create an eye-catching effect. Simple yet ingenious, the Symmetry Painting feature lets you paint in several places at once. There are several types of Symmetrical Painting options to experiment with, but the most enjoyable is Mandala. Often found in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, Mandalas are geometric patterns organized around a single central point (in fact, ‘Mandala’ is Sanskrit for ‘circle’). The Mandala brush setting in Photoshop lets you create these sorts of designs in seconds. You can also choose how many segments for your Mandala design, which essentially determines how many places you can paint at once. It’s simple to set up, creative, and easy to lose yourself painting circular Mandala…

01 SELECT THE CAR Grab the Selection Brush tool and make sure ‘Snap to Edges’ is checked in the tool options. Paint over the car to select it. Use the ] and [ keys to resize the brush tip and hold Alt to subtract areas if the tool includes unwanted details. Continue until the car is selected. 02 IMPROVE THE SELECTION. Click the Refine button. Increase the Border Width to expand the area of refinement along the selection, use the Matt brush to tidy messy spots. Use the Foreground and Background brushes to signify different areas. Set the Output to ‘New Layer’ and hit Apply. 03 FILL BEHIND THE CAR Highlight the ‘Background’ layer and duplicate with Cmd/Ctrl+J, hold Cmd/Ctrl and click the thumbnail of the cutout car layer to…

Photo essays from PhotoPlus readers and professional photographers alike Iam a mum to four beautiful children, three boys and my littlest is my daughter Willow. She’s my model for many of my pictures and with a little bit of bribery, she seems happy to oblige! The first thing I consider before taking my daughter out on a shoot is, of course, beautiful light! Whilst I am on a walk out with our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Chester, in the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside where we live, I’m spoilt for choice with many beautiful locations and I make a note to return there with my daughter to take portraits. Throughout the year, different plants are blooming, long grass, wildflowers, so many textures and colours. Sometimes I’ll add falling leaves using Photoshop and try my…

In part two of our new series: We explain all you need to know about Canon EOS camera’s various menus Today’s EOS cameras are oozing with tech. From 30fps Raw bursts, to 8-stop image stabilization, to Deep Learning AF that can tell the difference between a racing car and a racing pigeon and know where to focus on each of them (check out the new EOS R3 on page 86) – the EOS system offers a wealth of impressive specs designed to make our lives easier. Beyond the headline figures and CIPA standard statistics, the most important thing is how a camera handles. How easy is it to make adjustments? Do you have to spend a split-second too long to think about changing settings, or does it all happen intuitively? We’re not…

The yellow Set-up menu is where you’ll find a range of ‘housekeeping’ settings and more technical tweaks for the camera itself. You’ll find the screen brightness adjustment, sensor cleaning and firmware update functions here, for instance. While more recent Canon EOS bodies have their Wi-Fi connection options in a separate purple tab, older bodies have that function buried in the Set-up menu. Rather than have an orange set of tabs for Custom Functions, beginner-friendly bodies with a more limited range of customization options tend to have a Custom Functions sub-menu within the Set-up section too.…

IF YOU’RE A Canon Speedlite user, then you can control the flashgun via the camera menu rather than having to poke around on the back of the Speedlite. This is particularly useful if your camera has a touchscreen, as with a few gentle taps you can adjust the Speedlite’s flash power and other key settings of the flash exposure. There’s always a risk of nudging the camera when using the dials and buttons on the Speedlite, which can be bad news if you’ve lined up a shot precisely with the aid of a tripod. To make the whole process quicker, you can add the External Speedlite Control function (normally found in the red Shooting menu) to one of the slots in the My Menu tab in your Canon camera’s menu.…

“When I shoot buildings, I find it hard to keep the vertical edges upright, how can I fix this and get better shots?”Liam Sachs, Nettlebed BRIAN SAYS… Use a tripod, and get the camera level using the electronic level, if your camera has one; a spirit level in the hotshoe also works well. Use the gridlines overlays in your camera too. For some bodies you can switch gridlines on for the viewfinder, but virtually all the gridlines can be used in Live View. Check the settings in your camera to turn on the guides. Wide-angle lenses can add distortion at the edges of the frame, so if possible stand further back and use a longer lens for straighter verticals. Ideally your camera should be on a level with the middle…

Delamere Forest Lake MIKE DUTTON, ELLESMERE PORT SAYS… I took my young son out for a walk in his pram, and as we wandered I found an opening in the trees. The gap in the trees led down a natural path full of mud and puddles to this view of the lake. I had limited time, so crouched down and took a few shots of this view of the lake I’d not seen before. There was almost no wind, resulting in the lake being very calm and the reflections being near perfect. I processed the image with Lightroom, adjusting the crop, contrast, shadows and highlights to create a more life-like image. BRIAN SAYS… It looks like your wanderings found a great spot for a photo. I think that you could…

THE CONTENDERS Many of us easing out of lockdown have recently rediscovered the simple joys of ambling around towns and cities, and feasting on the sights and sounds of bustling life. As photographers, it’s only natural to want to capture this ‘new’ normality on camera. Any Canon camera is great for this, but some lenses are better than others. A classic choice for full-frame cameras is a 35mm prime lens that has a moderately wide viewing angle, but a very natural perspective. The same goes for using a 24mm lens (or thereabouts) on an APS-C format camera. It gives you the opportunity to shoot from the hip, capturing life as you see it. You can react to your environment, anticipate events as they unfold and capture the definitive moments. For…

Like the EF-M 22mm lens for EOS M bodies, this Canon lens for APS-C format DSLRs has a pancake design that enables a super-slim profile. In fact, it’s a millimetre shorter than the EF-M lens but 7mm wider, measuring 68x23mm. And despite featuring one less element in its optical path, it’s 20g heavier, but is still a lightweight at 125g. Further similarities in design between the EF-M and EF-S lenses include the use of one aspherical optical element, Super Spectra coatings and a well-rounded seven-blade diaphragm. Again, AF is courtesy of a quick and quiet stepping motor, with an electronically coupled manual focus ring. This time, however, the focus ring is rather small and fiddly. Two millimetres might not sound like much but, compared with the 22mm lens, this 24mm…

Many of Canon’s latest lenses use STM (Stepping Motor) systems, which are incredibly quiet and also enable smooth focus transitions when shooting video. Lenses with the lead-screw STM variant can autofocus in almost complete silence, whereas smaller lenses that feature ‘gear type STM’ with gearwheels tend to be more audible and less speedy. For stills, ring-type USM (Ultrasonic Motor) AF is still often preferred, especially in larger lenses. Again, some small lenses including the Sigma zoom on test use a ‘Micro USM’ variant that has driveshafts and gearwheels. Ring-type systems tend to be faster, quieter and feature full-time manual override in AF mode, whereas this is quite rare with Micro USM systems.…

Canon’s EF 40mm pancake lens is super-small but you might feel its focal length is on the long side. On the other hand, the EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM is massive in size and cost. For full-frame DSLRs, this 35mm f/2 IS USM makes an ideal compromise. It’s an f-stop faster than the EF 24mm that’s well worth considering for APS-C format DSLRs, but isn’t much bigger or heavier, at 78x63mm and 335g, and both lenses are the same price. The EF 24mm and 35mm lenses look very similar and both feature one aspherical element, Super Spectra coatings, ring-type ultrasonic AF, a distance scale with f/11 and f/22 DoF markings, plus a 4-stop image stabilizer. As well as being a stop faster, the 35mm lens has eight diaphragm blades that…

As with distortion, all of the lenses on test do well to keep colour fringing to a minimum. In-camera corrections are available in current and recent Canon cameras for all of the own-brand Canon lenses in the test group, as well as for the Sigma lenses, although early examples of may need a firmware update, which can be applied with Sigma’s optional USB Dock. In-camera corrections are unavailable for the Samyang and Tamron lenses.…

Sigma still markets a capable 17-50mm f/2.8 lens, originally launched back in 2010, but we prefer this newer offering. It has a bigger zoom range packed into a more compact, lightweight build. Announced in 2012, this was actually the first ‘Contemporary’ class lens in Sigma’s Global Vision line-up. As such, it aims to keep size and weight to a minimum without compromising image quality. Like the Canon RF zoom on test, the Sigma doesn’t have a constant-aperture design. Even so, it delivers f/2.8 at the short end of the zoom range and only shrinks as far as f/4 towards the longer end, making it much faster than the RF zoom. That’s no mean feat considering the physical compactness and generous zoom range of the lens. Handling is slightly impaired by…

We’ve reviewed the Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM pancake lens in this Super Test but, if you’ve got an EOS M-series camera, the chances are you’ve got the Canon EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM zoom lens as well. This lens is usually sold as a kit lens with EOS M bodies and, if you prefer a zoom to a prime for your all-day shooting, it’s unbeatable. The lens is unfeasibly compact and lightweight, with a crafty retractable design that shrinks it to just 61x45mm for stowing away, and it tips the scales at just 130g. Even so, it has a useful ‘effective’ zoom range of 24-72mm in full-frame terms, and packs an effective 3.5-stop optical IS. Corner-to-corner sharpness could be better but, overall, it’s a solid performer and a joy…