Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2021 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

Christmas subscription offer and gift! Subscribe and save on print and digital editions + get a free Lowepro backpack worth £70! Page 40 It’s that time of year where the days start to get shorter, and the nights get longer, which makes it the ideal time to embrace night photography. We enlist top Canon professionals to share their tips for photographing all things after dark; from city scenes and landscapes to astro, the aurora, and nature photos. Get your night vision on page 28. I enjoyed a fantastic VIP day at Longleat this month, spending a day with award-winning wildlife photographer Ben Hall and our Apprentice, getting amazing access for some close-up photos of their lions and tigers and more on a drive-through safari park. See page 8 for some…

Lighthouses and astrophotography Canon pro photographer Guy Edwardes, says that there are a few situations where it’s difficult to use a sky tracker. One of them is where the beams of a lighthouse project against the stars. On this occasion he reverted back to simply taking a single exposure using a wide-open aperture of f/2.8 and ISO6400, keeping his exposure time to 15 seconds, so that the stars remained sharp. Guy used the PlantIt Pro app to calculate exactly when the milky way would sit alongside the lighthouse. Canon’s 6D Mk II is a great camera for night photography Night for day THE VENICIAN island of Burano is famous for its multi-coloured canal-side houses and leaning church tower. It looks at its best during the crossover light period, around dawn…

WATCH VIDEO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_185_1 PROTECT YOUR LENS One of the biggest challenges we have when shooting around waterfalls, especially big ones, is the amount of spray and moisture in the air. This can cover your lens in seconds, especially if you’re looking to shoot a dynamic angle near the base of the waterfall. Keep a roll of tissue on hand to dry the lens between frames and place your lens cap back on whenever you’re not shooting. Of course, the spray can also make your clothes wet too, so bring a good waterproof jacket and consider waterproof trousers. NEXT MONTH LIGHT-PAINT PORTRAITS WITH A LIGHT BRUSH 01 SHOOT VARYING SPEEDS Try shooting the falls at several different shutter speeds to get a variety of blurry bodies of water. Start off…

IT’S OFTEN the case with landscape photography that if we expose for the foreground then the sky will be overexposed. The difference between sky and land can be more extreme in waterfall scenes, as waterfalls are often surrounded by dense woodland or shaded by rocky cliffs, which cuts out more ambient light. This makes it a challenge to balance out the two in a single frame. The solution is to take a series of bracketed frames (using a tripod), then combine the sky and land afterwards in Photoshop. You could employ HDR techniques for this, but often we get better results with manual exposure blending. To do this we copy, paste and mask in much the same way as the shutter blending technique described opposite, thereby blending the better sky with…

THE MISSION Take long exposures with a high ISO at night to create beautiful star-filled landscapes Time needed One hour Skill level Intermediate Kit needed • Wide-angle lens• Tripod• Headtorch and flashlights• Spare batteries In the final part of our ultimate landscapes series, we take a look at astrophotography and how you can take great landscapes, even in low light. So far we’ve covered everything from depth of field, to composition, and explained key settings like aperture and shutter speed, as well as explained which lenses and filters you need for landscapes. In this project, we’ll run through our top tips for getting the very best landscape shots at night. Foreground elements can often come out looking very dark and silhouetted, so be sure to read on to see how…

01 EDIT YOUR RAW FILE Open your image into Lightroom Classic CC and make your edits, using all of the skills you’ve picked up throughout the past five tutorials. For this image, we warmed up the tones, tweaked the exposure and lifted the shadows in the Develop module. 02 START THE EXPORT PROCESS Once you’re happy with your edits, go to File>Export. Under ‘Export Location’ go to the ‘Export to’ drop-down menu and select ‘Specific folder.’ This will then enable you to click the ‘Choose’ button to select the location you’d like your photo exported. 03 RENAME YOUR FILES If you’re exporting multiple images at once, the File Naming section is helpful. Check the ‘Rename to’ box and then the dropdown menu – we chose ‘Custom Name.’ Lightroom then automatically…

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 photo challenge every day – like ‘Stunning Flowers’. Winnersreceive prizesfromGuruShots’ sponsors, includingLowepro, Kodak and Lensbaby. Check out www.gurushots.com to find out more.…

PROJECT INFO NAME: Sue Bleiweiss LOCATION: Nashua river, Pepperell, Massachusetts MISSION: Photograph the fantastic wildlife on the Nashua river from her canoe KIT: Canon EOS 7D Mark II and Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM | C www.suebleiweissphotography.com Every year along the Nashua River I watch the bird life come and go with the changing seasons. They begin to show up in April with the arrival of the tree swallows, great blue herons and many more. I canoe every weekend, taking my Canon EOS 7D Mark II camera with me, and watch these birds as they build their nests and raise their young. After a dismal couple of breeding years prior, this year was a good for the mute swans, which provided some glorious photo opportunities. I shoot with a…

OBVIOUSLY ONE of the main ways to make more impact with colour in your pictures is to make it the main focus. There are numerous ways to do this, including going the minimal route and letting one or two colours predominantly fill the frame, or using the white balance trick to add a colour cast to the whole image to change the mood. You could go abstract, removing any context for the image so it’s just about colour. Try moving the camera during a long exposure to capture streaks of colour, or setting the lens to manual focus and intentionally defocusing the lens when shooting flowers and colourful leaves. If you normally shoot with the brightness histogram, then it’s worth switching to the RGB histogram as this will give you…

 Ask Brian! Confused with your Canon DSLR? Email EOSSOS@futurenet.com The recently launched EOS R3 has Canon’s most advanced AF ever – and that’s quite a claim. I’ve had the chance to have a look at the camera in action and study the manual of more than one thousand pages. I’ve previously referred to the EOS R5/R6’s AF as witchcraft, and the new system starts there and goes beyond. Eye Control AF in the EOS R3 is not a gimmick, the camera watches your eye position as you look around the frame for the subject of interest just by raising the camera to your eye. When you press the shutter, or AF-ON button, it will move the AF point to where you’re looking, even with a single AF point active. Then…

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 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, distortion and peripheral illumination are disabled throughout all testing, to better reveal the true performance of each lens. We also run a full range of lab…

A real veteran in Canon’s line-up, this lens is nearly 30 years old. It’s about half the length of the competing Sigma and Zeiss 50mm lenses, and just a third of the weight. That’s a good thing for all of us who don’t like being weighed down by big, heavy lenses. The downside is that the lens feels a bit basic, and a lightweight in terms of features and performance. The fact that it’s a ‘USM’ lens might sound like good news, but AF is based on an ultrasonic motor, rather than being a ring-type system. It’s not as quick or as quiet as the autofocus systems in competing lenses on test. On a more upbeat note, it’s unusual for a Micro USM system in featuring full-time manual overdrive of…

The veteran Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM has been a firm favourite with pro wedding and portrait photographers since it was launched 15 years ago. Even so, there have always been question marks over its sharpness at wide apertures and, wide-open at f/1.2, we’ve always found sharpness to be disappointing. The new RF edition puts the old EF lens firmly in the shade. It’s not only bigger and heavier, but retains excellent sharpness wide-open, while boasting superior handling. The flip side is that it’s much pricier. Although undeniably heavy at 950g, it’s not much bigger than the Sigma and Zeiss f/1.4 lenses here, despite being a third of an f-stop faster. It can’t match the 7Artisans f/1.05 for aperture speed, but the Canon lens features AF, so can be much…

Lateral chromatic aberrations are negligible in the lenses here and, for the four Canon lenses and the Sigma 50mm, can be tuned out by the in-camera corrections available in recent Canon DSLR and mirrorless bodies. Longitudinal chromatic aberrations can be more of a problem when using fast lenses at their widest aperture. Here, most do well to keep bokeh fringing to a minimum, but it can be more noticeable with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM.…

Autofocus cameras have been around since 1977, so why on earth would a manufacturer still be doggedly making MF lenses? Indeed, without the split-screen and microprism aids of yesteryear’s viewfinders, it can be tricky to nail manual focusing in modern DSLRs. But when it comes to it, the Zeiss Milvus range of prime lenses give a hands-on, feel-good factor to shooting. There are 11 lenses in the Milvus line-up, from an ultra-wide-angle 15mm f/2.8 to a 100mm f/2 macro lens. The 50mm f/1.4 lies at the centre of the range and is typical in having a beautifully engineered metal barrel and a full set of weather-seals. It’s a fabulously crafted lens that should last a lifetime, and beyond. The real delight is in the optical quality, based on Zeiss’s Distagon…

THE NO.1 MAGAZINE FOR CANON USERS! FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… ▪ Shoot Christmas family portraits ▪ Use a Lensbaby for artistic bokeh ▪ Paint splash portraits ▪ New image-editing tutorials in Photoshop CC and Affinity Photo PLUS ALL THIS… ▪ It’s Christmas! Great Canon gear ideas for gifting inspiration▪ Super Test: Lighting kits▪ Canon School: Get the best out of your Canon lenses▪ Profile: Canon Ambassador and pro sports photographer Vladimir Rhys ISSUE 186 ON SALE 14 DECEMBER 2021 * Content subject to change…

CANON PRO NAME: BEN HALL CAMERA: CANON EOS-1D X Mk II PROFESSIONAL CANON wildlife photographer Ben Hall, 43, is based in Cheshire, and started photography in his teen years. Turning pro in 2003, he’s since won countless bird and wildlife photography awards. He runs group and 1-2-1 photography workshops throughout the UK, focusing on iconic British wildlife, as well as running trips to more exotic locations overseas, photographing everything from big cats to bears. For more information visit www.benhallphotography.com APPRENTICE NAME: SIMON CARDER CAMERA: CANON EOS R5 SIMON, 56, is an internal auditor and semi-pro wildlife photographer based near Bath. When he is not working he spends his time shooting everything from insects to birds around Somerset and further afield. Simon is a published and award-winning photographer himself. He asked…

LYNX IN MIST THIS IMAGE of a lynx was taken in an enclosure in the Bavarian forest. An early start was crucial to make the most of the mist. My aim was to show the subject in its environment, using the autumn colours as a natural frame and the mist to add some atmosphere. JAGUAR STALKING I PHOTOGRAPHED this jaguar as it stalked a caiman along the banks of a river in the Pantanal. I wanted the jaguar walking straight towards me, so positioned the boat accordingly. BEAR BACKLIT THIS BEAR photo was taken in a hide in the Carpathian mountains in Slovakia. Backlighting is great for highlighting shape and form, but only attempt this when the sun is low and contrast levels are reduced.…

Waterfalls are one of the most enticing of landscape subjects. From an enthusiast photographer’s perspective there’s so much potential. First and foremost there’s the movement of the cascading water, which we can transform into silky smooth blur with a long exposure. Then there are surrounding details like rocks, rivers and foliage, which can all add wonderful foreground interest. As such, any self-respecting photographer would reach for a neutral density filter, set up a long exposure and capture the motion in the water as a beautiful blur. While this is usually the best course of action, there are other less obvious tricks and skills we can use with our long exposures to further develop our waterfall photos. In this project we’ll explore some of the secrets of waterfall photography. A few…

SOMETIMES WE may want to include details that are very close to the lens. This can make it tricky to get the whole scene sharp. Take two or more shots while varying the focus point, making sure the camera and exposure stays consistent throughout. FOCUS STACKING is a cinch in Photoshop. First go to File>Scripts>Load into stack to load your set of focus stacked images, then Cmd/Ctrl+click to highlight the layers and go to Edit>Auto Align. Choose Auto, then go to Edit>Auto-Blend to combine the sharp parts.…

WATCH VIDEO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_185_2 THE MISSION Take some lovely portraits of your, or someone else’s, pet Time needed 30 minutes Skill level Beginner Kit needed • Kit lens or 50mm• LED panels (optional) QUICK TIP Cats are known for doing their own thing, so it’s important you allow them to rest if they appear sleepy or uninterested. We made a point of giving Maggie plenty of space if she approached her water or food bowl and took the time to reward her for good behaviour by petting her and giving her the odd treat (approved by her owners, of course). Even those who claim not to be cat lovers can’t resist the heart melting cuteness of a kitten. But as irresistible as these playful bundles of fur are, they grow…

01 USE THE LENS FLARE FILTER Open an image, click the New Layer icon in the Layers panel. Go to Edit>Fill, set Contents: Black and hit OK. Right-click the layer and choose ‘Convert to Smart Object’, then go to Filter>Render>Lens Flare. Click the preview box to choose a position for the flare, hit OK. 02 BLUR THE EFFECT Click the Blending Mode option in the Layers panel and set it to Screen. If you want to adjust the position, type or strength of the flare, double-click the smart filter and try again. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Blur by a few pixels to soften the edges of the flare. 03 ADD A GRADIENT LAYER Click the Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers panel and choose Gradient. Set the Style to Radial…

I’m a fashion and beauty photographer from London and began my career in 2010, when I was 17 years old. From that moment I knew I wanted to be a photographer. I’ve dabbled with various genres, but something about beauty and fashion resonated with me. I soon realized that I wanted this to be my career and at this point I was getting ready for university, but, by the middle of 2011, I already had paying clients – I took the plunge and decided to follow my heart, fully committing to portrait photography. At the start, I needed to get my name out there, which is one of the reasons I worked with bloggers and influencers where possible. This helped me get a foot in the door. I’m a big…

Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) gives you the freedom to go to town on creative colour changes when you process your Raw files, as you can make global adjustments to the overall colour and target changes to specific colours. You’re also able to make limited adjustments to JPEGs in DPP, via the Color Adjustment tab. You can, of course, alter the colour mix in Lightroom and other Raw software. In fact, you invariably get many more options with paid-for software, such as alternative presets or colour profiles, split-toning (where you can apply different colours to the shadows, highlights and, in some cases, midtones) and more sophisticated selective adjustments via brushes and graduated filters. But DPP is essentially free and its colour rendering more closely matches that which you can achieve…

IN-CAMERA PROCESSING ABILITIES The latest cameras can save images with high dynamic range in the HEIF format, and such cameras can also covert HEIF images to standard JPEG ones if needed. EOS R5 cameras feature Dual pixel Raw capability, which the camera can use to adjust lighting on portrait images and background clarity. 01 RESIZE YOUR JPEGS When you shoot JPEGs, it’s normal to shoot at the full resolution of the camera, but you may want to give a friend a lower resolution file straight from your card. To do this, navigate to the play menu and select image resize. Then choose the resolution that you want to create from your original image. Resized images are saved as a new file after your already captured shots. 02 PROCESS RAW IMAGES…

AN EXTERNAL hard drive (HD) is the perfect solution for expanding your storage options. They offer the most storage capacity for the lowest cost and are easy to use. Several forms of external hard drives are available right now: An external HD offers loads of storage space, and are great for most everyday users. RAID drives are an external drive that contains two or more HDs. With two HDs inside and a controller processor, when you backup to a RAID drive, it automatically copies your data to both HDs. Should one of the disks fail, you have all your files on the other. NAS drives can be connected to your internet router, so they can be accessed from anywhere you can get an internet connection. You log in to the…

You might think that you can’t go wrong with a lens at this price. But older versions of Canon’s popular 50mm f/1.8 weren’t altogether fabulous. They had a noisy AF system based on a basic electric motor, and a 5-blade diaphragm that gave pronounced pentagonal shapes to defocused lights when you weren’t shooting ‘wide-open.’ The plastic mounting plate was lightweight, but not robust. This latest version of the lens puts all those wrongs to right. It has an STM (Stepping Motor) AF system that provides speedy yet quiet operation for stills, along with smooth AF transitions during movie capture. The focus ring no longer rotates during AF, which improves handling, yet also gives the bonus of manual override in Single AF mode. The current lens has a metal mounting plate,…

It’s often said that blurring the background is good for portraiture, but a tight depth of field can work wonders in many shooting scenarios. For still life images, close-ups and pretty much any time you want to make the main subject stand out against busy or cluttered surroundings, blurring the foreground or background (or both) is the easiest way to do it. This series of shots shows how the various ‘wide-open’ apertures of the lenses on test compare with 50mm at f/5.6.…

Not quite a 50mm lens, the Tamron 45mm gives a slightly more generous viewing angle of 51 degrees, rather than the more usual 46 degrees, on a full-frame body. Suffice it to say, there’s very little in it. The bigger 45mm combines a fairly fast f/1.8 aperture rating with 4-stop stabilization. Physically, it’s slightly smaller than the Sigma and Zeiss 50mm lenses and rather more lightweight. At 540g, it’s about two-thirds the weight of the Sigma and a little more than half the weight of the Zeiss 50mm. That being said, it’s still almost twice as heavy as the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4. Build quality is considerably better than in either of the Canon EF lenses and not far off that of the Sigma. A bonus that you can find…

To get the best bokeh from a lens, it’s best to shoot at its widest available aperture, to minimize the DoF. However, with ‘fast’ lenses, this isn’t always possible. Under bright sunlight, your camera is unlikely to have a sufficiently fast shutter to avoid over-exposure. One solution is to fit a ND filter to the front of the lens but it’s easier to narrow the aperture a bit. To retain circular outlines for defocused lights and other bright spots when stopping down, the aperture diaphragm needs to be well-rounded. Curved diaphragm blades are par for the course, but a greater number of blades makes a big difference. For example, lenses with only seven diaphragm blades will give a noticeable heptagonal outline to defocused lights.…

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. ENTRY-LEVEL CANON EOS 4000D CANON has stripped everything…

Letter of the Month In issue 184 you ran the article Step up to full-frame. I was looking forward to this article but was left disappointed when you seemed to either talk about older DSLR models (5D Mk III, 1D X etc) or top-of-the-range models outside the price scope of most of us. You also sang the praises about every current mirrorless model regardless of cost, yet only briefly mentioned the current 6D Mk II and ignored the 5D Mk IV – the backbone of many Canon semi-pros/pros. I was looking forward to an expert opinion on the 5D Mk IV, as I’m considering upgrading to this model. I have a crop-sensor and a full-frame DSLR body (6D Mk II), along with a range of lenses covering 17mm to 600mm,…

APERTURE CONTROL “THE ever-changing weather can make shooting tricky, with brightness levels varying. I use Aperture Priority to control depth of field on these days, when it’s cloudy with sunny outbreaks, but I also use Manual a lot for portraits of more sedentary wildlife. On a day like today, we started at f/5.6 and adjusted up or down as required.” PUMP UP THE ISO “I ADJUST the ISO according to the weather and light levels,” says Ben. “For big cats you want a shutter speed of around 1/1000 sec, so when shooting at f/4 to f/8 I needed to increase my ISO accordingly to get a fast enough shutter speed. On my 1D X Mark II, I was shooting between ISO2000 to 3200 all day, as it was mostly overcast…

01 THE ART OF MOTION (BIRDS IN FLIGHT, SILVER) BY NICOLAS REUSENS “This image is one of my favourite shots from my last trip to Ecuador. Using a complicated set-up, I was able to trigger two sets of flashes during a single exposure, using a shutter speed of 1/25 sec. I then introduced a sense of movement into the image by adding continuous lighting to the scene. I spent three days trying to get this shot and it was totally worth the wait!” Lens Laowa 100mm f/2.8 CA-Dreamer Macro 2X Exposure 1/25 sec, f/13, ISO200 http://www.photocrowd.com All the images in this gallery were entrants to the 2021 Bird Photographer of the Year competition and we’ve hand-picked our favourite entries taken with Canon EOS cameras. The 2022 Bird Photographer of the Year contest is…

Lens Canon EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM Exposure 1/60 sec, f/8, ISO400 The Lake District – is it an Autumnal Mecca of golden light, or a thankless seven hour motorway slog in the pouring rain? I ask myself this question annually. Based in the South West of England, I watch the October weeks with anticipation. Halfway through the third week, the words "I knew it!" echo around my living room as I stand in disbelief staring at BBC Weather as Storm Predictable unleashes its autumn ruining fury. I have a catalogue of images that came together in the face of adversity, but sometimes I have to remind myself that it takes these unlikely moments to triumph and create something spectacular. To help you understand, let me recap an experience one wet August…

01 SHOOT SEVERAL FRAMES Beautiful spots can often be overrun with tourists. If it’s not possible to visit at a quieter time, try shooting several frames as people move around. Later you can combine the clean parts using layer masking in Photoshop using the shutter blending trick that we described earlier. 02 GO LONG Fit a 10-stop ND filter to your lens and set up your camera for a 30-second exposure, or use a bulb exposure instead and shoot for even longer. People moving around the scene will disappear over the course of the long exposure, or if they’re sat still then they’ll be recorded as ghostly shapes. 03 CLONE THEM OUT Sometimes it’s impossible to get a clean shot, so you’ll need to resort to cloning in Photoshop to…

01 PLAY DATE Kittens and puppies have lots of energy and can be nervous or excited around new people. Having their owner nearby may help them feel more comfortable. We’d also recommend letting them get used to you before you take any pictures. 02 TRASH THE FLASH Some believe flash lighting can damage the eyes of very young animals, and it can certainly scare some of them. We used room lighting and a couple of portable LED panels to illuminate our subject. This also produces lovely catchlights in their eyes. 03 FLEETING FOCUS Use a single-point AF to precisely focus on the eye that’s closest to the camera. You can use One Shot AF to lock focus and recompose, AI Servo is best for animals that don’t sit still. Back-button…

WATCH VIDEO ONLINE http://bit.ly/pp_185_4 THE MISSION Expertly export your images in Adobe’s Lightroom Time needed 15 minutes Skill level Beginner Kit needed Lightroom Classic CC So you’ve edited your photo to perfection, minutely tweaking each slider to get the ideal result – but what do you do with your edit now? Blindly exporting your photo without ensuring you have the right settings is almost like cooking a gourmet meal and then slathering it with ketchup. Your hours of hard work will be disguised through incorrect settings and file formats. While learning how to properly export your photos might not be the most scintillating technique to master, you’ll thank yourself for it in the long run. It doesn’t matter if you want to upload your picture to Instagram, or you want…

01 COPY AND PASTE Open channels_before 01 and 02 into Affinity Photo. Go to the 01 image, copy (Cmd/Ctrl+C), then go to the sky image and paste (Cmd/Ctrl+V). Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to make a duplicate of the trees image, so that there are two tree layers and one sky layer below. 02 CHECK THE CHANNELS Go to the Channels panel (View>Studio>Channels), then click through each of the Composite Red, Green and Blue channels. We’re looking for the channel that gives us the greatest contrast between the trees and sky. With skies, this is likely the Blue channel. 03 CLEAR RED AND GREEN We can use our top layer as a template for selections. Right-click the Red channel and clear, repeat for the Green channel, so only the Blue remains. Highlight the…

The first step to getting more creative colours is to begin with an accurate or neutral starting point. The white balance setting is key to this, as it allows you to remove colour casts caused by the camera’s interpretation of different light sources. The white balance is an image processing setting that the camera applies before the image is saved as a JPEG or HEIF file. If you shoot Raw, then the white balance (WB) info is saved alongside the raw data from the sensor, rather than baked in, so you’re free to tweak or change the WB when you process the Raw file. As white balance doesn’t apply to Raws, it might be tempting to just leave it set to Auto and correct any errors later. But setting it…

Picture Style Editor is a piece of Canon software that can be downloaded from the Canon website. It allows you to create your own Picture Style preset that can be loaded into your camera using the process explained on the previous page, or used in Digital Photo Professional so that you can use it as a starting point for post-production. To do this, click the ‘Browse’ button next the Picture Style drop down and locate the file on your computer. Creating a new colour preset is a three-step process, but you’ll need to choose a Raw to use as the base image to begin with. This allows you see how the changes you’re making to the colour settings will alter images. To make this process easier, select the option to…

ANOTHER WAY to get creative with colour is to use gels in front of your flash unit, whether it’s a remote flashgun or a built-in flash. You can use them to add a splash of colour, or alternatively, to blend the flash light in with coloured ambient lighting in a location. When you’re shooting in daylight, try setting the white balance to Tungsten (to cool the image down), then using a warm-coloured gel in front of the flash to render the flash-lit subject a normal colour. If you’re shooting someone against a sunset, add a magenta filter to the lens to add a pink warmth to the scene, then use a green filter on the flash to render the person a normal colour. PART 8 Next issue: Get the best…

“I’m planning to get an EOS R5 and want to know if the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens and EF 2x Extender will autofocus, as it won’t on my DSLR?”Heather Reynolds, Machynlleth BRIAN SAYS… Most DSLRs require the max aperture of the lens and extender combo to be f/5.6, a few more recent models will focus with f/8 using a specific central AF points. Your combo would be f/9 to f/11, which is possible for the EOS R5 to focus with. When going mirrorless the image sensor is used for AF and has a greater ability to focus with slower lenses. Canon makes the RF 600mm F11 lens and it works with a 2x extender and, still, focus is possible at f/22. What’s little known is that many…

The new Canon RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM offers a slightly slower, but a lot smaller, lighter, and cheaper alternative to the excellent Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM lens. Despite being launched alongside the formidable Canon EOS R3 (and the Canon RF 16mm F2.8 STM) this isn’t a professional L-series lens, but instead brings a similar degree of telephoto reach to enthusiast shooters – and in a more compact form factor that’s a better fit for smaller bodies like the Canon EOS R6, with which it pairs well. The £699/$649 price is definitely a key factor with this optic; it’s no secret that RF lenses haven’t come cheap until recently, as Canon initially focused on premium-grade glass to show what the EOS R system can do, with only seven…

This lens from 7Artisans rewrites the rule book… Available in an RF mount option, it has a very fast aperture, beating that of the Canon RF 50mm F1.2 lens here, yet weighs just 606g, has quite a diminutive 58mm filter thread and costs just a fifth of the price. Like its siblings in the 7Artisans range, the 50mm is a manual-focus lens that lacks any built-in electronics. As such, you need to adjust the aperture via an on-board, stepless control ring. As usual, this limits the range of PASM shooting options you can use and, while the ‘de-clicked’ control ring is a bonus for shooting video, it lacks perfect precision for stills. The optical path features two ULD (Ultra Low Dispersion) elements and the high-quality construction is based on a…

The amount of distortion from all of the lenses on test is quite minimal, but it’s more minimal with some than with others. The worst offender is the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, closely followed by the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM, and the Zeiss Milvus is next in line. All of the other lenses on test have negligible barrel distortion with scores that only register after a decimal point comes into play. The Canon RF 50mm F1.2L and Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art are overachievers, being virtually zero-distortion lenses.…

Canon’s EF-mount equivalent of this lens has always been a popular buy for DSLRs, and the latest edition here ticks all the right boxes. Repurposed for EOS R-series cameras, the new RF lens fills a small hole, as it were, in Canon’s full-frame mirrorless line-up. There aren’t many compact and affordable Canon RF lenses but this one is a no-brainer for prime time. By contrast, Canon’s up-market RF 50mm F1.2 lens is massively heftier and costs around ten times the price. The stepping motor-driven AF system is quick and quiet, fast enough for sporty stills and smooth enough for video. An aspherical element contributes to centre-to-edge sharpness, and Canon’s Super Spectra Coating reduces ghosting and flare. As usual with Canon’s non-L-series lenses, the hood is sold separately. Build quality feels…

Sigma’s previous 50mm lens was renowned as being a heavyweight, but the replacement ‘Art’ edition really piles on the grams. It’s physically 50 per cent longer and gains 310g in weight, taking it to 815g, but that’s still lighter than the Canon RF F1.2 and Zeiss Milvus f/1.4 lenses on test. The Art lens’s weight gain is mostly due to it having a more complex and sophisticated optical path than its predecessor. This includes one complex aspherical element and three SLD (Special Low Dispersion) elements. The aim is to deliver excellent sharpness and contrast, while also keeping colour fringing, distortion and vignetting to a minimum. Build feels top-notch throughout. The focus ring operates smoothly, although it doesn’t have the tactile fluidity of the MF Zeiss Milvus lens. When speed is…

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 quality (and superior size), but most R cameras…

Canon’s new ultra-wide, ultra-light RF 16mm f/2.8 STM hands-on review The Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 STM is tiny, fast, and ideal for vlogging, interiors, landscapes, architecture and astro photos. Early verdict and more Canon news at DigitalCameraWorld.com, more on this lens at bit.ly/rf16mm The best large format printers for photographers, exhibitors and studios These are the best large format printers you can buy, from desktop printers to roll-fed commercial printers! More on large printers via link bit.ly/go_large. For more tests and buying advice see DigitalCameraWorld.com DSLRs are better than mirrorless for astro – and the Canon EOS 6D is king Analysis of astrophotography competitions shows that DSLRs are more successful than mirrorless cameras – and it’s led by Canon. More on why Canon cameras are the best on DCW via…