Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

Many of you, many of us on the PhotoPlus team and most of the Canon photography fraternity around the world still enjoy using Canon EOS DSLRs. Just because your camera is a few years old, and modern camera technology is in a mirrorless evolution, it doesn’t render DSLR systems obsolete. In this issue’s big guide, we explain why we still love DSLRs and the benefits they continue to offer every user, including the great choice of DSLRs at great prices – they’re available to buy new as well as on the used market. Most DSLRs have more than enough specs and settings, and are powerful enough to satisfy all your photographic needs, whether you’re a beginner, enthusiast or professional. Plus there’s a wealth of Canon and third-party lenses to complement…

MANUAL MODE TO BEGIN, Daniel put Simon’s Canon EOS 5D Mark III into its Manual mode, so that he could take full control of the exposure. He then dialled in a middle aperture value of f/16 for good front-to-back sharpness through the frame and also boosted the ISO a little to 400 as it was still fairly dark in the moments before sunrise. This resulted in a shutter speed of around 1 sec – long enough to see motion in the water and clouds without needing a neutral density filter. RGB HISTOGRAM DANIEL switched on the Histogram on Simon’s Canon EOS 5D Mark III, which can be found by going into Live View and pressing the Info button until it appears. This is a graph that shows you the tones…

01 WINNER ROBBERFLY BY ARNO VAN ZON This is an incredible macro shot of a robberfly from Arno. He used a specialist Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro lens to take this stunning close up. It’s extremely difficult to achieve a sharp image when shooting so close to your subject, but Arno has impressively rendered his tiny subject super sharp by using the focus stacking technique to merge 40 pictures together for a deeper depth of field. Lens Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Exposure 1/200 sec, f/8, ISO320 02 MORNING BRAWL BY HENRIK SPRANZ Henrik’s low angle works nicely to capture this moment between two alpine marmots. Getting down to eye level with his two subjects for a more intimate angle and shooting at f/4, which also helps blur…

If you’ve outgrown your current DSLR or you want to photograph action or shoot in more challenging conditions, the EOS 90D could be all the camera you need. In terms of specification and technology, it’s one of the most well rounded of Canon’s cameras, let alone its DSLRs. With its scintillating blend of speed (10 frames per second) and resolution (32.5MP), this is a camera that’s right at home capturing detailed, action-packed wildlife and sports sequences. The 1.6x crop factor of the APS-C sensor is also beneficial when you are unable to physically get close to athletes or animals. For example, a 400mm lens attached to the EOS 90D (or any camera with an APS-C sensor) gives the equivalent view of a 640mm lens (400mm x 1.6) on a full-frame…

THE MOBILE STUDIO THROUGH HISTORY The mobile studio plays a fascinating role in the history of photography. In the mid 19th century, so-called ambulant photographers would travel from town to town – sometimes carrying cameras and backdrops on a bicycle – and later the practice was embraced by a host of famous photographers. Perhaps the most captivating examples come from Irving Penn, who – between shooting Vogue covers – travelled the world with his Rolleiflex camera and north-light studio, photographing mud-masked men in New Guinea, hippies in 1960s San Francisco and burka-wearing women from Morocco. Collected together in the classic book Worlds in a Small Room, these portraits show the portable studio at its most powerful. 01 POSITIONING ANIMALS It helps to have another person get the animal into position…

01 PREPARE THE IMAGES Open the images in Photoshop. Before combining them, it helps if everything outside of the face is completely black. Grab the Burn tool. In the options at the top, set Range to Shadows, strength 40%, then paint to darken areas to full black. If necessary, paint black with the Brush, too. 02 BLEND THE LAYERS Choose one of the images. Make a new layer and fill with black, then drag it to the bottom. Copy and paste all the other photos into this one document, then Cmd/Ctrl+click to highlight all the layers in the Layers panel except the black one. Set the layer blending mode to Lighten. 03 POSITION AND TONE Use the Move tool to position each face neatly in a row. Grab the Brush…

If you want to give an image a brand-new look, this cool technique may be right up your street! It effectively ‘floods’ the foreground of any scene with a computer-generated water reflection effect, giving a perspective as though the scene or subject is photographed from a low angle near a body of water. Just choose the baseline of the source picture, and this becomes the ‘waterline’ in the new image. Take care to choose a horizontal line that could be a waterline – and for a convincing result, avoid anything breaking this line that would stand out. The technique will work on all kinds of images, from still-life shots and full-length portraits to landscapes and architecture, but I’ve used it on a safari-park shot of a bison, to introduce a water…

01 FINE-TUNE THE LINES After dragging your guide lines, you may want to fine-tune them to ensure that they match up with the objects in the scene. You can turn on Loupe View in the tool options (or press Shift+L). This gives you a magnified circle so you can see the objects you’re aligning with close-up. There’s also Constrain Crop, which gets rid of transparent areas. 02 APPLY LENS CORRECTION Before getting stuck in with the Guided tool, it’s worth applying lens correction using the Optics panel. Not to be confused with perspective correction in the Geometry panel, lens correction fixes issues like barrel distortion and vignetting. Head to the Optics panel and tick the Apply Lens Correction box. Camera Raw applies a fix based on the lens and camera…

I moved to North Wales four years ago, which has led to a change in my kit bag somewhat. I used to shoot a lot of corporate photography, so it used to be full of Speedlites and batteries, whereas these days it’s all about the studio space. Part of the space at my studio, Splash Point Photo, is a pool, as seen in the above picture of Zoe – how I wished I had my mirrorless EOS R5 back then! I dragged the shutter using strobes, but allowed in light from under the water, and some window light, too. My head was pushed against the ceiling while I tried to focus with my EOS 5D Mark III; whereas with eye detect and the flip screen of the EOS R5, it…

When you want to extend the depth of field in your image and get as much of the subject in focus as possible, you can use a small aperture, such as f/16. Even then, however, if you’re very close to your subject, the sharp focus might extend for just a centimetre or even only a few millimetres. You can maximize the depth of field at any aperture by making sure the back of the camera (and therefore the imaging sensor) is parallel with the most important detail – whether that’s a flower petal or a butterfly’s wings. PART 15 Next issue: Get to grips with Canon’s apps…

“Is the Speedlite 580EX II compatible with automatic flash exposure on the EOS 6D Mark II? Mine indicates TTL but fires at full power…” Steve Batho, Australia BRIAN SAYS… Yes, all Speedlites with EX or EL in the model name will work with your EOS 6D Mark II and provide E-TTL automatic flash exposure. Check you have fitted the flash properly on the camera hotshoe so all the pins line up. If your flash indicates TTL on the top-left corner of the LCD and not E-TTL, you have a custom function incorrectly set in the flash. Flash C-Fn 5 controls how the flash operates – it should be 0 for E-TTL, 1 for TTL for older film SLRs, 2 for external metered auto and 3 for external metered manual flash…

CHRISSIE ENDLICOTTE, OVERTON, SAYS… I’ve been taking a lot of photos of the birds that visit my garden over the last few years, and this is one of my favourites. I used an EOS R6 with an old EF 700-200mm lens on the mount adapter. It was raining and the raindrops on the wire add something to the picture in my view. I had seen several other species visit the wire but I think this one had the best expression. I’ve done minimal processing in Lightroom – I usually click the auto button and modify settings a little from there, as I like to keep the photos realistic. BRIAN SAYS… A really lovely shot of the bird. You have captured a great realistic catchlight in the eye, and the wire…

For ultra-low or ground-level shooting, a trick is to fully remove a tripod’s centre column, invert it, and refit it. You can then use the camera upside down and shoot out from between two of the legs. It’s effective, but using your camera upside down isn’t intuitive. Most tripods have multi-angle legs, so you can splay them wide and reduce the height that you’re shooting from. The limiting factor is the centre column, which will come into contact with the ground. To get around this, the Benro Mach3 and Novo tripods here are supplied with a short centre column, which you can use instead of the full-length centre column. With the 3 Legged Thing Winston, the head can be removed and attached direct to the tripod spider.…

FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… ▪ Creative landscape compositions▪ Using Canon EF-EOS R adapters for better shots▪ Add atmospheric lightbeams in Photoshop▪ Fast focus stack tips for pin-sharp pictures PLUS ALL THIS… ISSUE 193 ON SALE 28 JUNE 2022 * Content subject to change…

New Canon EOS R7: what we know so far and what we can expect Canon’s EOS R7 is the long-anticipated mirrorless successor to the EOS 7D DSLR line. It’s set to arrive later this year – find out specs and more via quick link bit.ly/R7_canon plus more Canon news at DigitalCameraWorld.com Sean Connery and Michael Caine among stars in new Terry O’Neill exhibition Leica announces a new exhibition showcasing the life’s work of Terry O’Neill, full of fashion and candid celebrity moments. See and learn more via quick link bit.ly/dcw_terry plus more Canon news at DigitalCameraWorld.com Why I think the ‘first three, no flash’ rule when photographing gigs needs updating Would Pennie Smith have captured the iconic shot of The Clash’s Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar had she been…

SUNSET SEASCAPES ST OSWALD’S Bay is the perfect place for long-exposure seascapes, with its jagged rocky shoreline and sunset-facing views. Many happy hours have been spent here but this was one of the most memorable, as I managed to capture it on video as well as stills. WILD GARLIC JUST TO be here with a scene like this in front of you is a special moment – to be able to capture it was the icing on the cake. Wild garlic basking in morning light and giving off that intoxicating smell that takes me back to this moment every time I encounter it. STURMINSTER MILL I HAD been trying to find a new composition for this shot and knew what I wanted to get from it. After many failed attempts…

Mirrorless cameras and lenses are where Canon is currently focusing its development, but there are more EOS DSLR cameras and dedicated DSLR lenses available and being used right now – and there are many reasons why you might want to stick with these tried, tested and reliable cameras. There’s the cost associated with going full-blown mirrorless, of course, and the fact that there’s more choice available in the EOS DSLR range – particularly if you’re prepared to buy second-hand. And then there’s the question of viewfinders. While you lose the ability to preview the image in the viewfinder as the camera sees it – the electronic viewfinders in Canon’s mirrorless models are essentially miniature Live View displays, complete with Picture Style, White Balance and other settings applied – you do…

The EOS DSLR line-up is dominated by APS-C cameras, but there are three bodies that have full-frame sensors: the EOS 6D Mark II, EOS 5D Mark IV and EOS-1D X Mark III. There’s a number of advantages to going full-frame and a couple of disadvantages. The key benefit of having a bigger sensor inside the camera is the lack of crop factor. This is particularly helpful if you shoot with a wide-angle lens, where every millimetre of focal length can make a big difference to the final image. Attach a 20mm lens to an APS-C camera, for example, and you actually get the equivalent narrower view of a 32mm lens on a full-frame camera. Being able to be frame a scene or subject at closer distances means that it’s also…

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A portable studio enables you to capture subjects in all sorts of places, and with a clarity that only comes from flash lighting. We visited a rare-breeds farm to photograph an array of characterful chickens, goats and sheep, including the beautiful Golden Guernsey goat above. The portable studio approach is especially suited to animals like this, which are likely to be less skittish in familiar surroundings. So, rather than bringing the farmyard animals into the studio, we took the studio to the farm. Whether you want to capture animals, people or any other kind of subject, a mobile studio can lead to wonderful results. It might seem complicated at first, but in a sense it is a great simplifier. By using plain backdrops and sculpting the light to suit our…

YOU CAN create a moody, low-key lighting setup almost anywhere, even in a field. Set the flash to 1/1 full power and bring the light in as close as possible to the subject. Here the light was almost touching the sheep’s nose. AT THIS range and power, the flash is far brighter than the natural daylight, so by exposing for the flash, the daylight has minimal impact on our image. For a good stock exposure setting, use manual mode and set shutter speed 1/200 sec, aperture f/11 and ISO100.…

This month we were invited by Rotolight to try out their new AEOS 2 and NEO 3 LED lights at the stunning Knowle Hall with a mixture of models and lighting setups, hosted by The Creativity Hub. Flash is the conventional light source of choice for portraiture, so we were eager to see how these two LED lighting options from Rotolight performed. The AEOS 2 and NEO 3 lights were certainly powerful and we were able to create some fantastic portraits. As they’re constant lights you can see how your lighting is working in real time, a bit like a modelling lamp on a flash head. They also feature built-in colour gel options, meaning you don’t have to carry around plastic gels which would also reduce light output on a…

01 TOUCH UP BLEMISHES Lighting can highlight little imperfections in the skin, these are easy to remove in Photoshop, but ensure you do this before sharpening images, as this will make them more prominent. Use the Spot Healing Brush tool, resize your brush with the [and] keys and paint over them to remove. 02 SHARPEN DETAILS Enhance the eyes of your image with some selective sharpening. Hit Ctrl+J to duplicate your layer and go to Filter>High Pass, choose a value of 2-5px and hit OK. In the Layers panel set the blend mode to Overlay and then use a layer mask to paint the eyes so only they are being sharpened. 03 ADD AN EMBER For shots where our model Hamish was holding a prop cigar we added an ember…

01 REFLECT YOUR SCENE Open an image in Photoshop. Get the Crop Tool. The bottom of the image is where your waterline will be, so drag the crop over the entire image, set the bottom of the crop to a baseline that looks natural as a water’s edge. Tick Delete Cropped Pixels, and press Return. Press Ctrl/Cmd+J to copy the layer. In the Layers panel, select the Background Layer. Go Image>Canvas Size, tick Relative, change the units to Percent and put 100 in Height. Click the top-middle Anchor, set Canvas Extension Color to White, click OK. Click the top layer, and press Ctrl/Cmd+T. Shift-drag the top handle down to the bottom to flip the image and create a reflection. 02 ADD MOTION BLUR TO THE REFLECTION With the top layer…

Luminosity masking is a technique that enables you to zero in on different parts of the tonal range – or different ranges of luminosity – in order to adjust and enhance areas of your photos. It’s especially useful for landscape editing, because landscapes often have an imbalance between bright areas, such as skies, and darker parts, like a foreground in shade. As such, we can target brighter pixels and claw back detail, then boost shadows or different colour ranges in the scene. Here it enables us to pull back the overly bright sky, tone down any strong blues in the water and boost the greens in the grass. Best of all, these tonal adjustments can be made in a few seconds, without the need to paint fiddly masks. Instead we…

1 Canon EOS R5 www.canon.co.uk THE STEP up from Canon EOS DSLR to mirrorless takes a small adjustment period, but I started to lose faith in my 5D Mark III DSLR when I found it back focusing a little too much, which would result in soft focus. Even in simple conditions, I felt I was often fighting with it to focus more, but then again it is a decade-old piece of tech. I find the hit rate on my EOS R5 to easily be 10x what I was getting with my old kit, so it was definitely worth the investment. 2 Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM www.canon.co.uk I LOVE committing the sin of a wide-angle portrait! I’d go as far as to say that the 17-40mm is my favourite lens…

A TRIPOD isn’t always practical if you’re chasing insects or working at ground level, but it gives repeatable results when focusing manually, as well as keeping the camera rock steady. For crisp results, use the camera’s self-timer, a remote release or Canon’s Camera Connect app to take a picture. More ‘macro’ lenses A NUMBER of lenses boast a ‘macro’ focusing option. This essentially enables you to focus close, but stops short of providing the life-size magnification of a true macro lens. For example, Sigma’s 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM superzoom offers a magnification of 1:3 at its minimum focusing distance. The Canon RF 85mm F2 Macro IS STM is a portrait lens that can focus close enough for 1:2 or half-life-size magnification. Beyond life-size IF YOU’RE bitten by the…

Whether you’re shooting with an EOS DSLR or a mirrorless camera, you can take advantage of focusing aids to help you manually focus close-ups with precision. These are accessible when viewing the Live View image, so you need to be viewing the scene on the rear screen of a DSLR, rather than through the optical viewfinder. The most familiar aid, and arguably the most useful, is the ability to magnify the image up to 10x. Position the focus point on a detail that you want to focus on, then tap the magnify button to cycle through the different magnification settings. You can also move the focus point around the screen while the image is enlarged, in order to check the sharpness of other areas, as well as activating the depth…

Macro photography often requires extensive depth of field, but working very close to a subject for maximum magnification limits depth of field, and closing the aperture for f/22 or more creates additional problems with image softening, due to diffraction loss. One way to solve this is to shoot with the aperture at the optimum for the lens (eg f/16) and adjust focus slightly between frames, before combining several images to create a composite with a larger depth of field. When you have taken a series of images, use DPP’s depth compositing tool to combine the individual frames, because it simplifies the task of identifying the sharpest element from each frame to be added to the composite image. Composite images can be made using TIFF images created in DPP, or camera…

From my workshops and inbox, it’s clear many photographers have found that the autofocus on the EOS R5 and EOS R6 takes some effort to get the most from it. There are three main factors to consider: AF mode, AF method and subject to detect. For moving subjects or photographers in awkward positions, use Servo AF, so the camera refocuses right up until the picture is taken. One-Shot is for static subjects, such as buildings, landscapes and still life. With eight AF methods, a lot of photographers revert to a trusted single AF point and in doing so miss out on much of these cameras’ autofocus capabilities. It’s a leap of faith to trust the EOS camera to find your subject and focus on it, but it does this so…

01 Apple Studio Display Crystal clear and accurate colours galore From £1499/$1599 www.apple.com/uk THIS DISPLAY, is the perfect complement to the Mac Studio, it also pairs beautifully with any Mac. It features an expansive 27-inch 5K Retina display, a 12Mp ultra-wide camera with Centre Stage, and a high-fidelity six-speaker sound system with spatial audio. True Tone tech automatically adjusts the display’s colour temperature as the environment changes for a more natural viewing experience. The Studio Display has three USB-C ports that deliver speeds up to 10GB/s to connect high-speed peripherals, storage and networking right into the display. A Thunderbolt port enables you to connect the Studio Display and any connected peripherals to your Mac with a single cable. The same cable also delivers 96W of power to a Mac notebook,…

For most photographers, the perfect tripod should offer solid support with a lofty maximum operating height, yet fold down reasonably small for stowing away, and it shouldn’t be overly heavy. After all, nobody wants to lug around more weight than they need to. Big, heavy tripods often feel a bit of a chore and end up being left at home, where they’re no use at all. At the other end of the scale, lightweight tripods often have a disappointingly short maximum operating height, as well as being comparatively flimsy and prone to swaying around in a breeze. For material gains, carbon fibre has distinct advantages over aluminium. It’s impressively rigid yet lighter in weight to the extent that most full-sized carbon tripod kits (including the head) are about 20 per…

We went through a stage when clip locks were preferred to twist locks. A push-pull lever enabled quick and easy adjustments, especially compared with the large amount of circular rotation needed to operate twist clamps. More recently, the pendulum seems to have swung the other way, to the extent that the Manfrotto 055 is the only tripod in this test group to feature clip locks. A major factor in the resurgence of twist locks is that, in most cases, only about a quarter-turn or half-turn is required for full release or clamping action. Couple that with the ease with which you can grasp all the twist locks of a tripod leg when the sections are at their minimum length, and you’re onto a real winner.…

CANON PRO NAME: DANIEL WRETHAM CAMERA: CANON EOS R5 DANIEL IS an award-winning landscape photographer based in Dorset, where he has beautiful landscape locations around the Jurassic Coast right on his doorstep and regularly runs photography workshops. His work has been acknowledged by filter manufacturer Kase and he is now part of its partner programme. You can also find his video blogs on his YouTube channel Daniel Wretham Landscape Photography. Check out his website for his portfolio and more information or to book a workshop at www.danielwrethamphotography.com. APPRENTICE NAME: SIMON CARLTON CAMERA: CANON EOS 5D MARK III SIMON is a 69-year-old retiree from sunny Dorset who loves to spend his free time taking photos of landscapes and architecture, and product photography. He wrote to us asking for help getting the…

Canon’s beginner-friendly DSLRs are the most affordable way to enter the EOS system. There’s a huge array of dedicated EF and EF-S lenses to choose from, both new and pre-owned, and the cameras benefit from years of user feedback and refinement, so they handle intuitively. Take the EOS 250D – as the world’s lightest DSLR with a movable screen, it’s easy to carry anywhere, which means it’s more likely to capture images that would otherwise be missed or just snapped on a phone. It offers simple controls, a streamlined set of features and a helpful guided user interface that teaches you about the camera as you shoot – making it as easy as possible to take your first steps in the world of DSLR photography. While it might lack some…

Pick up one of Canon’s professional full-frame DSLRs and you can feel where your money’s going. The EOS 5D Mark IV and EOS-1D X Mark III are muscular machines but their robust bodies are fast and nimble to use, with a wealth of customizable physical controls. They also offer performance and reliability that professionals rely on. Canon’s flagship full-frame EOS R mirrorless camera, the EOS R3, sets a new benchmark for speed and autofocus performance, and its high-resolution stablemate, the EOS R5, takes the hybrid approach of the EOS 5D series to new heights, with an enticing blend of 45MP stills, 8K video, built-in image stabilization and next-level subject tracking. Its DSLR counterpart, the EOS 5D Mark IV, includes 30.4MP stills, 4K video (albeit cropped), excellent all-round image quality and…

Belvedere, Tuscany. 05:31am. 29 April 2017 I don’t classify myself simply as a travel photographer. I like to think of myself as a ‘super tourist’, a person who likes to visit and record their holidays and adventures with high quality camera equipment. I communicate this work globally, but sitting at the centre of this small enterprise is an ever curious mind. I love to innovate, but I also love a big cliché and sitting high in the rolling countryside of Tuscany is one of Europe’s biggest photographic clichés – the Belvedere. It’s another mixed day of torrential downpours and beams of sunshine. I am running a small photo tour to photograph the Tuscan countryside in early spring time. Comedy had already struck after I placed a pair of Nike trainers…

01 THREE-LIGHT SETUP Our farmyard studio setup consists of three lights, although for some shots only the key light on the right was required. We set up in a barn not far from the chicken coop and goat stables – so we could set up an animal, take a few shots, then let them wander off back to their friends. 02 PLAIN BACKDROP A roll of grey vinyl fixed to two light stands makes a simple, effective backdrop. Vinyl is sturdier than paper and less likely to kink or crease, plus it can be wiped clean after the shoot. In a pinch, you could use a pop-up backdrop, a sheet of black velvet or any other plain material you like. 03 SIDE LIGHT Our first light is positioned to the…

A PROFILE photo like this is a great way to capture a group of people or animals. We shoot each creature individually – keeping the camera angle and lighting consistent throughout – then combine the set of photos into one frame that cleverly showcases the similarities and differences between each face. To shoot for this, we use a single light, positioned to the side and behind the face, and angled back towards the camera so that it kisses the edges of the profile. This way, the front side of the subject is kept in shadow, which not only makes for punchy, dramatic lighting, but also makes it much easier to combine the images in Photoshop afterwards.…

01 ROTOLIGHT AEOS 2 The Rotolight AEOS 2 builds on the success of the original AEOS and offers brilliant versatility. It’s lightweight with an ultra-thin design, this new LED is also the thinnest and lightest 1x1 panel ever made weighing in at under 1.4kg. 02 ROTOLIGHT NEO 3 The NEO 3 light panel adds greater power, an innovative touch screen interface on the back of the light and is designed to fit seamlessly into your workflow with the Rotolight iOS & Android App. It also has a new high-performance Lithium battery. 03 MODEL & LOCATION We shot at the beautiful Knowle Hall in Solihull and our models were dressed in ’20s attire, giving our portraits a classy vibe and feel. Elegant dresses, sharp suits, elaborate headwear and fake cigars were…

Converging verticals occur when we angle our camera up towards a building or structure to fit in the frame. The straight vertical edges of the building can lean in towards one another, making it look as if the building is toppling inwards. This effect is emphasized the closer you are to the building – and wider lenses can result in more pronounced distortion. You may be able to avoid converging verticals while taking the shot by stepping back, finding a higher vantage point or using a tilt-shift lens. If these options aren’t possible, some perspective issues can be fixed in Photoshop or Lightroom. Here we’ve used Camera Raw to fix our photo, but if you’re a Lightroom user, you can use the identical tools in the Develop Module. The Geometry…

01 LOAD THE LUMINOSITY Open the waterfall image, then go to the Layers panel. Hold Cmd/Ctrl+Alt and click on the layer thumbnail to load the luminosity of the image as a selection. Click the Adjustment icon in the Layers panel and choose Curves. The selection is applied to the Curves layer 02 DARKEN THE SKY Hit Cmd/Ctrl+D to deselect, then drag down on the curve. As we targeted highlights, our adjustment affects them more than shadows, allowing us to darken the bright sky. Drag the top of the curve down more so the adjustment works more on the highlights. 03 PAINT A MASK Our adjustment has darkened the highlights in the grass a little too much, but we can fix this with a quick layer mask. Click the Mask icon…

I took these photos during my trip to West Africa, in Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso in 2019. It’s not easy to photograph the people in these places. Some still believe that cameras can steal a part of their souls, or that the images made in the camera can manipulate them. So, it wasn’t uncommon to see people hide their faces, or start shouting at me when I had my camera out. When children see a tourist with the camera, it must look like some scary fairground attraction. They usually want to show that they are brave enough to be photographed, but they still find it a bit scary. This can make the shoots a lot of fun for them and for me as the photographer. They ask you to…

MORE FOCUS STACKING TIPS It’s tempting to shoot lots of images when using the camera’s Focus Bracketing feature, but often just 20 or so pictures are sufficient. It’s best to shoot your subject on a tripod and indoors. When shooting outside, movement of the subject due to wind will make it more difficult to merge images, but using a card or reflector to block the wind is a good solution. 01 CAPTURE THE STACKED IMAGES Taking the series of stacked images can be done manually but it’s easier if you use your camera’s focus bracketing feature. Focus Bracketing is a feature found on most of the EOS R-series cameras and also on the EOS 90D. For other cameras, you can bracket using the EOS Utility software or by manually focusing…

Many Canon EOS cameras come with a built-in pop-up flash, but while this is a convenient way to add a blip of light, they’re not powerful. A Speedlite gives greater range, but being anchored to your camera limits your options. By taking your Speedlite off-camera it enables you to light subjects from any angle for more creative lighting. Being able to liberate the light from the hotshoe for off-camera effects is great, and being able to control multiple lights from one unit is better. There are two types of wireless trigger – optical and radio-frequency. The former requires a direct line of sight from the camera, has a limited range and is affected by bright sunlight. The latter has a greater range, can travel through solid objects and is unaffected…

For shooting sports and other fast-paced action with a big telephoto lens, you’re often better off with a monopod than a tripod. The greater freedom of movement enables you to more effectively track people and objects in anything from football and cycling to motor sports and aircraft displays. You can still enjoy some support, for bearing the load of a heavy camera and telephoto lens combination, along with a steadying effect that delivers sharper images. Taking versatility up a gear, the 3 Legged Thing Winston, Benro Mach3, Benro Go Plus Travel, Kenro Ultimate Travel and Novo Explora T20 tripods on test can be used as tripods and monopods. To convert them for monopod use, all you need to do is to unscrew the detachable leg, remove the centre column with…

What to look for Canon EOS cameras Canon splits its EOS DSLR lineup into entry-level, enthusiast and pro ranges; the EOS 4000D is the most basic, the 850D and 77D for intermediates, the 90D 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’ affordable option, the EOS R3 and R5 for more serious photographers. Plus not forgetting Canon’s smaller compact system (also mirrorless) APS-C EOS M camera range. DSLR CAMERAS PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED…

Letter of the Month I loved the Long-Term Testing Canon EOS Mirrorless article in the Spring 2022 issue. It was interesting to hear the viewpoints and tips of the various photographers. As an enthusiast who enjoys photographing waterfalls and birds in flight, I was glad to hear these pros also enjoyed some of the features of the Canon EOS R5 that I enjoy. I was surprised that someone didn’t mention the feature that quickly won me over to the mirrorless experience: I now have a single shooting experience, whether I’m using the EVF (electronic viewfinder) or LCD. They look virtually the same, they work the same – no more differences in how exposure and AF work when switching. Long live the Canon EOS R mirrorless series! Cameras have come a…