Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2022 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

Back in September 2018, Canon launched its new EOS R mirrorless full-frame camera. We’ve been waiting ever since for an APS-C crop-sensor Canon EOS R to complete the modern mirrorless family of bodies. Well, this month Canon has revealed not one but two new APS-C cameras: the Canon EOS R7 and R10. I was lucky enough to test both cameras at the big launch in London. Compact, lightweight and affordable (compared to their full-frame big brothers and sisters), these are the ‘real’ mirrorless cameras we’ve all been waiting for! What’s even more impressive is Canon’s crammed in the best tech from the top-end EOS R5 and R3, and both the R7 and R10 can shoot at 15fps mechanically (faster than any other EOS camera), and they also have the same…

MANUAL MODE TO BEGIN, Rob set Phil’s Canon EOS R5 to its Manual mode so that he could take full control of exposures. The first setup was all about using fast shutter speeds to make sure the riders were pin sharp in shot, so he set a shutter speed of 1/500 sec and an aperture of f/4 to let in loads of light. He also switched on Auto ISO, so there was one less exposure setting to worry about, enabled Raw image quality, and turned on the fastest burst rate mode, too. AUTOFOCUS NEXT, Rob set Phil’s EOS R5 to its Servo autofocus mode so that the camera would continually refocus – a must for fast-moving subjects such as motorbikes. He then went into the autofocus options by pressing the…

media://hotshot-5.jpg/ PHIL’S COMMENT “I had an incredible time photographing and learning with Rob at Donington Park and luckily the weather held out – it only started raining just as we started to pack up for the day. I’ve learnt some key techniques that I’m really eager to practise when I get back home, and I now have a better understanding of what all the buttons and features do on my new Canon EOS R5, which is a massive help. A huge thank you to Rob and PhotoPlus for arranging the shoot. It was a brilliant day and I plan to keep shooting as much as I can because one of my goals for this year is to get some of my shots featured in a prominent motorcycle magazine – I…

Golden hour is really early in the summer, so the only way to embrace it is to set the alarm to silly o’clock. When it comes to capturing the beautiful warm light of a sunrise, don’t set your white balance to its Auto setting – this neutralizes the colours. Set it to Daylight for the most natural look, but also try Cloudy or Shade if you want to give those warm colours a boost. Of course, by shooting Raw, you can adjust the white balance (colour temperature) to your taste in post-processing as well.…

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Famous locations such as the Colosseum in Rome are both easy and difficult to photograph. Easy because, well, look at it – it’s incredible. Difficult because it attracts tourists and photographers by the thousands. As such, not only is it tricky to take an unusual photo, but it’s also hard to find an angle that isn’t swarming with people. This is where a strong neutral density filter can be a huge asset. It enables us to use shutter speeds of 1-2 minutes in daylight, which means that people moving past the frame don’t register in the shot. Plus it creates lovely motion blur in the clouds, which serves both as an eye-catching visual and an indication of how this grand structure has stood for millennia while activity buzzes all around.…

01 CORRECT NOISE The camera sensor heats up during a long exposure, causing increased noise and hot pixels. Lightroom’s noise reduction tools can help, but a better option is DxO’s PureRaw, a Lightroom plug-in that can automatically fix an astonishing level of noise and produce a better Raw file. 02 FIX COLOUR CASTS Strong ND filters leave the image looking slightly cool. In Lightroom, grab the white balance eyedropper and click on a neutral point (such as the path) to fix colour casts. Sometimes light can leak in to give edges a magenta cast. This can be fixed with a radial filter set to reduce magenta tints. 03 COMBINE FRAMES Long exposures can be tricky to get right, so you may need to use exposure blending to combine more than…

01 CANON EOS CAMERA Make no mistake, any Canon camera is suitable for this technique. That said, newer cameras, such as the EOS R, would come in handy. And a bigger full-frame sensor enables you to crop images without compromising image quality. 02 LENS CHOICE Although this technique can be done with a kit lens, an alternative optic that offers a more versatile focal length can speed things up. We used a Canon RF 24-105mm – a zoom lens that enables you to adjust your focal length quickly. 03 VARI-ANGLE LCD SCREEN Some older Canon DSLRs have fixed screens, which makes lining up high or low angle compositions really awkward. If you have a Vari-Angle LCD, flip it out and this should make life much easier, speeding up your framing…

THE FILTERS for the drop-in filter mount adapter slot in or out at the push of a button, making them super-easy to switch and clean. The filter attaches before the rear element, so it works with any EF lens you already have. YOU CAN see two markings on the EF mount side: the red dot is for Canon’s full-frame EF lenses and the white square is for APS-C lenses, but attaching an EF-S lens means your pictures are shot in a cropped mode on EOS R mirrorless cameras.…

Focus-stacking is a great way to increase depth of field in close-ups, landscapes or any scene where you want front-to-back sharpness. This isn’t always possible in one exposure – especially if you want to include details that are very close to the lens – but by shooting a set of photos with varying focus points, we can combine the sharpest parts into a single image later on. To shoot for a focus stack, use a tripod and focus on the closest point. Take a shot, then manually shift the focus slightly and take another, continuing until you’ve recorded front-to-back sharpness. The Canon EOS R5, R6 and 90D, for example, have built-in focus bracketing modes that shift the focus automatically for you. To composite our images, we used two auto Photoshop…

01 PHOTO TO SKETCH Hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy the bottom layer, then Cmd/Ctrl+U to bring up HSL. Drag Saturation to -100. Highlight the middle layer, hit Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert, set Blend Mode to Colour Dodge in the Layers panel. Go to Filter>New Live Filter Layer>Blur>Gaussian Blur. 02 BOOST THE CONTRAST Increase the blur to make a sketch effect. Next hit Cmd/Ctrl+L for Levels and drag in black and white points to increase contrast. Next hit Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+ Alt+E to merge a copy of all the layers. Rename the new layer Sketch, then hide all but the bottom layer. 03 TRACE AROUND THE BUILDING Grab the Pen tool. Choose a surface and click on the corner to add a point. Click+drag to make another – the wider you drag, the more curved…

My eagerly awaited trip to Iceland began with a flight from Dublin to Reykjavik in September 2021. I chose to go with a travel guide as I wanted to take as many images of iconic places as possible over the week. Iceland welcomed us with incredibly challenging weather conditions: torrential rain, high winds and sleet. As a result, we had to abandon our planned trip to the active volcano Fagradalsfjall. We proceeded eastwards on the south coast as the weather improved and were able to visit Strokkur geyser. On the next day, we travelled to Reynisfjara, the world-famous black sand beach area with its basalt stacks, roaring Atlantic waves and amazing panoramas, giving us numerous opportunities for images. This beach was the location for scenes in Game of Thrones and…

These days, there’s an app for everything. Want to turn your phone into a fake electric shaver? There are apps for that. Feel the need to add a cat to any photo? Get stuck into CatPaint. Of course, there are also sackfuls of apps for photographers, too – from tips and techniques to complete photo-editing suites. Dig deep enough and you’ll find plenty of practical apps that let you do juicy camera stuff, such as calculating the exposure time you need to use when you’ve got a strong neutral density filter attached to the lens, working out the hyperfocal distance for maximizing depth of field, or plotting the position of the sun and moon at any location. But did you know that Canon has its own range of apps that…

SOME EOS cameras feature a low-energy Bluetooth option for connecting to a smartphone with the Camera Connect app installed. Wi-Fi, on the other hand, is something of a battery hog, so it pays to turn it off once you’ve finished using it. It’s off by default as a precaution. You can check the status of the Wi-Fi connection on your camera by checking the top-plate LCD if your camera is equipped with one, or on the Quick Control Screen – as shown on the EOS 250D here. It’s advisable to turn Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off if you’re going to be on a plane – some EOS cameras that have a dedicated communications menu include an Airplane Mode option, just like a phone. PART 16 Next issue: Canon APS-C vs full-frame…

“How do Canon photographers capture action photos in low light?” Jamie Wiggeth, St Agnes BRIAN SAYS… In low light or bright light, the typical requirement for action photos is a fast shutter speed. As the light level drops, the way to fast shutter speeds is wide-aperture lenses with higher ISO settings. At sporting events, you’ll see professional photographers using lenses with f/2.8 aperture as their standard for faster shutter speeds and maximum quality. The higher ISO settings are the most noisy, but sensible post processing of your images can minimize the visible effect of the noise. Take care to be selective with sharpening, particularly avoiding over-sharpening out-of-focus shadows. If you have a great action shot, the action is the important part and no one else with the same equipment could…

Canon has truly outdone itself with the EOS R10. Here we have a body that’s priced at under a grand in the UK and US, yet it offers shooting speeds that match or exceed those of the top pro sports cameras on the market. We’re not suggesting that the Canon EOS R10 is the best professional camera you can buy. However, it is mechanically faster than the Canon EOS R3, and beats the R5 and R6 when shooting both mechanically and electronically. We weren’t surprised to see an entry level EOS R camera in an APS-C body, but for it to pack this much firepower – making it, sensor size notwithstanding, a faster and higher resolution Canon camera than everything except the R5 and R3 – is quite extraordinary. Canon…

There are many times when we simply can’t get as close to our subject as we would like. If you’re shooting anything from small timid birds to planes at an air show, from athletes to motor sports, or wildlife on safari, you need a long lens that really covers the distance. A super-telephoto lens can get you there, and a zoom beats a prime for flexibility when your movements are limited. That’s especially true if you’re confined to a hide for shooting wildlife or in a spectators’ area at a sporting event. A super-telephoto zoom can also come in handy for shooting candid portraits at events, so you can be unobtrusive and pick people out from a distance, while also blurring the background with a fairly tight depth of field.…

The typical focal length extremities at each end of the range offered by super-telephoto zooms tend to be 100mm, 150mm or 200mm at the short end, and either 400mm or 600mm at the long end. This sequence of shots shows the amount of pulling power that each major focal length gives you. Naturally, the effective telephoto reach is boosted if you use any of these lenses on an APS-C format Canon EOS camera, which we’ll come to next.…

Sigma and Tamron say their super-tele zooms in this test can be used with their latest tele-converters. The same goes for Canon lenses, via EF or RF extenders. The advantage is outweighed by a narrowing of aperture by one or two f/stops when using a 1.4x or 2x tele-converter. The 1.6x crop factor of an APS-C body, like the EOS 7D Mark II, gives no aperture loss. The effective maximum focal length of a 600mm lens is boosted to 960mm.…

The Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sports gives serious super-tele reach with a huge 10x zoom range. This makes it ideal when you need to quickly swap between standard and really long focal lengths, without swapping the lens. The catch is that it’s big and heavy, at 2.7kg. The optical path includes three top-grade FLD (fluorite low dispersion) elements and one SLD (special low dispersion) element. Fluorine coatings are applied to the front and rear elements to repel water and grease, and the lens is extensively weather-sealed. Handling exotica is the same as in the Sigma 150-600mm Sports lens on test. Image quality and all-round performance are excellent but sharpness drops off at the long end.…

Why didn’t Canon launch budget RF-S lenses for mirrorless cameras years ago? Our editor Peter Travers’s thoughts on trying out the first budget, compact RF-S lenses developed for the small Canon EOS R7 and R10 APS-C mirrorless cameras. Find out more via quick link bit.ly/dcw_rfs Camera launched at 1000mph from Earth to the Moon for science Check out the onboard footage that shows the perspective of the flight test vehicle being launched into the atmosphere at more than 1000mph. More at DigitalCameraWorld.com via quick link bit.ly/dcw_mph DSLRs are back! Sales increase 132%, while mirrorless cameras decline 57% So, DSLRs are far from dead – in fact, sales are up 132% while mirrorless cameras have dropped 57%. What’s going on? Find out the full story at DigitalCameraWorld.com via our quick link…

RED CARPET FABIO QUARTARARO winning the 2021 Moto GP crown. The strong shadows helps to create a leading line, while shooting from down low gives the subject dominance and flash helps to fill in the shadows. CHAMPAGNE MOMENT THIS SHOT is a once-in-a-lifetime. When Valentino Rossi pulled into his garage for the final time in his career, he was greeted by his team and friends with a bottle of champagne. A special moment to capture. SPEED OF LIGHT COMBINING FLASH with ambient light in dark conditions allows for amazing effects. In this case, shooting under floodlights and capturing the moment this rider stormed back after a 200mph session on track.…

01 TWO BEE OR NOT TWO BEE BY MARTIN BROWN Martin got in close for a frame-filling image with his Canon EF 100-400mm lens. The central symmetrical framing works nicely and the lavender field has created a beautiful wash of purple in the foreground as well as vibrant bokeh in the background, allowing the two yellow bees to really pop out. Lens Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM Exposure 1/1000 sec, f/11, ISO1000 02 LADY SCARLET BY HENRIK SPRANZ Henrik’s amazing dragonfly shot impressed us this month. His female scarlet dragonfly is perfectly sharp, well placed a third of the way in from the right edge of the frame and surrounded by incredible bokeh and super colourful out-offocus highlights. This image really pops and is unlike anything else we…

Towards the end of the daylight hours, the low sun gives similar conditions to those experienced at dawn. There’s a second golden hour with warm, flattering light, lasting until the sun sinks below the horizon. Cloud formations may give you a dramatic, fire-coloured sky, but even on a clear, cloudless day, you still get an evocative warm glow, graduating into a cool blue. As well as a great time for capturing landscapes, sunset is also an excellent opportunity to shoot silhouettes – the dark outline of an iconic subject is a must for your creative portfolio. If the sun is still visible, you can keep it in shot but direct light striking the lens reduces contrast and usually creates visible flare. Although flare reduces image quality, it can’t be avoided…

Provence, France. 19:34pm. 7 July 2017 Do you turn up to shoot popular UK landscapes and baulk at the increasing number of tripods? You haven’t seen anything yet. I have been shooting in Provence since 2010 and the world is now a very different place from when my love affair with the purply blue began. The last time I went I vowed it was my last, as the landscape was overrun with global influencers, geotagged photographers and coach-loads of tourists on a scale the likes of which you have never seen. Drones buzzed in the sky among the millions of oblivious bees, wedding shoots traipsed lighting rigs and dirty dresses through the soil, while cutsie girls clutched straw hats and twirled in daffodil-yellow dresses as machine-gun shutters clattered – it…

01 STURDY TRIPOD Your Canon camera needs to be perfectly still for several minutes, so a tripod is a must. We need to remain in place for a while, so set up in a spot that won’t get in the way of people passing by or other photographers. If a tripod isn’t practical, you could use a wall or your bag. 02 16-STOP ND FILTER A 16-stop neutral density filter stretches your exposure times to minutes or even hours. In bright sunshine, a 1/500 sec shutter speed becomes 2 mins and 11 secs (compared to just 2 secs with a 10-stop ND) – a good length for blurring clouds and removing passing tourists. 03 PEOPLE AND VEHICLES One of the benefits of shooting long exposures in busy spots such as…

AS WELL as blurring clouds and removing tourists, strong ND filters are also fantastic for blurring the motion of water. With fast-moving waves, the churn is transformed into streaks of silky white blur. Notice, too, how reflections come out clearer when the water is smoothed out with a long exposure. You don’t necessarily need a 16-stop filter for this, as motion blur can be achieved with exposure times of just a few seconds, but one of the great things about a stronger ND is how you can use wider apertures. So, if you want maximum sharpness, set the aperture to the lens sweet spot, which is usually 2-3 stops down from the widest aperture, around f/8 or f/11.…

With Canon’s EOS 850D being the last Canon DSLR to be released, all the way back in February 2020, we Canon users have been given little option other than to switch to mirrorless when looking to upgrade if we want the latest and greatest camera innovations and new technology. We’re sure that, like us, you have also had to face the tricky dilemma of what to do with your collection of old Canon EF and EF-S lenses for your DSLR. Do you keep them with your old camera as a backup or trade them in to get some cash towards your mirrorless purchase? In this project, we look at a third option: using one of Canon’s EF-EOS R adapters (of which there are several iterations) that enables you to continue…

If you want to add striking lighting effects to one of your images, the free gift supplied with this issue will have you beaming. It comprises 20 custom-made brushes that can be used to add amazing lightbeams to your shots. Whether you want to have rays of light boosting the mood in a window-lit interior or streaming through the canopy in a woodland scene, you can find the ideal effect in our 20-brush kit in download link (bottom left). The brush shapes aren’t limited either, because they’re designed to be applied to a fresh layer and then pulled into the exact form you want via Photoshop’s Free Transform command. Between Free Transform and the variety of the brushes supplied, you should be able to manifest the exact lightbeams you want…

01 LOAD FILES INTO STACK Before we can blend our focus-stacked images, we need to load them all into a single file in Photoshop. There’s no need to copy and paste images manually: go to File>Scripts>Load Files Into Stack, then select the set of photos you want to use. Alternatively, if you use Bridge, select the set of images and go to Tools>Photoshop> Load Files Into Photoshop Layers. 02 AUTO-ALIGN When we adjust the focus point backwards while shooting for a focus stack, the frame zooms slightly out. The effect is more pronounced in close-up photography. This slightly messes up the alignment of our photos, even when we use a tripod, but Auto-Align fixes things. Highlight all the layers in the Layers panel, then go to Edit> Auto-Align. Choose Auto…

HEARING Catherine O’Donnell talk about how she moved into photography after a successful career in magazine journalism, you can almost imagine her being described back then as “the accidental photographer”. She prefers to use the word “serendipitous” when explaining the sequence of events that took her from editing an in-flight magazine for TUI (“Ironically, I’m quite scared of flying”) to taking pictures at a friend’s wedding in Menorca, which led to her first wedding photography commission. “I’d always taken pictures but I’d never ever considered it as something I could do as a career,” she says when recalling that first paid shoot. Up until then, Catherine had used some of her photos as reference studies for paintings, but the success of that wedding made her re-evaluate her photography. And that’s…

Depending on which shooting mode you’ve set for the camera, you can adjust the aperture, shutter speed and ISO in the Camera Connect app. You can also apply exposure compensation, change the white balance or Picture style and even focus the lens – either by tapping on the image displayed on your phone screen or by using the focusing buttons to electronically adjust the focus position in small increments. You can then take a shot (or record a video) and check the results afterwards. Being able to control the camera using your phone means that you won’t accidentally nudge the camera when it’s mounted on a tripod. If your camera isn’t equipped with a vari-angle screen, being able to compose, focus and fine-tune settings from an otherwise-awkward camera angle is…

If you’re a semi-pro or fully professional photographer, Canon’s Mobile File Transfer app may be of use. MFT is not an app you download on a whim, as it’s entirely function over form. Again, it’s moving to a subscription-based model soon, but if you earn money from photography and need to upload images to an FTP server straight after you’ve shot them, you’re probably happy to take on the cost. The MFT app is designed to make your wireless workflow easier, as it enables you to quickly tag images with IPTC metadata – the industry standard way of adding details such as subject, description, location, keywords and copyright. You can create a file with this info before or after you’ve captured the image, and can even add a voice memo…

Bright sunny days make the perfect summer holiday for most people, but strong harsh light can lead to less than ideal pictures. If you process your holiday photos with DPP, the results can make perfect memories of a great summer experience. If you do head to the beach, it is worth protecting your camera with a clear plastic bag to keep the sand away, and use a lens hood if you have one. After a great day on the beach, your images may need some enhancement to give them that extra boost. DPP has lots of tools for adjusting your pictures, ranging from colour adjustment to gamma curves. The key is to enhance the colours, and the first step is to tweak the colour adjustment curves; this tool works with both…

Image stabilization (IS) was created by Canon to enable you to capture shake-free photos when using longer lenses. You are probably used to the hand-holding rule that says you should shoot with a shutter speed that is the reciprocal of the focal length or faster to avoid shake. So, for a 500mm lens, the rule means 1/500 sec or faster shutter speed. IS was developed to allow slower shutter speeds to be used and still avoid camera shake. Canon launched the world’s first lens with optical image stabilization in 1995, the EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM, which featured two stops of stabilization. For a film camera, this was beneficial due to the limited range of ISO available for film. Since then, IS has been developed and added to many lenses.…

We’ve been waiting for the Canon EOS R7 since the launch of the EOS R system back in 2018. The long-awaited first APS-C member of the EOS R family, the R7 overpowers the old (smaller and more compact) EOS M system to give Canon the most powerful APS-C camera on the market. Offering a burst speed that matches (and, mechanically, beats) the Canon EOS R3, and resolution second only to the EOS R5, the EOS R7 is a technical marvel. Following in the footsteps of the Canon EOS 90D and EOS 7D Mark II APS-C DSLRs, you can utilize its 1.6x crop factor to amplify the effective focal length of full-frame lenses. As such, this could become the best camera for wildlife and sports photography, thanks to its unique combination…

Unlike many wide-angle and even standard zoom lenses, 1.59 distortions tend to be quite minimal in super-telephoto zooms. The Canon EF 100-400mm gives the worst barrel distortion at the short end but it’s still pretty minimal, and they all have slight pincushion towards the long end. The Sigma 150-600mm Sports has particularly negligible pincushion throughout its entire zoom range. The Canon RF 100-400mm and Tamron 150-600mm have a little more pincushion distortion at all zoom settings but it’s still of a fairly low order.…

For handheld shooting, you should use a shutter speed that’s at least the reciprocal of the focal length of a lens (effective focal length for crop sensor cameras). That equates to 1/500 sec at 500mm on a full-frame body, or 1/1000 sec at 600mm on an APS-C format camera. This can be difficult, with the widest available aperture often being f/6.3. Image stabilization enables sharp results, usually with speeds up to four stops slower.…

For a zoom lens with sheer super-telephoto clout and great all-round performance, you can’t beat the Sigma 150-600mm Sports. It’s superbly well engineered, weather-sealed, has a wealth of high-end features and delivers excellent image quality. It’s also very good value for money. However, there’s no denying that it’s a big, heavy lens. The Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary and Tamron 150-600mm G2 lenses are rather more manageable, with the Sigma edging ahead for features and image quality, while the Tamron has more extensive weather-seals. On balance, the Sigma is the better buy and great value at the price. The Canon EF 100-400mm is smaller and lighter than any of the 150-600mm zooms and, while it doesn’t have such long telephoto reach, it’s a fine lens with a slightly faster aperture rating and…

DSLR CAMERAS PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED ENTRY-LEVEL DSLRs CANON EOS 4000D TESTED IN ISSUE 140 PRICE: £370/$N/A 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 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. 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-inch 230K dots Max burst (buffer) 3fps Memory card SD/SDHC/SDXC CANON EOS 2000D (REBEL T7) TESTED IN ISSUE 149 PRICE with 18-55mm kit lens: £519/$480 THE 2000D is a better-spec Canon camera than the 4000D, but comes with a step up at…

media://hotshot-2.jpg/ media://hotshot-5.jpg/ CANON PRO NAME: ROB GRAY CAMERA: CANON EOS R3 & R5 ROB STARTED his photography journey in 2013, picking up an entry-level Canon EOS 550D as a way to shoot his big hobby at motorsport events. He’s since turned his passion into a pro career, graduating from shooting the UK domestic racing scene to jetting off to Moto GP races all over the world, as well as running his online Speed of Light Academy. www.speedoflightacademy.com APPRENTICE NAME: PHIL PERRY CAMERA: CANON EOS R5 PHIL IS a healthcare relationship manager with a high street bank. In his spare time, he loves to photograph motorsports and has recently upgraded to a Canon EOS R5. He wrote to us asking whether we could help him get the most out his new…

With long days and clear nights, summer gifts us with more hours of photo opportunities. If you’re an energetic photographer, the extended shooting time offers a host of fun photo projects to tackle. You’re going to have to burn your creative candle at both ends, but it’s possible to shoot a new and diverse portfolio in one mega session in a one long day. If you go for it, we’ll allow a quick siesta in the middle of the day to recharge your personal batteries, while giving your Canon camera’s battery a boost, too. Early and late in the day deliver warm, evocative light, enabling you to shoot atmospheric images that catch the eye. But with a change of direction and some considered technique, you don’t have to put your…

The middle of the day in summer is often regarded as the worst time to take photographs, because the high sun above produces unflattering bright light for most subjects. But you can use the direct sunlight to your advantage and take great still-life shots of flowers as they open during the day to soak up the sun. The secret to taking good flower photographs is timing. If you’re shooting flowers in the wild or in a garden setting, you only get a limited period of weeks, or even days, when the subjects look their finest. When shooting flowers outside, it’s the wind that tends to be a problem for photographers. As the day warms and things start to move, taking sharp shots of flowers can be a lesson in frustration.…

WHEN YOU’RE out shooting, you’ll have discovered that silhouettes sometimes happen and sometimes don’t. This is all down to how your camera’s light meter reads and interprets the scene and sets the exposure values. To take control of this process, you need to take charge of the exposure duties, and tell your Canon camera who’s the boss! 01 CAMERA & LENS CHOICE Any Canon EOS camera and telephoto zoom lens will work for silhouette portraits. We used an EOS 5D Mk IV and a focal length of 155mm on our Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L to frame and easily isolate our subjects against the sky. You need a bright, clear and colourful sky at sunset to contrast against our silhouetted subjects. 02 EXPOSURE MODES Shoot in Manual mode (or Av or…

SILLY NUMBERS Somewhat frustratingly, manufacturers use three different approaches to naming neutral density filters. While some are labelled by the reduction in f-stops – such as 3, 6, 10 stops or similar – others are given a value that shows the amount of light that is reduced; 1-stop halves the light, so the filter is given a value of ND2, 2-stop is a 2x2 reduction, so ND4, 10-stop is 2 to the power of 10, so ND1024 (often rounded down to ND1000). A third method multiplies the number of stops by 0.3, so a 3-stop filter is ND0.9 and 10-stop is ND3.0. Confused? Us, too! 01 TAKE A TEST SHOT Before attaching the filter, take a test shot to work out a normal exposure of the scene. Use settings you’re…

One of the common pitfalls for many photographers is to line up a subject in front of the lens and forget everything else in the scene. The problem with this approach is that while centrally placed subjects offer interest, the compromise is that the rest of the frame can look empty and lack any real value, which is what stops a good image from becoming a truly brilliant one. This is where a technique called creative framing can come in very handy. Essentially, you can use anything in your surroundings to create a natural border around the frame. Of course, what you use to make your border depends on your environment, but trees, fences, railings and doorways all work perfectly. Bear in mind if your ‘borders’ are brighter or darker…

01 CANON EOS R MIRRORLESS All four of the adapters we’re looking at in this project are designed to work with Canon’s full-frame mirrorless EOS R lineup, such as the EOS R, EOS RP and EOS R5. So, if you’ve upgraded, you might not need to sell your old optics. 02 CANON EF & EF-S LENS Give any of your old Canon DSLR EF or EF-S lenses a new lease of life by using one of Canon’s adapters, because all four mount adapters in this project make it possible to use your old lenses on the new EOS R full-frame mirrorless bodies. 03 CANON EF-EOS R ADAPTER There are several options when it comes to EF-EOS R adapters, including a basic model, another featuring a control ring, and also options…

01 LOAD YOUR LIGHTBEAM BRUSHES To install the Lightbeam brushes in Photoshop CC, copy the LightbeamBrushes.abr file from the download (see bottom left for link) to your computer by dragging and dropping it. Now open Photoshop CC and go to Window>Brushes. In the Brushes panel, click the flyout (the four-bar icon in the top-right of the panel), and choose Import Brushes from the drop-down list. Navigate to the folder into which you copied the LightbeamBrushes file, and double-click on it. Your new brushes are recognized by Photoshop, which installs them automatically. Scroll down to the bottom of the list in your Brushes panel to find them. Each brush has a small preview to help you tell them apart. 02 SET UP YOUR BRUSH Open the image to which you want…

Some scenes are so iconic that they can be reduced to simple blocks of colour and still remain instantly recognizable. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is a case in point. In this project, we look at how to transform the flowing lines of the building into graphic shapes like a minimalist painting. We’ve provided the image (link on left to download) to follow along, but the same technique can be used for all kinds of images, not just buildings, so if you have a photo of your own in mind, give it try! There are two stages to this effect. First, we transform our photo into a pencil sketch using a clever combination of layer blend modes and blur filters. This gives us a fine degree of control over…

Living around 20 minutes outside Cambridge city centre, I often visit because it’s brilliant for shopping as well as street photography. A visitor to Cambridge cannot fail to notice the ‘big three’ – colleges, punts and bicycles. Brilliant though Cambridge is, it can be a challenge to find something different to portray because it’s already really heavily photographed so it can be difficult to find a unique angle. When I looked through my stock of 200 Cambridge street photos from last summer, I noticed a strong preference for catching cyclists. This gave me the lightbulb moment of trying to look for variations on the much-photographed postcard scenes around Cambridge town centre and incorporate bikes into them, making them the star of the show. Some of my images were impromptu street…

USE EVALUATIVE METERING AND SHOOT RAW To make things as simple as possible, use Evaluative metering, then your camera can determine the ideal exposure for you, with plenty of scope for post processing. Shoot in Raw to have the most processing flexibility, especially for recovering bright highlights and pulling detail from deep shadows. 01 FIX COLOUR BALANCE WITH CURVES Image tone curves can be used for Raw and JPG images, and are ideal for well-exposed shots. Adjust individual curves for maximum flexibility. Pull up the red curve to add red, push down for cyan, the green curve tweaks green and magenta, and the blue one deals with blue and yellow. Here the red curve gets a minor adjustment, while blue has a larger one. 02 TARGET ESSENTIAL SUMMER COLOURS Use…

PETER FRIEDMANN, WILTSHIRE SAYS… I have recently switched over to a Canon EOS R6 and took it to Costa Rica for a bird photography trip. I had spent time working out suitable AF settings, and it largely was successful for all kinds of birds. A lot of the bird-watching was in jungle forests, so the birds were usually in deep shade and gloom, so I had to use higher ISO settings. I used GIMP to edit my shots, with most of the pictures needing some highlight and shadow correction, plus sharpening. BRIAN SAYS… This is a great shot of the bird in its natural environment. I can certainly see how this would be a challenge to capture without Animal Eye AF. I suggest a little change to the crop, so…

Canon has launched two new RF-S kit lenses as budget-friendly, light, small and versatile optics for the new Canon EOS R7 and R10, in the slender shape of the RF-S 18-45mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM and RF-S 18-150mm F3.5-6.3 IS STM. The new mirrorless APS-Cformat lenses offer 35mm equivalent focal lengths of 29-72mm and 29-240mm respectively. With built-in optical IS, they’ve been developed as the ideal partners for shooting everything from landscapes and portraits to food and vlogs. The RF-S 18-45mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM is a multi-purpose lens for everyday shooting, thanks to its compact design and lens-retraction mechanism, which makes it perfect for travelling and packing away in smaller camera bags. With a manual focus override and lead-screw-type STM for smooth, quiet movie AF, it’s a lens for all types…

To test real-world performance, we use lenses in all sorts of lighting conditions, both indoors and outdoors. We check for good build quality and handling, smooth and precise operation of all controls, the speed and accuracy of autofocus, and the effectiveness of image stabilization, where it’s fitted. We typically test full-frame compatible lenses on a range of both full-frame and APS-C format bodies, whereas lenses that are designed specifically for APS-C format bodies are only tested on the latter. In-camera corrections for chromatic aberrations and peripheral illumination (where available) are disabled throughout all testing, to better reveal the true performance of each lens. We also run a full range of lab tests under controlled conditions, using the Imatest Master and DxO Analyser suites. Photos of test charts are taken across…

There’s fairly little colour fringing with all of the lenses on test, throughout their respective zoom ranges. The EF 100-400mm is the worst of the group at its shortest focal length, but gives barely any colour fringing at mid to long zoom settings. As with own-brand Canon lenses, the Sigma lenses on test are compatible with in-camera correction for lateral chromatic aberration, further boosting their effective performance.…

FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… ▪ Using Canon’s RF 100mm macro lens ▪ Creative lighting with Speedlites ▪ Shape-shifting portraits in Affinity Photo ▪ Fast Photoshop CC image-editing techniques PLUS ALL THIS… ▪ New Canon camera tips: Learn to master Canon’s main exposure modes ▪ Super Test: We test the 10 best Canon EOS cameras from budget DSLR and mirrorless to top-end bodies ▪ My Kit: Canon pro Justin Hession on his kit for commercial portraits ISSUE 194 ON SALE 26 JULY 2022 * Content subject to change…

Letter of the Month I have been reading PhotoPlus for some 10 years now, and I recently upgraded my Canon EOS 650D to a mirrorless EOS RP. Lately, in my opinion, the magazine is perhaps moving away from the amateur towards the professional. This is illustrated for me by Project 2 in Canon Skills (issue 192), extolling the use of Rotolight LEDs. Two of these lights cost in the region of £1800. That’s more than many Canon cameras, and hardly the sort of kit most of us could afford. Graham Simmons, Leybourne, Kent Many thanks, Graham, we always appreciate reader feedback. We have the tricky task of creating a mag for all Canon photographers, and aim to include beginner to pro content each month, with skills from entry-level to more…