Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

01 WINNER KIRKJUFELL BY JOANA KRUSE While the legendary conical shape of Iceland’s Kirkjufell mountain is one of the region’s most photographed scenes, Joana has done a superb job at making her composition unique by including some brilliant details in the icy foreground. The black-and-white conversion works brilliantly well too, with Joana expertly dodging and burning the textures for added impact. Lens Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Exposure 20 secs, f/14, ISO50 02 ALTERNATIONS BY SABRINA GAROFOLI Sabrina’s clearly got a great eye for a good photo as this row of five houses is rather striking. She’s placed the houses at the bottom of the frame and allowed the abstract clouds to fill the frame and pull in the viewer’s eye. The compelling contrast has been strengthened too with her expert black-and-white…

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SPECIALIST STARBURST LENSES If you want to capture starbursts in a single frame without the detrimental effect on image sharpness that comes with diffraction, you could fork out on a lens loved by starbursters like a Zeiss 21mm, Voightlander 15mm or Nisi 15mm. These can let you capture star bursts even at wider apertures like f/8 or even f/5.6, but they’re not cheap and you may need an adapter to get them to work with your Canon. You might find that the lenses you own produce good results. The best way to find out is to set up a simple test by shooting a streetlamp at night. 01 CURVED OR STRAIGHT The starburst effect can vary dramatically depending on the aperture blades in your lens. There are two key factors…

You can shoot anything in black and white, but the skill lies in ‘seeing’ your subjects in shades of grey rather than being distracted by colour, and it’s much harder than it seems. Colours are, of course, converted into shades of grey, which means that you don’t see the contrasts in black and white that colours provide. Instead, black-and-white photography is much more dependent on lighting, contrast, shapes and textures. This also makes it easier to produce powerful, graphic compositions. But while it’s perfectly possible to just go out and start shooting in black and white, you can learn and understand this medium a lot quicker in a controlled situation with a simple still life setup, where you can arrange your subject, the lighting and the composition bit by bit.…

01 CANON EOS CHOICE The brilliant thing about landscapes is that you can get great results even with budget friendly APS-C Canon EOS cameras. Whether you’ve got an older DSLR model or a newer mirrorless, both of Canon’s APS-C and full-frame offers are ideal. 02 LENS OPTIONS There’s no correct answer for which lens you use, a wide-angle will make your castle smaller and include more of the scenery, so you may need to move closer to it. While a telephoto lens will allow you to home in on a castle if it’s further away. 03 TRIPOD FOR SHARP SHOTS A tripod is essential for all sorts of shots, but are particularly great for landscapes where you usually have more time to really fine-tune your composition. They also offer stability…

Of all the edits you can make to an image in Photoshop, cropping could potentially be the most transformative. A tighter crop can elevate a photo to another level. It can help to remove distractions around the edges, create a better aspect ratio or lead to a stronger composition. Here, a cinematic aspect ratio of 16:9 lets us crop in tighter to our subject, which enhances the mood as well as removing extraneous details around the edges. Cropping can also be functional. We might need to straighten a wonky horizon, correct sloppy framing or prepare an image for printing at a certain size. With so many uses – both creative and practical – it pays to know the ins and outs of the Crop tool. It may come as a…

01 TRACE A SHAPE Make a shape with the Pen tool. We’ve used the Affinity logo. Go to Affinity Photo > About for the logo, make a screenshot and open it in Affinity Photo. Click around the shape with pen tool to add anchor points. Set Fill to empty and set a stroke colour and size. 02 PASTE INTO THE PORTRAIT Once you’ve traced around all the shapes with the Pen tool, highlight the shape layers (Cmd/Ctrl+click to highlight more than one) then go to Layer > Geometry > Add to combine them. Copy with Cmd/Ctrl+C. Open Shape.jpg and paste in with Cmd/Ctrl+V. 03 MAKE IT GLOW Grab the Move tool and use the bounding box to resize the shape to fit the portrait. You might want to adjust the…

Moving up to the Creative Zone modes gives you a lot more freedom to try new things. It’s not such the daunting leap that you might anticipate either, as there are many automatic options that you can continue to take advantage of when you move away from the basics. The Creative Zone modes include Aperture Priority (Av), Shutter Priority (Tv), Flexible Priority (Fv – a relatively new addition which is available on the majority of EOS R cameras), Program (P), Manual (M) and Bulb (B). Each of these modes give you control over the exposure, whether that’s simply using the exposure compensation function to make pictures brighter or darker, or adjust the three main elements of exposure – aperture, shutter speed and ISO – to give your images a specific…

There’s a lot to think about when you move across to the Creative Zone modes, but you don’t have to take every decision away from the camera. Even if you switch to Manual shooting mode, you can take advantage of a range of automatic options until you feel confident enough to start changing things up. Besides, there are some automated shooting options that are pretty useful whatever your skill level. Take ISO, for example. In Scene Intelligent Auto, the camera sets an ISO that it calculates is suitable for the scene. With a Creative Zone mode, you can set the ISO to Auto and let the camera raise or lower the ISO sensitivity as the lighting changes. One big difference is that you can limit the ISO range, so you…

USE THE TOOLS TO SUIT THE PHOTOGRAPH It doesn’t matter in which order you complete the adjustments to Raw images using DPP. Conventionally you can start with the main panel, but for this image the selective darkening of the background was the key first step. Use the tools and push the sliders, especially sharpening, to the extremes to see the effects then back them off to achieve the final results you’re happy with. 01 MAKE THE SUBJECT STAND OUT As an initial step, reduce the importance of the background and maybe add a little sparkle to the subject’s eyes. Use the Adjust specific areas tool and a brush with a medium blur radius to paint over all of the background, reducing the brightness and saturation. A second adjustment to lighten,…

The Canon EOS R50 is the perfect match for content creators and travellers who want a small and simple-to-use mirrorless camera. An APS-C sensor combined with interchangeable lenses is going to be a step up in quality from any compact camera or camera phone used to create online content. In particular, those lenses are now from Canon’s primary RF lens lineup – its latest, most advanced and best-supported range of optics, rather than the much more limited selection offered by the EF-M mount used by the M50. And, of course, you can use Canon’s EF-mount DSLR lenses using an affordable adapter. With the guided UI and Canon’s straightforward menus, it couldn’t be easier to use. With a solid spec sheet, including 24.2MP still images and 4K video, you can get…

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 tested just on cameras like the EOS 90D and 7D Mark II. EF-M, RF and RF-S lenses are tested on respective EOS M and EOS R system bodies. In-camera corrections for chromatic aberrations, distortion and peripheral illumination are disabled, throughout lab-testing, to better reveal the true optical performance of each lens. In our lab, we test lenses under controlled…

We’ve been impressed with Laowa’s 100mm 2.0x macro lens that’s available in both EF and RF mount options for EOS DSLRs and mirrorless. This 90mm version is designed purely for EOS R system bodies and delivers a monster 2.0x macro magnification at its shortest focus distance. It captures small objects at twice lifesize, as measured on the image sensor. As a fully manual lens, you have to set the aperture manually, as well as the focus distance. That’s not a deal-breaker in macro photography, where a hands-on approach is often preferable. The lens focuses internally, rather than physically extending at shorter focus distances. However, while the front element remains fixed in place, the inner elements are recessed at the infinity focus setting, and move forward right up to the front…

If you’re in the market for a dedicated APS-C format macro lens, Canon has made interesting options in the EF-M 28mm f/3.5 Macro IS STM (£294/$299) for mirrorless EOS M-series cameras, and the now obsolete EF-S 35mm f/2.8 Macro IS STM for DSLRs, the latter making a smart second-hand buy. Both have built-in LED macro lamps, built into the front of the lens barrel, useful for illuminating subjects at very close range. It’s actually a dual lamp arrangement, so you can select one side or the other, or use both sides simultaneously, along with two selectable brightness levels. Both lenses also feature Canon’s hybrid image stabilizer system, and virtually silent autofocus stepping motor.…

Tokina’s recently launched ‘atx-i’ range majors on wide-angle lenses but there’s also this 100mm macro. The optical path appears to be identical to the ATX model, based on nine elements in eight groups and featuring two aspherical glass elements and two Super-Low Dispersion glass elements. The construction is unusually compact but the inner barrel extends as you reduce the focus distance from infinity towards the shortest focus setting. But the working distance between the front of the lens and the subject is pretty respectable in full macro mode, at 11.5cm. The autofocus motor isn’t particularly fast and is clearly audible. As with most Tokina lenses, old and new, there’s a ‘One-touch Clutch’ mechanism for the focusing ring. You simply snap the focus ring forwards to engage autofocus mode, or pull…

Canon really has come up trumps with its new RF 100mm macro lens. Build quality and handling are fabulous and the Spherical Aberration control ring and oversized 1.4x magnification, and spectacular image quality take everything to another level. But naturally, it’ll only work on EOS R-series cameras. For both full-frame and APS-C format SLRs, the Canon EF 100mm L-series lens is superb, delivering spectacular image quality and boasting hybrid image stabilizers along with a robust, weather-sealed build quality. On a tighter budget, the Sigma 105mm lens is the one to go for. It has a regular rather than hybrid stabilizer but it works a treat for general shooting as well as for panning in sports and wildlife photography. If you want to really bump up your macro magnification, the Laowa…

Letter of the Month I have always been keen on photographing wildlife and planes, so was happy when I recently had the opportunity to try out the Canon EOS R6 Mk II with a RF 600mm F11 lens. Yes, I was sceptical, having been brought up on DSLRs and bulky telephoto lenses, together with tripods and gimbals. I had always accepted that lugging all this equipment about is the price you pay to get the pictures you want. With the EOS R6 Mk II, I was attracted by the eye-tracking AF, and the In-body Image stabilization, but not by the supposed limitations of the 600mm lens. Well, all the reservations went out of the window. Every shot was hand held, and the quality matches anything I’ve done in the past,…

CANON PRO NAME: PAUL FOWLIE CAMERA: CANON EOS R5 PAUL HAS been a pro wildlife and landscape photographer since 2010. Based in Yorkshire, he runs photography workshops in the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, Scotland and Scandinavia, and is also the author of A Year with Nature: A Photographic Guide to Wildlife. We met up with him in Leyburn to drive around the wonderful Yorkshire Dales to see what wildlife we could find in and amongst the heather and rolling hills. To book one of Paul’s hides or workshops, and see his inspiring images visit his website at www.paulfowliephotography.co.uk APPRENTICE NAME: REBECCA PITT CAMERA: CANON EOS R6 REBECCA, 18, is currently in her first year at Leeds Art University studying photography, and has a passion for wildlife and often visits her local wildlife parks…

Lens Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Exposure 1/500 sec, f/16, ISO100 In 1839, when Louis Daguerre created what many believe to be the first “photograph”, he did so by exposing a piece of treated copper to light. Technology has moved a long way since then, but the process remains the same; you create a photograph by controlling how much light is recorded by your camera. As a photographer, one of the fundamental concepts you need to understand is the exposure triangle. It is the foundation upon which all of your technical decisions will be made, and it’s the key to unlocking your creative vision. Understanding the exposure triangle will help you to take control of your camera, and create images that truly capture the essence of your subject. At its most basic,…

I SO refers to the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor to light, and harks back to the days of film photography when different types of film had different sensitivities. ISO is simple to use, because it acts in a straightforward manner, change ISO from 100 to 200 and you double the sensitivity of your sensor, reduce it from 800 to 400 and you half the sensitivity. A higher ISO can be useful in low light situations, but it also introduces noise (graininess) into your images. It’s important to balance your ISO with your aperture and shutter speed to create the best possible image with the least noise. ISO 100 Lens Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM Exposure 1/400 secs, f/8, ISO100 ISO 3200 Lens Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM Exposure 1/8000 secs, f/8, ISO3200 Boost…

Starbursts can be a wonderful addition to your landscapes and night scenes. Point your lens towards any small highlight and it can become a stunning star shape. There’s no great secret to shooting starbursts, we simply use a narrow aperture like f/16, f/22 or higher. But the technique poses a distinct dilemma. The narrow aperture results in diffraction, wherein light passes through the small opening in the lens and spreads out along the aperture blades, causing the pinpoints on the star (known as ‘diffraction spikes’). So in this instance diffraction is our friend, but more often than not it’s the enemy, because it also results in a softening of fine detail. So the dilemma is whether to capture the starburst and settle for a softer scene, or prioritize sharpness. With…

01 OPEN INTO LAYERS We took 4 frames here-an f/22 frame, two f/8 frames focused on foreground and background, and a shot with our hand blocking the sun. Make any initial changes you like in Camera Raw or Lightroom to the set of photos. Once done, highlight them all and go to Tools > Photoshop > Load Files into Photoshop Layers. 02 STACK THE FOCUS Once open, Cmd/Ctrl+click on the four layers to highlight them, then go to Edit > Auto-Align Layers, choose Auto and hit OK. Next highlight just the two f/8 layers (excluding the starburst layer) and go to Edit > Auto-Blend Layers, choose Stack Images and hit OK. This combines the sharp parts from each layer. 03 BLEND THE STAR Next we can blend the sunburst layer.…

01 MONO PICTURE STYLE Visualising a full colour world in black and white is not easy, even for experienced photographers. This is where your Picture Styles come in. With the Monochrome Picture Style, you can see your scene in B&W using the Live View display or EVF. 02 SHOOT RAW AND JPEG Canon’s Picture Styles are applied to in-camera JPEG images. Sometimes these will be good enough quality on their own, but it’s often best to have the Raw image for more advanced editing – so set your camera to capture both Raw+JPEG files. 03 USE LIVE VIEW TO COMPOSE You can use your camera’s Info button to cycle through various display modes, and the histogram display, for example. Cycle through these modes until they’re all switched off so they…

As nature blooms, it’s time to do the things that warmer weather allows. If you’re a lover of portrait photography, the options at this time of year are just amazing. Bluebell woods, wild garlic and blooming hawthorn and elderberry offer wonderful settings for portraits. It doesn’t matter if you’re shooting with natural light or using off-camera flash – what matters is utilising the location and editing to bring out the best in the photograph. As it happens, the shot above was lit using a big soft umbrella from camera left, but a diffuser blocking the sun, or a reflector bouncing light in, would have worked as well. There’s always a fear that Adobe Lightroom isn’t sufficient for editing portraits, but in reality, it’s more than adequate for day-to-day editing requirements…

01 EXTRA CROP TOOLS Cropping features can be found in several commands. If you have a bunch of scanned slides with messy edges, you can use File > Automate > Crop and straighten photos. Image > Trim can also be useful, as it lets you crop all areas that are the same as the bottom left or top right pixel colour. Image > Reveal All can also be helpful for cropping out to the entire original frame. 02 DELETE OR NOT? This makes the crop tool non-destructive. Rather than erasing edges, it hides them. If you make a crop and decide to change it, click on the tool, and you’ll see the edges you removed earlier are still available. As such, it’s like making crops in Camera Raw or Lightroom.…

IF YOU ASK content creator and long-time Canon fan Ellis Reed what he loves about photography now, it’s being part of a positive, shared community. But Ellis didn’t always want to be a photographer. He originally played the lead guitar in a band throughout his teens and ended up going to music college in Bristol where he studied the media side of things. He was interested in design, photography, and videography, and at 18 bought his first Canon DSLR. More than ten years later, Ellis is shooting for a roster of clients, working for Canon, and being part of a thriving online photography space. He’s based in Bath and loves shooting there, but he’s no small-town boy… Hey Ellis, so tell us a bit about your photography journey. Where did…

I got into photography in 2006 to document my travels, though a lot has changed since then. I take most of my images where I live close to Vienna, where you can still find natural meadows and forests. In my small world nature photography, I strive to show nature’s tenderness and beauty. I use a wide open aperture on long lenses almost all of the time – to achieve the dreamy bokeh. An open aperture results in a very shallow focal plane which makes it hard to focus. Additionally I always try to use a very low point of view to be eye-level and to catch more light from the sky in the background. I always use manual focusing in a magnified Live View on the screen of my camera…

Menu options YOU GET more menu options compared with Basic Zone modes. Not only are there extra tabs in the red Shooting menu, you’re also able to access the camera’s Custom Functions and, in some cases, a dedicated AF menu. Some of the menu options may be greyed out – this means that the setting is incompatible with another option that’s active. Press the SET button with the grey option highlighted, and it will tell you what the problem is. If you find the menu options a bit overwhelming, you can even create a shortcut menu of your most-used settings via the My Menu tab. Custom controls AS WELL as creating your own custom ‘My Menus’, you also have the option to customise the function of some of the buttons…

IT’S EASY to find yourself getting lost in the Canon EOS menus and not remembering which options you have adjusted. If the controls don’t work as expected or the camera generally isn’t behaving as it should, it doesn’t always mean there’s a fault – you could have inadvertently changed a setting that’s causing the performance issue. Fortunately, it’s easy to return the camera to its default state using ‘Clear all camera settings’ in the yellow Set-up menu. Your camera may give you further options, such as just resetting the camera controls rather than cleaning all of your menu adjustments.…

PhotoPlus EXPERT BRIAN WORLEY CANON PRO Brian is a freelance photographer and photo tutor, based in Oxfordshire. He has unrivalled EOS DSLR knowledge, after working for Canon for over 15 years, and is on hand to answer all your EOS and photographic queries “What is needed to add GPS info to the images captured with a Canon EOS R5?”Charles Hunter, Darlington BRIAN SAYS… None of the current mirrorless EOS R-series cameras include a GPS receiver, so you can use a combination of your mobile phone and the Canon Camera Connect app. If you’ve already used the Canon app with your camera, Bluetooth will already be configured, so on the camera navigate to the GPS device settings in the communications menu and set the GPS device to Smartphone. Alternatively use a…

Lagnua Beach Park BOB HUNTER, CALIFORNIA SAYS… After retirement I became interested in street and sports photography. I try to get out as much as possible and shoot sports, even if it’s school sports or surfing along the California beaches. One stormy day I spotted this belly board surfer catching some waves along the Aliso Beach in California. Due to the fast action and the need to be agile, all my photographs are hand held. I find a tripod or monopod slow me down and I miss shots. This photo was cropped with Affinity Photo. BRIAN SAYS… This is a great action shot that captures the fun of the surfer enjoying the waves. The crop you have chosen positions the surfer with space to move in to on the right…

Most macro prime lenses have a maximum magnification ratio of 1x or 1:1. At their shortest focus distance, they can reproduce objects at full life size on the camera’s image sensor. An area measuring just 36x24mm would completely fill the image sensor of a full-frame camera, and it’s a mere 22x15mm if you’re shooting with an APS-C format body. A couple of the lenses in our test group even boost macro magnification to 1.4x or even 2x. That might not sound particularly impressive but the thing to bear in mind is how much larger the resulting image is when you view it on screen or in print. The scope for enlargement is simply stunning. Tiny garden bugs can become giant, alien creatures and you’ll see levels of fine detail that…

Macro lenses aren’t just for close-ups. With the ability to focus all the way to infinity, they work just as well as high-performance lenses for general, everyday shooting. The Canon RF 24mm F1.8 Macro IS STM and Canon RF 35mm F1.8 Macro IS STM are prime examples, priced £719/$599 and £529/$499 respectively. Both of these lenses are compact and lightweight, yet sturdy and dependable. Handling benefits from a customizable control ring that’s featured in addition to the focus ring, ideal for controlling the likes of exposure compensation, ISO and aperture. Hybrid optical image stabilization is 5-stops, boosted to around 6.5-stops with in-body stabilization in most recent R system cameras.…

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

Lens Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM Exposure 1/250 sec, f/7.1, ISO1000 REBECCA’S COMMENT “My favourite shot is this male grouse that we spotted just as it started to rain. I carefully got out of the car, trying my best to stay low and waited for it to be perfectly in profile. I love how the rain drops have created fantastic beads of water, showing that great shots can still be taken in poor weather conditions. I put everything I’d learned into practise, focusing on the eye, waiting for the right moment and firing a fast burst of frames. Thank you Paul and PhotoPlus for giving me a taste of what it’s like to be a pro wildlife photographer. I loved every minute and can’t wait to get home and photograph the…

Lens Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Exposure 1/4 sec, f/16, ISO100 Press the shutter release button and your camera’s shutter opens and closes. How long that takes depends on what shutter speed you have set on your camera. The longer the shutter is open, the more light will enter your camera. Shutter speed is essential for capturing moving elements in your images. A fast shutter speed (such as 1/1000 sec) can be used to freeze action such as quick wildlife, while a slower shutter speed (such as 1/4 sec) can be used to create motion blur like moving water in seascapes. Longer exposures can be also essential when you’re shooting in low light indoors, or at night. Use the histogram The exposure histogram graph displays the distribution of brightness values in an…

Your camera can’t “see” the scene you are looking at, but it makes its exposure calculation based on the light levels entering through the lens via a metering sensor, and selects an optimal exposure. You can allow the camera to make all the decisions for you, but taking control yourself will create far better results. The first step is to choose the best metering mode from Spot, Partial, Centre-weighted average and Evaluative, each option taking the light reading from a successively larger area of the frame. Spot is the most selective, covering only 1.5% of the frame, Partial 6.2%, Centre-weighted takes a reading across the entire frame, but with a bias to the centre, and Evaluative reads the entire frame. Evaluative metering is the default metering mode in most Canon…

HOW TO VIEW OUR VIDEO GUIDES ONLINE ALL OF OUR NEW PHOTO PROJECT AND IMAGE-EDITING VIDEOS CAN BE VIEWED ONLINE VIA THE WEB LINKS ON PAGES 44-59! New projects with video guides Follow our Canon camera walkthrough guides and Photoshop editing videos 44 Shooting stars Transform your lightsource into an incredible starburst effect 54 Lightroom Classic CC Discover how to edit your Raw portraits with Lightroom Classic CC 48 Mastering mono We cover everything you need to know to start shooting B&W 56 Tool School Master the Crop tool to enhance your compositions 58 Affinity Photo Add futuristic neon shapes to portraits with Affinity’s Pen tool 50 Capturing castles We share our favourite tips for castle landscape photographs VIEW THE VIDEOS WHENEVER YOU see this icon, you’ll find an accompanying…

01 SUNNY DAY You’ll need a sunny day to capture clear starbursts. Haze or clouds around the sun can make things more difficult. Don’t look directly at the sun through the lens – instead engage Live View. Don’t worry about the sun damaging your sensor, this only tends to happen with longer lenses and wider apertures. 02 TRIPOD We need a tripod to take a series of frames in alignment. But even if you just want to capture starbursts without using the frame blending technique described here, a tripod is still a good idea because the narrow aperture required for creating starbursts often means that a slower shutter speed is necessary. 03 STARBURST SETTINGS Start by shooting a frame for the starburst. Set your Canon camera to aperture priority and…

STARBURSTS show up brilliantly at night, thanks to the darkness around the bright points of light. The main difference between shooting starbursts during the day and at night is the necessity for a long exposure. Typically, if you want to use a narrow aperture of f/22 and ISO100 then you’ll need a shutter speed of around 30 seconds, although this will depend on the strength of the lights in the scene. Your metering can struggle in the dark, so rather than using Aperture Priority you’re usually better off setting Manual Mode. After shooting a frame at f/22, you can set an equivalent exposure at f/8. Simply count the number of clicks on the dial it takes to go from f/22 to f/8, then count the same number of clicks to reduce…

We are truly blessed in the UK for historic buildings and monuments, and our array of magnificent castles are no exception. Where I live, in Wales, is home to a whopping 427 castles, so you’re never far from one to get your photographic fix. Castles can range from huge, grand dwellings to small follies, stone towers, and almost unrecognisable overgrown ruins. However, what the smaller ones sometimes lack in architectural prowess, they make up for with loads of character, and with every castle you’re guaranteed they should provide potential for your photographic outings. Try not to find photographing these large structures too daunting, as in this project I hope to give you a head start on your approach to capturing a piece of history and taking some top castle photos.…

We can create stylish glow effects in Affinity Photo with the Outer and Inner glow layer effects command. Here we’ve chosen to use the Affinity logo as a shape, but you can use the same skills to make any glowing shape you like. Then with simple layer and masking skills, we can combine our shots with a portrait, or an image of our choice. It works best if the image is dark, as this allows the glowing lines to show through. We begin here with the Pen tool, which allows us to trace a simple outline around the Affinity Photo logo. Once done, we can copy the shapes on to the Shape.jpg start image (see link bottom left), add our glow effects and experiment with masks so that the shapes…

In the past 10 years, my husband and I have travelled all over the world and visited more than 30 countries together. Our son was born two years ago and he now travels with us around the globe. One of the main challenges of being a photographer while travelling as a family is finding the right balance between the itinerary, family time and shooting time. Trying to balance between baby naps, going out at night to shoot the Aurora in Iceland or catching the sunrise over a beautiful lake in Austria may not always work as planned. Travelling with family – and especially with young kids – is very different from a photography trip. You have limited time to spend in each location and you need to compromise and be…

Every time camera technology moves forward, there are more automated options to help you get a great photo automatically. With so much auto, is there a need to move away from auto at all? Looking through the AF settings for an EOS R8 and R6 Mark II demonstrates that auto settings are the defaults for so many aspects of what the camera focuses on and how it tracks your chosen subjects. While these auto settings simplify taking a better photo, they also take creative control from you. When the subject to be photographed is challenging or comprises many possible subjects in the frame, it’s time to control to make your own creative choices. Switch from AI focus, if you know your subject is moving or static, use Servo for moving…

The Canon EOS R50 is the new, budget beginner APS-C mirrorless camera. Could this be the affordable, smaller EOS R mirrorless you’ve been waiting for? Or the camera to make you switch from your old DSLR? Or the R50 could be a smaller carry-around-with-you compact camera to complement your bigger DSLR setup! The R50 is basically a newer, cleverer replacement for the M50 line. Even though the M50 will continue to be sold, and the EOS M system will continue to be supported (for now). Still, it’s pretty inarguable that the Canon EOS R50 is the spiritual replacement for the Canon EOS M50 Mark II, released in 2020 (as a very marginal update to the original Canon EOS M50 from 2018). And the R50 manages to supersede its predecessor in…

Macro lenses are generally designed to be high-precision technical optics. As such, they’re usually ‘flat field’ lenses that have no field curvature, so if you shoot a flat object from front-on, the whole of the surface covered by the image frame should be rendered sharply. Similarly, distortion is usually very minimal or virtually non-existent, especially with macro lenses that have a focal length of 60mm or more. As our graph shows, however, there’s a slight variance of barrel and pincushion distortion amongst the lenses on test.…

Irix’s 150mm macro is an imposing EF-mount full-frame compatible lens that weighs in at 848g, and comes complete with a tripod collar. The build quality and finish are impeccable, based on high-quality optical elements and a weather-sealed magnesium alloy barrel. The Irix comes with built-in electronics for communication with the host camera body. As such, there are no restrictions on shooting in the full range of semi-auto modes and EXIF information is recorded in image files. Illumination of the camera’s focus confirmation lamp is enabled in the viewfinder, with a display of the aperture setting. The aperture stays well-rounded when stopping down, thanks to the 11-blade diaphragm. There’s a locking mechanism, if you want to fix the focus distance at a particular length, while UV-reactive focus distance and magnification factor…

Naturally, you can use any compatible EF or EF-S mount lens on a mirrorless R system camera via a mount adapter, but you can’t use RF mount lenses on a DSLRs. The Laowa 100mm F2.8 2:1 Ultra Macro APO lens is a rarity in that it’s available in both EF and RF mount options catering to a broad range of cameras. Like the Laowa 90mm lens on test, it’s a fully manual affair with no electronics, and delivers 2.0x maximum magnification, as well as being full-frame compatible. Although ostensibly the same lens, there are notable differences between the EF and RF mount versions. To make up for the lack of a mirror assembly in R system cameras, the RF edition is physically 30mm longer and heavier.…

Tamron enjoyed a lot of success with its 90mm macro lenses dating back to 1979 and predating the digital photography era. The latest ‘F017’ model of the SP 90mm f/2.8 Di VC USD Macro is distinguished by a silver band around the base, and comes with a host of attractions, including a refined optical layout, both conventional and nano-structure coatings and effective hybrid optical stabilization. Build quality is very good and the construction features weather-seals. An autofocus limiter switch can lock out the range either side of 50cm. Performance is strong with fantastic sharpness and clarity, along with minimal colour fringing and distortion. Expect to pay £200/$300 for a used lens in excellent condition.…

DSLR CAMERAS PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED MIRRORLESS CAMERAS PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED With over 200 lenses we’ve listed for Canon EOS cameras, picking the right one can be tough. Here’s the lowdown! What to look for Canon EOS camera ranges Canon splits its EOS range into mirrorless cameras and DSLRs. Its older DSLR line-up includes beginner, enthusiast and pro ranges; the EOS 4000D is the most basic, the 850D for intermediates, the 90D and full-frame 6D Mk II for advanced enthusiasts, and the full-frame pro-level 5D and 1D lines. Over the page are the two EOS mirrorless ranges: Canon’s smaller, older APS-C EOS M cameras, and Canon’s EOS R System APS-C and full-frame cameras that offer the very latest digital technology. The APS-C crop-sensor EOS R50,…