Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2023 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

BEDRUTHAN I SHOT this while practising my technique for depth of field. With such a beautiful array of colours, the sea stack makes a wonderful focal point, surrounded by texture. PENTIRE HEAD EARLY evening light illuminated the browns and turned them into gold. A polarizer worked so well, bringing out the details in the high-altitude clouds. POLPERRO THIS almost cross-shaped composition is all about saturation, with the sea and beautiful greens at their peak of colour thanks to the overhead sun.…

Scene Intelligent Auto (A+) THE FULLY automatic mode on your Canon is likely to be the Intelligent Auto mode, found as a green square with an A+ inside it on the mode dial, though older Canons had a Full Auto mode denoted by a simple green square on the dial instead. Regardless, both work in a similar way with the camera doing most of the legwork so you can concentrate on getting the perfect composition. It will give you some confidence before you move on to the more advanced semiautomatic modes (see page 36). In A+ mode the camera will assess what’s in the frame and work out the autofocus, correct brightness for the scene, whether to use flash and will also set the appropriate colour tone. While it’s a…

Program AE mode (P) CANON’S Program AE mode, or ‘P’ on the mode dial, is a great mode for beginners to experiment with if you’d like to take more control of your camera settings and step away from the fully automated modes. In Program, your Canon EOS camera will automatically work out the correct camera settings for you, but with some key differences. Here, you can override its suggested settings with the command dial to control the aperture which will in turn change your shutter speed. You can also manually change the ISO to adjust how sensitive the sensor will be to light and how much digital noise will be present in your shots. You also have access to settings such as RAW image quality, metering, autofocus, white balance and…

Oia, Santorini, Greece. 10:30am. 10 August 2009 It’s the summer of 2009, and I am on a stock photography holiday, sponsored by my new agency contracts and my relentless obsession to collect saleable imagery. Our accommodation is adequate, the sun is shining, and I have a dusty quad bike as my transport for the whole week. The hilarity starts when I video my wife Rachel as she drives it like a snail around a car park, grimacing the whole time. She doesn’t like anything that even slightly resembles a motorbike. I have always had an affinity with the clean images of Santorini; layered houses with smooth white render, blue gates, hilltop windmills and a backdrop of infinite open ocean. It was the days before Santorini was seen as a somewhat travel…

01 CAMERA MOTION Camera movement can transform scenes into streaks of blur. There’s real skill in doing so, but still retaining an impression of the place. Simply move the camera up, down, left, right or swivel it during the exposure. For a smooth motion, it helps to press the camera against your forehead. Alternatively, use a pan/tilt tripod if safe. 02 SLOW SHUTTER SPEED We need to slow our shutter speed down so that the camera movements register in the exposure as colourful motion blur. Try setting your camera to Shutter priority (Tv mode) at 1/15 sec and ISO100, then see what kind of blur you get. For stronger blur, either go for a longer shutter speed or make quicker camera motions. 03 BOLD COLOURS One of the main reasons…

HERE’S A fun compositing technique that lets you mash up a series of buildings or landmarks, layering them one on top of another. Open an image of a building then grab the Object Selection tool and drag a box over it. Photoshop will employ AI to select the object within. You can hold Shift and drag to add more areas, or Alt to subtract unwanted areas. Once done, simply copy the selection (Cmd/Ctrl+C), open an image of a plain sky and paste in the building (Cmd/Ctrl+V). Next use the Move tool to position it and resize if necessary with Transform (Cmd/Ctrl+T). Continue in the same way, adding other buildings. To make the buildings look like they’re in front of one another, try painting subtle shadows on layers placed between the…

The Column tool in Affinity Photo lets you take the merest sliver of an image, which can then be stretched out to form a vibrant band of colour. You can specify a number of pixels for the width, so you can go for a single row of pixels or – as we’ve done here – make it a few pixels wide. Once expanded, we get an eclectic mix of colour to match the palette of our portrait. We’ll show you how to use the technique here to craft a vibrant effect. It may look complicated, but it’s a simple matter of copying and stretching our selections, then using a distorting filter to transform the colourful strips into circles. Along the way we’ll explore key Affinity Photo skills, such as layer…

01 Canon EOS R5 WEB: www.canon.co.uk THIS camera is currently my ride or die! The mirrorless system makes it fast, lightweight and easy to use – which is ideal when you have to travel far distances on foot to reach the species you want to film or photograph. It can also record video in 4K and up to 100fps, making it perfect for filming wildlife, especially fast-moving species. 02 Canon EOS 5D Mark IV WEB: www.canon.co.uk BEFORE I upgraded to the EOS R5, my workhorse camera was an EOS 5D Mark IV. I still use it, especially if I’m staking out a den. It’s been to many countries, trodden many paths and been down many ditches, but has lived to tell the tale! I thought about selling it once I upgraded, but…

THERE ARE a few caveats with Photobook Set-up. You can ‘only’ select up to 998 images (which is hardly restrictive!) but the big one is that you can’t select RAW images. So if you habitually shoot RAW then you might as well give your shortlisted photobook pictures a specific rating, then filter those images out later when you process the RAW images. There is an alternative though: select RAW+JPEG as your image quality preference, and you’ll be able to use Photobook Set-up to transfer the processed JPEGs into a separate folder on your hard drive. You can then plan your photobook with what are essentially finished images before you process the RAW versions of your final selections. Some cameras also give you the option of processing RAW files in-camera, so…

Finding a way to connect images that face each other on each double-page spread, and building a flow from one spread to the next will give your photobook a natural rhythm that keeps people turning the pages. There are lots of ways that you can link images that are positioned next to each other and provide a motif through your book. There might be an obvious story, such as a summer vacation presented from start to finish, but what if you’re putting together a photobook based around a concept or you want to produce a portfolio-style collection of your best work? Getting back to basics is a good place to start. It could be something as simple as using images that have a contrasting or complementary colour scheme, for instance.…

ADD EXTRA IMPACT TO YOUR ACTION SHOTS Sports action shots are an ideal subject for maximising the benefits of shooting RAW. Always think of how the processing can enhance your image and keep the four areas of composition, colour, contrast and sharpening as your initial steps to get the most out of action packed photos. Use DPP recipes to copy settings to other shots. 01 OPTIMISE THE CROP If you were focused on getting the shot, you might have a less than ideal composition. With so many megapixels it’s easy to use the crop tool to enhance your shot. Open your RAW photo in DPP, and go to edit image, then select the crop tool panel. There’s a few standard crop ratios already there, but you can make your own…

Flexible Priority or Fv mode was the first significant new creative zone exposure mode in decades. Introduced with the EOS R, it’s now a standard mode on most R-series cameras, as well as the EOS M6 Mark II. In my experience, many photographers are creatures of habit and regularly ignore new features or ways of working. So it is time to learn what this feature is – and how it could be the only exposure mode you need for creative work. Flexible Priority mode derives its name from the way you determine the balance of control taken, and how much you allow the camera to help. There are four individual parameters to work with: shutter speed, aperture, ISO and exposure compensation. By default, exposure compensation is zeroed, and shutter speed,…

Ideally matched to the really compact EOS R10, this lens retracts to just 44mm or less than two inches, so you can easily pop the camera and lens into your daily bag. It’s a good way of making sure you never miss a shot. It’s amazingly lightweight as well, at 130g, being little more than half the weight of the EF-S 18-55mm on test, to give a sense of perspective. The downsizing and weight loss come in part from a modest zoom range, equating to 28.8-72mm in full-frame terms, and a fairly narrow aperture rating that shrinks from f/4.5 at the shortest zoom setting to f/6.3 at the long end. Even so, there’s a lot packed into this little lens. It features an agile stepping motor autofocus system and 4-stop…

Our lab tests reveal the actual rather than automatically corrected amounts of distortion for each lens. A quick glance at the graph reveals that the R-system lenses rely much more heavily on automatic correction, which can’t be disabled via camera menus. Once the correction is applied, however, distortion becomes a non-issue. For the DSLR lenses on test, there’s generally a swing from lower levels of barrel distortion at the short end of the zoom range, to minor pincushion at the long end. Again, in-camera correction is available in all recent Canon DSLRs.…

Colour fringing is often noticeable around high-contrast edges towards the corners of the image. Most of the lenses in this group give the worst colour fringing at the short end of their zoom range. The RF 24-105 bucks the trend, with its worst performance in the middle sector of the zoom range, whereas the RF-S 18-45 is worst at the long end. As with distortion, in-camera correction is on hand in both mirrorless and recent DSLRs, to fix the problem.…

The closest thing that Canon has ever made to a pro-grade APS-C format lens, this one was originally launched back in 2006. Its starring attraction is a fast f/2.8 aperture rating, which remains constant throughout the entire zoom range. That makes it at least two full f/stops faster than any of the other lenses on test apart from the Sigma, at the long end of the zoom range. Although the relatively fast, constant-aperture design is a bonus, the downside is that this is the biggest and heaviest of all the APS-C format standard zooms. Even so, at 645g it’s still 160g lighter than Canon’s equivalent EF 24-70mm f/2.8 for full-frame SLRs. With its gold ‘ultrasonic’ ring around the front, the lens has styling from a somewhat bygone era. Inside, the…

Choosing lenses Key factors to watch out for The main factors to consider in a lens are its focal length, maximum aperture, and if it’s full-frame compatible or not. We’ve categorized lenses by focal length range from wide-angle to telephoto. The larger a lens’s maximum aperture, the ‘faster’ it is. Zooms are more flexible than primes, but tend not to have such fast maximum apertures. Full-frame lenses will also work with ‘crop-sensor’ EOS DSLRs, but crop-sensor lenses aren’t compatible with full-frame cameras. For Canon EOS R mirrorless cameras the dedicated Canon RF lenses are best, but using Canon’s Mount Adapter EF-EOS R enables EF-S and EF lenses to be used on EOS R cameras. Contacts Canon www.canon.co.uk Peleng www.digitaltoyshop.co.uk Samyang www.samyang-lens.co.uk Schneider www.linhofstudio.com Sigma www.sigma-imaging-uk.com Tamron www.tamron.co.uk Tokina www.tokinalens.com Zeiss…

APPRENTICE NAME: ALAN BURCHELL CAMERA: CANON EOS 5D MK IV & 1D X BASED in Cambourne, Cornwall, Alan is a retired archaeologist; he also served in the military and police. On retirement he became a mature student at Exeter University, reading archaeology to Masters level – here he also discovered he was dyslexic and dyscalculia. “This makes it difficult for me to completely understand manipulation of numbers and reading manuals,” he says. This hasn’t held him back with his photography, but Alan asked for our help to learn to use his Canon kit to capture local scenery. CANON PRO NAME: DAVID CLAPP CAMERA: CANON EOS R3 & RP CANON landscape and travel photographer David is based in South Devon, but enjoys travelling the world with his Canon kit. Running seminars…

01 WINNER THE DUEL BY SABRINA GAROFOLI This is an incredible shot of two mantis clashing heads, on a pre-posed stick with beautiful studio lighting. The side-on composition works well, and Sabrina has made sure to include all of both mantis figures, as well using a wide aperture of f/4.5 to blur the background and create some fantastic bokeh behind them. Lens Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro EX DG OS HSM Exposure 1/125 sec, f/4.5, ISO100 02 TRAPPED! BY JOHN MIHOPULOS John’s wildlife shot has incredible split-second timing, perfectly framing the precise moment a cormorant is about to eat its catch of the day. John’s expertly used a high ISO for a rapid shutter speed of 1/3200 sec, fast enough to achieve a completely pin-sharp shot by eliminating any shake from…

ISO Sensitivity THE ISO is the setting we use to change how sensitive the camera is to light. A low ISO value, such as ISO100, will be the least sensitive to light and require a longer exposure time, but will deliver the best image quality with low levels of digital noise. Increasing the ISO, to say ISO25,600, will make the sensor much more sensitive to light, in fact it will be eight times more sensitive to light than at than ISO100. This means bumping it up will allow you to shoot at faster shutter speeds so you can shoot handheld in poorly lit scenarios, but the trade-off is you’ll get an image with more noise and softer details. Each time you double the ISO, say ISO100 to ISO200, it’s a…

01 INTENTIONAL CAMERA MOVEMENTS Look for bold colours and vertical lines of shop windows or lamp posts, then try an up/down camera movement over a 1/15 sec exposure to create streaks of blur. A side to side, or a camera swivel can produce interesting results. 02 ZOOM BURST A zoom burst is like a intentional camera movement, but with a twist. During a long exposure (start with 1/10 sec) we used a zoom lens and quickly zoom in or out. The edges of the frame will be transformed into streaks of blur. A tripod is handy for stability. 03 DOUBLE FLIPS Enable the double exposure mode in your camera’s menu, set the blending to Add and set the number of frames to two. Shoot a skyline, above the centre of…

01 CANON EOS CAMERA You don’t need the latest features of newer Canon EOS mirrorless cameras to take great landscapes. Even an old DSLR, such as the EOS 6D Mark II or even the APS-C EOS 250D, is capable of taking great landscapes full of vivid colour and detail. 02 LENS CHOICE It’s wise to have a few lens options, such as a wide-angle zoom for expansive scenes, and a telephoto optic to help compress the perspective and hone in on specific details. For our shot, we used a Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM lens set to 25mm. 03 STURDY TRIPOD A tripod is essential for all sorts of landscapes, allowing you to take your time to finesse the composition, focus and camera settings. They also lock the camera…

Recent updates to Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop include an exciting new approach to using presets. By using AI Adobe has taken things a step further. Available in Adobe Camera Raw, Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic (v11.4 and onwards), Adaptive Presets are powered by machine learning. They work in a similar way to normal presets, but rather than altering the entire image, they zero in on either the subject or sky, before applying tailored tonal effects to the area. Additionally, a new control lets us fine-tune a preset’s strength, and premium preset sets offer a host of effects tailored to different subjects. Adobe continues to integrate AI into its apps, which, aided by machine learning makes complex edits easier and faster, which is great news for photographers. Use the Presets.jpg…

01 SELECT THE PERSON Grab the Selection Brush, check ‘Snap to Edges’ then paint over the subject to select them (hold Alt and paint to subtract if necessary). Click the Refine button. Increase Border Width to improve the edge, then paint over gaps in the hair and fingers with the Matte brush to get a better result. 02 MAKE A COLUMN SELECTION In the Refine Selection box set Output: New Layer with Mask and hit Apply. Reveal and highlight the bottom layer, then grab the Column Marquee tool from the toolbar. Set Width 3px then drag to make a vertical selection (you won’t see the marching ants unless you zoom in very close). 03 STRETCH THE SELECTION Hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy the selection to a new layer then grab the…

Orion fell in love with aviation at around two years old. He would ask for YouTube videos of planes so he could watch them take off and land. After a while, we started to go to the airport, where I would take pictures with my phone. He always wanted our phones to take pictures, perhaps because he saw the other plane spotters taking photos, and he wanted to get involved. When he was two-and-a-half, we bought him a little kid’s camera, but it was more of a toy, with some games on it. He showed an interest in taking pictures – so when he turned three, I bought him a Canon EOS 250D. Our family started to grow around aviation to fuel Orion’s passion, where before neither of us were…

The first step in planning a photobook is choosing the format: landscape, portrait or square. The orientation of the pictures you’ll be showcasing can help guide you. Landscape-format images can be tricky to fit in a portrait-format book for example, as you can end up with too much dead space above and below the photo or having to run the picture across the middle ‘gutter’ of the book. Landscape-format books can be more accommodating, as two or three portrait photos can fit neatly on a page opposite a landscape image. Square books are a natural fit for square crops, but they can also work well with landscape and portrait images too. These are just guidelines though. Regardless of the orientation of your pictures, you may prefer the bookshelf-friendly shape of…

While it’s easy enough to organise your images on your computer, you can streamline the process in-camera too. You can set up multiple folders on your memory card via the yellow Set-up menu (look for a menu option called ‘Select folder’ or ‘Record func+card/folder set’). You’re also free to rename them too. It’s particularly useful if you’re using a high-capacity card, where you might be saving thousands of images between downloads, and want to file images by locations in new folders, or where you want to find a folder of images on your computer later. PART 30 Next issue: Sharpen your Speedlite skills…

It’s easy to get PhotoPlus for your iPad and iPhone Wherever you are in the world, you can get new issues when they go on sale in the UK! 1. GET THE APP Scan the QR code (left) or go to the App store on your Apple device and search for ‘photoplus’ and then install the app. Now you can open the app on your iPad and/or iPhone. Any issues you buy will be stored in My Library. 2. USE THE APP In the app you can then buy any single issues, preview the current issue, scroll to find and buy any previous issues, as well as buy a selection of our great camera and photo bookazines available. 3. START YOUR FREE TRIAL Tap Subscribe for a 30-day FREE trial…

EMILY DIXON, CORFU SAYS… It was easy to find this butterfly, as there have been many in my garden every day since the weather got warmer. I had struggled for a while to capture them, but it became a lot easier once I bought the lens I used for this photo – and that’s when I developed my love for macro photography. Now I take lots of photos of insects and tiny flowers. I usually do some minimal editing in Luminar. For this photo I did some cropping, played with the lighting to make the photo brighter, and boosted the contrast a little. BRIAN SAYS… Proof that patience and practise are worth a lot in capturing small creatures. The central composition works well here, as it makes the butterfly the…

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…

Much smaller and more lightweight than the up-market RF 24-105mm F4L IS USM standard zoom, this one is particularly travel-friendly. Naturally, it has a slower, variable aperture rating compared with its constant-aperture sibling, shrinking to f/7.1 at the long end of the zoom range, but that’s certainly not a deal-breaker. Canon’s EOS R-system cameras maintain fast and consistently accurate autofocus in dark conditions, and deliver impressive image quality at high ISO settings. And you can still get a reasonably tight depth of field when shooting at fairly close range. For extreme close-ups, the lens features an impressive 0.5x magnification ‘Centre Focus Macro’ facility. Other neat features include a 5-stop image stabilizer, and the same ‘Focus/Control’ switch as fitted to a number of other budget-friendly RF lenses, along with the same…

If you prefer maximising your viewing angle and are not so fussed about telephoto reach, you’ll find this lens a better fit for your photography than the EF-S 18-135mm. In full-frame terms, it delivers a class-leading 24mm ‘effective’ wide-angle focal length for APS-C format DSLRs at the short end, while still stretching to an equivalent 136mm of telephoto reach. As such, it beats the EF-S 18-55mm and 17-55mm lenses at both ends of the zoom range. The lens looks and feels a comparatively old-school design, which isn’t surprising as it was launched back in 2009. Up-market attractions include a ring-type ultrasonic autofocus system with mechanically coupled full-time override. It’s very quick but not as near-silent as in most lenses that use stepping motors. Another plus point of the traditional ring-type…

THE NO.1 MAGAZINE FOR CANON USERS! FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… ■ Capturing the coast with Drew Buckley ■ Shooting portraits with 50mm primes ■ Fire spin photos! ■ New Photoshop CC and Affinity Photo image-editing guides PLUS ALL THIS… ■ Outdoor Photography guide: Canon pro photographer Guy Edwardes shares his top Canon camera skills ■ Profile: Kav Dadfar – editorial, landscape and travel photographer ■ Super Test: Eight of the latest Canon EOS R mirrorless cameras tested ISSUE 208 ON SALE 22 AUGUST 2023 * Content subject to change…

Letter of the Month I’m looking to replace my Canon EOS 6D and 5D Mk IV with two R6 Mk II mirrorless cameras, and therefore I would like to buy some back issues which include your test of the EOS R6 Mk II in issue 200, and lens tests including the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L and RF 15-35mm F2.8L. Michel De Pourcq, Bruges, Belgium Thanks for your email, what a good idea to buy back issues, Michel. You can buy back issues of print mags from www.magazinesdirect.com/photoplus-magazine-single-issue but only the last six issues, so issue 200 or earlier wouldn’t be available. However, you could get the mags on your iPad or tablet in digital format instead. Get the PhotoPlus app in the App Store for iPhones and iPads (see page…

USE Av MODE “I GOT Alan to set his Canon EOS 5D Mk IV to Aperture Priority (Av) mode,” says David. “So he could ensure his lens’s aperture was always around f/8 to f/11 for the best image quality, good depth of field, and totally sharp scenes. In Av mode, you set the aperture and ISO (we set ours to 100-200), and your camera sets the shutter speed for a standard exposure.” MANUAL FOCUS DAVID explains how he focuses manually to infinity on his lens: “I always use the infinity L marker on lenses to focus to infinity for sharp landscape shots. Learn which point along the L marker to manually focus on with your own lenses, checking on the screen in Live View and zooming into the scene. “Believe…

Whether your Canon camera is a DSLR, mirrorless, bridge or even a creative compact, it will come loaded with a wide arrangement of modes for you to choose from. These modes offer automated assistance to help you out when you’re first getting started with your Canon and go all the way up to fully manual where you take total control of the functions and settings. There’s countless modes in between too, which cover a wide range of scenarios. In this feature we’ll take a look at all of the important exposure modes you’ll find on your Canon EOS. Not all Canon cameras are built the same, so you’ll often find additional scene modes and creative filters on more entry-level models, like the new Canon EOS R100, which even has some…

Group Photo THIS MODE is designed to make taking shots of large groups of people a breeze. It ensures that everyone from the front of the group to the back is in sharp focus by automatically choosing a narrow aperture value. It’s recommended you use a wide-angle lens, such as the 18mm end of an 18-55mm kit lens so you can squeeze everyone into shot; although take a few steps back if needed to make sure everyone is included in the frame. Take several photos to make sure you have one where everyone is smiling – and not blinking! Panoramic Shot THIS IS a great mode to try out when shooting wide-spanning vistas that are too large to squeeze into one frame. You can use the D-Pad on your Canon…

Urban environments can be a frenetic mass of contrasts, vibrant or mundane, lively or eerie, beautiful or drab. For a photographer, it’s easy enough to capture how places like this look, but it’s more of a challenge to convey how they feel. To get a sense of a place without the distractions of detail, we can turn to abstract techniques. Intentional blur, multiple exposures, unusual camera angles and digital mash-ups can all help us emphasise the emotion of the place, and create wall-worthy art that feels more in touch with the work of impressionist painters than it does with what you might call ‘normal photography’. In this project we’ll look at a range of techniques you can try out on the streets. Camera skills are often about eliminating shake, keeping…

01 BLEND EXPOSURES As well as in-camera multiple exposures, we can also craft our own in Photoshop by copying one image on top of another, then changing the Layer Blend Mode to Screen. We can also experiment with the 26 other layer blending modes, and come up with all sorts of creative combinations. 02 EXPERIMENT WITH TILT City scenes are often dominated by straight vertical lines and strong geometric shapes. But diagonal lines can be aesthetically pleasing, so why not get creative with tilt? Grab the Crop tool and rotate the crop to set the horizon off-kilter. You can do this at the time of shooting too. 03 TRY BLACK AND WHITE Creative techniques like multiple exposures can look very busy, so why not convert them to black and white.…

01 ANIMAL DETECTION AUTOFOCUS Newer Canon EOS mirrorless cameras such as the R5, R6 and R7 have Animal Eye Detection so be sure to use it if your Canon has this handy feature. It automatically locks onto your subject’s eye and tracks it so you can concentrate on composition. 02 GET DOWN LOW One of the easiest (and cheapest) steps you can do to take better wildlife shots is to stop shooting at head-height and get low to the ground. Get down so that you’re eye level with your subject for more intimate portraits and to make it easier to blur the background. 03 SHOOT IN THE GOLDEN HOUR We use the PhotoPills app to plan our shoots. It allows you to drop a pin on a specific location to…

In Photoshop compositing, a neat trick is to create a layer between the subject and the background and add a radial gradient in white – this produces a pleasing fog effect. Our brain sees this fog and thinks there must be distance between the subject and the background, effectively creating depth in the composite. Obviously, the subject has to be cut out to give a clear view of the background. This could be done with erasing, or using a layer mask in Photoshop. Lightroom does not have the benefit of these layer masks or the ability to erase, but it does have a masking feature. Thanks to the redesigned masking in Lightroom Classic CC, we can still achieve this effect for portraiture. It’s probably more effective for studio photos and…

01 USE PREMIUM PRESETS Premium Presets are included in the paid version of Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC. The latest updates include five premium sets: Portraits: Black & White; Portraits: Edgy; Portraits: Group; Subject: Concerts and Video: Creative. These are created by professional photographers and editing experts, so they’re great for learning about tools and techniques used by pros. 02 MASKS PANEL After adding an Adaptive Preset to boost your subject or sky, you can delve into the Mask Panel to adjust things. Masks will have been generated for your presets. You can add or subtract from the initial AI mask with the brush. You can also tweak the tonal sliders to adjust the effect. Here, the sky adjustment has also amplified the noise, so we’ve added a touch…

IF YOU ask professional photographer Siân Elizabeth when she first remembers holding a camera, she’ll tell you that it’s always been there. But it wasn’t until she graduated with her journalism degree in 2007 that she invested in a Canon EOS 400D, a ‘proper’ camera that would accompany Siân on a backpacking trip around the world. By the time Siân returned from travelling, she knew that photography was her ultimate career path – but it still took exploring a few different genres to find her true passion… Where did your career begin? When I returned from travelling after university, I knew that photography was my career path. I joined a wedding photography agency, which soon had me shooting weddings on my own. When I realised that they trusted me enough…

Being surrounded by nature and waiting for hours to try and catch a glimpse of a wild animal might not be everyone’s bag – but for me, there is nowhere else I’d rather be. My career has seen me travel the world, filming and photographing some of the planet’s rarest species. Whether that’s in the bustling metropolises of Singapore and Hong Kong, the busy streets of Vienna or the wilds of South Africa, I’m incredibly lucky to have the career I do – although I still get the same thrill when I’m sat in a hedgerow where I live in Cornwall! All animals come with their own challenges, especially working out exactly how you are going to film or photograph them in their natural environment without disturbing their habitat. Animal…

While you can fill a photobook with images from your back catalogue, you may want to shoot specific shots, or put together a book about an upcoming family holiday or event. Canon EOS cameras have a shortcut that allows you to shortlist images in-camera that you might potentially use in a photobook, saving you a bit of time later. If you use EOS Utility to transfer images from your camera to a computer, these photos will be automatically saved into a photobook folder on your hard drive. You’ll find Photobook Set-up in the blue playback menu. After selecting this option, you’ll be presented with a sub-menu that allows you to specify the images that you want to assign to the photobook folder when you import them via EOS Utility. You…

EDITING images – in other words, deciding which pictures make the cut and which don’t – is the biggest challenge when it comes to designing a photobook. It’s hard to be objective when you know what it took to take the photos, but you have to be pretty dispassionate when it comes to cutting down your collection. You’ll certainly have your favourite pictures that you want to include, but images can take on a different context when they’re presented as part of a body of work, and you may need to be prepared to ditch some images that you’re fond if they don’t fit the overall scheme. Leave some time between your editing sessions; seeing things with a fresh pair of eyes can make it easier to identify which images…

“ Can you suggest the most effective way to set up my EOS R5 to easily capture short videos for social media when I’m out taking photos? ” Jules Ward, London BRIAN SAYS… Like most EOS R-series cameras, the EOS R5 will start capturing video if you press the movie button while the camera is in Stills mode. On the EOS R5 the camera uses the settings saved in the movie custom mode C3. I would suggest that a good start is to configure the C3 mode as a version of Shutter Priority. Use Auto ISO, and set the resolution and frame rate. Make sure to activate digital movie stabilisation to reduce camera shake. For smaller file sizes and clips to share to social media, a frame rate of 25fps…

For relatively small full-frame cameras like the EOS RP and EOS R8, this lens gives the same benefits of a compact, lightweight and retractable design as the RF-S 18-45mm for APS-C format mirrorless cameras. It’s not that much bigger or heavier, measuring 70x58mm when retracted and tipping the scales at just 210g. That’s quite an achievement for a full-frame standard zoom, but there’s a catch. The outright zoom range is the most limiting in the entire test group. There’s nothing wrong with the wide-angle ability but telephoto stretches only to a ‘standard’ 50mm. Naturally you could also use the lens on an APS-C format R-system camera, where you’d get an arguably more useful 38.4-80mm effective zoom range. But there’s not a lot to play with and the f/4.5-6.3 range is…

Available to buy separately or as a kit lens option with more up-market APS-C format DSLRs, this is the third incarnation of Canon’s EF-S 18-135mm zooms. The first had a basic electric autofocus motor, the second switched to a stepping motor, and this latest edition boasts a revolutionary Nano USM system, which has since been adopted in other EF and RF mount lenses for DSLR and mirrorless bodies. Nano USM is based on a drive unit with an ‘elastic metal’ body and a ceramic voltage element. It enables super-fast autofocus for stills, along with ultra-smooth and virtually silent autofocus tracking for movie capture. Although there are some cosmetic changes, the optical design remains unchanged from the previous STM edition of the lens. As such, it’s based on 16 elements in…

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, R10 and R7 are smaller, affordable entry-level options. While the EOS R8 up to the R6 Mark II, R5 and flagship R3 are full-frame for serious enthusiasts to professionals. Canon’s EOS R cameras are packed with…

I can’t be the only one completely bored by Canon’s EOS camera designs? Are Canon’s repetitive designs of its entry-level models betraying the incredible technology inside? Learn more about Canon gear at our website DigitalCameraWorld.com via our quick link bit.ly/dcw_boring When is the best time to go out and shoot landscape photos? Photographer Phil Howell says the golden hour is a special time to go out to shoot scenics. Learn more in this quick tutorial on our website at DigitalCameraWorld.com via our quick link bit.ly/dcw_scenic I predict Canon’s EOS R100 will be the biggest EOS camera for 20 years The new Canon EOS R100 could become a landmark camera like the first EOS 300D (Digital Rebel) DSLR was in 2003, says PhotoPlus editor Peter Travers. Read more opinion at our…