Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

We get lots of readers, and friends and family for that matter, often asking us for buying advice, such as “What’s the best Canon camera I can buy for this price?” Or another popular one is “Which telephoto zoom should I buy for my EOS camera?” We have all the answers and more in this issue’s big Canon Gear of the Year awards. It’s packed with the very best Canon EOS cameras, lenses and accessories we’ve tested recently, so you can be sure it’s up to date with the latest buying tips. With gear for beginners on a budget, to mid-range kit for enthusiasts, to top-spec stuff for the pros, there’s something to suit your needs. See page 27. Also inside, our PhotoPlus Apprentice learns how to take better pet…

This year, perhaps more than any other, we’ve been truly amazed. PhotoPlus has been running for more than 16 years now and, for each and every one of them, we’ve had a sparkling stream of new Canon kit passing through our hands and our test lab. Some EOS cameras, lenses and accessories have always shined more brightly than others but, over the last 12 months, we’ve tested and reviewed new kit that has had a real wow factor. Not just once or twice, but over and over again. A couple of the camera launches over the last year really stand out, but the emphasis in 2023 has been on lenses. RF mount glass for EOS R cameras has mightily impressed us right from the start, but everything just keeps getting…

The United Kingdom is full of top landmarks from lighthouses to trees and historic listed buildings to castles. On a recent trip up to Scotland, I couldn’t help myself but stop for a few photos at the iconic Kilchurn Castle on the scenic and blissful Loch Awe. If your landscapes are failing to have the impact you’d like, it might be worth including an iconic landmark such as a castle in your scene to anchor it and to demand the viewer’s attention. In this project I’ll run through some of the essential gear you’ll need to take great landscape shots, as well as some of my favourite tips for photographing outdoor scenes. You’ll learn how to improve your composition, slow down your shutter speed with an ND filter and wait…

Modern cameras can produce images of staggering clarity and pixel-perfect detail, but these defectless digital depictions of scenes and people can sometimes feel a little cold. It’s no surprise, then, that we feel nostalgia for a time when photography was more difficult, and imperfections the norm. There’s a certain charm to old photos tainted by colour casts, light leaks, blurry edges and grainy details. What they lack in crispness they make up for in fuzzy old-school feels. This perhaps goes some way to explaining the trend for adding analogue effects to digital photos. It lends them some retro charm, and lets us create photos that evoke a feeling of time and place. In this project, we’re looking at how to add a range of vintage effects to our photos with…

Professional photographers reveal their top six tools of the trade they couldn’t shoot without “In the water, almost everything you dream becomes possible” My photography journey began with the birth of my daughter, Maximilianna. On the day of her birth, I rushed to the store and bought a simple digital camera to capture her first day. Then another day, and another, and that’s how it all started 19 years ago. At that time, I was professionally involved in running my own restaurants, but over time, I became so fascinated with photography that I completely dedicated myself to it. I kept buying better equipment and honing my skills, specializing in wedding and advertising photography. But most days, I would also photograph my daughter as she grew. Twelve years ago, I saw…

Access our amazing discount offers on our digital editions. Scan the QR code to get the app today! 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…

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…

Letter of the Month In your uplifting article ‘Feel-Good Photo Skills’ in the PhotoPlus December issue 211, you featured a beautiful photo with a tree, which I am very sure is the same tree on Loch Lomond at Milarrochy Bay, which I shot for some sunset photos during March this year, while my wife and I were staying at the local campsite nearby in our motorhome. It’s such a pleasing coincidence for me that I have attached a couple of my best shots for you to see, although I doubt they have the same level of appeal as the photo in your article. I hope you like them anyway. Phil Dunn, Southend-on-Sea, Essex You’re right, Phil, our image is of the lone oak tree at Milarrochy, in Loch Lomond, Scotland.…

APPRENTICE NAME: HELEN BLACK CAMERA: CANON EOS R6 HELEN IS a former IT trainer for a recruitment agency based in Peterborough. She’s always had a strong interest in photography, although when made redundant ten years ago, she found more time to spend with her hobby. She developed a love for wildlife photography during the pandemic, using a pop-up hide in her garden to take lovely photos of birds and other garden visitors. While she’s confident photographing wildlife outside in day light, she admits that studio flash is a new world, so we’ve paired her up with pet pro Laura to show her the ropes. CANON PRO NAME: LAURA GALBRAITH CAMERA: CANON EOS R5 & R6 LAURA WAS an IT and maths teacher, but seven years ago decided to pursue her passion and become a…

When you subscribe to PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine FREE CAMERA BAG WORTH OVER £60! YOUR FREE LOWEPRO NOVA AW II BAG • Fits Canon EOS DSLR with attached 24-105mm lens plus 1-2 additional lenses • All Weather AW cover, water-resistant zipper & overlapping lid • Flexible interior dividers deliver customizable gear protection • Carry via adjustable shoulder strap, padded handle or belt loop • Interior lid, front & side pockets offer easy access to storage • Internal dimensions 20.5 x 11.5 x 17cm • External dimensions 26 x 19 x 20cm “Subscribe to PhotoPlus and save money plus get this great Lowepro camera bag for free!”Peter Travers Editor Great reasons to subscribe today • FREE Lowepro Nova AW II bag worth over £60 • SAVE Pay less than you would in the…

If you love lots of fine detail in your photos, you simply have to try multi-row panoramas. Essentially, the technique involves shooting the scene in a series of overlapping segments, just as you would with a panorama. But instead of a single row, you do several rows to create an entire grid of photos. The longer the lens and the wider the grid, the more resolution you can achieve. The individual images are then stitched together in Photoshop or a dedicated pano stitcher, such as PTGui. This can give you an astonishing level of detail and enables you to make a huge print or even a wall mural. We look first at the basics of multi-row shooting, from camera settings to tripod techniques. The fundamentals are simple, but it gets…

There are many, many ways to help focus attention in your photos. Sharpness is one and you often see this effectively done in camera using a shallow depth of field. Your eye is drawn to areas of sharpness and tends to ignore things that are out of focus. It’s why so much money is spent on f/1.2 lenses by portrait photographers. Another way is using light and dark. Your eye naturally goes to the brightest part of the frame, and pays less attention to the darker parts. That’s part of the reason why it’s important to retain detail in the highlights, while it’s not as critical to keep it in the shadows. It’s not that you shouldn’t, it’s just less important. Knowing this, you can darken areas around your subject…

STORY BEHIND THE SHOT In Pinn and the Moon A bracing hike gave Nick a more unusual perspective for this shot My colleague Marcus and I made an early start on a very cold winter morning, to walk to a viewpoint where we could photograph the snow-covered Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye from a more unique angle. As I crested a hill, I could see the moon above the ridge and had to run through knee-high snow to get into a position where I could place it in a gap to the left of the Inaccessible Pinnacle before it disappeared out of view. FOR NICK HANSON, the greatest sense of purpose comes when he’s carrying his Canon camera on a shoot in the wilderness. Based in the UK,…

A key defining principle of the EOS DSLR camera system was to make it simple and instinctive. Full-time manual focus for lenses with USM focus motors fits that remit. It is useful for subjects that don’t move a great deal. The ability to simply turn the lens’s focus ring if shooting macro or landscapes was so instinctive you might not even have realized that it was a designed feature. It also means the lens can be manually pre-focused before you even start the AF. When EF lenses were introduced with fly-by-wire focus rings, new custom settings were added to the cameras to still allow the chance to adjust focus slightly once One-Shot AF was complete. Moving to mirrorless, RF lenses have a fly-by-wire focus ring that means you can no…

Every so often, a new big superzoom telephoto lens grabs everyone’s attention. Usually it’s the likes of Sigma and Tamron duking it out, but now it’s Canon making headlines with the Canon RF 200-800mm F6.3-9 IS USM, a serious challenger to the super-telephoto zoom throne. In the realm of full-frame super-telephoto zoom lenses, there’s the battlefield-ready, big, green and mean Sigma APO 200-500mm f/2.8 EX DG (at an eye-watering £15K) or the Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sport (a sensible £1699). The Canon RF 200-800mm offers a (potentially) record-snatching 600mm difference in focal length from wide to telephoto, and manages to achieve this in a body weighing just over 2kg and only 31cm long. There are, however, compromises to be made, with the maximum apertures being limited to f/6.3…

THE NO.1 MAGAZINE FOR CANON USERS! FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… ■ Flash-lit figures in landscapes ■ Winter landscape techniques ■ Vertical panoramas in churches ■ New Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity Photo image-editing guides PLUS ALL THIS… ■ Profile: Matt Doogue, award-winning Canon macro photographer ■ Super Test: Budget lenses for Canon EOS DSLRs and mirrorless cameras ■ PhotoPlus Apprentice: Canon pro Chris Grimmer teaches our reader how to take amazing astro shots ISSUE 214 ON SALE 1 FEBRUARY 2024 * Content subject to change…

01 CELESTIAL EQUATOR ABOVE FIRST WORLD WAR TRENCH MEMORIAL BY LOUIS LEROUX-GEREU SKYSCAPES: RUNNER UP Louis’ brilliant star trails above the preserved First World War trenches in the Canadian National Vimy Memorial Park came runner-up in this year’s contest. His final image was composited from no less than 577 exposures, each 30 secs long and taken on his astro-modified Canon EOS 6D with a wideangle Samyang 14mm lens. This haunting image contrasts the conflict-scarred landscape with the ethereal beauty of the stars. 02 AURORA OVER THE GREAT POLLET SEA ARCH BY BRENDAN ALEXANDER AURORAE: SHORTLISTED Shooting with his Canon EOS 6D and a Sigma 20mm f/1.8 EX DG, Brendan took two exposures, one at 7.5 secs for the sky and another at 5.5 secs for motion in the foreground, and stitched…

Medicine Lake, Canada. 17:18pm. 11 March 2010 Living in the western world on a relatively large island, it is difficult to grasp the concept of being vulnerable. Wherever we seem to go in the UK, other than the most remote of locations, there is society. For the traveller, there are supermarkets everywhere, fuel stations dotted around and, should you need help, you can go to a police station. In trouble? Just pick up your mobile and call someone. Now let me take your phone away. In fact, let’s take all of that away. How do you feel? It is 2010 and I have made it over to the Canadian Rockies to shoot the splendour of the mountains in all their snowy glory. I have been here before, in the fall,…

Earlier this year, I set myself a little challenge to try to take a range of different compositions on the same section of beach, for a nice collection of minimalist seascape scenes at sunset. It was a very enjoyable couple of hours, as I worked on different points of view, with the tide going out and the sun slowly setting. I was able to fine-tune my compositions, placing the horizon exactly where I wanted, with Gull Rock out to sea on intersecting lines when framing in Live View, plus thinking about what I wanted in my foreground, how much of the sandy ripples to have in shot, or using water trickling out to sea or waves coming towards me. But the most important part of these sorts of minimalist shots…

The Dodge and Burn tools are ideal for selective lightening and darkening in Photoshop. There are lots of other tools that do a similar job, but there’s something about these two that will keep you coming back to them. Perhaps it’s the connection with the darkroom processes. In the darkroom, areas of a print would be ‘dodged’ by shading some of the light from the enlarger bulb. A disc on a piece of wire would often be used, echoed in the Photoshop Dodge tool icon. By contrast, parts could be ‘burned’ by focusing light from the enlarger onto specific areas, resulting in darker tones. An ‘OK’ hand shape could be used, the hole between thumb and finger channelling light onto the print, hence the hand-shaped icon for Photoshop’s Burn tool.…

White stripes Anthony heads to a reflection pool in the New Forest to bolster his wildlife portfolio I am self-employed with a big passion for wildlife photography for the past eight years and have been inspired by a few pro wildlife photographers. I have come a long way in my photography journey which started with my first Canon, an EOS 1200D. I now mostly use a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS. My obsession with badgers started a year ago after spending many hours in photography hides hoping to see these magnificent mustelids. While searching the internet for a badger hide experience, I came across the Woodland Reflections Photography hide in the New Forest and quickly booked a night session. I was aiming for the…

Adjust colours to go mono Use DPP’s Colour and Partial Adjustment tools to create black-and-white images Canon’s Digital Photo Professional’s Colour Adjustments are powerful tools for converting colour RAW images to monochrome. Their advanced tonal control is more flexible than the Monochrome Picture Style. Partial adjustments are used to darken and lighten selected parts of the photo, reminiscent of printing in a darkroom. Images converted this way can still be further optimized using DPP’s more conventional tools. The Colour Adjustment tool converts images to monochrome, but offers additional control over how individual tones are rendered far beyond just selecting a different Picture Style. Colour Adjustment isolates specific tones in an image and lets you decide how bright or dark each tone is rendered. Masters of black-and-white printing used to selectively…

Compressed colours PHILIP JONES, TREDEGAR, WALES, SAYS… This was taken by the Cwm Clydach nature reserve, between Brynmawr and Gilwern, near Abergavenny. I could see the shot I wanted along the path, so I set up my EOS 6D Mark II and 70-300mm zoom lens on a tripod and used the self-timer to avoid camera shake. I zoomed in to 300mm to eliminate distractions and compress the scene so everything seemed closer together. Manual exposure was chosen and Landscape Picture Style to control the brightness and colours. Post-processing in Digital Photo Professional was minimal, with a boost to saturation being the main adjustment. I think I achieved the effect I wanted. BRIAN SAYS… You’ve taken a different approach to capturing autumn’s colours, focusing the viewer to a section of the…

Limited back issues of PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine print editions are available on our new MagazinesDirect.com secure store at www.magazinesdirect.com/photoplus-magazine-single-issue But if you’ve got an iPad, Android, Kindle or Nook tablet, or iPhone or Android smartphone, you can download PhotoPlus back issues from the following digital edition options: • Got an Apple iPad or iPhone? Get the free PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine app in the App Store or at bit.ly/photoplus_app then browse through our back issues or subscribe and save through the app. • Kindle Fire or Nook HD? Simply search for PhotoPlus on Amazon’s Newsstand or in B&N’s Nook store. • Windows or Mac? Use Zinio to read PhotoPlus on your laptop or desktop computer or via the app! Go to www.zinio.com and search for PhotoPlus where you can…