Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2024 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

CANON PRO NAME: CATHERINE O’DONNELL CAMERA: CANON EOS 5D Mk III CATHERINE is an award-winning portrait photographer who’s been published in magazines globally. She’s known for her laidback approach to family portraiture, which helps her capture natural poses and special moments that don’t look forced. Being a mum of three keeps her on her toes, but also gives her ample opportunities to perfect her portraits – making her the ideal Canon photographer to help Ieaun improve his shots! www.catherineodonnell.co.uk APPRENTICE NAME: IEAUN WILLIAMS CAMERA: CANON EOS R5 IEAUN IS a teacher based in South London, and in his spare time loves to get out with his camera and try everything from landscapes to weddings. He’s looking to change career and move into portraiture. While he has a few weddings under his belt, he admits…

Dust is the nemesis of all photographers. Grit, grime, dirt and even sand can all find their way inside the intricate workings of your camera body or in the optics of your lenses to cause havoc. While it’s not the sexiest subject around, it’s vital to keep kit clean, and since cameras and lenses can cost a small fortune, it’s only right that we give them the care they deserve to keep them in top condition. This also helps you keep the resale value high and stops those annoying little dust spots appearing in your photos. Spring is the perfect time to do an annual deep clean of all your camera kit, from lenses and bodies to camera bags. And while we probably should do it more often, once a…

When it comes to editing portraits, a few simple techniques can take your image in all kinds of interesting directions. In this project we’ll explore a range of edits you can make in Affinity Photo. Most of these are carried out in the Develop Persona, which is the workspace for RAW editing. This is the place to process and enhance your raw photos before – if necessary – taking them into the main Photo Persona for further editing. Straight out-of-camera RAW files tend to look a little flat and dull. But this is because RAWs are meant to give you the best possible starting point for editing. RAWs contain greater dynamic range and colour data than JPEGs, and we can use the tools in the Affinity Photo Develop Persona to…

01 TOLLESBURY A row of trees makes for an interesting composition at Tollesbury Lens Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Exposure 30 secs, f/11, ISO100 After our retirement a few years ago, my wife and I found we were able to spend much more of our time travelling the UK in our beloved motorhome, and exploring the wonderfully varied scenery around our islands. Ranging from the nearby wild areas of East Anglia to stunningly beautiful distant places such as Loch Lomond and Skye. Presented with such excellent photo opportunities, my thoughts soon turned to photography, so I bought my first Canon EOS DSLR and slowly built up a selection of second-hand lenses. 02 LEE BAY Sea fog in the afternoon resulted in some moody lighting Lens Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM…

Action photos require your EOS camera to track a subject and continually update focus until the photo is captured. Selecting Servo AF is only the most basic step to make this happen. Many cameras have a range of additional settings to refine how a camera autofocus responds to different subject dynamics. Almost regardless of the actual subject speed, it’s how it moves that determines how AF needs to respond; a fast car on a race track moving towards or away from the camera is consistent and quite easy for the camera to predict where it will be when the photo is taken. A small bird in flight changes direction much more rapidly and so benefits from different focus settings to maximize the chance of each shot being sharp. Most EOS…

There has been so much hype over mirrorless cameras over the past few years, it’s easy to lose sight of just how great Canon DSLR and their companion EF and EF-S lenses have been over the past couple of decades. In short, Canon’s conventional EOS kit has been setting the standard for many years. But then everything went mirrorless. If you’ve got a perfectly good EOS DLSR and collection of lenses, you need a very good reason to trade it all in for R System replacements. We tend to think that camera bodies come and go but quality lenses potentially last a lifetime. Changing lenses is even more of a tricky decision as EF-mount lenses work perfectly well on EOS R System bodies via an EF-EOS R mount adaptor. So…

Launched at the same time as the EF-S 10-18mm lens for APS-C format cameras (also on test), this was Canon’s first ultra-wide zoom for full-frame DSLRs to feature optical image stabilization. The newly designed stabilizer gives a 4-stop benefit in beating camera-shake. Having an f/4 aperture rating, the lens is considerably smaller and lighter than Canon’s 16-35mm f/2.8 zoom. That’s a big plus point for landscape and cityscape shooting, when you want to keep carrying weight to a minimum, and the optical stabilization can save taking a tripod as well. The lens has premium optics with GMo (Glass Moulded) aspherical elements, including a large-diameter one at the front, plus two UD (Ultra-low Dispersion) elements. Super Spectra Coating is applied, as well as fluorine coatings on the front and rear elements.…

Various EOS R System full-frame cameras are available as a complete kit with this lens. Typically, it takes full advantage of the revised RF mount, compared with EF lenses for DSLRs. It’s little shorter and lighter than the EF 24-105mm f/4L, at 84x107mm and 700g, making it an ideal match for slim-line mirrorless bodies. Typical of L-series lenses, it has excellent build quality with extensive weather-seals and with a hood. Optical highlights include aspherical and UD elements, a 9-blade diaphragm and fluorine coatings. Compared with its older EF counterpart, there’s a more effective 5-stop rather than 4-stop image stabilizer, and it gets a boost to 8-stops with in-body stabilization, where featured in EOS R System cameras. Nano USM autofocus is very fast for stills and enables super-smooth focus transitions for…

COMPARISON TABLE There are some crucial advantages of the RF lens mount of EOS R System cameras, compared with the older EF mount for DSLRs. Key benefits are a wider flange and a much closer proximity to the camera’s image sensor. The typical outcome is better sharpness and clarity, especially out towards the edges and corners of the image frame, while the much higher data transfer speed between RF lenses and EOS R mirrorless cameras gives a boost in autofocus and image stabilization. Our pick of the crop we tested is the RF 14-35mm F4L IS USM for its outstanding performance and versatility, while the RF-S 10-18mm F4.5-5.6 IS STM is incredibly compact and lightweight, and great value for APS-C mirroroless cameras. However, it’s the EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM…

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TECHNIQUE ASSESSMENT Portrait pro Catherine showed enthusiast Ieaun how to set up his Canon for top people pictures MANUAL MODE IEAUN WAS well versed in shooting in Manual mode so Catherine suggested continuing to do so. This M mode gives Ieaun full control of the three core exposure variables: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Catherine was looking for a minimum shutter speed of 1/100 sec or faster for sharp handheld shots, and would use a wide aperture for single subjects, or a more narrow aperture of f/8 for group shots. It was then just a case of adjusting the LED power and ISO sensitivity to achieve a well-exposed image. DRIVE MODES IEAUN started off in the High Speed Continuous drive mode on his Canon EOS R5. However, when Catherine noticed…

01 WINNER LOCH RUSKY SUNRISE BY JOE GILHOOLEY Joe’s sublime sunrise image of the beautiful Loch Rusky, found in Trossachs in Scotland, has been captured masterfully and takes the top spot in our Minimalist Landscapes photo contest this month. We love the simplicity of the four empty boats floating on the ethereal loch on a misty morning, the lovely reflections, with a stunning sunrise colour palette bursting out from behind the trees on the horizon. Lens Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Exposure 1/4 sec, f/11, ISO500 02 GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE BY ALAIN BOULARAN Alain’s wonderful blue hour shot of the iconic golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, uses the classic orange and teal colours to add contrast and give his landscape a cinematic look. The warm, bright lights from the bridge do…

Many of us are now accustomed to using circular polarizing filters on our lenses. They’re useful for enriching colours in landscapes – especially blue skies and foliage – and invaluable for cutting through reflections or atmospheric haze. But polarizers aren’t just for lenses. Something magical happens if we polarize our light source too. This is called cross polarization, and the technique is simple. We need both the light entering our camera and the light emitting from our source to be polarized light. It’s a classic technique that has many uses, both practical and creative. Cross polarization can result in photos with zero reflections and glare, which makes the technique useful for practical things such as dental photography, because eliminating the glare allows for clearer pictures of teeth. But if you…

Sometimes we all wish we could sprinkle a little movie magic on our photos. In fact, it’s pretty simple to do and there are numerous colour tools in Lightroom to help us. You could use the Tone Curve’s individual colour channels, or the often-missed Calibration panel. Even the HSL panel can be used for creative rather than corrective means. Here, though, you’ll see the Color Grading panel in action. Located in the Develop module, Color Grading makes use of three colour wheels: Shadows, Midtones and Highlights. The dot in each allows for simultaneous Hue and Saturation changes, while a slider below handles Luminosity changes. Holding down Shift while dragging the dot limits you to Saturation; holding the Command or Control key limits it to Hue only. In the individual views,…

01 GUILIN, CHINA The blue hour lends a mysterious atmosphere to this cormorant fisherman Lens Canon RF 24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM Exposure 1/5 sec, f/5.6, ISO800 IF YOU had to describe Scott Kelby’s career in one word, it would be prolific. He’s written over 100 books and is best known to many as the CEO of KelbyOne, one of the most comprehensive online training platforms for photography and image processing. And yet the qualities that stand out when speaking to Scott (or reading one of his books) are his warmth, humility and sense of humour. In his twenties, he was making a living by playing keyboards full-time in bands and clubs, or as he puts it: “Mostly fulfilling the dream of being a starving musician.” After a brief stint in the finance…

Professional photographers reveal their top six tools of the trade they couldn’t shoot without “My love and passion for the great outdoors came at a young age as I grew up in Dorset on the south coast” I picked up my first camera, a Canon EOS 100D, back in 2014, just after starting my architectural studies. I wanted to document my travels in Europe and I found the steep learning curve very addictive. From that moment on, I fell in love with photography. My love and passion for the great outdoors came at a young age as I grew up in Dorset on the south coast; it’s a playground for exploring the Jurassic Coast, countryside and magical woodlands. I started taking landscape photography seriously in 2017. I fell in love…

Product project using EOS Utility Discover the range of functions that assist photographers to capture consistent still-life shots EOS Utility includes a wide range of capabilities that are helpful for still-life and product photography. In this specialized genre, consistent and accurate colour is a requirement at the capture stage which the EOS Utility software handles with ease. In some situations it is necessary for you to capture images that are not only well composed, but also consistent with other shots of similar items. Space for text or graphics might need to be accommodated at the taking stage which is achieved with the guides and overlays. Product photography is a skilled and technical discipline where the alignment and position of the subject within the frame is vitally important. EOS cameras with…

Panning Porsche PAUL RICHARDSON, NEWARK ON TRENT SAYS… I’d set myself the goal of getting my shutter speed as low as possible while keeping a low failure rate. I picked a spot at Redgate Corner at Donnington Park as this is a relatively high speed corner after the pit straight. The challenge is that there’s a barrier 2m away from the 3m safety fence. I shot at 200mm and started at 1/160 sec to gauge my panning speed to match the cars. Once I had a got into a rhythm, I reduced the shutter speed in steps to 1/60 sec with a low attrition rate of 6-7 shots out of 10. Editing was with Lightroom with minimal light correction and with no added motion blur. BRIAN SAYS… It looks like…

Carrying around additional lenses is no fun when they’re big, heavy and cumbersome. This offering from Canon for APS-C cameras is refreshingly small for a wide-angle zoom and tips the scales at less than half the weight of many competing lenses. Its 67mm filter thread is also a lot smaller than usual, so filters are relatively inexpensive to buy. One weight-saving feature of the lens is that it has a plastic mounting plate, but build quality feels reasonably robust. Typical of many recent Canon lenses, it features an STM (Stepping Motor) autofocus system which is fast for stills, smooth for video capture and virtually silent. The electronically-coupled focus ring enables manual override of autofocus but there’s no focus distance scale. Less than half the price of Canon’s ancient EF-S 10-22mm…

This lens gives a noticeably wider maximum field of view than the EF 16-35mm, equating to 114 degrees compared with 108 degrees. The difference of 2mm at the short end of the zoom range might not sound much, but it makes a big difference. Weighing 540g, it’s 75g lighter than the EF lens and easily manageable for handheld shooting. There’s some seriously upmarket glass shoehorned into this small lens. The total count of 16 elements includes three GMo (Glass Moulded) aspherical elements, two UD (Ultra-low Dispersion) elements and one UD aspherical element. Fluorine coatings are applied to the front and rear elements to repel moisture and grease. As you’d expect from a current Canon L-series lens, it features extensive weather-seals and comes complete with a hood. Autofocus is driven by…

Canon’s original 100-400mm IS USM lens was launched all the way back in 1998, with film cameras firmly in mind. It continued to be highly desirable with the advent of digital SLRs, both for full-frame and APS-C format bodies, having an effective zoom range of 160-640mm on the latter. Less popular was its trombone-style, push-pull zoom mechanism. That’s been changed to a more regular twist-action zoom ring in this second edition, which replaced the original in late 2014. The optical path includes top-grade fluorite and Super UD (Ultra-low Dispersion) glass, and is more sophisticated than in the original lens, with four additional elements. As with some of Canon’s more recent top-flight lenses, high-tech ASC (Air Sphere Coating) is featured, plus fluorine coatings on the front and rear elements. Another neat…

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 I would like to buy another PhotoPlus print subscription. I had one years ago that I started in Germany when we were stationed there. But we then transferred to our home in Florida. I LOVE PhotoPlus. It is the best photography magazine on the market. I do not want a digital subscription. Please tell me that you still send print subscriptions to the USA and how I can subscribe? Please help. Thank you! Cherie Alvarez, Florida Many thanks for getting in touch, Cherie. Yes, of course, we offer print subscriptions in the US, starting at $29.99 for 3 issues. Please go to our site www.magazinesdirect.com/photoplus, and select Print for the Format, and United States for where you want the mags delivered. Get in touch with your…

CATHERINE’S TOP 10 TIPS FOR FAMILY PHOTOS 1 One lens to rule them all Catherine always takes her Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM with her and could quite happily shoot on it all day with its versatile zoom and f/2.8 maximum aperture. 2 Discreet camera bag Catherine has been using her Jo Totes Gracie for years which looks like an ordinary brown leather handbag so it doesn’t scream ‘photographer’. 3 Shoot at eye level Rather than shooting down at kids from your head height, go down on one knee or use the Vari-Angle screen to get lower to blur backgrounds easily. 4 Photoshop tips I keep my editing minimal for a more natural look. I use Lightroom Classic CC to batch edit my RAW files and Photoshop CC for advanced edits like spot removal.…

After the long slumber of winter, which feels like it goes on forever these days, suddenly there are signs of life that invigorate and inspire us photographers. With the ever-changing climate and milder winters, there’s always a crossover of winter and spring seasons, so depending on which part of the country you are in Spring may come sooner or later than usual. Either way, it’s a fantastic time of year to dust off your camera and lenses and head out to explore what’s on offer and capture as many seasonal images as you can. Spring is one of those seasons when there’s lots of fascinating subjects on offer, but unlike summer, for instance, we’re not bombarded all at once: we can spread out what we shoot over the months between…

Zoom in on details 11 SPRING is a time to crack out that macro lens in full force. From close-up flower heads to bugs and insects, the smaller world comes to life and gives you a whole host of potential subjects. One of the stars of the show are our amazing dragonflies and damselflies. Keep on the lookout for their usual haunts such as shallow pools and bodies of water and learn when they spend their time. You may be lucky to come across newly emerging individuals and this will give you a superb opportunity to get up close and personal to them. First thing in the morning is best as they sit for hours morphing into fully, grown adults. This time will give you the chance to capture all…

While we call this miniaturization look a ‘tilt-shift’ effect, it’s actually only the tilting part of an expensive, specialist tilt-shift lens that will have the ability to shift the zone of focus in this artful way. Tilt-shift lenses are specialist optics, out of reach for most photographers (myself included). But for architectural and city photographers they’re the holy grail, allowing users to move the lens along its axis, either left/right and the pitch, or up/down and the yaw, depending on which way the lens is set up, while still attached to its Canon body. Needless to say, this fancy functionality comes with a high price tag. Fortunately the ‘tilt’ aspect, responsible for creating these toy-town effects, can be easily replicated in-camera, using Scene modes of some entry-level Canons, as well…

Luminosity masking is a powerful technique for selective tonal adjustments. It’s often favoured by landscape photographers because it offers a fine degree of control over the brightness of different tonal ranges. Essentially, Luminosity masking allows us to create selections of different areas of brightness. In our coastal scene here, it means we can target the bright areas of sky around the sun, or the dark groynes in the foreground, then enhance those areas with adjustments. There are several plug-ins that make Luminosity masks, but to understand how they work, it helps to know how to create your own. We can do so by using simple selection shortcuts in combination with Channels in Photoshop. Our Channels panel enables us to isolate Luminosity by loading selections of different channel information. From here,…

Photo essays from PhotoPlus readers and professional photographers alike 01 NIAGARA FALLS AND AMERICAN FALLS BY HELICOPTER Shooting at 40mm Premjith has caught a wonderful aerial landscape with both the Niagara and American waterfalls in shot Lens Canon RF 24-70mm F2.8L IS USM Exposure 1/800 sec, f/9, ISO250 Niagara Falls sits on the border of New York State in the US and Ontario in Canada. I wanted to cover all angles so I arranged to take photos from the skies in a helicopter, and later at eye-level from a boat. I have past experience in aerial photography in Switzerland, Iceland and Bahrain, mainly terrestrial and alpine mountain shoots. I knew that it was important to select the right camera and lens combination. In this case I chose a Canon EOS R3…

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…

GuruShots is billed as the world’s leading photo game. It’s an online platform that gives global exposure to people who love taking photographs. GuruShots members start out as Newbies and compete with other photographers to win challenges, increase their ranking on the site and eventually progress to coveted ‘Guru’ status. Challenges are voted on by Gurus and the wider GuruShots community, and there’s a fresh photo challenge everyday–like ‘Animals’ here. Winners receive prizes from GuruShots’ sponsors, including Lowepro, Kodak and Lensbaby. Check out www.gurushots.com to find out more.…

You might well think that the EF-S version of this lens is small and light, and you’d be right. But the newer RF-S lens is unfeasibly tiny for a wide-angle zoom, even considering that it’s for APS-C format rather than full-frame cameras. Unlike with EF-S lenses on DSLRs, you can use the RF-S lens on full-frame EOS R System mirrorless cameras in APS-C crop mode. Unlike the EF-S lens, it has a retractable design, shrinking the dimensions to just 69x45mm compared with 75x72mm. It also has a smaller filter attachment thread of just 49mm. The RF-S lens has two fewer optical elements, at 12, and again has a plastic mounting plate, the overall weight being a mere 150g compared with 240g for the EF-S lens. The lens relies entirely on…

Launched back in 2005, the original version of this lens was available as part of a kit with the first three editions of the EOS 5D, as well as the 6D. However, it wasn’t sharp enough to make it onto the approved list of lenses for use with the highre-solution 5DS and 5DS R, and this revamped Mark II edition of the lens was launched in 2016. Top of the agenda for the Mark II was a redesigned optical path, which also gains high-tech ‘Air Sphere Coating’ for keeping ghosting and flare to a minimum. Keep-clean fluorine coatings are added to the front and rear elements, and the build-quality has been enhanced for greater resistance to vibration and shock. The image stabilizer is also improved, rising from 2.5-stop to 4-stop…

There’s a wealth of super-tele zooms that you can fit to an EOS R System camera via an EF-EOS R mount adapter but, as an RF lens, the 100-500mm is naturally a perfect fit. It takes cues from the well-established EF 100-400mm, also on test and is physically slightly longer but a little lighter. It adds an extra 100mm of telephoto reach, albeit with a slowing in aperture by two-thirds of an f/stop, to f/7.1. The autofocus system, based on dual Nano USM motors, is blazing fast and well able to track moving subjects. The optical path incorporates no fewer than six UD (Ultra-low Dispersion) elements and one Super UD element, while the image stabilizer is rated at an impressive five f/stops, the effectiveness of which is further boosted when…

STAY FOCUSED SHARPERN YOUR SHOTS Learn to take pin-sharp shots of everything from flying birds and motorsports to big landscapes FREE VIDEOS! In the next Canon Skills chapter… Craft your own cyanotypes Creative portraits with prisms Mastering Canon’s monster RF 200-800mm lens New Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity Photo tutorials PLUS ALL THIS… ▪ PhotoPlus Apprentice: Learn to take beautiful landscapes in Dorset with talented Canon pro Jack Lodge ▪ Super Test: The best photo backpacks ▪ Canon Profile: Wedding and portrait photographer Tommy Reynolds ▪ Canon School: In-camera effects ISSUE 217 ON SALE 25 APRIL 2024 * Content subject to change…