PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

Editor As restrictions continue to be eased, we’re allowed to get out more with our cameras, either on our own, or with friends and family at sociable yet socially-distanced two metres! As always at PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine we’re here to specifi

ROBIN LOVES wildlife and pet photography, and has a fascination for tiny critters, so we made her dream come true, enabling her to get up close and personal with harvest mice and a red-eyed tree frog. SIMON’S BEEN a keen photographer since his late t

IN MILES Herebert’s studio he has three lighting heads set up to ensure he’s in total control of the lighting: “For Robin to boss her exposures she needs to shoot in Manual,” suggests Miles. “This enables you to set the aperture and shutter speed to

The welfare of your subject always comes first, and a soft paintbrush is often the best way of moving insects as they can be very delicate. Different species also require different conditions, such as light, temperature and humidity. Compost heaps an

Thankfully we’re seeing more restrictions being lifted during the pandemic, and at the time of writing, in the UK we’re able to get out more each day with friends and family at a social distance, and that means new opportunities for improving your Ca

I was especially pleased with this shot of a panther chameleon, which was posing on a branch held by David. I kept the AF point locked onto his eye so it would be sharp, and the two lights and black backdrop really made the colours stand out. This ch

Christine took this marvellous portrait of her daughter while they were in lockdown, she tells us: “I wanted to try my hand at some indoor portraits using natural light and my daughter was an eager model. She was finding it hard being away from her f

Subscribe for 12 months and get your issues delivered to your door, plus choose between three options below starting at only £27 A contemporary shoulder bag for your Canon DSLR or EOS R mirrorless with lens, plus 2-3 lenses, flashgun, tripod, laptop

Carcassonne, Aude, France. 5:43pm. 18 September 2011. Carcassonne is one of those places that looks best from afar. The view we catch fleetingly from the A61 (whilst whizzing from Toulouse to Narbonne) of the fortified Cité high on its mound, command

As we’re still spending time indoors at the moment, it’s a great time to photograph a willing partner for some beautiful boudoir images. Note: we photographed our model before lockdown restrictions were introduced. But with boudoir it’s all about get

For a fraction of the price of studio lighting kit, buy a diffused blind for your bedroom or lounge window for unbeatable soft lighting for portraits. Diffused light reduces light levels, so increase ISO accordingly. We shot in Manual at f/2.8 to blu

Wildlife photography stirs up imagery of far flung destinations and shooting from secret hides. But, with our tips and a telephoto zoom lens, you can take great images of your feathered friends from the comfort of your own back garden. The UK enjoys

Giving the birds a place to land enables you to control the composition to an extent. I added an old gatepost to the garden and placed it in front of some foliage, but you could also set up some gnarly old logs for a more natural look too. You’ll dis

Download the Spyder X software from the Datacolor website. There are versions for the SpyderX Elite and Pro for Windows or Mac. Follow the simple installation wizard, but don’t plug in the device until the installation is complete. Revert to your mon

As the old adage goes: ‘Behind every great photographer is a colour calibration device.’ Okay, so nobody actually said that – but they should have! You see, colour calibration is hugely important if you want to edit your best photographs, because how

Open up your free textures in Resources> Elements and pick one you like and open it into Photoshop Elements in the Expert mode. Then, open up another shot that you want to add the texture to. Hit Ctrl/Cmd+A to select the texture, Ctrl/Cmd+C to copy i

Sometimes your images need a little extra punch to make them really stand out and textures are a brilliant way of doing precisely that! Texture files can be stored on your computer, added to your images to give them additional depth, or even add mult

This simple technique is a creative way to show off an entire timelapse sequence in a single image. Perhaps you have a set of timelapse photos on your hard drive that could work for this, but if not then why not shoot a new sequence? It could be a gr

Many of us will have old family photos and vintage prints tucked away, so now might be the perfect time to dig them out, brush them off and digitize them with a scanner or your camera. Once done, you can open the image in Affinity Photo to perform al

Open the portrait, go to the Layers panel and click the new layer icon. Grab the Inpainting tool from the toolbar. Go to tool options and set ‘Current Layer and Below’. Paint over scratches to remove them. Hold Cmd/Ctrl+Space and drag to zoom in or o

Set your camera up on a tripod. For the exposure mode, pick Aperture Priority and engage the interval timer (if your camera doesn’t have it, you could use an external cable release timer, or fire the shutter yourself). Shoot to capture a day-to-night

Editing your photos can transform them, bringing out the vivid colour and incredible detail you saw in person when taking the shot. But photo-editing skills take time to learn, and even more time is needed to get the best from each image. Photolemur

Download and register by 30 September 2020 1 To download and install your free copy of Photolemur 3 https://skylum.com/photoplus-photolemur into your web browser (not into Google or your search bar) and press enter. 2 You’ll arrive at a page where yo

When Photolemur starts, you can drag one or more images into its mini-window to get started. While you’re editing your shots, click Open More to bring more pictures into the Photolemur interface. You can open Raw images from most cameras, or JPEG fil

I set off to the British Wildlife Centre (before lockdown) in Surrey, armed with my Canon 200D and Sigma 18-300mm. This was the only lens that I needed, as I was going to be close to the animals, but I also packed a small tripod and a bean bag. In pr

I took these images at Studio Visage in Folkestone with model Kristina Cohen Regan, aka Sinister Sister (@ sisterofsinister). Kristina is a professional makeup artist and I wanted to get some shots where the make up was really experimental. I’d seen

I have fond memories of learning to use my father’s old Canon 35mm film camera as a kid, even when I wasn’t supposed to! Now I regularly use Canon digital cameras and lenses for my commercial work, which ranges from portraiture, to product photograph

PAGE 70 Learn to shoot remotely with WiFi via video calls! EXPERT CAMERA EXPERT Brian has unrivalled EOS camera knowledge after working for Canon for over 15 years. He now works as a freelance photographer and photo tutor in Oxfordshire. PAGE 72 Take

The person with the camera will ultimately create and light the setup, and position the camera. They will also need familiarity with EOS Utility and tethered shooting to make it work. Of course, you can monitor this and interact with a video call, ma

Spending so much time in lockdown has undoubtedly given us all an appreciation for the small things. Quite literally, in many cases. Having to be restricted to home turf for so long may have forced you to train your camera on subjects that are close

EOS cameras allow you to control them remotely with the Canon software on your computer and mobile devices. EOS camera remote control takes several forms: a mobile app that works with your Wi-Fi enabled camera, providing remote control of major setti

WEB: www.canon.co.uk IT MAY be old school and not the latest bit of kit, but my Canon EOS 5D Mark III has a rock-solid build and has been a reliable workhorse for several years, coping with whatever I’ve thrown at it like a total champion. I use it w

Although the lens determines the magnification of the subject, the subject will appear larger in an image taken on an EOS camera which has an APS-C sensor, compared with one taken on a full-frame camera. The magnification hasn’t really changed, it’s

The majority of Canon’s macro lenses benefit from autofocus, although the tilt-shift TS-E macro lenses and the specialist MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo are manual-focus only. Autofocus can struggle to lock onto fine detail, and the depth of field

By their very nature, many macro subjects are found at low level. This can pose a few problems when it comes to framing up and focusing, as you may need to place your camera in a position where it’s hard to see through the viewfinder. If your camera

Your EOS camera may have a Close-up Special Scene Mode, which you can access using the SCN setting or the flower symbol on the Mode dial. This doesn’t allow you to focus the lens closer or magnify the subject more than normal, rather it sets the came

Why does Live View in EOS Utility look so dark when using flash for shots? Rick Robett, Tarporley BRIAN SAYS… If you’re using flash then the odds are you’re using Manual mode with a fast shutter speed, then you may find Live View dark on the LCD and

WHEN YOU review a shot, you can magnify the image to check that details are sharp. There are several ways to do this. If your camera has a touchscreen, you can spread two fingers on the rear screen to magnify the image up to around 10x. Or, double-ta

Too much of a good thing can be bad for you, in the case of automation in photography I think it removes some of the creative value you bring to the picture. Today’s cameras choose where the subject is in the frame, focuses, calculates the exposure a

Samyang updates its most popular manual focus DSLR lenses £359-£439/$ TBA www.samyanglensglobal.com SAMYANG’S NEWLY revised MF 14mm f/2.8 Mk2 now features a lockable focus ring to prevent accidental rotation, along with a de-click option for the aper

IT’S EASY to feel that we often carry a big camera bag or backpack around, stuffed with our Canon gear, extra lenses, flashguns and other goodies, when all we end up using is the camera itself and our one most preferred prime or zoom lens. It can lit

SERG GARKUS, POLAND SAYS… I shot this photo while out walking with my model friend. It was not a planned shoot, but I always have in my bag a camera, one flash and a small soft box. We were walking in Kraków city centre, and the streets were crowded

The Canon RF 24-105mm f/4-7.1 IS STM is a smaller, lighter and more affordable alternative to the Canon RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM – the ‘kit’ lens that released with the Canon EOS R mirrorless back in 2018. The L-series version performed better than i

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 accura

After so much time indoors, the sheer scale of a sweeping landscape can take on epic proportions. From open fields and rolling hills to huge dramatic skies, there’s a lot to take in. With a standard zoom lens, you’ll often struggle to squeeze as much

If you’re trekking through harsh terrain in pursuit of landscape photo ops, the last thing you need is a bag of heavyweight camera kit. This compact ultra-wide zoom weighs just 240g, but still packs in some useful features. Unlike Canon’s older and h

Ultra-wide prime lenses for APS-C cameras are rare, and Canon doesn’t make one at all. The best option is this 10mm ‘Crop Sensor’ lens from Samyang, which combines a short 10mm focal length with a wide f/2.8 aperture rating. Not just a manual focus l

THE BEST camera drones are far more than the simple toys they used to be. They’re now used widely by both amateur and professional photographers because they can reach areas and shoot from angles that regular cameras can’t. They allow aerial photogra

You can expect some barrel distortion with ultra-wide-angle lenses, but it tends to become less with zoom lenses, as you extend through the zoom range. For direct comparison, this chart shows the relative amounts of distortion for prime lenses and zo

Built for APS-C format DSLRs, it has an ‘effective’ range of 16-38.4mm in full-frame terms. Naturally, there’s quite a lot of overlap with a standard zoom lens but a plus point for landscape shooting is that you won’t need to swap between lenses so o

Launched about six years ago at the same time as the EF-S 10-18mm lens for APS-C cameras (also on test), this was Canon’s first ultra-wide zoom for full-frame DSLRs to feature image stabilization. Indeed, the newly designed stabilizer was made specif

We often want to keep an entire landscape scene as sharp as possible. At medium to long distances, the depth of field stretches about twice as far behind the point of focus as it does in front. So, try to focus on a point that’s about a third of the

Whereas using the hyperfocal distance typically requires a chart that relates focus distances to focal lengths and apertures, ‘zone focusing’ can be more straightforward. While many AF zoom lenses have a focus distance scale, the fixed focal length o

Tokina was one of the first independent manufacturers of ultra-wide zooms for APS-C cameras, in the shape of its 11-16mm lens which has since been updated. This ‘Pro’ lens is similar in many respects, including its f/2.8 aperture rating, which stays

A problem with landscapes is that the sky can be much brighter than the land beneath. You can therefore end up with the ground looking too dark. The obvious solution is to use an ND Grad filter, which is dark at the top and clear at the bottom. Many

Samyang is known for its well priced manual prime lenses, like the 10mm for crop-sensor cameras that we’re also covering this month. The XP range is something more exotic, consisting of five top-performance manual-focus lenses that have built-in elec

Irix offers a 15mm f/2.4 in two different versions, the Firefly and the Blackstone. The optical path is identical in both, but the pricier Blackstone has better build quality, with a metal, rather than plastic barrel, and an extra weather-seal. The B

Colour fringing caused by lateral chromatic aberration can a pain in landscapes. It’s caused by different wavelengths of light being focused at different points across a plane perpendicular to the path of light through the lens. It tends to be most o

We’ve long been fans of Sigma’s ultra-wide 12-24mm lens, with its extreme max viewing angle. The Mk II edition of the lens was great and the latest ‘Art’ edition is better, gaining a constant-aperture rating of f/4. This newer addition to the Art lin

We’ve kept a close watch on budget when selecting the lenses for this test group, but there are some pricier Canon options available. For APS-C format DSLRs, there’s the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, at £499/$549. However, it’s quite an old lens

For APS-C cameras, the Tamron 10-24mm is the most sophisticated lens for landscapes, with advanced AF and stabilization systems and the best quality of construction, which includes weather-seals. It’s an excellent lens that beats all other options fo

For landscape photography with Canon’s EOS M and R series mirrorless bodies, there are two prime (or zoom) candidates. For APS-C EOS M cameras, use the Canon EF-M 11-22mm f/4-5.6 IS STM, at around £319/$399. Ideally matched to slimline M-series bodie

PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED PRICES QUOTED ARE BODY-ONLY UNLESS STATED Canon EOS cameras Canon splits its EOS DSLR lineup into entry-level, enthusiast and professional ranges; the 4000D is the most basic, the 800D and 77D for intermediat

Key factors to watch out for THE MAIN factors to consider in a lens are its focal length, maximum aperture, and whether or not it’s full-frame compatible. We’ve categorized lenses by focal length range – from wide-angle to telephoto. The larger a len

In the next Canon Skills chapter… ▪ Master the art of infrared imagery ▪ How to capture portrait panoramas with a tele lens ▪ More new advice in our Photoshop CC, Elements and Affinity Photo tutorials ▪ PhotoPlus Apprentice: We head to the Peak Distr

Limited back issues of PhotoPlus print editions are available on our MyFavouriteMagazines secure store at http://bit.ly/getphotoplus. But if you’ve got an iPad, Android, Kindle or Nook tablet, or iPhone or Android smartphone, you can download PhotoPl

I have been a Photoshop user for around 20 years, and there is a comfort in knowing there is a lot more I can do with the software, and a familiarity with the tools. At £10 per month, I don’t think it is aimed at amateurs like me. Your magazine intro

Canon rumours in 2020: what cameras are coming, officially and otherwise! We round up the most credible camera rumours and throw in our thoughts on what the camera makers might do next. More on DigitalCameraWorld.com via quick link https://bit.ly/cam