Table of contents for June 2015 in Digital Camera Magazine

While the road trip tends to be more associated with novels like On the Road and iconic movies like Easy Rider, photographers have long been inspired by the open road’s visual possibilities and promise of adventure. Robert Frank’s The Americans is the obvious example, but Edward Weston also travelled the USA, and Henri Cartier-Bresson recorded his trip through the south and west of the country in 1947. This stunning image was taken by Jakub Polomski during a photographic trip to Patagonia. “It was taken as we were leaving El Chalten in the afternoon,” Jakub explains. “We were lucky with the weather, because it’s very unusual to get such a sunny day in Patagonia. For this image, I used a Canon EOS 5D Mark II SLR with a 17–40mm f/4 lens…

WIN a Canon Pixma Pro-100S printer! www.bit.ly/dc-colorrun The Color Run is a 5km fun run where participants get covered from head to toe with a brightly coloured powder for every 1km they complete! This exciting sporting charity event takes place throughout the summer and early autumn in the UK and is a great opportunity to capture some awardwinning sporting portraits! The Color Run is offering Digital Camera readers privileged access to this year’s events! Not only will you get to shoot the course and participants with full access, but by submitting your two best images afterward, you’ll have the chance to win a Canon Pixma Pro-100S printer! If you’re keen to get involved, you’ll need to email press.thecolorrun@img.com (note the full stop after ‘press’ in that email address) ahead of…

Feeling stuck for inspiration? A new exhibition, André Kertész in Europe, is running at the James Hyman Gallery in London until 13th June, and it’s well worth seeing. Kertész remains one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. His work with the human body was particularly creative, using mirrors to distort limbs, and he also had a keen eye for pleasing geometric compositions in his street work. Brassaï once said: “André Kertész has two qualities that are essential for a great photographer: an insatiable curiosity about the world, about people and about life, and a precise sense of form.” www.jameshymangallery.com Get started today * Whatever you shoot, be more like André Kertész, and try to photograph it in new ways. * Kertész was famous for shooting from unusual…

For this month’s Mission, we want you to head out and shoot sheds and outhouses. This is a great excuse to explore wild locations and find hidden shabby huts to use as your focal point. The taker of the best photo in the judges’ opinion will receive a brand-new Lowepro Transit Sling 250 AW bag. The Crowd Vote winner also receives a special prize. The best images will also appear in an upcoming issue. Win a Lowepro Transit Sling 250 AW backpack! We’re giving away this super-convenient Lowepro camera backpack worth £82 to the lucky winner of our newest photo challenge. For your chance to win one, upload your best ‘sheds & outhouses’ image to Photocrowd at www.photocrowd.com/a/current. (See below for details.) The Transit Sling 250 AW offers flexibility and…

Get your views heard We’d love to hear your thoughts on the magazine and all things photographic! So email us at digitalcamera@futurenet.com or visit us at www.facebook.com/digitalcameraworld STAR LETTER DIGITAL CAMERA STINKS! I regularly buy Digital Camera here in Holland. Last time I did it was wrapped in plastic. At home, I took it out of the plastic – and immediately my eyes and my face reacted. They were badly irritated by the smell from the magazine. Lets say it in plain English: it smells real bad! I left it in another room to release the smell. But even now, several weeks later, it is still not possible for me to read the magazine! It’s a pity that I can’t read it... And besides that, the magazine is more expensive…

When Uncle Bob bought you a pint of cider and asked if you’d photograph his daughter’s wedding, it seemed rude to say no. After all, he knows you’re the photographer in the family, with one of those big digital SLRs and a bag bristling with impressive lenses – so you can’t possibly let him down. But now, in the cold light of day, the thought of shooting a wedding is a little daunting. You’re sitting nervously, contemplating the day ahead – knowing the memories of the day all rest on your ability to harness the technical and creative sides of your photography. But you can take the fear factor out of wedding photos by following this guide to the shots you need to get to tell the story from start…

There’s a lot going on around the ceremony, and you need to keep your wits about you. Wedding guests will be arriving, the groom and best man will be pacing about nervously, and then, of course, the bride makes her grand entrance. You can’t possibly be everywhere, so consult your agreed shot list and prioritise. Once the ceremony starts, you can quietly set about capturing the emotion of it all before it spills out into smiles and laughter outside the church. Pro tip Openeyes Don’t ruinyour hardwork by forgetting that everyone’s eyes must be open, especially ingroup shots.Take several tomake sure.…

With the formalities of the day over, it’s time for everyone to relax and let their hair down – except for the photographer, of course! Not all couples want the official photographer to keep going through the evening, preferring this part to be recorded on the cameraphones of the party-goers. However, this part of the day can yield some really fun photos. Even if you’ve managed with natural light so far, now is the time to grab your flashgun, make sure it’s loaded with fresh batteries, and get down to the dancefloor!…

Process your images in HDR Projects 2 Import images Put your starting images into one folder and open HDR Projects 2. In the top left corner, click the Import Exposure Bracketing button and select your starting images from the folder. A pop-out box will appear. Press the arrow in the bottomright corner to apply the default settings. Edit exposure bracketing Your images will now load into the main editor. From here you can adjust the Exposure Value and Global Weight of each individual image through slider controls. We had a play around with ours, however our combined shot worked best the way the software had set them. Post-processing Click on the Post-Processing button. This enables you to stylise your image, and also convert it to black and white if you…

Digital cameras use phase-detection or contrast-detection as the basis for automatic focusing. Typically, digital SLRs use fast phase-detect AF for viewfinder shooting and slower contrast-detection AF during Live View mode, while mirrorless cameras and point-and-shoots, effectively always in Live View mode, rely on full-time contrast-detection AF. Things aren’t quite so cut-and-dried these days, with camera manufacturers developing a range of hybrid autofocus solutions that combine the two. 1 Incoming light Autofocus needs plenty of light – the more precise AF points can only be enabled using lenses with large maximum apertures that let a lot of light in. 2 Reflex mirror Although this directs most of the light up to the viewfinder, some passes through it to the sub-mirror. 3 Sub-mirror This mirror reflects light towards the AF module towards…

HELP ME LEARN HOW TO USE MY NEW SLR ”My husband recently surprised me with a Nikon D3200 SLR. This is a big step up from my previous Panasonic DMC-LX5 point-and-shoot. “I want to have a better understanding of the basics and also have an idea of what all the buttons and features do! As you can imagine, it’s a bit of a minefield to get my head around.” Kate Self, Chichester FIRST IMPRESSIONS Learning the basics Kate’s husband Ben wrote to Digital Camera as he wanted to surprise her with a day’s tuition. Kate is a beginner who feels overwhelmed by the amount of controls, dials and options on her new SLR. We spent the day at Earnley Butterflies, Birds and Beasts (www.earnleybutterfliesandgardens.co.uk), near Chicester, where I was able…

Spot Healing Brush Tool Unlike the Healing Brush, there’s no need to select a source. It works by sampling the pixels near the point being painted over. As such, it’s quicker to use than either the Healing Brush or Patch tool, and excels at removing marks or blemishes from otherwise clean areas. Patch Tool The Patch tool intelligently replaces pixels with those from a source area. Make a loose selection with the tool around the area you want to fix, then drag the selection to a similar clean area nearby. There are two modes: Normal and Content-Aware. Content-Aware patching is similar to Content Aware Fill, but you get to choose the source area. Clone Tool The Healing tools are very clever, but they’re not perfect. Occasionally they might leave you…

WIN! A One to One day with Charlie Waite worth £750! You’ve just had an insight into Charlie Wait’s talent and photographic principles. Now’s your chance to get Charlie to help you with your own landscape photography, as we offer one Digital Camera reader a One to One tutorial day with Charlie. A One to One day is both an intensive learning experience and an enjoyable day out. Charlie will start by assessing some of your photos before taking you to a variety of locations to shoot, before ending with with a review of the photos you’ve taken during the day. Whether you’re a beginner or have been shooting for years, Charlie’s mastery of composition, light and form will help you enhance your camera skills. The One to One day…

Four Thirds Micro Four Thirds Remarkably simple, the Olympus is the only lens in the test group that has no buttons or switches. There’s not even one for locking the zoom mechanism, although this isn’t a problem as there’s no hint of zoom creep. There’s no optical image stabiliser either, as it relies on in-camera stabilisation from Olympus Micro Four Thirds bodies. Finally, there’s no auto/manual focus switch as this is taken care of by the host camera. The stepping motor autofocus system is optimised for shooting both stills and movies. It’s virtually silent, reasonably quick for stills and gives silky smooth transitions when shooting movies. Multi-coatings are applied to all lens elements to keep ghosting and flare to a minimum and, of the three aspherical elements, one is made…

APS-C Canon EF Nikon F Pentax K Sigma SA Sony A Compared with Sigma’s 18-200mm lens that’s also on test, this one is relatively big and heavy, at 79 x 102mm and 585g. Similar features include motor-driven rather than ring-type ultrasonic autofocus, with the same weaknesses of focus ring rotation during autofocus and the lack of full-time manual override. Both lenses feature a focus distance scale printed on the focus ring, and a macro scale printed on the inner barrel which extends at longer zoom settings. The maximum macro magnification ratio is 0.33x but you can boost this to 0.5x by buying Sigma’s optional close-up filter, developed exclusively for this lens. Neither of the Sigma lenses has a weathersealed mount. While the Sigma 18-200mm features four SLD elements, the 18-300mm…

For our lab tests, we used a Canon 7D Mk II for the Canon and Sigma 18-200mm lenses, and a Nikon D7200 for the Nikon and Sigma 18-300mm lenses, and the Tamron 16-300mm. All three MFT lenses were tested on the same Olympus OM-D E-M1 body. Most lenses dropped in sharpness at the long end of their zoom range, apart from the Panasonic 14-140mm, for which sharpness levels dipped at mid-zoom settings, and the Sigma 18–200mm which maintained fairly even levels of sharpness throughout its zoom range. The Tamron 14-150mm MFT lens was least impressive for sharpness. Low levels of colour fringing proved good in the Olympus and Panasonic lenses. The worst performers were the Nikon 18-300mm and Tamron 16-300mm lenses. The Olympus gave negligible amounts of distortion at any…

How to get your back issues! Got an Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch? Get the free Digital Camera app for your iPad or iPhone at http://bit.ly/DC_app (UK) or http://bit.ly/DCW_app (the rest of the world) then browse through our back issues or buy a subscription using the app. On Android, PC or Mac? Zinio: http://bit.ly/DCW_Zinio Google Play: http://bit.ly/DCW_GoogleP Got some other device? Digital Camera is available for Kobo, Kindle, Nook, Windows 8 and more. Check out all of our partners at the bottom of the page BUY A BINDER FOR YOUR PRINT EDITIONS! Prefer print? Keep your mags together with our binder, which neatly holds a year’s issues www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/photo Issue 164 May 2015 May 2015 Shooting stunning fineart nudes The greatest cameras ever! Elliott Erwitt: the master of mischief Street…

One of the biggest advantages of shooting in raw is the extra detail that’s recorded in an image’s highlights. Compared to JPEGs, there’s no competition. When it comes to weddings, the biggest exposure headache is often balancing out the bride’s white dress with the rest of the scene. Get it wrong and the dress could be horribly blown out. Raw gives you an extra safety net in that you can use the Highlights and Whites sliders in Camera Raw or Lightroom to recover missing detail in blown-out highlights. To recover detail, simply open the image in Camera Raw or Lightroom, then go to the Basic panel. Drag the Highlights slider to the left until you’re happy. Alternatively, apply the fix selectively by painting with the Adjustment Brush. To do so,…

The 50mm lens, or ‘nifty fifty’ as photographers often refer to it, is a versatile lens, and one that many have in their kit bag. One of the reasons why this lens’ focal length is so popular with photographers is that 50mm is about as close as you can get to our own field of vision (on a full-frame SLR body). Although it’s easy to think you need to pack loads of kit to be prepared for every eventuality, this isn’t the case! By limiting yourself to shooting using just one lens for the day you’ll have to come up with creative solutions to photograph your subjects in a different way. Digital Camera editor Ben Brain took nothing but a Nikon D810 and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 lens on a…

Master imageediting in Digital Darkroom See page 77 While excessive compositing in Photoshop has acquired something of a bad name, it’s a perfectly valid means of creative expression, as long you are honest and up-front about what you are doing. Photoshop artists such as Erik Johansson and Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in digital art, creating compelling compositions and fantastic scenes that look eerily real, rather than something from Planet Photoshop. Erik explains how the image below evolved from an idle musing. “One day I thought, ‘What if the power lines could be something else?’ I thought that they could be quite suitable for a big laundry day. I shot some power lines on a sunny day a few years ago in Sweden, then photographed a…

1st and Crowd Vote Sandi Bertoncelj Canon EOS 7D with EF 17–40mm f/4L USM lens; 1/640 sec at f/8, ISO 200 Ben says Photographing sport is not all about high-speed action. The anticipation and atmosphere before the event can be just as powerful and interesting as the moment itself. Sandi has captured a dramatic and spectacular scene. The bright neon colours of the skier enable us to spot them in the open and tough environment. The fact they appear so tiny in the composition reminds us of their vulnerability in the face of nature, but also their toughness as an athlete. From a technical standpoint, this image ticks all the boxes. The photographer has done well to keep an even exposure and not to blow the highlights in the snow.…

Preparation, preparation, preparation! You cannot underestimate the power of getting yourself fully ready. For starters, make sure all your kit is ready to go and clean. Use a blower brush to get dust off all lenses and sensors. And don’t turn up with a camera bag smeared in mud because you used it to take landscapes last week and put it down in the middle of a field. Batteries (including spares) need to be charged – and make sure you have plenty for your flashgun too, as you’ll discover that fresh ones soon lose charge, leaving an embarrassing delay for recycle times. Kit checklist... Check and then double-check you have everything you need: Main camera Spare camera body Batteries (all charged) Flashgun Reflector Lenses, from wide to medium telephoto Memory…

From tiny chapels to big purposebuilt barns, every wedding location is different. If you’ve been able to recce the venue first, this will have helped enormously, but changing weather conditions on the day may mean you need to alter your plans. Have two or three different spaces within the location where you can move the newlyweds around, both for variety and also to combat an unexpected weather conditions, such as strong winds or rain. Pro tip Reflectors Having a reflector to bounce light back onto your couple can make a big difference. It’s not easy to operate one on your own, though.…

High-dynamic-range (HDR) photography is a popular technique with landscape aficionados. The basic principle involves shooting multiple images at different exposure values, then merging them together to create an image with a wider range of tones. This way, you can artfully capture detail in both the shadow and highlight areas of a scene. You’ll need to take several shots (typically anywhere between three and nine), being sure to keep the aperture and ISO values the same. Only change the shutter speed between shots, so the depth of field and noise remain constant. The final images are then merged in imageediting software. There are many different programs you can use to process your images, however, we used HDR Projects 2. (See page 6 for details of your free copy with this issue!)…

Throwing powder paint over a person may result in vivid, dynamic portraits, but clothes, equipment and the floor are likely to end up with a fine dusting of paint, so you’ll need plenty of dust sheets and tarps. You’ll also need a suitable place to shoot. A garage or workshop might be an option; or wait for a dry night, then shoot outside. Powder paint looks incredible when backlit with flash, and if both the timing and the throw are right, you can capture the moment the coloured paint explodes across your subject in perfect clarity. You don’t have to have lots of expensive equipment either – all you need are two or three flashguns (we used three) and a means to trigger them off-camera. Finally, there’s the most important…

1 Phase-detection The light entering the AF module is separated by a microlens, which produces a pair of offset images on the AF sensor. The distance or ‘phase difference’ between the two images is measured and the camera determines whether the lens needs to be focused closer or further and by how much. What’s good: Snappier to acquire focus than contrast-detection AF. What’s bad: AF points are clustered towards the centre of the frame. 2 Contrast-detection Contrast is measured using data taken straight from the camera sensor. It can be more accurate than phasedetect AF, as it isn’t reliant on mirrors, microlenses and AF sensors being in perfect alignment. The principle is that a sharp image is the one with highest contrast, but to determine where the contrast peaks, the…

WATCH VIDEO www.bit.ly/dc165video With this technique, imperfections in texture such as stray hairs and small spots can be corrected independently of messy tonal patches such as blemishes and dark patches. You’ll find a full guide in the video, but here’s a brief outline: Make two duplicate layers named Colour and Texture. Use Filter > Surface Blur on Colour [1]. For Texture, go to Image > Apply Image and set Layer: Colour [2], Blending: Add, Scale 2 and Offset 0, and tick Invert [3]. Then set the blend mode [4] to Linear Light. Now you can Clone and Heal on the Colour layer to remove large blemishes and discoloured skin while preserving skin texture, or switch to the Texture layer [5] to heal smaller imperfections.…

CSC Fujifilm X-A2 > With 16–50mm lens: £419 / $550 > www.fujifilm.com WATCH VIDEO www.bit.ly/dc165video THE SPECS The X-A2 replaces the X-A1 as Fujifilm’s most affordable compact system camera. It differs from other X-series CSCs in that it has a standard (and therefore lower-priced) APS-C format CMOS sensor (with a Bayer pattern filter array and antialiasing filter), rather than an X-Trans CMOS sensor. FEATURES Many of the features of the X-A2 are the same as the X-A1’s. For example, Fujifilm has plumped for the same 16.3MP APS-C format (23.6mm x 15.6mm) sensor and the EXR Processor II image processing engine. Also as before, there’s no viewfinder built-in, so images must be composed on the screen on the back of the camera. This is still a 3-inch 921k-dot device, but the…

Despite being outgunned for zoom range by the newer Nikon and Sigma 18-300mm lenses, as well as the Tamron 16-300mm, the Canon is the outright heaviest lens in the group, and the joint biggest along with the Sigma. Launched in 2008, the Canon looks and feels quite dated. There’s no focus distance scale and autofocus is based on a simple and fairly noisy electric motor. Unlike Canon lenses that feature ring-type ultrasonic or stepping motor system (the latter adopted in the newer 18-135mm STM lens), the focus ring rotates during autofocus and there’s no full-time manual override. On the plus side, the lens features a lategeneration image stabiliser that has a four-stop rating and comes complete with automatic panning and tripod detection. Two UD (Ultra-low Dispersion) elements are fitted to…

Four Thirds Micro Four Thirds Weighing in at just 265g and measuring 75mm in length, this Panasonic lens is even lighter and smaller than the competing Olympus superzoom. It’s also slightly shorter in maximum focal length, equivalent to 280mm instead of 300mm on Micro Four Thirds cameras, but adds optical stabilisation. Panasonic claims a 2x improvement in its Power vs Mega optical image stabilisation system, and it’s certainly a big advantage over the Olympus and Tamron MFT lenses in the group, which have no optical stabilisation at all. The addition isn’t just good news for owners of Panasonic cameras with no built-in stabilisation, as it gives the choice of whether to use optical or sensor-shift stabilisation on other MFT cameras. Build quality feels almost as refined as in the Olympus…

Four Thirds Micro Four Thirds Compared to APS-C and full-frame lenses for various makes of camera, independent lenses for the Micro Four Thirds format are thin on the ground. Indeed, the likes of Sigma, Samyang and Voigtlander only make prime lenses in MFT-fit. This Tamron 14-150mm is the only independently made MFT zoom lens currently available. It equals the Olympus’s extended zoom range but lacks the Panasonic’s optical image stabiliser. It’s compact and lightweight at 64 x 80mm and 285g, although the filter thread is smaller at 52mm. Build quality feels good with a smooth action to both zoom and focus rings, similar to the other MFT lenses on test. Again, there’s no hint of zoom creep but the Tamron includes a zoom lock switch which is absent on both…

1 What is a circle of confusion? A The process of buying a brand-new camera B A term for blurred areas in the bokeh background of a photo C The confusing link between ISO and exposure D A light modifier for creating mind-bending effects 2 My images suffer from haloes. What’s the problem this describes? A I’ve probably oversharpened in Photoshop or Lightroom B Excessive noise correction has made the edges a bit hazy C Poor cloning in Photoshop has recreated a bit of the person’s head where it shouldn’t be D I’m overly obsessed with photographing celestial beings. 3 What, exactly, is ambient light when it comes to photography? A Soft, moody, relaxing light – the term is derived from ambient music B Directional light used to fill in…

It’s unlikely that you’ll have much time to shoot a grey card during a wedding, so the best way to ensure that white balance is correct is to shoot in raw (in JPEG mode the white balance is embedded into the image, while raw files can be altered with no loss in quality) then tweak the white balance later. To do this, open the images into Camera Raw or Lightroom’s Develop module. The Temperature and Tint sliders let you change the white balance, but don’t bother trying to fix colours with them – it’s far easier to grab the White Balance tool from the toolbar, then simply click over a point in the image that you know should be neutral, like a grey suit or white dress. All the other…

Vintage effects are on trend right now and are perfect for wedding photography, because they can lend images a timeless quality. To try it, open the vintage images supplied via www.bit.ly/dc165files (‘vintage_before’, ‘vintage_texture’ and ‘vintage_border’). Grab the Move tool and drag the texture image into vintage_before. Press Ctrl/Cmd+T and resize it to fit, then set the blend mode to Soft Light and Opacity to 40%. Add a Layer Mask and paint with black to tone down the texture over the faces. Next, adjust the tones. Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and set Saturation to about -20, then add a Colour Balance layer and add Cyan and Blue to the shadows, and yellow to the highlights. Use a Curves layer to boost the contrast with a gentle S-shaped curve. Finally, drag…

To combine your shots, you can use the HDR Pro tool built into Photoshop. Our step-by-step below shows you the basic process, and our guide to the right helps you explore the controls in more detail. Depending on the camera, raw images contain pixels that have from about 12 bits of brightness information up to almost 16 bits. An HDR file can hold 32 bits of brightness information on each of the three colour channels. Computer displays can’t handle such a wide dynamic range, so a true HDR image will look very poor in its natural form. To display and use an HDR image we need to ‘knock it back’ to 16 bits. This process is called ‘tone mapping’. We still call it an HDR image, because of the process…

Vasco Da Gama Bridge Emanuel P Aparício Ribeiron www.instagram.com/emanrib United Kingdom 1“This is the Vasco da Gama bridge in Lisbon, Portugal. I spent days studying this spot and the weather conditions to be able to capture this image as I had envisioned it. This place is magic and changes second by second; there are always differences in light and shadows which create some difficulties. Post-processing only involved a slight contrast and adjustment of temperature in Adobe Camera Raw.” Canon EOS 450D with Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens; 180 sec at f/11, ISO 100 The Low Feeling Brian McCready www.brianmccready.com Northern Ireland 2 “I spent most of the afternoon around the shores of Spelga Reservoir in the Mourne Mountains, unable to see more than a few metres in front of…

MISSION FACTFILE Who: Born in 1985, Massimo Branca is an Italian documentary photographer. He graduated in Anthropology with a thesis on the use of photography as a medium for research in social sciences and cultural investigation. What: Since 2009 he’s worked with Collettivo Fotosocial, a collective of photographers who use visual storytelling to produce social change. Where: Massimo has worked in Ecuador and Colombia (2008), Sardinia (2011), Madagascar (2011-2012) and Venice (2011-2014). Since 2013 he’s been working in Bucharest. Kit list: “Fuji X-E1 with 18-55mm f/2.8-4 and 23mm f/1.4 lenses. For other projects, a Nikon D700 with 24mm and 85mm lenses.” More info: www.massimobranca.com Can you tell us how you became a photographer – and why have you pursued documentary photography? I’ve been interested in visual arts such as drawing…

Group shots were once the mainstay of every wedding. The photographer was charged with the time-consuming task of capturing every possible set of family and friends. These days the vogue is for more informal photography, and the endless call for yet another gathering of guests has partially died out. What’s really important here is that you’ve discussed and agreed what will be shot in this way. If you allow a group shot session to turn into a free for all, consisting of everybody asking “Can you just get…?” you’ll end up frazzled, and your shots will suffer. Be polite but firm to keep the day flowing. If you’re shooting a large group, the key is to organise it in such a way that all the guests, as far as possible,…

1Getting started Mount your camera on a tripod and compose the shot. Look for interesting foreground matter and elements to lead the eye through. Make sure the tripod locked down: you don’t want your camera to shift during the exposures. Attach a remote shutter release or set your camera to its self-timer mode. Frame your composition and focus. Once focused, switch your lens to Manual. 2 Camera settings Put your camera into its Manual mode and set the ISO to 100 to keep the image quality at the highest setting. Next, set the aperture to around f/11 to ensure the scene is sharp from front to back, and balance the shutter speed to sit in the centre of the exposure meter (EV 0). Finally, set your camera’s Mirror Lock-Up feature…

My camera has several autofocus modes – how do I know which one to use? Digital cameras typically have three autofocus (AF) modes: one-shot, continuous and automatic. Different manufacturers use different names for these modes, but they all function in the same way. As the name suggests, one-shot or single-shot AF is designed for those times you only want the camera to focus once. Half-press the shutter release button to activate the autofocus and once the camera locks on, it stops focusing. It’s the perfect choice when you’re dealing with stationary subjects. Choose continuous or servo AF when you’re photographing moving subjects. Here, the camera will continuously adjust the focus to keep track of the action. WHAT YOU’LL LEARN THIS MONTH • How to set the right AF mode for…

Q At the moment I am retouching little blemishes in Photoshop, because I am not sure whether it works so well in Lightroom. What do you think? Deepak Singh Andrew says I did exactly what you are doing for years, taking the image worked on in Lightroom into Photoshop in order to make a few final touches to it. Not any more. While Photoshop’s Clone and Healing Brush tools are very sophisticated, for the type of minor blemish ‘cleaning’ I do, I find that Lightroom 5 or 6 do a very good job. To be fair, if you want to clone a large area, I think Photoshop is better suited to the job – but since I have neither the patience or the finesse to ever clone out larger areas…

WIN! A masterclass with Charlie See page 99 * Born in 1949, Charlie Waite is one of the world’s leading landscape photographers. His work is held in collections all over the world, and he has held numerous solo exhibitions. * Charlie has written over 30 books, and is a sought-after public speaker and TV presenter. He became an honorary Fellow of the British Institute of Professional Photographers in 2000. * As well as running courses via his firm Light and Land, Charlie is a competition judge, and is on the judging panel of the USA Landscape Photographer of the Year contest. Surprisingly few British landscape photographers achieve fame beyond their genre, but Charlie Waite is certainly one of them. Thanks to his exhibitions, workshops and TV appearances, Charlie is now…

Digital Camera is brought to you by the UK’s most experienced team of photography journalists, which means you can trust everything you read on our pages, and compare kit with confidence. We believe the best way to test a product is to use it as it was intended. Our real-world testing involves taking equipment on a proper shoot – whether outdoors or in the studio – and using it exactly as you would, to let you know whether it’s fit for purpose. Although scientific data won’t tell you everything about a product, it’s a great way to make comparisons and sense-check our real-world conclusions. We have a series of controlled tests for cameras and lenses that deliver objective benchmarks. Digital Camera is 100% independent – and never swayed by the…

STORAGE From £229 / $249 > www.wdc.com Network-attached storage (NAS) drives enable you to access files wirelessly. With the right set-up a hard drive system with multiple drives rather than just one can ensure all your images are safe if one drive fails. Unlike conventional desktop hard drives, NAS drives plug in through your home network, so you have to connect to them through a browser in order to view, copy and edit files. This system means you can access your files through a smartphone or tablet, and create your personal cloud. If, however, you wish to connect in a more conventional way, the EX2100 comes with instructions on how to ‘map’ the drive – make it appear as a directly connected hard drive. The EX2100 and its four-bay sibling…

THE CONTENDERS 1 Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS, £390 / $590 2 Nikon AF-S DX 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3G ED VR, £600 / $895 3 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-150mm f/4-5.6 II, £550 / $840 4 Panasonic Lumix G 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH Power OIS, £480 / $730 5 Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM | C, £270 / $410 6 Sigma 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM | C, £400 / $610 7 Tamron 14-150mm f/3.5-5.8 Di III, £340 / $520 8 Tamron 16-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD Macro, £480 / $730 Photography can literally be a pain. If you’re exploring a city, rambling around the countryside, or heading to the other side of the world, a weighty bag of cameras, lenses and accessories will soon have you feeling the…

APS-C Nikon F There are currently two Nikon 18-300mm lenses on the market, this newer one having a narrower f/6.3 rather than f/5.6 aperture at the long end of the zoom range. It’s also a lot more travel-friendly than the older lens, being smaller and nearly 300g lighter, at 550g. Like most Nikon lenses, this one features a rubber weather-seal ring on its metal mounting plate. It beats the competing Canon lens by featuring ring-type ultrasonic autofocus, which is reasonably quick, very quiet and comes complete full-time manual override. As usual for this type of system, the focus ring doesn’t rotate during autofocus. Switches are on hand for auto/manual focus, VR (Vibration Reduction) on and off and zoom lock. We experienced four-stop effectiveness from the VR and, unlike the older…

APS-C Canon EF Nikon F Pentax K Sigma SA Sony A Sacrificing a little in telephoto reach can pay dividends when you want to travel light. At 430g and 71 x 86mm, this lens is only about two-thirds of the weight of most 18-300mm APS-C format lenses. An exercise in downsizing, it’s also 180g lighter and 14mm shorter than the first edition of Sigma’s optically stabilised 18-200mm. Part of this reduction is due to the introduction of double-sided aspherical lens elements and a downsized autofocus motor, while a new TSC (Thermally Stable Composite) material used in the lens barrels also plays a part. However, autofocus lacks full-time manual override, and the focus ring rotates while autofocusing. As the lens is quite compact, you need to be careful to keep your…

APS-C Canon EF Nikon F Sony A Pricier than the Canon and both Sigma lenses for APS-C format SLRs, the Tamron undercuts the Nikon, while beating them all in terms of outright zoom range. The Tamron offers a wider viewing angle at its shortest zoom setting than any other lens in the group. In full-frame terms, it has an effective focal length of 24mm in Nikon and Sony mount options, and 25.6mm in Canon-fit. The lens feels robust but it’s actually lighter than all the other APS-C lenses here, apart from the Sigma 18-200mm. Like the Nikon, it has a weather-seal ring on its mounting plate, and it’s the only lens on test to feature a focus distance scale that’s positioned beneath a viewing window. Switches are on hand for…

NOISE REDUCTION Noiseless Pro 1.0 > £36.99 / $49.99 > www.macphun.com Getting around… Noiseless Pro 1.0 Take a closer look at what the interface has to offer 1 Presets This displays the list of preset noise reduction processes shown in the panel below. You just click one to try it. 2 Adjust If you prefer, you can adjust the noise reduction parameters manually and save your own personal custom settings. 3 Amount If you like a preset noise reduction effect but find it a little too strong, you can just wind back this Amount slider. 4 Compare In this split-screen view you can drag the centre bar left and right to ‘wipe’ the noise reduction effect over your picture 5 Toolbar This is where you choose the level of magnification…

Star quality When choosing your favourite images in Lightroom or Bridge, scroll through with the arrow keys, then press Ctrl/Cmd +1-5 to add a star rating. Use the Filter settings to view your favourites. Looking at a freshly shot batch of images is one of the biggest thrills in photography – so much so that in our rush to get at them we tend to skip mundane workflow tasks. It may seem boring, but if you just spend a few minutes applying copyright, keywords and other useful information when you first download the images on your memory card to your computer, it will save you masses of time organising and sorting your images in the long run. Both Lightroom and Bridge have automated features that perform these kinds of tasks…

Often the demanding lighting conditions at weddings make shooting at high ISOs a necessity. This inevitably leads to increased noise, particularly in shadow areas. Camera Raw and Lightroom both have the same excellent noise reduction tools, which can work wonders. The reduction needed will depend on your image, but here are a few pointers... Open your image in Camera Raw or Lightroom’s Develop module and go to the Detail panel. Zoom in to 100%, then start by using the Luminance slider to reduce greyscale noise and the Colour slider to remove any colour noise. Be careful not to push either too far or you’ll over-soften. The two Detail sliders act as a threshold to bring back edges that may have been softened by the Luminance and Colour adjustments. The Contrast…

L ightroom’s Book module is a useful tool, but not just for building photo books. You can choose whether to make a book and send it to Blurb Books (Adobe’s affiliated book producer) or to natively export the templates as PDFs or JPEGs. It’s very easy to make simple album designs using the Lightroom book templates, and then simply print them yourself. Start by making a collection of images (select them, then click the Collections plus icon). Go to the Book module and choose an output option in the Book settings on the right. Click Auto-Layout to set out the book with one image to a page, then customise the layout by dragging images from page to page, or add them from the film strip. Highlight any page, then click…