Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2019 i Digital Camera Magazine

Spending time at nature reserves as a child didn’t spark a passion for birdwatching, but recently returning to one of these locations with a camera was far more enjoyable. Slimbridge Wetland Centre was just one of many places I would visit with my wildlife artist father, sitting silently in a hide while he hunted the next subject with his telephoto. This time at Slimbridge, patience wasn’t a problem, and it was a real buzz when a photogenic bird came into view. I was also lucky to be using the impressive Sigma 60-600mm superzoom, reviewed on page 127. Also this month, there’s a Canon and Nikon full-frame DSLR/mirrorless face-off, 18 pages of photo projects, 16 pages of Practical Photoshop tips, and a festive photo walk. And speaking of which, season’s greetings…

Usually in this feature, we have a professional photographer all to ourselves for the day. This time around, however, it was a real insight and a treat to shadow a real-life shoot for a real, live, commercial brief. The location? An Italian restaurant called Margot (www.margotrestaurant.com), situated in the heart of Covent Garden, London. Margot’s cuisine focuses on quality seasonal ingredients, and service is welcoming yet elegant; but when I arrive in the morning, the main restaurant has been kitted out into a mini photo studio and the first lighting setup is being tested by John Nassari and his team (assistants Emily and Felix). John might be best-known for wedding photography, but today, he wears a different hat. He has been developing a piece of software called Nassari 360 for…

1 “Come prepared on the day of the shoot. Having pre-meetings and site visits will help you to plan the day.” 2 “Have a great team behind you. I have an assistant who’s able to record supporting video and audio.” 3 “Do the right research and think about ways to tell clients stories with different media, such as video, text and links. Make the 360 rich in information.” 4 “Stay calm and focused. The client will know if you’re nervous, and you won’t get the best material.” 5 “Take charge, and be direct to get the shots you want, but don’t be bullish. Everyone needs to work together.” 6 “Make sure that each shot in the panorama is consistent by working in Manual mode and controlling your lighting.”…

Have you ever shot a ‘blood moon’? When it comes to eclipses, total solar eclipses get plenty of attention from astrophotographers; but they are tricky to photograph, last for only a few minutes, and occur only in specific parts of the world. On the other hand, a total lunar eclipse can last for several hours, and is visible to everyone on the night-side of Earth. A total lunar eclipse occurs when Earth gets between the sun and the moon, which can only happen during a full moon. As the moon passes through the Earth’s deepest shadow – something it misses most months – sunlight passing through the planet’s atmosphere is projected onto the moon. The physics is similar to the colour of the sun during a sunset, and it causes…

Given the need to shoot frames quickly, it’d be wise to use one of the camera’s semi-automatic exposure modes. Shutter Priority allows the easiest control of shutter speeds, while the camera sets the aperture. When using longer lenses, it’s imperative to follow the Reciprocal Rule to avoid camera shake. The choice of metering mode will be influenced by the subject: for animals largely filling the frame, use Matrix or Pattern; for subjects that are smaller in the frame, where the other areas of the image are less important, choose Spot. Select the White Balance preset that’s most suited to the shooting conditions, and switch the camera into back-button focus mode. Finally, for moving subjects, use predictive focus (below) and enable burst shooting, within the limits set by your camera and…

Are you fortunate enough to have a compelling array of birds feeding from your bird table? Then why not give your images a bit of a lift by adding some fill-in flash? For these images, I popped a flashgun to the left of the table; selected high-speed sync for faster shutter speeds; and waited for feeding time, looking along the lens barrel and firing the camera via a remote cable release. After trying out a few different exposures, the flash really brought the final images to life. 1 Hiding at home I set up my improvised bird table hide from a rear window, placed the flash outside and supported the camera and 60-600mm lens on a bean bag. 2 Feeding time Lured by a tasty combo of nuts and seeds,…

Large open spaces, and how time and light changes the way we interpret these spaces, are something I have always had a fascination with. In this image of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, called ‘The Girl in the Yellow Dress’, time seems to be separated into sections: the gallery itself becomes the stage the crowds flow across; the highly distorted girl in the yellow dress seems strangely out of sync with all those around her; and the photographer in the bottom right-hand corner captures the scene. The process of creating this final image started with shooting the background. This required about 10 images, which were then stitched together to create a natural looking low-distortion and high-resolution (135 megapixels) image. Using an exposure of 1/4 sec in order to capture…

Every month two of our resident expert Photoshop experts are challenged to interpret one raw file in any way they see fit. Over the following pages, they reveal their rationale and show how you can achieve their looks… The original raw by Robert Bradshaw This shot illustrates a common situation when you’re shooting landscapes: capturing detail in both the bright sky and the darker terrain beneath. Robert has chosen to underexpose the ground; the challenge for our experts is to recover the detail from the raw file. James Abbott James specialises in landscape and portrait images, and is an advanced Photoshop user. Raw warrior 1 wants to create… A moody ‘blue hour’ scene Jon Adams Jon is a professional photographer and writer. He also provides one-to-one and small-group image-editing tuition.…

Mirrorless cameras look set to have continued their rise in popularity over the festive season, and it’s a safe bet that just a few of them figured on Christmas present wishlists. Here at Digital Camera, we’re always keen to know what keeps people pressing their shutter buttons, so thought we’d invite some DSLR-toting readers to shoot some street photography using a compact mirrorless camera with a big reputation: the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mk II. In a festive take on our established Scavenger Hunt formula, we based the afternoon around Bath’s Christmas market and included the Bath Abbey Tower Tour – a climb up 212 steps – so the participants could shoot some cracking aerial views. Nine lucky readers would each be issued with an OM-D E-M1 Mk II, a 12-40mm…

Our reader Kory Bumgardner This is a captive Arctic fox that I photographed on a wildlife workshop in Montana. It was a beautiful day with lots of snow and sun. With three different foxes to photograph, I decided I wanted to focus on one at a time. I used my Nikon D850 with the 70-200mm lens at 185mm, and an exposure of 1/1,250 sec at f/5 and ISO 320. These guys move so fast that they are quite tricky to photograph, but I was so happy when he turned toward me and got this shot. I wanted to give him plenty of room to breathe within the frame. Our expert Andrew James What a great shot and – captive animals or not – still a tricky one to get right…

www.sigma-imaging-uk.com Nicknamed the ‘Bigma’, Sigma’s original 50-500mm super-telephoto lens was launched back in 2001, updated in 2006, and revamped in 2010 with the welcome addition of optical stabilisation. It was renowned for being a big, heavy lens – but the new 60-600mm Sport is noticeably larger and nearly 40 per cent weightier, at 2,700g. That’s almost as hefty as the Sigma 160-600mm Sport lens. Like the preceding 50-500mm lenses, the new edition has a massive 10x zoom range. Its main selling point is that you can shoot at any focal length from standard to super-telephoto, at the flick of a wrist, without needing to swap the lens on your camera. It’s ideal when you need to react quickly to shifting shooting opportunities, especially in action sports and wildlife scenarios. Beyond…

Nikon Z 7 £3,399/$3,396 (body only) An SLR killer from Nikon? www.nikon.com Virtually identical in price and megapixel count, the Z 7 matches the established D850 for capturing ultra-fine detail and texture. In practical terms, it edges ahead, with a 24-70mm f/4 kit lens that’s scarily sharp across the entire image frame, and highly effective five-axis IBIS to keep everything steady. Naturally, there’s no mirror-slap to cause unwanted vibrations, which can cause a noticeable degradation in sharpness with such high-resolution cameras. The hybrid phase/contrast-detection autofocus system incudes 493 phase-detection points, arranged across a much larger area of the image frame than the D850’s 153 points. For autofocus speed, the Z 7 feels as fast as the D850 in the latter’s regular viewfinder-based shooting, and massively faster than using the D850…

It’s no use having excellent camera skills if you don’t know how to work with people Keep them at ease “You can be technically the best photographer, but have poor social skills that make the subject unconfident. I like to show subjects the work as we do it. That way they feel elated and relaxed.” Relate to the subject “When you know how to use light, the focus on the shoot should be on the subject relationship, not the technical challenges which will distract you. A good portrait is all about the rapport you build with the subject.”…

10 things you can shoot this month, from moody food photos to snow globes and festive wonderlands If you have a printer, a spiral-binding machine and a ton of patience, you can try to create your own calendar at home. But we opted for the easier option and got a printing company to make one for us! Whitewall (https://uk.whitewall.com/photo-calendar) is one of the best out there, and on this occasion we used its services. You will be able to find cheaper options than the calendar we chose, but try to get a sample of the print and paper quality before you commit: with this type of product, you really want your images to shine, and compromising on these aspects would be a mistake. We couldn’t decide on just one genre…

With the festive season upon us, what better way to capture a snowy scene than inside a globe! For our snow globe we used a display case and an image we shot on Dartmoor, plus a little touch of Photoshop. You can get a display case similar to ours from many places; after a quick Google, we found a near-identical one from Ikea that is only a few pounds. If you don’t want to spend any money, you can see what you have lying around at home: this effect will still work with an upside-down drinking glass. For the scene inside, we decided to convert our image to monochrome, as this adds a touch of surrealism and looks great with the snow effect. To take the shot of our display…

1 Be mindful of where you tread Take your time when you arrive at a location. There’s only one thing more annoying than footprints in fresh snow – and that’s your own footprints in fresh snow. Stay well back and survey the scene in front of you before rushing in. 2 Shoot in raw The camera’s white balance settings are likely to get confused in high-contrast winter scenes, but shooting in RAW mode enables you to correct this during the processing stage. The camera’s built-in metering is also easily confused by all that bright snow. Eexpose slightly to the right but without clipping any highlights – the last thing you want is an image of grey snow. 3 Shoot all day Unlike summer months, the low angle of the winter…

Few photographic subjects are more rewarding, and challenging, to capture than wild animals. Perhaps it’s because they’re so unpredictable, often appearing only fleetingly – and when they do, you can’t direct them to pose the way you want. Successful wildlife photography is therefore as much a test of persistence as having the camera skills to get the kind of images you want. But preparation is key, as always, so there are ways of taming some of the more random variables involved in this field. Over the next 10 pages, we’ll share techniques, tips and strategies for making magical animal captures.…

Given the typically long distances between the camera and your subject, wildlife photography is an area that requires a lot of magnification. Popular lens choices will therefore include telephoto lenses (a 100-400mm, for example) or fast prime lenses (a 500mm or a 600mm), but the latter command hefty price tags. Again, it may be wiser to hire one to see which type suits your needs best. We used two lenses to shoot this feature’s images: a Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 IS USM and a Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sport. Weighing just 780g, the Canon can easily be carried in a small camera bag and hand-held, even with an extender. (See below.) The Sigma tips the scales at 2.7kg, but its 10x magnification means that this one lens will…

Sharpening and noise reduction are two of those rather boring but nonetheless essential image-editing tasks we all need to master if we want the best photographic results. They’re something to be done swiftly and without fuss, so that we can get on to more creative edits – so it helps to speed up this rather mundane process if you know exactly which tools to use, and how to set them. Camera Raw’s Detail panel is the best tool Photoshop offers. Helpfully, it’s divided into two logical sections: sharpening and noise reduction. It makes sense that these appear together: in a way they’re two sides of the same coin. Over-sharpening can amplify image noise, and excessive noise reduction can soften details. There’s no magic formula for finding the right balance between…

For the Great Festive Photo Walk, our nine readers used an Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mk II with an M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12?40mm 1:2.8 PRO lens. They were quickly able to get to grips with controls they weren’t used to and take compelling, creative shots. They also appreciated the electronic viewfinder and the cameras’ compact size. That’s what Olympus’s OM-D range of cameras is all about. Each is built to deliver brilliant image quality, high speed, pinpoint precision and a host of creative options. OM-D cameras are smaller and lighter than equivalent SLR models, helping to make your photography more spontaneous. This is married with a timeless design aesthetic that makes an OM-D camera easy to use. Our readers weren’t the only ones who had the chance to use an OM-D…

Our reader Shari Barker The day was full of white beaches, red rocks and deep blue skies, plus this lone tree standing out on the cliff. The colours were so brilliant that I wanted to capture them to remember the amazing natural colours of the landscape that we were experiencing. This was taken at midday, as we were only in this area for a few hours during our travels. It was taken with my Pentax K70 using an exposure of 1/200 sec at f/14 and ISO 200. I also used a polariser to enhance the blue sky. Our expert Andrew James The reason we generally favour low-light landscapes is for the softer light and the way low sunlight helps to accentuate the shapes and textures of the natural world. But…

www.nikon.com We’ve already reviewed the amazing Nikon Z 7 (in Digital Camera 208), with its high-resolution 45.7MP sensor, sophisticated phase-detection autofocus, high-speed continuous shooting and 4K video, but we’ve also been itching to get our hands on the much cheaper and more enthusiast-orientated Nikon Z 6. This camera offers a lower 24.5-megapixel resolution and not quite as many AF points as the Z 7, but it’s less than two thirds the price, offers a wider ISO range, full-frame (no crop) 4K video and an even faster 12fps frame rate. The Nikon Z cameras use a new lens mount, but Nikon is also selling an FTZ mount adaptor that lets you use any existing current Nikon lens without restriction. It currently adds around £100/$150 to the cost of the camera when…

Rather like buses, you wait ages for a Canon or Nikon full-frame mirrorless camera, then two turn up at once. The EOS R and the Z 7 are very much like compact versions of the highly acclaimed EOS 5D Mark IV and D850 SLRs, respectively. If mirrorless cameras are the future of photography, then that future is just about here. The bigger question is: if you’re buying a new camera right now, what’s the best option? With no reflex mirror, the EOS R and the Z 7 have electronic rather than optical viewfinders. These preview the effect of exposure settings, as well as an instant review of shots, but some will still prefer an optical viewfinder, especially when panning or tracking erratically moving objects. Other differences might be less obvious,…

We wouldn’t say that the Z 7 is ‘better’ than the D850, but it does feel fresher and more exciting. Both have a very high megapixel count, but the Z 7’s lack of a flip-up reflex mirror reduces vibrations, maximising the potential to capture ultra-fine detail and texture. A further help is the built-in five-axis stabiliser, which can also work in conjunction with optical stabilisation in VR lenses. A more surprising bonus is that the Z 7 delivers noticeably cleaner image quality at high ISO settings. The extra-large lens flange, especially compared with Sony E-mount cameras, is also very evident. The diameter is almost matched by the EOS R, but Nikon’s flange is physically closer to the sensor, and there’s no low-pass filter. In the SLR camp, the D850 wins…

DJI Mavic Air £769/$799 www.dji.com The Mavic Air is a stunning technical achievement, and an incredibly capable drone that could well be the only flying camera you’ll ever need. With front, downward and rear-facing distance sensors, the drone can identify obstacles and not just warn the pilot, but also plot a course to avoid them. The Air’s maximum 10km range is very impressive, and DJI’s smartphone app includes some cool effects. All this computing power does come with a downside. The battery life is a quoted 21 minutes, and is somewhat less in real-world conditions. Unfolding the Air is also surprisingly tricky. As with other DJI drones, an extra Fly More pack is available, which bundles useful extras like a case and spare batteries – but you’ll need to part…

When we were lucky enough to talk to the celebrated (and very busy) National Geographic contributor and ocean conservationist Paul Nicklen, he’d just got back from three weeks in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, and was heading out again the next day to capture one of the biggest sockeye salmon runs in the world. Born to Ice is an apt title for Paul’s latest photo book. He was raised on Baffin Island, Nunavut, and grew up amid the ice fields and seas of northern Canada. The Arctic is in Paul’s blood – and because of this, witnessing the polar regions through his lens is authentic and moving. He’s well-qualified to portray the impact of climate change on the polar regions and their inhabitants – yet does so with hope. In the…

1 Olympus PEN-F This is the compact camera John uses to shoot 360 panoramas. A 12mm lens is attached, to capture the wide angle of view he needs. 2 Olympus E-M1 Mark II John loves working with a more discreet and quiet mirrorless body. The OM-D E-M1 weighs just 600g; John carries two, using the second as a backup. 3 Olympus M Zuiko 25mm f/1.2 Pro On this shoot, John favoured shooting with the fast and light 25mm lens. This lens is the equivalent of a 50mm focal length on a full-frame camera, which is a natural view to the human eye. 4 Olympus flashgun A Cactus flash receiver mounts to the hotshoe of John’s camera, and he uses this to trigger an Olympus flashgun with wireless functionality off-camera. 5…

Whitewall has an easy and intuitive program to use online to create your own photo calendar. After going to http://uk.whitewall.com/photo-calendar simply click the ‘Start designing’ button, then pick your style and paper. Once these have been selected, it will automatically open into the main program where you can build your calendar. Here you can upload all your images (click Computer, or just drag and drop), and alter text styles and layouts. We’d advise you not to go too overboard and stick to the templates, as really you want the images to speak for themselves. If you have very large images, you may need to resize them if you cannot upload them. Once everything is in the correct place and you’re happy with the final product, go to the checkout –…

Munich-based photographer and designer Tom Hegen has a distrinctive take on the landscape genre. Tom usually works from an aerial perspective, documenting our impact on nature and the land; for this special project, though, Tom photographed Burning Man, the festival that sees a temporary city being constructed in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. Thousands of people gather here every August for a spiritual experience. Rather than a festival with music and entertainment, this event is described as a cultural movement where the participants live in a decommodified space and explore, collaborate, build and create together. At the end of the event, the city is completely removed: not a trace is left. Shooting in the desert is by no means an easy task. For starters, fine sand particles whipping through…

As the holiday season is in full swing, we thought it only fitting to give this month’s Facebook challenge a festive theme. Therefore ‘That Festive Feel’ is the title to our shooting challenge – and we want to see what amazing photographs you can come up with. It could be that some festive food and a plate of delicious mince pies sprinkled with icing sugar take your interest, or that you want to have a play around with the bokeh effect and some twinkly tree lights. If you’re keen on portraiture, excited children make great subjects to capture. Festive doesn’t just refer to Christmas: it has a wider celebratory and joyful meaning, so you’re free to interpret the theme however you see fit. Whatever festive images you capture, be sure…

So you’ve started thinking about a suitable camera and lens combination for photographing wildlife. If some of the kit is more specialised than what you currently shoot with, hiring in what you need allows you to try before you buy, and refine your choices. Other accessories we’ve mentioned include a tripod and head that can take the weight of your camera plus a long lens. As space in hides at nature reserves can be limited, it’s also worth considering a monopod to rest the camera on. They’re also lighter and more nimble than a tripod. You could also try a gimbal head. This allows smooth horizontal and vertical movements, making it ideal for panning while tracking animals. But the lightest solution of all, if there’s a horizontal surface available, is…

Hides at nature reserves offer shelter and their windows or openings mean there’s no barrier between the lens and the subject. There is some basic etiquette, though: you must move around quietly, and talking at normal volume can frighten the animals. For going native in a secluded spot, though, why not try a portable hide? Variants include a tent-like structure (pictured) or a shroud that fits over you and your camera gear. Alternatively, a garden-facing window or a car seat will make a makeshift hide for wildlife photography.…

In my new book, Noor: Queen of Ranthambhore, Aditya ‘Dicky’ Singh and I talk about Noor’s killer look. It enabled us to get relatively clean and good portraits of her as she looked right at us. When taking portraits, the trick is to keep everything simple: the main subject must be the highlight. Dicky and I have learned to be flexible when we photograph tigers: sometimes they’re close, sometimes far away, so I use a combination of the Canon EOS-1D X Mk II and EOS 5D Mk IV bodies, with lenses including a 24-70mm, 100-400mm, 200-400mm and 500mm. First, you need a decent depth of field to get sharpness from nose to ears, balanced with the need to keep the background relatively diffuse. One trick to help this is to…

You may have heard the term ‘circle of confusion’ bandied about when depth of field is being discussed. This term helps to describe why some parts of an image will be sharp, some will be ‘acceptably sharp’ and others will be out of focus. The idea is that a single point on the subject only appears as a point on the image if it’s perfectly in focus. If it’s not, the point appears as a circle in the picture. Rather than showing a sudden drop-off from sharpness to blur, there’s more subtlety in the transition. The amount of blur in the out-of-focus areas varies, and the objects that are just outside of the depth of field are still recognisable, even if they’re not pin-sharp.…

If you use a large aperture in very bright light, your camera may not be able to set a shutter speed that’s fast enough to prevent the image being overexposed. Fitting a neutral-density (ND) filter on the lens, however, will reduce the amount of light and bring the shutter speed within the camera’s range.…

Winner MIchael Epel ENTER THE TRAVEL CATEGORY TODAY! Enter the Travel category today at www.photocrowd.com/dcpoty Enter our competition now and win brilliant prizes! Now is your chance to bag some amazing prizes and test your photographic skills to the limit. Digital Camera Photographer of the Year is a major competition to discover exciting and talented photographers. With some great prizes to be won (courtesy of mpb.com, Rohan, Sony, Rotolight and Cewe), pro judges will choose winners across themed categories, as well as the overall winner. You can enter as many categories as you like! Sponsored by mpb.com Easy photography kit trading MPB.com is changing the way that photographers trade equipment online, forever. Open to EU and US customers, it offers a hassle-free and secure process for sellers, and makes buying…

FREE! 23 image grids on your disc When you start exploring a photographic subject up close, you’ll find a number of different angles and compositions you could capture to show its details. But by picking out small areas, you can end up shooting intriguing abstracts that don’t reveal the entirety of the subject. The idea of an image grid is to combine all these views in a multi-image presentation: while none of the individual pictures shows the whole subject, the grid gives an intimate portrait of the whole item. Image grids offer a fascinating approach to all kinds of subjects, from portraits and architecture to still-life – and once you have your detail pics, you get a second dose of creativity in arranging them. To make life easy, we’ve designed…

It’s often said that less is more, and this maxim could be one of the secrets of many photographers’ success. Every image has a starting point – an idea or observation that’s then actioned to capture the image you had in mind with the most appropriate technique – and the same goes for editing. The main difference between these two stages of the image-making process is that editing opens up a plethora of options: black-and-white, colour toning, detail enhancements and creative blur are just a few effects you can choose to apply to your shots. But how do you keep things simple? One way is to use a preset as a starting point, and this is exactly how we’re going to approach two of the four effects we’ll be covering…

Wildlife Photographer of the Year is in its 54th year, and is a showcase for the world’s best nature photography. This year’s winning images were selected from over 45,000 entries across 95 countries. The competition is run and developed by the Natural History Museum, and the exhibition is now open at the museum. For more, see www.nhm.ac.uk ‘Pipe Owls’ by Arshdeep Singh, India Winner, 10 Years and Under Huddled together at the opening of an old waste-pipe, two spotted owlets look straight into Arshdeep’s lens. Framing the pair off-centre and using a shallow depth of field has produced a characterful portrait of a species well-adapted to urban life. ‘Bed of Seals’ by Cristobal Serrano, Spain Winner, Animals in Their Environment As a group of crabeater seals dozed, Cristobal was positioned…

Ian must spend a lot of time outside: he’s met three other coastal walkers over the last 20 years. I meet him outside his cottage by West Loch Tarbert. “How heavy’s your pack?” he asks. “You had any trouble? Do you have waterproofs? I’m a nosy bugger, ain’t I?” He heads inside to show me his 1988 copy of The Guinness Book of Records, which includes a photo of record-breaking coast-walker Helen Krasner with his nieces in front of the cottage. The off-track coast heading north of Ardpatrick Point is the most hostile I’ve yet encountered. Its pretty appearance disguises sharp, narrow bands of rock, like upturned axe heads that run against the grain of travel. Rain and seaweed make the lower shore too slippery to walk along. Chest-high bracken…

Photographed on a very sunny day, this flying seagull image has been overexposed because of the amount of light striking the lens. This means that the bright blue sky behind has lost its intensity, and we have some blown highlights around the bird’s bright white feathers. But because it was taken in raw, we might be able to pull some detail back into the feathers and rescue this image. In either Lightroom Classic or Camera Raw’s Basic panel (these two Adobe programs essentially have the same editing tools), we can pull the Highlights and Whites Sliders to the left until we have those highlights under control. 1 There might still be a little brightness on the head, but as long as it is within the range of the Histogram we’ll…

Back in black The new Leica Q-P offers an understated take on Leica’s classic full-frame compact Another month, another new version of the Leica Q. Last issue we looked at the attractive but quite attention-grabbing Khaki Edition – but the Q-P is much less likely to turn heads. Leica’s classic red dot logo has been replaced by the word ‘Leica’ in an elegant script engraving on the top plate, and the camera boasts a hard-wearing matt-black paint finish – both of which are less likely to draw attention to the fact that you’re carrying £4,100 worth of kit. The ‘finest’ brown leather carrying strap may be more of a giveaway. Under its inky skin, the Q-P offers the same specification and performance as other Q bodies, including a 24MP CMOS…

www.nikon.com The D3500 is the latest version of Nikon’s entry-level DSLR. It’s effectively an update to the evergreen D3400, a starter DSLR that’s been a long-term favourite. The D3500 will usually come with a lightweight 18-55mm AF-P kit lens, which has a retracting mechanism to make it more portable. This camera is designed specifically for beginners, with simplified controls and a built-in Guide Mode to help new users learn the basics. But it’s also compatible with a wide range of lenses from Nikon and third-party makers, and has a good enough specification to please enthusiasts as well as beginners. Inside, the D3500 has a decent 24.2-megapixel APS-C sensor. It also has an unusually good 5fps continuous shooting speed; and while you don’t get 4K video, it can shoot Full HD…

Canon EOS R £2,349/$2,299 (body only) A good buy, or a missed opportunity? www.canon.com Price-wise, the EOS R is pitched between the 6D Mk II and the 5D Mk IV. It has a practically identical megapixel count to the latter, and a newer-generation image processor than both. Headline attractions include an upgraded version of Canon’s Dual Pixel AF autofocus system with a slightly bonkers 5,565 phase-detection points, covering almost the whole image frame. It can practically see in the dark, with a range stretching down to -6EV, beating all other cameras on test. Handling highlights include a simple yet intuitive interface, with a customisable M-fn bar just above a high-res 3.2-inch touchscreen. It’s the only camera in the group to feature a fully articulated rear screen, which also gives access to…