Table of contents for August 2025 in Digital Camera Magazine

As previously mentioned (many times), I have an ongoing fascination with and research into the tourist gaze, a term coined by sociologist John Urry. I am often drawn to making images where tourism itself becomes the subject. The act of looking, consuming and photographing is enduringly interesting to me. I made this photograph during a frustratingly brief stop in the desert. The meagre duration of the sightseeing stop was set by the highly organised coach tour I’d blagged my way onto as an ‘escort’. While the jaw-dropping moon-like landscape is undeniably worthy of photographic attention, as usual, it’s a tourist in the act of being a tourist that grabs my attention. It’s not a particularly interesting shot and, to be honest, I have too many photos of tourists like this;…

Macro photography is both a great joy and a huge challenge. Macro can give great fulfilment, because we are revealing the fascinating and often beautiful hidden world around us. However, achieving good-quality macro images can be difficult. I’ve been doing it since 2017 and am currently writing a book on the subject, and I often still struggle. But first, what do we mean by ‘macro’? Although the term technically refers to 1:1 magnification, most macro photographers take many of their shots at a lower magnification. So in this article, when I use the term ’macro’ it also includes ‘close-up’. There are lots of potential subjects in macro, such as flowers, fungi, snowflakes, minerals, droplets of oil in water, and household objects. For many, however, the most exciting and fulfilling subjects…

Shooting with a narrow aperture (and a distant background) and orienting yourself so the sensor is parallel to the plane of the insect may be enough to get the subject fully sharp. However, in most cases, this is not sufficient. That’s why so many macro photographers use the technique of focus stacking. The first step is focus bracketing – taking shots focused at different distances, from the front of the subject to the back. In none of these is the subject fully sharp, but within the set, we will have full coverage of sharpness, meaning that there is no part of the subject which is soft in every image. Focus stacking can be done in image editing programs, such as Photoshop or Affinity, or dedicated software such as Zerene Stacker…

1 ‘Kingfisher’ by Daniel Boland “This is a beautiful female kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) on a stone. I love the way the dreamy, out-of-focus background draws the viewer’s attention to the bird.” Instagram: @danielboland79 Digital Camera says: It’s a lovely colour palette, with the muted background enhancing the striking appearance of the kingfisher. The peculiar round stone adds an extra item of interest. 2 ‘Bonesaw’ by Ian Phillips LSWPP “This image was part of a shoot for University Centre Weston in Weston-super-Mare. The character Bonesaw was created by Georgia (@g.w_atristry) for her second-year assessment. I used a Sony A7 IV, a Godox AD300 Pro with a gridded strip box as a kicker and an AD400 Pro with a 90cm octabox as my key light, metered to f/5.6.” Instagram: @ianphillipsphoto Digital Camera says: A…

ENJOY DIGITAL BACK ISSUES DATING FROM 2009!* Read issues 90-296 of Digital Camera on your computer or mobile device when you subscribe! Page 42 *2012 when using Pocketmags iOS users can access our back issues archive dating from 2009 by downloading the Digital Camera app from the Apple App Store (www.bit.ly/app_DCM). Android and desktop computer users can access our back issues archive dating from 2012 by using the Pocketmags app (www.pocketmags.com) or the Pocketmags website. Find out more at: www.magazinesdirect.com/digital-instructions/…

This year marks the Solar Maximum, making it an exciting time for aurora photographers. The sun has an 11-year sunspot cycle and throughout 2025, we’ve been experiencing the peak of activity. Sunspots appear as dark patches on the Sun’s surface – they are actually cooler regions created by powerful magnetic fields. These fields cause solar flares and the coronal mass ejections that we can see shooting into space. When these charged particles reach Earth, they interact with its magnetic field, creating breathtaking auroral displays that photographers love to capture. This heightened solar activity means more frequent and vibrant northern (and southern) lights, which often appear at much lower latitudes. It’s a truly magical time for photography and, for once, there’s no need to travel to Iceland or Norway to see…

OM System OM-5 Mark II Outdoor photography-optimised body gets a range of upgrades, including a dedicated computational photography button for accessing its cutting-edge tech More of a refinement than a radical revolution, the recently announced OM System OM-5 Mark II makes small design tweaks and adds a handful of user-requested features. Maintaining the same 20.4MP Micro Four Thirds sensor and TruePic IX processor as its predecessor, the OM-5 Mark II also has a similar retro look and the same IP53 weather-sealing. But the update makes some key refinements to the camera’s exterior, including a limited edition colour option – sand beige. The Mark II has a slightly larger grip for more comfortable handling, and gets a much-requested USB-C port, but remains a compact 52mm deep and weighs 418g (body only).…

£959/$999 www.viltrox.com It’s not too long ago that I reviewed the Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 Air – an ultra-compact and super-lightweight APS-C format lens with a rock-bottom price tag. The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 LAB that we’re reviewing here is the polar opposite of that. It has an uncompromising design that puts image quality, top-notch construction, high-level performance and exotic handling at the forefront, with relatively little concern about size and weight. Let’s cut to the chase. The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 Lab costs £959 ($999), a lot more than the humble Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 Air at £139 ($179), though it’s understandable as the Lab lens is in a different league. However, while there aren’t many 35mm f/1.2 lenses on the market, I’m reminded of Sigma’s design ethos for…

WANT TO HAVE YOUR SAY? Email us, with ‘Reader letters’ in the subject line: digitalcamera@futurenet.com Eye of the beholder I’m 80 next month and while I still tinker and have three digital cameras, I’m a fairly well-established photographic dinosaur. In my student days, I worked Saturdays and summer holidays in a local camera shop, surrounded by the latest cameras, but mainly I took the developing and printing orders as the customers came in with their 127, 120 and 620 film rolls. These were the days when a Pentax SLR was £50 and a Leica, for the elite of Westcliff-on-Sea anyway, was around £100. I remember that a 36-exposure cassette of wonderful Kodachrome film was 36/9d, or £1.84 in today’s money, processing included. I picked up and learned a bit about…

Helen Bartlett Photographer Working exclusively in black and white, Bartlett is a leading family photographer and a Canon Ambassador. She tells us about her career to date, from page 116 Will Cheung Photographer & writer A fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and the former editor of many photography titles, Cheung is the man behind Camera Clinic, which continues on page 70 Tony North Macro photographer This award-winning photographer speaks at camera clubs and runs a variety of small group and one-to-one workshops. He has written this month’s cover feature. Page 52 Chantal Pinzi Photographer & visual activist A chapter of her long-term project Shred the Patriarchy topped the Sport category at the Sony World Photography Awards 2025. She tells us more about it from page 98 Jon Devo…

To employ the technique of back-button focus, you will need to uncouple the shutter button’s default dual function (a half-press to start the metering and autofocus systems and a full-press to fire the shutter) and delegate metering and autofocus to a button on the rear of the camera. Michal swears by this technique and says he has yet to meet a motorsports professional who doesn’t use it, while Joel has also adopted it. So what are the benefits? The photographer feels more in control, with camera functions taken care of by different fingers, meaning you’re less likely to make the wrong input under pressure.…

Art of the race “This photo is a great example of how ICM can turn a photo into art, capturing the sense of speed and motion. Use shutter speeds between 1/3 sec and 1/8 sec, pan with the car, anticipate the shutter closing and flick the camera ahead of your target before it shuts.” Colours of speed “Using long exposure and ICM together, you will need an ND filter to prevent overexposure. Use a shutter speed from 0.3 to 1 sec and find a spot with some colour or texture. Pan with your subject for half the exposure then move the camera up or down with different flicks, spins or twists. This technique requires lots of practice, but it’s worth it.” Frame the action “Use the environment to your advantage…

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Even before you take the shot, there is the considerable challenge of finding your subject – not to mention getting close enough without it flying away. Understanding locations, insect behaviour and how to approach insects are key to getting into the right position to capture a good image. Locations I look for spots that are fairly ‘wild’ – not overly manicured – with an abundance and diversity of plants, especially wildflowers. Many photogenic species, such as butterflies, flies, beetles and bees, are pollinators. Dragonflies and damselflies spend their larval stage in water and lay their eggs there, so ponds and rivers are good places to find these creatures. Chat to anyone interested in nature and join related Facebook groups or nature societies. Butterfly Conservation, for example, will have advice on…

Good exposure is vital in all genres of photography, of course, but macro has its own challenges. One is achieving a fast enough shutter speed to avoid blur due to movement; another is lighting the subject in a way that not only allows for adequate exposure of the image, but which is flattering to the subject. “If you are shooting insects in flight, you need shutter speeds in the thousandths of a second range” Shutter speed With still insects, I usually aim for a shutter speed in the region of 1/100 to 1/200 sec; this is generally sufficient to avoid motion blur. However, if you are shooting insects in flight, everything changes: we now need similar speeds to those required for birds, in the thousandths of a second range. This…

This month: Urban life It’s time to take to the streets with your camera and enjoy city culture Landscape shooters shoot rural scenes and nature enthusiasts focus on the natural world but what exactly do urban photographers have in their viewfinders? If we take the literal meaning, ‘urban’ covers everything relating to the characteristics of a town or city. In practical terms, that means people, buildings, structures, traffic and more. It’s a huge subject with untold potential for photos and creative interpretation, but given the enormous scope, it makes sense to funnel down what you want to shoot. This also depends on how you work – you may prefer a more relaxed, even random approach and shoot anything that takes your fancy. On the other hand, you could set some…

GET TO KNOW… DxO PHOTOLAB Page 88 MEET YOUR TRAINERS Edit like a pro with their expert insights James Abbott Specialising in landscapes and portraits, James Abbott is an advanced Photoshop user and has created hundreds of tutorials. James Paterson With over a decade as a writer and photographer, James Paterson knows which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter most. Sean McCormack A photographer and writer based in Galway, Ireland, Sean McCormack is the author of books including The Indispensable Guide to Lightroom CC. Wendy Evans LRPS The author of over a dozen books on the subjects of photography, CGI and Photoshop, Wendy Evans has used Photoshop since version 3.0.…

Sometimes less is more in Photoshop, and although some techniques are unavoidably complicated, some are so simple they almost feel like cheating. While some may argue that using Photoshop itself is a form of cheating, let’s not forget all the tricks photographers could get up to in the darkroom, as well as the ability to choose films with different colour balances and saturation levels. With this in mind, we’re going to look at techniques that are based around hue, saturation and colour to create strong effects that require little intervention to achieve them using Adjustment Layers. No Blending modes this month; we’re going to focus purely on the controls available in the Adjustment Layers we’ll use. These effects can be applied to pretty much any image, so they aren’t subject-specific.…

£1,699/$1,999 (body only) explore.omsystem.com There’s a lot to say about the OM System OM-3, but the two most pertinent things are that it’s the PEN-F successor Olympus fans have been waiting nearly a decade for, and also that this camera out-Fujifilms Fujifilm. The OM-3 has the flagship firepower of the OM-1 Mark II, with its cutting-edge computational photography. It has the handcrafted creativity of the Olympus PEN-F, with the ahead-of-its-time Creative Dial. And it has the iconic shape and silhouette of its namesake, the Olympus OM-3, with its timeless design by Yoshihisa Maitani. It’s the PEN-F sequel we’ve been waiting for since 2016, and a camera that gives Fujifilm’s finest a run for their money. Film simulations, computational photography, algorithmic autofocus… the OM-3 is a potent creative tool. Naysayers will…

£110/$120 (new); £70/$80 (upgrade) www.dxo.com Known for innovations such as its precise lens correction profiles and AI-powered DeepPRIME noise reduction, DxO has placed both at the heart of its latest PureRAW. Though too specialised to be considered among the best editing software applications, it is designed to be used alongside them. Essentially, it’s for tuning up raw files ahead of editing. DxO PureRAW 5 can be used as a standalone batch processing tool for converting raw files into fully corrected jpegs, or as Linear DNG files that can be used like regular raw files in Lightroom, Capture One and other photo editors. It can be used within Lightroom by exporting unprocessed raw files. Apply PureRAW’s corrections and denoising and the processed images are returned to Lightroom in one simple process.…

ENTER THIS URL www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc297 Enter the URL www.digital cameraworld.com/dc297 into the destination bar of your internet browser – we’re using Google Chrome, but other browsers work in a similar way. Please do not enter it in any search field or search bar. This will take you to a page on our website. JUST CLICK THE HIGHLIGHTED LINK Click on the link labelled ‘Download the files for Digital Camera 297’ and your download will start, delivered from our own server. Please override any browser warnings about downloading from a non-secure source – our server is safe! ACCESS YOUR FILES Open the. zip In your Downloads folder, or wherever you chose to download your files, double-click the dcm297-files.zip file icon. When it expands, double-click on Digital Camera 297 files, and the download content…

1 Avoid ‘photo holes’ Get to know the layout of the circuit – walk around the track before the race starts. Don’t be tempted to stay at ‘photo holes’, gaps in the fencing. Avoid them, unless you want the same shots as everyone else, says Michal. 2 Lose the fencing The merest trace of a safety fence will spoil an otherwise great photo. To make fences disappear in static shots, get up close, use the widest aperture (the smallest f-number) and shoot the cars head-on rather than sideways. 3 Don’t fail to prepare …otherwise, you can prepare to fail. Make sure your clothing covers all eventualities for changeable weather, pack spare batteries and memory cards – even a second camera and lens. It’s a long day, so pack some snacks and water.…

1 Starting settings Select Manual exposure for total control of the settings. Start at 1/80 sec and gradually go down to 1/15 sec (Michal’s ‘sweet spot’ for fences). Tuck your elbows in and pan sideways, firing the shutter button as you do so. 2 Now go slower For his typical panning shots, Michal uses shutter speeds of 1/15 sec or 1/10 sec, and encouraged Joel to do the same. Joel soon found that 1/15 sec was working for him, with a small aperture (f/22) to manage light levels. 3 Try the ICM look… For his intentional camera movement technique, where he adds blur to create an artistic image (page 17), Michal will go even slower – to between 1/3 sec and 1 sec – and attach a neutral density filter to avoid overexposure.…

1 | CAMERA KNOW-HOW Double trouble Learn how to create double exposure images in-camera, with Wendy Evans At most camera clubs, there will be some stick-in-the-mud film user telling everyone how they used to create double exposures by not winding the film on and how easy and creative it all was without having to mess about in Photoshop. Let’s put a stop to all that film-was-great nonsense (it wasn’t) by coughing dismissively and pointing out that it’s now easier to do it with your digital camera. All you need is one that supports multiple exposures and an idea of two things that you want to combine. The best way of doing this is to make sure one of your exposures features a prominent silhouette that the other image can go…

About the competition The Event Photography Awards was founded in 2014 to celebrate the (often unsung) photographers who contribute so much to the validity, sustenance and marketability of the events industry. The judging panel consists of over 60 event industry leaders, augmented by editors of trade and photography magazines, including Digital Camera. The overall winner is selected from all the category winners. EPA 2025 is the 11th edition of the not-for-profit exercise and attracted well over 2,000 entries from more countries around the world than ever before. www.eventphotographyawards.com…

As the headline of this feature (and the title of my forthcoming book) suggests, for me, photography is an art. In macro, my main goal is to depict the beauty of nature and evoke a sense of joy and wonder in the viewer. The technical aspects covered here will go some way to producing this effect, but a truly beautiful image needs to go a step further; it needs to be composed well. It should have a harmonious arrangement of elements within the frame, in terms of shapes, sizes, angles, poses, colours and tones. There should be no elements to distract the viewer from the subject or muddy the overall effect. Some composition errors can be fixed in processing, but it’s better to get things right in camera. Choice of…

We’ve all been there – you get set up in the perfect spot, carefully compose and then, at the moment of pressing the shutter, someone unknowingly walks into your frame. That’s what happened to me at Iceland’s popular Skogafoss waterfall. Thankfully, it’s fairly easy to remove unwanted objects from your photos and, with a new Photoshop/Lightroom update, people can now be detected and covered up automatically. There was a time when retouching photos like this could be a painstaking and lengthy process of cloning and healing, but now we can use AI to generate new pixels to cover up these distractions. The AI-powered Distraction Removal feature employs machine learning to clean up your images in seconds. It’s especially effective in scenes like this, where attempting to clone or heal rough…

From plucky challenger when it released its first full-frame mirrorless camera, the Alpha 7 in 2013, to the dominant force in camera sales and sensor manufacturing, Sony flipped the industry on its head when it created its Alpha line of cameras. The range eventually knocked DSLRs off their perch around 2020-21 and then snatched top spot in the consumer and professional camera segments from Canon and Nikon. Sony’s journey to the top of the pile has been steady and commanding. But are we getting to that inevitable point that all champions reach once their titles have been defended multiple times and the hunger for challenge has waned? “Sony’s unrivalled share of the sensor sales market means that much of its competition in the camera world are also customers” This October,…

£960/$900 www.canon.co.uk The Canon PowerShot V1 is a camera that the market is probably going to adore, albeit one that isn’t quite what it expected. The rumours would have us believe that the Canon PowerShot V1 was going to be a traditional compact camera, along the lines of the Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III. In fact, it’s actually more of a compact vlogging camera, similar to the Sony ZV-1 II. While the market expected Canon to launch a compact that would replace the G7 X, instead, the company has launched one that complements it – and threatens the stranglehold that the ZV series previously enjoyed on cameras for vlogging. With the Canon EOS R50 V taking on Sony’s ZV-E10 II as its interchangeable lens option, the brand is doubling…

Having taken up photography at the age of eight after being given a Zorki rangefinder [a Soviet-made copy of a Leica] for Christmas, Helen Bartlett started earning an income from photography when she was a teenager. Her mother ran a nursery school in the basement of the family home and, as a summer job, Bartlett would take photos of the children. Selling their parents handmade black and white prints gave her an early taste of creating and selling photographs, so after studying history at university, she decided to make photography her career. Since then, Bartlett has gone on to become a leading family photographer. Shooting exclusively in black and white, she specialises in documenting the essence of childhood, capturing tender scenes created to resonate with her clients. Intrigued by Bartlett’s…