Table of contents for December 2017 in Digital Camera Magazine

BRENT STIRTON INTERVIEW See page 88 BEATING almost 50,000 entries from 92 countries, a powerful image of a recently shot and de-horned black rhino in South Africa’s Hluhluwe Imfolozi Game Reserve deservedly takes this year’s title for photojournalist Brett Stirton – who we interview on page 88. “Brent’s image highlights the urgent need for humanity to protect our planet and the species we share it with,” says Sir Michael Dixon, Director of the Natural History Museum. “Like the critically endangered black rhinoceros, blue whales were once hunted to the brink of extinction, but humanity acted on a global scale to protect them. This shocking picture of an animal butchered for its horns is a call to action for us all.” Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by…

ANOTHER high point on the nature photographers’ calendar, the British Wildlife Photography Awards exist to celebrate the beauty and diversity of British wildlife. Up against the tooth-andclaw vividness of African and American nature, it’s easy to dismiss much of British wildlife as ‘little brown jobs’, but the BWPA has shown this isn’t the case. This year’s top images include a hunting short-eared owl, vivid green aquatic hydras and a cracking selection of creative coastal bird shots. The top prize of £5,000 goes to Daniel Trim, for his shot of a pied wagtail silhouetted by the lights of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. You can see Daniel’s image alongside the cream of other entries in the competition book by Ammonite Press, and in the touring exhibition. www.bwpawards.org SIGMA 16MM TOP OF…

Corner your subject Negative space is anything that is lacking in detail, blurred or otherwise plain, while positive space is an area of interest – a main subject or notable detail. Over-emphasising the negative space in a shot can create bold compositions and a fresh take on a well-worn place, such as this lighthouse in Burnham-on-Sea. Experiment by moving your subject around to different edges or corners of the frame. You’ll get different results depending on whether you change the camera angle, or get up and move to a different spot. A wide-angle zoom lens can be very useful for this. Emphasise blur As well as the placement of the subject, you can create negative space with depth of field by blurring parts of the frame. A wide aperture, like…

LANDSCAPE photography is a notoriously difficult genre to crack. Many obstacles stand between you and the perfect landscape shot: the height and angle of the sun, inclement weather and uninteresting foregrounds all play a role in degrading your final image. The last thing you need is to find the right location, at the right time, only to come home with a wonky image that you have to crop into later on the computer. There is a way to keep the full resolution of your images, and that’s by using a hotshoe-mounted spirit level. With this handy accessory, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t come away with perfectly straight images every time. Due to its small form-factor and light weight, you can leave it on the camera in and out of…

THE reason we know how water drops behave is thanks to high-speed photography. But you don’t need high-tech gear to create water art. The set-up for this project is simple, but you’ll need accurate focusing and good timing. Fill a baking tray with water and place it on a worktop. Place a chair over it, so you have somewhere to attach a freezer bag half-filled with water. Punch a hole in the corner of the bag with a safety pin, and you’ll get a regular flow of drips into the tray. Put your camera on a tripod and fill the frame with the drip tray water and the drip itself. A macro lens can be useful but isn’t essential. Whatever you place behind the drip tray will be reflected in…

WHEN a match is struck, it flares into life so quickly that we can’t actually observe what happens at the precise moment of ignition. But by shooting a rapid burst of shots at high frame rate, we can record this amazing moment and get a shot that straddles the divide between art and science. You need a macro lens to record it, but leave plenty of room around the match head when you compose, as the fiery flare is bigger than you’d think! Step 1 Place a match in a blob of Blu-tack and put a dark background behind it. Use Manual Focus and Live View, and focus on the head of the match. Step 2 Switch to Manual mode (M) and adjust ISO to 200. Dial in an aperture…

AIRPLANE WINDOW Lining it up When angled and intersecting lines are found in a composition, they can convey movement and add tension. Out of her airplane window, Sarolta noticed that “the interplay between part of the wing, its shadow, the fellow, and the lines on the tarmac were intriguing”. The lines form a frame around the air marshal and draw the viewer’s eye towards him. Emphasising editing Sarolta processed this image in Camera Raw, converting it to black and white and adding a slight tint. By removing colour information, darkening the Blacks and upping the Clarity, the tonal range has become even more reduced, making the shot more graphic, and so the viewer’s eye is less distracted. “I edited the shot to emphasise the semi-abstracted interplay between the elements,” she…

Q I’m about to have a go shooting speedway. Any tips? Keith Hooper A IT’S great fun, Keith! Like all action photography, you need to keep the shutter speed high and, depending on lighting, you’ll need to be prepared to push the ISO up to help you get exposures of 1/1,000 sec or faster to freeze the action. If your cameras allows, use a small group of active AF points at the centre of the camera and shoot on Continuous, then keep tracking your subject. You’ll need a telephoto lens of around 200mm to get tight compositions. Try to show depth by focusing on the front rider with others behind dropping out of focus. Remember that dirt flies off the bikes and can hit the camera lens!…

SOF TWARE www.adobe.com; Adobe LI ghtroom CC It’s Lightroom CC, but not as we know it, with a smart new interface and cloud-based storage Lightroom CC 2018 is a bold move for Adobe.Cloud synchronising is possible in the old Lightroom, but only with selected Collections. With the ‘new’ Lightroom CC, all your photos are uploaded to Adobe’s online storage. This is going to require quite a lot of cloud storage capacity, so Adobe has introduced 1TB storage to its Photography Plans. Lightroom CC’s new interface might also prove controversial, although it looks terrific. The organisational system is simpler, and the editing tools have a more straightforward layout. Some tools and features are missing, though, including the Tone Curve tool. The Library and Develop modules have been merged into a single…

SOFTWARE Photoshop CC GET IT FROM www.adobe.com;Get Start files from www.bit.ly/dc197files; Photographer and journalist James is a professional photographer. He’s an advanced Photoshop user and has created hundreds of tutorials to help other photographers improve their skills. jamesaphoto.co.uk Non-destructive editing is often the best way to edit your images. This workflow option basically involves using Adjustment Layers to add effects to images, while additional layers can be used for cloning and other tasks – the underlying pixels remain untouched. So what’s the point of non-destructive editing? The thing about this approach is that it’s not so much about saving the original image file if your workflow takes care to maintain a backed-up original; it’s all about having the ability to make changes to adjustments at any time during or after…

OWEN HARVEY__UK GOLD, UNDER 30s “In the mid-to-late 1940s, a new subculture in America emerged and grew during the post-war prosperity of the 1950s. Young Latino youths were placing sandbags in their custom vehicles so that the body of the cars would ride close to the road; ‘slow and low’ being their motto. The vehicles were decorated to hold political statements and sported images representing Latino culture – lowriding had begun. As the years passed, lowriding culture became extremely popular and the cars had hydraulic springs installed to perform tricks on the road, such as driving on three wheels, or bouncing the front wheels up to a metre off the ground. Often seen in music videos, the scene was embraced by cultures all around the world and had huge global…

THE G1 X is Canon’s premium compact, offering a large sensor and extensive manual controls in a highgrade metal body. The latest incarnation, the G1 X Mark III, ups the ante. Not only is it the first Canon zoom compact to have a DSLR-sized APS-C CMOS sensor – similar to the one in the EOS 80D in this instance – but it also inherits Canon’s well-received Dual Pixel CMOS AF, for fast, accurate autofocus. Powered by a Digic 7 processor, the G1 X Mark III features a 3x optical zoom equivalent to 24-72mm, 4-stop stabilisation, 7fps shooting with autofocus, a built in EVF and always-on Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. www.canon.co.uk; £1,149/$1,299…

TO make a still-life photo really sing, you have to nail the lighting. Look at professional product shots, especially those of luxury items, and you’ll notice that they’re carefully lit to make the product look glossy and desirable. Here we’re going for the big daddy of problematic subjects to light – glass. Glass contains considerable opportunity for both desirable and unwanted reflections, so controlling the light is key to getting a striking final image. We’re using a bottle and a glass of whisky to create a classic still-life shot that resonates style and timelessness in equal measure. You’ll be surprised to hear that it’s easy to take a shot like this at home. You don’t need any special equipment, just a couple of lights (they could even be desk lamps)…

WHEN you shoot a portrait, the golden rule is to focus on the eyes. But rules are made to be broken, and you can shoot evocative portraits without any of the face in focus. Pick a window on a rainy day, and you’ll notice beads of water on the glass. With your subject positioned on the other side of the pane, you can use these beads as your focal point, and shoot a sombre, reflective portrait that’s just as effective as a regular headshot. Shoot inside-out to convey the idea that the subject is out in the cold, or shoot outside-in to give the sense of someone longing for a break in the weather. To make the shot really effective, you need a very shallow depth of field, so only…

OVERNIGHT temperatures start to drop below freezing this time of year, and moisture in the air will form a plethora of icy patterns and textures on car windscreens. A kit lens is perfectly good for this project, but to get some contrast, try different heights and angles. Shoot in raw format, and use Aperture Priority with a setting of f/11. When you convert the raw file, reduce Shadows and Blacks to accentuate contrast, and pull back Temperature to get a cool, blue feel.…

IT may be feeble in illuminating power, but candle light punches way above its luminosity in terms of atmosphere. To shoot a candlelit portrait, use Manual (M) mode and raw format. Include the candle in the shot, as the light is so warm that the light source is needed to help the viewer understand the image. Use an ISO of 1,600 and a fast lens like a 50mm f/1.8 at an aperture of f/2. Set a shutter speed of 1/100 sec, and focus on the nearer eye of your subject.…

MOVE a small light source within the frame during a long exposure, and you will record ethereal streaks of light. You can trace around a subject with a torch to outline it, light it from different angles with the torch beam, or even move coloured string lights behind it for an amazing background. For more complex paintings using multiple light traces, you can stack and blend your shots together in Photoshop. We’ll cover this in next month’s Photoshop Masterclass, but let’s first reveal how to set up and shoot your own light paintings. STEP 1 Set up your camera Place your camera on a tripod, then frame up and focus on your subject. Now switch to Manual Focus to lock off the focusing distance, and set the mode to Manual…

WILD EXMOOR This issue, Ben Brain takes a 4x4 trek across Exmoor’s iconic open moorland with two readers who are passionate about wildlife photography. Who will come out on top in the battle of the big guns? READER 1 CAMERA: Nikon D810 LOCATION: Barnsley, South Yorkshire HATS off to Sean, who made the 4.5-hour trip from South Yorkshire to Somerset the night before, and slept in his car to make the 7am start time! Sean is a bathroom designer by trade, but has been bitten by the wildlife photography bug after picking up his first DSLR around three years ago. He would recommend joining a local photography club to gain valuable tips and hints, and says that joining Barnsley Photo Club helped him to gain a better understanding of photography.…

£1,250/$1,300 SPECIFICATIONS Sensor 24.3MP APS-C X-Trans CMOS Memory SD/SDHC/SDXC Viewfinder EVF, 2,360k dots Max video resolution UHD at 30, 25, 24fps ISO range 200-12,800, expandable to 100-51,200 Autofocus points 325-point hybrid contrast/phase detection Max Burst rate 14fps (21 raw) Screen 3in touchscreen, 1,040k dots Weight 337g Dimensions 121 x 74 x 43mm Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE Max image size 6,000 x 4,000 Metering zones 256 Video 4K UHD at 30, 25, 24fps Image processor X Processor Pro Fujifilm’s latest X-Processor Pro engine is roughly four times faster than the previous model’s The X-E3 is Fujifilm’s latest compact enthusiast level rangefinderstyle camera. We had an idea it would be coming because the previous X-E2 was the only X-mount camera yet to get the company’s latest 24.3-megapixel X-Trans sensor. The X-E3 is…

For beginners starting out in photography, an SLR has long been the most obvious choice of ‘proper’ camera. With extensive shooting controls, interchangeable lenses and optional extras, you can start simple and expand your kit as your expertise grows. However, this has become equally true of compact system cameras, which do away with mirrors to enable downsized designs. Some super-skinny models ditch the viewfinder as well, and photographers moving up from a smartphone might find composing shots on an LCD screen entirely natural. Any camera for beginners should be modestly priced, intuitive and easy to use, so that you can enjoy getting great results, straight out of the box. However, it should also be able to grow with you, enabling and even encouraging you to learn new skills and techniques,…

Photographer and writer Jon is a photographer and writer, and also provides individual and small group tuition in digital SLR and Photoshop skills. jon@jonadams media.co.uk; SOFTWARE Photoshop CC GET IT FROM www.adobe.com;Get Start files from www.bit.ly/dc197files; Capture the movement of the clouds streaking across the sky, and you’ll immediately have an intriguing shot that compresses time.Place an atmospheric building in the foreground and you’ll have something even more rewarding; but getting the right exposure balance in-camera is a challenge that will involve a tripod, high-density filters, and a good degree of trial and error. With long exposure times typically measured in minutes rather than seconds, it’s a great project to aspire to. But if you already have some suitable building shots on your hard drive and want to emulate the…

INFOCUS Photography news from around the globe AT FIRST glance, the Sony Alpha 7R Mark III’s headline figures shape up a lot like the old one’s. The Mark III offers 42.4MP full-frame resolution courtesy of a back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor, just like the Mark II. And, just like the outoging model, the Mark III has 399 AF points. The improvements between the generations are subtle in some areas – we’re talking a bump in the native ISO range from 100-25,600 to 100-32,000 – and significant in others. Take the continuous shooting speed, up from five frames per second to 10fps. Battery life gets a boost from 290 shots to 530 shots, thanks to the Mark III’s new NP-FZ100 battery pack, although this falls behind the Nikon D850’s 1,840-shot rating.…

ADOBE CC 2018 ON TESTSee page 108 ADOBE has confirmed that Lightroom 6 is the last standalone version of the software and is introducing two new CC options instead. Confusingly, old Lightroom CC has been rebranded as Lightroom Classic CC; this is aimed at users who want to retain a ‘desktop-first’ workflow, complete with local storage. All-new Lightroom CC (above) is aimed at users who are more mobile-oriented. The Photography Plan, with both versions, Photoshop CC plus 20GB of storage costs £9.98 per month, as does the Lightroom CC-only plan, which offers 1TB of storage; £19.97 per month gets you the Photography Plan plus 1TB of storage. SONY LENSES SONY ROCK ’N’ ROLL IN addition to the AR 7 III (see page 18), Sony has made three other announcements this…

ULTRAVIOLET (UV) fluorescence is the visible light that is emitted from a subject when it is illuminated (the technical term is ‘excited’) by UV in a dark room. Think of the longwave UV lights used in nightclubs, funfair ghost trains and so on that make shirts glow a brilliant white due to the whitener in the fabric. Many subjects fluoresce in UV, including some minerals (which can be identified by the colour they produce); security markings on banknotes, passports and driving licences; some plant material (including the quinine in tonic water, fruit and some woods); different birds’ eggs; some animals such as scorpions; and various cosmetics such as face paints. A walk around the garden at night with a UV torch, or in your bathroom, can be an enlightening experience.…

COLOUR is a powerful tool that can simply convey a feeling or tell a story in photography. So why not try experimenting with photographs that take colour to the extreme? Framing a bold slab of colour against a dull background, or piecing together compositions with limited colour palettes, using hues of one colour, can have a dramatic effect. “I have always been obsessed with colour,” explains photographer Cig Harvey. “I like to explore one colour intensively to distil and concentrate its effect. Each colour elicits a different emotional response, both on a primal level and as linked to my own memories. In these images, I am searching for a visual jolt – an element of surprise.” To create single-colour images, Cig advises: “Start with a large background of one colour…

WITH a macro lens and a few everyday items, you can take incredible shots of oil drops floating on water. Like most macro shots, setting up carefully is essential, but the process forces you to focus on minute details. The discipline that comes from trying out this project will extend through your other styles of photography, so shooting delicate abstracts is of great overall benefit. To prepare, fill a tumbler with water and add a drop of washing-up liquid to it. After a gentle stir, leave it to settle for 5-10 minutes, then add a few drops of cooking oil. STEP 1 Fill your glass Place the tumbler on some coloured pieces of paper. With your camera on a tripod, frame up and focus manually with a macro lens. Use…

QUITE a lot of things happen very quickly when you press the shutter release button on your camera. The light reflected off the subject is captured by the lens and fed to the image sensor, where it’s recorded as an analogue electrical signal then turned into digital data by the analogue/digital converter. All of this typically happens in a fraction of a second, but it’s really just the start of the process of creating an image. Before the file ends up being temporarily stored in the camera’s buffer prior to being written to the memory card, the massive amount of data created for each image you shoot has to be crunched. Digital processing that’s carried out at this stage includes adjustment of the white balance, colours and contrast, along with…

1 TOO DARK A Grad Filter on the sky adds more detail and mood. 2 CONTRAST Improve contrast using the Contrast, Clarity and Dehaze sliders. 3 DODGE AND BURN Adjustment Brushes will lighten and darken some areas. IMAGE RESCUE OUR starting image has lots of detail in it thanks to the overcast conditions – but that in turn has meant it lacks contrast, and that sky looks rather insipid. However, it has all the ingredients I need to create an interesting black-and-white photo, with the foreground grass, the shapes of the huts and the potentially moody sky beyond. First of all I press V to turn the colour image to black-and-white. I can easily improve the contrast by pushing the Contrast slider to +30 and adding +11 on the Clarity…

Brent Stirton is a hard man to track down. For at least nine months of the year, he is away on assignment in some of the world’s most volatile locations, where he documents issues ranging from the illegal wildlife trade to tribal conflicts and human rights abuses. When we speak, he is on a rare twoweek break at his Californian home after several months away in Mongolia, Somalia and the Peruvian Amazon. Even then, Brent Stirton doesn’t get many days of complete rest: my call is one of six he’s taking this morning. “That’s not unusual,” he says. “When I come back, there are usually a few days of chaos.” Studying journalism in South Africa, what were your hopes and dreams? I was in the South African military, and South…

£569/$599 (with 15-45mm lens) Specifications Sensor 24.2MP APS-C Dual Pixel CMOS AF Memory SD/SDHC/SDXC (UHS-I) Viewfinder No Max video resolution 1,920 x 1,080 at 60, 50, 30, 25, 24fps ISO range 100-25,600 Autofocus points 49 Max Burst rate 6.1fps (21 raw) Screen 3-inch tilting touchscreen, 1,040k dots Weight 302g Dimensions 108 x 67 x 35mm Max image size 6,000 x 4,000 Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC Image processor Digic 7 Metering zones 384 The M100 has been made so small and so simple that it’s a little trickier to use than we’d like The new entry-level camera in Canon’s mirrorless EOS M range packs in Canon’s latest 24-megapixel Dual Pixel CMOS AF sensor for high-speed autofocus, high resolution and firstrate images. It also boasts a full set of PASM exposure modes…

www.bllingham.co.uk; Billingham Hadley One £265 At 37 x 28 x 14cm, the Hadley One is a slightly larger version of Billingham’s best-selling Hadley Pro. Its standout feature is a 13in laptop slot behind the main compartment. It’s a practically sized bag without being unwieldy, although you only get a half-width padded insert included. This will swallow a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, plus an ungripped full-frame body with attached 50mm lens. The remaining space in the main compartment is great for personal effects, or you can add an optional second camera insert. Out front are two large pockets, perfect for keeping lenses reachable during a shoot. But the real reasons you buy a Hadley One are its supreme quality, and a timeless style that’ll suit any occasion. The smell of the leather…

Editor, Practical Photoshop With a decade as a working writer and photographer behind him, James knows which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter the most to you. SOFTWARE Photoshop CC GET IT FROM www.adobe.com;Get Start files from www.bit.ly/dc197files Achieve in-camera atmosphere Look for ways to add drama as you shoot This project is all about taking your photos a stage further in postprocessing to create a heightened mood. But – apart from a little creative flare – you can only enhance what’s already there. So how do you create atmosphere in-camera? Lighting, camera angle and posing are the three big factors. First the lighting. The sun is behind the model. Diffused through hazy cloud, it creates a soft edge highlight along her figure and filters through the fabric. Backlighting…