Table of contents for August 2018 in Digital Camera Magazine

With summer well and truly here, this is the perfect time to hone your photography skills and brush up on your camera craft. So, we’ve put together some golden rules to ensure you have a fruitful photographic summer (page 40). You may have also noticed that we’ve had a bit of a makeover: I hope you love the new look as much as I do. Our new Practical Photoshop section (page 65) will help you get the best out of your digital files and perfect your photos. And as usual we have loads of cool gifts, including all-new tips cards to collect, presets, photo borders and 70 minutes of video – with loads more to come… This month will be my last at the helm of Digital Camera. Don’t panic!…

1 Nikon D850 “This is my main camera nowadays, but I also carry a Nikon D810 as a backup. Each body has a Kirk L-bracket on it – for fast attachment to my Arca Swiss tripod head, and allowing me to quickly change from landscape to portrait formats. I carry four spare batteries with me, so tend to leave the charger at home.” 2 Lee filters “I have 11 filters with me today… including eight neutral-density grads. I have 0.6, 0.9 and 1.2 medium grads; I don’t use soft grads for landscapes, but have one for cityscapes. I also have 0.6, 0.75, 0.9 and 1.2 hard grads. I use the 0.6 grad the most, so I carry a spare: it is easier to swap than clean if it gets covered…

If shooting still-life setups makes you lick your lips, you’ll definitely want to have a go at our delicious food photography photo project! For this project, we decided to capture a rainbow of colours using fresh fruit. The beauty of this project is you don’t need loads of fancy kit. We used a Olympus OM-D E-M1 with a 12-40mm lens, which is equivalent to a 24-80mm lens on a full-frame SLR. To light our fruit, we simply placed it on a white highchair tray and positioned it by the window. If you don’t have a highchair, a white plate will do the job. We used a reflector to bounce the light back into the shadows, giving the end result a nice lift. When it comes to planning, you’ll want to…

By digitising your old photographs, you can give them a whole new lease of life! Take this image, which was orginally shot in the late 1930s. The surrounding frame has become damaged and the image has a few scratches and faded. To fix this, we used a few simple tricks in Photoshop and managed to boost the overall effect. When it comes to scanning in your old treasured photographs, a flatbed scanner will do the job. We scanned our image in at a resolution of 300 dots per inch because we wanted to make prints of the scanned photo, but if you intend to view the image on-screen, a resolution of 72 or 96dpi is sufficient. The higher the resolution you choose, the larger the resulting file will be –…

Summer is the perfect time of year to shoot infrared photography. There is lots of light, and all that green foliage makes the landscape turn into a snow-like scene when it’s captured through infrared light. There are two ways to shoot an infrared image, like this shot by Przemyslaw Kruk. The first (and cheaper) is to use a filter. You have to use a long shutter speed setting, and you may encounter hotspots. The more expensive way is to use a converted IR camera. Many photographers convert an old DSLR or CSC model: once you’ve converted, you can’t go back! If you are going to convert a camera, we recommend you get a professional IR conversion company to do it for you. Alternatively if both of these techniques sound like…

Digital cameras feature a number of manual focusing aids that are designed to make it easier to tell when the subject is sharp. Although the ability to magnify details on the Live View display is now commonplace, focus peaking is the (relatively) new kid on the block. It’s a tool inherited from video cameras and is now widely found on mirrorless cameras. A small handful of DSLRs also list this function as Focus Assist for Live View. Focus peaking works on the principal that the sharpest areas have the highest or peak contrast, with the camera overlaying a white or coloured highlight on the edges and textures of objects on the Live View image to indicate this. The overlay moves across the image in real time as you focus back…

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. We want as many readers as possible to enter, so we’re revealing all of the categories now. You can enter as many categories as you like! FREE TO ENTER! £10,200 of PRIZES TO BE WON! Rohan clothing uses the world’s most advanced fabric technologies. These technologies are hidden and enable you to thrive in the harshest conditions nature can throw at you – wherever you’re heading. Rohan clothing…

While I was at a village fete, I spotted this classic car. I shot it as an HDR image in the hope that the background would improve when it was aggressively processed. It didn’t. If anything, it got worse! So to see if there was a viable picture lurking somewhere in the frame, I had a play in Photoshop to see if could be rescued without too much fuss. Since the background was the problem, the first thing I did was to grab the Pen tool and cut out the car. With the clean lines of the bodywork, it didn’t take long, and once the Path was complete, I right-clicked on it and turned it into a Selection. After punching the cutout into a new layer, I then created a…

Reader 1 Alain Landes Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II & Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III Location: London Alain is a retired NHS anaesthetist, who started photography in the late 1970s with a Canonet fixed-lens compact. He quickly progressed to a Canon SLR and just one lens (an 85mm prime), joined the Royal Photographic Society and soon after got his LRPS. 100-hour weeks for eight years, followed by a family, took care of most of his spare time, but retirement has allowed him to reactivate his passion for photography. A bad back saw Alain opting to save size and weight by trading in his Canons for an Olympus mirrorless system. www.flickr.com/photos/alain-121 Reader 2 Derek Robertson Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II & Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III Location: Edinburgh An…

Camera Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III Lens 9-18mm f/4-5.6 lens at 17mm Exposure 1/1,000 sec at f/8, ISO 320 Challenge 3 Alain Landes After a quick break to refuel and cool off, we headed inland to explore the urban side of Brighton. Alain and Ben headed to the Lanes, an area famous for its narrow alleyways and boutique shops. It’s easy to find yourself aimlessly wandering districts like this with no real agenda – and sometimes that can result in unexpected pictures – but we were on a fairly tight schedule. With that in mind, we quickly identified a couple of hotspots – a busy corner crossing, a wall covered in graffiti – where we paused in the hope of things developing. That’s when Alain spotted this bicycle. “The Lanes…

This motor racing shot is sharp enough but the composition is untidy and the whole shot can be smartened up a bit to create something a lot more dynamic. Our first job here is to crop out unwanted parts of the image to centre the attention of the two main cars. 1 We will do this in the Develop module, pressing R to bring up the Crop Overlay tool, then losing the grass, posts and third car on the left, plus that sliver of grass in the top right. We now want some more detail in the main car to show. 2 We’ll simply use the Shadows slider in the Basics tab to bring these out. The colours of the car are a bit flat. 3 We’ll boost these by…

Roving photographer Quintin is halfway through his 6,000 mile photo walk around the whole of the UK coast. www.theperimeter.uk This month’s route Gourock to Helensburgh 5 days, 68 miles Total so far: 3,320 miles It’s the first day this year that I don’t need thermals. Can I dare to dream that warmer weather is on the way? Despite this, I learn two apt Scottish words this week: ‘oorlich’, meaning damp, chilly and utterly unpleasant; and ‘drookit’, meaning drenched or soaked through. Near Port Glasgow, the timber ponds along the Clyde are as beautiful as any land art and make for a thrilling photographic subject in the still and reflective water. In the 18th century, they were used to store and season imported wood; now all that remains are posts that…

£499/$499 www.laowalens.co.uk GOLD AWARD If you’ve bought an APS-C mirrorless camera, the chances are it’s because you want a compact, portable camera kit – so the last thing you need is a big, fat zoom lens to cover off all the focal lengths you need. One of the things that makes the Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D especially appealing for Sony E, Canon EOS M or Fujifilm X-mount camera owners is its size. You can get ultra-wide zooms for these cameras, but they can’t match the Laowa’s size, or indeed its f/2.8 maximum aperture. You can even fit 49mm filters to the front. This is a manual-focus lens, which proves less of a problem than you might think, but with no mechanical or electrical connections to the camera, it means you’ll…

£8,999/$9,999 www.canon.co.uk BEST ON THE TEST The C300 II is in the middle of Canon’s Cinema EOS range. While it costs substantially than any of the DSLR and mirrorless crossover cameras in this group test, it goes a lot further towards meeting the needs of pro videographers, with a modular design suited to attaching external monitors, grips and sound equipment. It uses a Super 35mm CMOS sensor, similar in size to APS-C and corresponding to the old 35mm movie format. The eight-megapixel sensor captures 4K video directly without cropping, oversampling or pixel binning, and can capture at 4:2:2 10-bit quality internally to twin CFast memory cards. It can also capture raw 4K to an external recorder. Performance The built-in ND filters are a major asset outdoors, and there was little…

£3,499/$3,297 www.nikon.co.uk As a high-resolution multipurpose DSLR, the D850 is more or less a direct rival to the Canon EOS 5D Mk IV, but offers both higher resolution and, via an optional battery grip, higher continuous shooting speeds. Its advantage for video is that it captures full-width 4K video with no crop factor, so your lenses have the same angle of view for video as they do when you’re shooting stills. Another advantage the D850 has over the 5D Mk IV is that it can output clean 4:2:2 8-bit 4K video to an external recorder; the Canon’s external output is restricted to Full HD. There are no log modes, but there is a Flat Picture Control designed to capture a wider brightness range. Performance The D850 relies on contrast AF…

£3,199/$2,998 www.sony.co.uk Sony’s full-frame mirrorless cameras have carved out something of a reputation amongst videographers. The A7S II is arguably the most video-centric of the A7 series, but it’s also the oldest (and strongly tipped for an update), so we’ve selected the A7R III here: it offers the best of both worlds for both stills and video shooters. With 42.4 million pixels, it offers the second-highest stills resolution of all the cameras on test, and can capture either full-frame 4K video or 5K ‘oversampled’ video in its cropped Super 35mm mode, which Sony says offers the best picture quality. HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma) mode is included, plus S-Log2 and S-Log3 modes for higher dynamic range capture. Performance The A7R III was the only camera to properly capture the green wool…

BEST ON TEST GOLD AWARD G-Technology G-Drive Mobile SSD R-Series £140-425 / $170-740 www.g-technology.com Technology: Solid-state drive Available capacities: 500GB-2TB Dimensions: 94 x 50 x 14.5mm Image read/write speed: 307/298MBps (500GB) Video read/write speed: 410/353MBps (500GB) Best price per gigabyte: 21p (1TB & 2TB models) 1 Despite nearly tying with the Samsung SSD for top spot in the speed stakes, this drive also boasts the cheapest price per gigabyte here for an SSD, with the £215 1TB version offering the most tempting value. It comes formatted for macOS and therefore won’t show up in Windows, but the drive can be easily reformatted for a PC using third-party software: we recommend the free MiniTool Partition Wizard (www.partitionwizard.com). G-Technology’s case design is thicker than the other SSDs on test, but this reflects…

Wedding photography has long been established as a popular way to make money from your photography, but it can also be stressful, time-consuming and expensive to get started. Because of that, it’s a good idea to start off slowly, perhaps shooting weddings for family members or friends, before deciding if it’s really for you. Along with the necessary photographic talent – because the photos you take will be a couple’s greatest reminder of their day – you will need to be authoritative and take charge of proceedings when it’s time to get your images, but also be friendly, approachable and great with people. You will also need to be as good at promoting your business and yourself: it’s a competitive market out there, and business skills are almost as important…

If you enjoy shooting subjects that talk back, maybe it’s time you started making cash from your portraits. You don’t need much equipment if you start by taking outdoor portraits in natural light. Any DSLR or CSC will be up to the job. You also need to think about your lenses. While a kit lens can produce great results, a wider-aperture standard zoom, such as the pro’s favourite 24-70mm f/2.8, will allow you to achieve shallower depth of field than the f/5.6 maximum aperture at the longest end of most standard zooms. The other lens that’s worth investing in is a 50mm f/1.8, as this will give you even narrower depth of field. People skills Along with your photographic skills, taking successful portraits relies on your ability to get the…

Getting your images online is the best way to get your work noticed, gain new clients and even sell prints to customers that you could never reach in any other way. The internet gives you the chance to showcase your work in a way that’s accessible to people around the world, not just on your doorstep, and even to be found by magazines and professional picture editors. Of course, the web can be a big, confusing place where it’s hard to get noticed amid the sea of images already available, and you might also be worried about the possibility of image theft if you display your best shots publicly. So here, we take a look at how to get your shots online, how to protect them, and how to help…

Steve McCurry Legendary photographer One of the world’s best-known photographers, Steve talks about his life – and shares a preview of his new video training course. See page 138 Jeremy Walker Landscape photographer Jeremy reminisces of an earlier life shooting bus shelters, as we join him for a day’s masterclass on how to use Big Stopper filters and ND grads. See page 8 Guy Edwardes Wildlife photographer Guy has been photographing gannets for over 20 years, and has thousands of stunning images of them. But this year he tried a new approach. See page 59 Jo Bradford Smartphone photographer Jo gives practical advice on how to get better pictures with your smartphone – just one of the projects in our new Photo Active section. See page 14 Andrew James Our…

Lens Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 Filter Super Stopper & 0.9 Hard ND Grad Exposure 4 minutes at f/11; ISO 100 1 “Set up the shot as if it was a normal exposure. Use a grad if necessary. Set exposure in Manual, and set the focusing.” 2 “Take a test shot to double-check exposure and focusing.” 3 “Turn autofocus off, if you are using an AF lens.” 4 “Turn optical image stabilisation off on the lens, if it has it.” 5 “Insert the Big Stopper (or other ND) in the filter slot nearest the lens.” 6 “Cover up the eyepiece of your DSLR (not necessary if using a CSC).” 7 “Set the shutter speed to the Bulb (or B) setting.” 8 “Calculate the increased exposure necessary with the ND filter you are…

It can be tricky to take landscape shots during the middle of the day, especially in the summer months. There’s often lots of glare from the sun, and the exposure values between the sky and the ground will most likely be different. When you get those white fluffy clouds in the rich blue sky, though, it’s definitely worth getting out there with your camera! Luckily there’s an accessory that will aid you on your shoot. A graduated ND filter can make the difference between a winning shot and an average one. Take our image, shot on Hound Tor in Dartmoor. The sky in this setting was looking great on the day – but when we took a shot, it appeared washed out, and the camera struggled between the different exposure…

Portraits aren’t always just about your subject. Sometimes their surroundings are just as interesting, and you then have the challenge of balancing the lighting so that you capture both. Our portrait subject for this project was Alex, and the location was the amazing Dark Horse bar in Bath. (A big thanks to the boss Louis, by the way, for his willing co-operation to facilitate this shoot.) This location is a maze of rooms and cubby-holes, all creatively lit with a soft ambience that gives the place its character – and which we definitely wanted to preserve because it was essential to the atmosphere we were after. But ambient lighting in a bar is designed to illuminate the surroundings, not the guests, so we needed additional lighting to pick Alex out…

Working with a smartphone camera means using your composition skills and working with light creatively. Compositions are improved with leading lines and diagonals. Find creative ways to introduce depth of field with foreground interest. And don’t forget the simple play of light and shade… Great photographers develop a keen understanding about the myriad ways that light affects the images they make. Once you begin to notice where it is in the frame, and where it isn’t, you can use light as a compositional tool to shape and define the subject. A smartphone lens has a wide field of view: it will stretch out the foreground and make distant objects look tiny. So foreground interest needs to be considered at all times. Find things to occupy the foreground and let them…

You may get better results if you switch off autofocus for some scenes and subjects: here are some common scenarios where manual focus might be the better choice… Some types of photography are a natural fit for manual focusing. The slower pace of landscape photography, for example, means you can afford a bit more time to position the focus exactly where you want it. Working with a tripod-mounted camera also means that you can take advantage of the rear Live View display. With a lens or camera set to manual focus, the focus distance that you set will be locked in. This means you’ll get consistent results from frame to frame, which is essential when you’re taking pictures that you’ll be combining later, whether stitching them together to create a…

Young people (25 and under) haven’t been left out of the Digital Camera Photographer of the Year competition! In fact, they have their own division within each category, with a fresh set of prizes to be won, as well as a chance to be crowned the overall Digital Camera Young Photographer of the Year 2019. The same panel of professional photographers will judge your entries, with the same themed categories as the main competition. You can enter up to five shots – see right. (You can also enter the main competition as well as this one!) THE PRIZES £18,800 of prizes to be won! The prizes Our winner gets prizes worth over £6,600: £3,000 cash • iPad Pro with Pencil, worth £ 1,387 • Sony RX10 IV, worth £ 1,799…

With a decade as a writer and photographer behind him, James knows exactly which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter most. If you were to take a raw photo using two different branded cameras side by side, chances are there will be slight differences to the way the photos look when opened in Camera Raw or Lightroom. This is because the colours are rendered slightly differently depending on how the raw data is converted to RGB data. So a Canon Raw file can look markedly different to a Nikon Raw file, even when all the settings are identical. If you’re not happy with the look of the colours in your photos, the Camera Calibration panel can help. Found both in Adobe Camera Raw and in Lightroom’s Develop module, these…

Camera Nikon D800 Lens AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR Exposure f/9 at 2.5 sec, ISO 400 Andrea Heribinova, London “This shot was taken from inside the Bokan rooftop bar on top of the Novotel London Canary Wharf hotel. I visited previously a few times for the sunset, but it’s this night shot that I prefer, when all the lights come on in the city. I wasn’t sure if tripods would be allowed, so I used my miniature Platypod. Shooting through the glass meant I used a Lenskirt to cut the reflections. I walk around London a lot to find new views, and I keep an eye on social media to see what’s up around London, and if there are any new venues open with views of London’s skyline.” Camera…

Camera Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III Lens 9-18mm f/4-5.6 lens at 9mm Exposure 1/500 sec at f/9, ISO 320 Challenge 1 Alain Landes We kicked off the day with a roasting stroll on Brighton Pier, on the hunt for characterful candids and colourful abstracts. “It was a challenge to use an unfamiliar camera with a wide-angle zoom for the first time, but the glorious weather helped,” explains Alain. “It meant that I was able to keep the aperture at around f/8 and use the base ISO of 200. The advantage of using a wide-angle lens is that although you have to get quite close, the subject is not really aware of you as you are not generally pointing the camera directly at them. I never actually looked at my subject…

Rate My Photo Our reader Steve Brande Having recently part-exchanged my Nikon D7200 and lenses to dip my toe into the full-frame world, I am now a Nikon D750 user. But on this occasion I hadn’t thought of bringing my camera and only had my Samsung Galaxy S6 phone with me. We were taking advantage of a rare calm evening at Beadnell Bay in Northumberland. Ivy (the dog) was lagging behind; when we turned to gee her along, we saw this amazing sunset start to appear. I dropped to one knee and started firing away with my phone touching the sand. I was so pleased with the shot that it became a small canvas print soon after. Our expert Andrew James It’s amazing how far cameraphones have come: they really…

Bridge magnet If you’re drawn to the idea of an all-in-one camera with a generous zoom, they don’t come much bigger than the Nikon Coolpix P1000’s 24-3,000mm range That focal length range is not a misprint! Nikon’s new bridge camera offers a 125x optical zoom, giving the 35mm-equivalent range of 24-3,000mm. (The P900 topped out at a paltry 2,000mm.) If 3,000mm is not enough, then you can use Dynamic Fine Zoom to take this to a focal length equivalent to 6,000mm. A 4x digital zoom can push this even further, although you’ll have to put up with reduced image quality as a result of your telephoto greed. With a magnification of this magnitude (and a maximum aperture of f/8 at the long end of the zoom), camera shake becomes a…

£619/$699 (with 15-45mm lens) www.fujifilm.co.uk VALUE AWARD The X-T100 is by no means Fujifilm’s most advanced X-mount camera yet, but it fills a crucial gap in the mirrorless camera market and takes on DSLRs at their own game. Until recently, mirrorless cameras have fallen into two main groups: low-cost cameras with simplified controls for ‘smartphone upgraders’, but no viewfinders; and altogether more advanced cameras for enthusiasts and pros, with electronic viewfinders and other features, but with a price tag to match. What the X-T100 does is bring that DSLR-style ‘viewfinder’ experience down to a much more affordable price. The specs are basic but effective. Inside the X-T100 is a 24-megapixel APS-C CMOS non-X-Trans sensor. You do get 4K video capability, but it’s at a maximum frame rate of 15fps which,…

There is a growing crossover between stills photography and video. Working photographers are increasingly being asked by clients to shoot video as well as stills, and camera makers are incorporating ever more professional video capabilities in mainstream stills cameras. It’s a revolution we can’t ignore, and neither can today’s pro or semi-pro photographers. So we’ve gathered together seven of the most interesting 4K crossover stills/video cameras across a range of price points, including two specifically video-centric models. We’ll see what they do that’s different and why many pros choose to pay the extra for dedicated video cameras. Our guide is not for professional videographers, but for regular stills photographers moving into video for the first time, or for anyone upgrading their camera to cope with a demand for premium-quality 4K…

£1,699/$1,899 www.fujifilm.co.uk VALUE AWARD BEST ON TEST The X-H1 is Fujifilm’s top APS-C X-mount camera. It’s the first in the Fujifilm X range to feature in-body stabilisation, which works alongside the optical image stabilisation in many Fujifilm lenses. The X-H1 can capture both 16:9 UHD video and DCI 4K, with a bit rate of up to 200Mbps and an F-Log gamma option. It also comes with a new Eterna Film Simulation mode, which can be used with the camera’s 400% dynamic range setting for up to 12 stops of dynamic range – and less grading work compared with log modes. There is a crop factor when shooting 4K video, but it’s relatively small at 1.17x. It’s also possible to shoot Full HD at up to 100/120fps. Performance With crystal-clear footage,…

£1,499/$1,599 www.olympus.co.uk VALUE AWARD Olympus has not built quite the same reputation for 4K video as that other Micro Four Thirds camera maker Panasonic, but the OM-D E-M1 II still offers some powerful video tools for stills shooters. It can shoot both 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160) and Cinema 4K video (4,096 x 2,160) at 30 or 24fps, and with a maximum bit rate of 237Mbps – pretty good for a consumer-focused crossover camera. It also benefits from Olympus’s five-axis in-body stabilisation system. The M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm 1:4.0 IS Pro is the perfect partner for this camera, with a constant f/4 maximum aperture and its own in-built stabilisation, for a combined stabilising effect of up to 6.5 stops. Performance The Olympus captures crisp, clear and natural-looking video with only…

For full-on professional video features and quality, two cameras stand out. The Canon Cinema EOS C300 Mark II and the Panasonic GH5S offer rivals with better quality 10-bit video, higher 4K frame rates and a video-centric bias that makes few concessions to stills. But that’s the problem. The C300 II is an out-and-out professional video camera that effectively doesn’t shoot stills at all. It demands substantial technical know-how to operate. The GH5S is much more approachable. It’s cheaper, lighter, simpler and works much more like a regular DSLR or mirrorless camera. But it is limited to 10-megapixel stills. So if you want a crossover stills/video camera that does both equally well, you’ll need to compromise just a little on video features. This is where the Fujifilm X-H1 impressed us. It…

While you can shoot portraits in almost any location, having your own studio can help a photography business appear more professional. It also makes it easier to control the lighting, background and style of your images, enabling you to give your customers the images you and they want. However, a studio will bring extra costs and responsibilities compared to other types of portrait photography. Home or away The first thing you’ll need to consider is whether you are going to set it up at your home, or rent (or buy) a separate building. There are pros and cons to both approaches. Setting up a studio in your home, whether it’s a spare room, garage or even a dedicated building on your land, can be a cheaper and easier option than…

As we drive along the twisting Exmoor road that leads down to Porlock Weir, Jeremy Walker explains why he has chosen this spot for our one-day shoot. “I have been to Porlock Weir about three times before, and there are a couple of spots here that I still want to recce,” he explains. “This location is not as well-known as the Jurassic Coast, which I shoot a lot, but that is best photographed at a different time of year. Most of the cliffs and beaches are south-facing, so are in shade at sunset.” “The small harbour here is picturesque, and the pebble beach has some beautiful wooden groynes that suit Big Stopper long exposures. With the beach facing north-west, it is lit the whole day at this time of year.…

When it comes to shooting nature, there are a number of approaches you can take. We often think about blurring the background to isolate our subject, but it can also look highly effective to blur the foreground and have your subject sat in a blur sandwich! To try this for yourself, you need to find the right subject, with distinctive background and foreground areas either side of a strong, recognisable form. To create the green hazy effect on our image, we rested our camera on a mossy rock. With the moss simply touching the front of our lens at this distance it still had some transparency, meaning that you could see the form and structure of the fern plant in the mid-ground through the moss. It helps to open up…

1 Press pass (if possible) When you’re planning a project which is an event, make sure that everything you do is well-prepared and professional. Ordering a press pass through the organisation is a good way to be taken seriously as a street photographer. In my case, it meant the events staff knew I was there as a photographer, taking pictures of the people attending. 2 Have a good handle on theme I spent a few days looking into other photographers’ work that would inspire my project. I was especially interested in how Martin Parr works at similar events. His latest work from the Chelsea Flower Show inspired me to focus on the human element of the airshow rather than setting out to photograph planes. 3 Planning I planned carefully for…

Jon is a photographer and writer, and provides tuition in digital SLR and Photoshop skills. On this month’s disc, you’ll find no fewer than 20 custom-made photo borders. Each and every one has been crafted by hand to add an artistic edge to your images. Whether you choose to make prints or post them online, the effect will set your shots apart from the competition! The borders have been designed to work with all kinds of images, from portraits and macro shots to still life and landscapes, and you can further customise them to give a variety of effects. Even better, they’re really quick and easy to use, so find your favourite pics, and transform with an artistic new look in just a few minutes. Here’s how you can use…

James is a professional photographer. He’s an advanced Photoshop user and has created hundreds of tutorials. www.jamesaphoto.co.uk When was the last time you watched a movie and the colours and tones looked just the way they do in real life? When was the last time you looked at an image and wondered what processing had been applied to achieve its look and feel? Chances are it was fairly recently; I’d even be bold enough to say that the use of colour and contrast were behind both of those situations. Controlling colour and contrast are two of the most fundamental adjustments you can make to images, but they’re also two of the most important. Not only do they control the overall appearance of an image, they can also influence mood. Too…

Ian made his photographic reputation in South Africa, where he worked for The Daily Mail and Drum. He was the only photographer to document the massacre at Sharpeville in 1960. His books include Black and Whites: L’Afrique du Sud (with a foreword by then-French president François Mitterrand) and Living Apart. Ian Berry is a genuine living legend. Not only has he documented some of modern history’s big events, he’s even played a role in history himself, as the only photographer to document the police massacre of protestors at South Africa’s Sharpeville township in 1960. Lancashire-born Ian was working as a press photographer in the country. There had been other photographers on the scene, but police had ordered them all to leave. Ian, though, ignored their demands. “I thought: ‘I’ll keep…

Camera Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II Lens 12-100mm f/4 lens at 86mm Exposure 1/500 sec at f/8, ISO 200 Challenge 2 Alain Landes After a couple of hours working the pier, it was time to explore the beach. The stark light and shade generated by the combination of clear blue skies and midday light didn’t lend itself to classic landscape photography, but Brighton has plenty of other seaside nuggets to focus on – including the British Airways i360. This observation tower takes passengers to a height of 450 feet (20 feet higher than the London Eye) – but it’s the view of the pod itself that caught Alain’s eye. “I originally wanted to shoot straight up from the base of the tower with the wide-angle lens, but was prevented from…

1 Locations The best zoos for photography have modern enclosures, so you don’t have to photograph through fences or glass. Drive-through safari parks are also good, but don’t wind down windows if you’re not allowed! 2 Seasonal light The best time of year for light is late autumn and winter, when the lower sun can create some interesting conditions. At these times, zoos are also generally less crowded, giving you more space to shoot in. 3 Activity peaks The best times for animal activity are at the start and the end of the day. Also check when the feeding days and times are – especially with big cats, as post-feeding days are sleeping days more often than not! 4 Shoot through fences When shooting through fences, stand parallel, get as…

£469/$549 with EF-S 18-55mm IS II lens www.canon.co.uk The EOS 2000D (known as the Rebel T7 in North America) is essentially a 24-megapixel replacement for Canon’s previous cheapest camera, the EOS 1300D (Rebel T6). It’s also one step up from Canon’s new ultra-cheap EOS 4000D, reviewed last issue. Apart from the extra six million pixels, though, not much has changed compared with the 1300D. The EOS 2000D’s specs are still pretty basic, featuring Canon’s long-running entry-level nine-point autofocus system, an ISO range of 100-6,400 (expandable to ISO 12,800), continuous shooting at three frames per second and a non-articulating rear screen. You do get Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity, though, for linking wirelessly with other devices. This is all very basic by today’s standards, although for beginners on a budget, the 2000D…

4K video accessories…

£3,249/$3,099 www.canon.co.uk Canon has always been ahead of the curve in the DSLR video market. The EOS 5D Mark IV is an all-rounder which has proved a big hit with pros for its durability, versatility and affordability as a pro DSLR – and shoots 4K video too. There are some limitations. First, the 4K video mode does not use the full width of the sensor, so there is a fairly substantial 1.74x ‘crop factor’ in this mode. Second, the EOS 5D IV supports Canon’s Log Gamma mode for extended dynamic range, but only via a paid upgrade at a Canon service centre. Most surprisingly, it can only record 4K to internal memory cards; you can use an external HDMI recorder, but only for Full HD resolution. Performance The 5D IV’s…

£2,199/$2,298 www.panasonic.co.uk VALUE AWARD Panasonic has made 4K crossover cameras its speciality – but with the GH5S it’s gone a step further, sacrificing outright resolution for high-end video features. The sensor has only 10 million pixels, which dents its appeal for stills photography, but is ideal for 4K, especially as this is a ‘multi-aspect’ sensor that can shoot in the 17:9 Cinema 4K ratio, 16:9 for 4K UHD and regular 3:2 and 4:3 stills ratios using the maximum sensor area. Uniquely amongst ‘crossover’ cameras, it can capture 4:2:2 10-bit video internally to suitably fast SD cards. Most rivals can only capture 8-bit video. The GH5S also comes with Panasonic’s V-logL log mode pre-installed for extra dynamic range. Performance Performance is first rate, capturing great clarity, contrast and colour straight out…

Today, there are many professional photographers who will tell you that stock photography is dead. But that isn’t the case at all. True, the market for stock images has changed dramatically over recent years. In the ‘good old days’, you could get good returns from a few images – but with the proliferation of images and low-cost ‘microstock’ sites, nowadays the returns per sale of individual images can be extremely low. This means that making an income from stock images is now mostly about getting many lower-return sales, rather than a few bigger ones. Do your research There are many stock libraries that could sell your images, so you need to do some research to find the right one for you. You should check that the library wants the type…

Submitting your shots to magazines can be a great way of starting out making a little money from your photography, as there are publications on every single subject you could think of. Many photographic magazines have a readers’ gallery or showcase section, which is a great place to begin. These won’t offer the highest rewards, but they can be a stepping stone to getting your images published elsewhere in the magazine, or even in other publications. If you have some great seasonal images of your local area, you could also try submitting a small selection of images to a local interest magazine or publication, rather than starting out with a large organisation. If your photos are up to scratch, getting your foot in the door of any publication is pretty…

Even in a digital and online age, there is still a huge market for traditional prints for people to hang on their walls. Most people don’t have the technology, or the know-how, to make great prints from digital files, and will still prefer to buy pictures for their walls ready-made, with or without frames. Here we’ll look at how you can start selling prints, what initial costs you’re likely to face, and what eventual returns you might expect. Finding a market There are several options when it comes to finding places to sell your prints. A popular one is to approach shops and cafés, offering your prints on a consignment basis. This is an agreement where you provide the prints to hang in the shop, then split the money when…

Photo competitions offer big prizes… either in cash or in terms of top-of-the-range kit. It is a great way of trying to get some return from your hobby with the minimum of investment or effort. Where to look At any one time there are hundreds of photographic competitions around the world open for entries. The key is finding the right one for you. With prize values running into thousands of pounds or dollars, it’s tempting to jump straight for the extremely prestigious competitions such as the Landscape Photographer of the Year, Travel Photographer of the Year or Wildlife Photographer of the Year. However, these high-profile competitions attract thousands of entries, many of extremely high quality, so your chances of winning are pretty slim. Rather than only looking at these well-known…

Shooting events is a good way to earn money with your camera, and it can offer more diverse subjects than specialising purely as, say, a wedding photographer. Events work involves a number of different photographic and business skills, because you need to be able to shoot many different types of subject, and to deal with the needs and demands of both the organisers and participants. The skills and style of photography needed for shooting a corporate function, say, are very different to those needed for shooting sports events, so you need to decide which types of events you want to shoot. Experience pays Before you start charging for your event photography, it pays to get some experience of the type of events you plan to cover. You can often find…