Table of contents for April 2019 in Digital Camera Magazine

In photography, there are various ways to achieve the desired final image, and it’s a medium where experimentation is never time wasted. You may have favoured methods or processes that work very well – but wouldn’t it be great to skill up with some hard-learned expertise from leading professionals that will take your photography to the next level? That’s our theme for this issue. We’ve curated a range of tips and tricks from experts in their fields, so whether you shoot nature, nighttime, wildlife, landscapes or portraits – or just want to get creative – turn to p40 for 50 ways to shoot better pictures. Also this month, away from regulars like Photo Active, Camera College and Practical Photoshop, we meet full-frame mirrorless for the masses in the enticing form…

Introduce the camera “With my pet photo workshops, I teach people how to capture shots using my own dogs – who are (fairly) well trained and easy to manoeuvre around! Some dogs don’t like the clicking and they don’t like the big lens, so in this case I’ll arrive before shooting and just meet and greet the animal. I might also hold the camera near their face while passing over treats.” Start from further back “I take a similar approach to shooting pets with a large lens as I do with my travel or environmental portraits. For example, I’ll often start off with a 50mm lens, then get in closer when subjects become accustomed to me being there. It’s the same sort of thing with dogs. It’s important to judge…

Have you ever been presented with a stunning view, but struggled to photograph it because it was behind a large sheet of glass? When I recently visited the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, I was up on the observation deck, savouring the incredible aerial perspective – but found it difficult to get a good shot because of the reflections in the window. We couldn’t get a clear shot of what was on the other side of the glass – that is, initially. No matter where you are – think shops, the zoo, museums – windows can be tricky to take photographs through. Fortunately, there are ways to eliminate, or at least minimise, these reflections and take a clearer shot. One approach is to position your lens as close and square to…

Have you ever wanted to live like a tiny Borrower, invisible to the world? Or maybe invisible just for a little bit! Well now is your chance… OK, by using Photoshop it is, anyway. The first thing you need to think of is a theme for your shoot. For my photo shoot, I set up a towering block of photography books surrounding a cup of tea. The idea was to create the effect that I was on a break and enjoying the tranquil moment of being alone with a good book! The book I am reading is the same book I’m sat on, and the cup of tea in my hands is the same as the cup on the side! These small details create an interesting and more in-depth effect.…

All photographers can, at times, be guilty of jumping from one project to the next, without reflecting on their creative progress. That’s why designer and photographer Edward Heffer decided to recreate the same challenge the Digital Camera team once set him for a Shootout: portrait photography using only natural light, plus reflectors. (See Shootout in Digital Camera 170.) Edward was a keen amateur when he joined our portrait Shootout in 2015: “I saw it as a chance to meet the pros, gain some skills and work with a model for the first time,” he says. “Talking to the models and gaining this experience gave me the confidence to develop my work.” Edward is now a semi-professional, making some money from his portrait work. “To show my development, I shot in…

As a long winter comes to a close, the smell of spring is in the air! From flowers breaking through the soil to lambs jumping around the fields, we want to see your images that match this theme. As always, there are no rules when it comes to the content of your entry. All we ask is that it corresponds somehow to ‘Signs of Spring’. If you are photographing flowers, a macro lens can come in handy. Lenses with a macro ratio of 1:1 or closer will get you better results. You’ll most likely want to set your camera up on a tripod and use a narrow aperture setting to retain as detail. You may even want to consider focus stacking to get a crisp result. If you’re photographing animals,…

No matter where we are on our photographic journey, we’re perhaps all aspiring to be a little bit more ‘pro’ – to really feel like we’ve got a handle on our camera and that we can take on any photo situation with confidence. As spring appears and the cold climes of winter fade, it feels like the perfect time not only to fall back in love with shooting, but also to add a few fresh techniques and approaches into your standard image-making routine. If you usually focus your creative efforts on one genre, why not challenge yourself to shoot a new subject and style? Every different type of photography requires a unique set of skills, so switching up genres will make you an all-round better photographer. To help you on…

Sean McCormack is a photographer and writer, based in Galway on the west coast of Ireland. He’s the author of The Indispensable Guide to Lightroom CC. 1 Automatic Lightroom (as well as Camera Raw) supports Lens Correction Profiles, which map the faults of the chosen lens, allowing visual correction. These can be applied automatically by examining the lens metadata and matching it to a corresponding profile. If it can’t find a match, you can still select it manually, and set it as a default for that lens. Mirrorless cameras often have built-in profiles for system lenses. 2 Manual There are two ways you can make a manual correction. First, you can use the Distortion or Vignette sliders and set them to taste. Second, you can manually apply a profile. This…

Reader 1 Fiona Luke Camera: Canon EOS 100D Location: Dartmouth Fiona started taking photos in her teens, using a 35mm Pentax film camera, and always used to take her camera away on day trips and holidays. In terms of favourite subjects, Fiona leans towards landscapes – with the west coast and islands of Scotland a particular favourite. Today Fiona is shooting on her Canon EOS 100D, and has brought her EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens with her, plus an EF 50mm f/1. 8 II borrowed from a friend. Fiona currently just takes photos for pleasure, but would love to be able to sell the odd few in the future. For her next photo assignment, she’s looking to head out to Dartmoor for a night shoot. Reader 2 Max Pickering Camera: Nikon…

Rate My Photo Our reader Mary Gilbert This is a photo I took at a polo match while travelling in New Zealand. I had never tried this kind of action photography before: the challenge for me was to get a decent shutter speed without overexposing, but still getting the horse and rider sharp. I have cropped in from the original image but shot a bit wider to avoid cropping out any parts of the horse or the polo stick in the air. It was shot on my Canon EOS 5D Mk IV with a telephoto zoom lens; the exposure was 1/640 sec at f/8 and ISO 800. Our expert Andrew James If that is your first attempt at sports photography, Mary, you are going to be very good at it…

www.canon.co.uk 1 Super Spectra Coating is applied to reduce ghosting and flare. 2 The control ring enables hands-on adjustment of aperture and shutter speed. 3 Switches are on hand for AF/MF and the hybrid stabiliser. 4 As usual with STM lenses, the ‘fly by wire’ focus ring is electronically coupled. 5 The RF mounting plate on this lens lacks a weather-seal ring. Following Sony’s lead, Canon and Nikon have both launched some fairly big, heavy lenses that somewhat negate the advantage of a slimline mirrorless camera body. By stark contrast, this 35mm optic measures a mere 74 x 63mm and weighs in at just 305g. It’s small and light, but full of opportunity. Thirty-five millimetre lenses on full-frame cameras are often regarded as ideal for street photography. Typical of lenses…

www.canon.co.uk In a classic case of the second-cheapest option being a better deal, this is a much better camera than Canon’s more basic 4000D/Rebel T100. Upgrades include a dioptre adjustment for the viewfinder, a metal rather than plastic lens mount ring, plus a higher-resolution image sensor and LCD screen. The basic kit lens gains image stabilisation. A feature guide helps beginners get on terms with camera settings and the Creative Auto shooting mode offers a stepping stone from fully automatic modes to semi-automatic and manual modes. There’s also a decent range of creative filters. Performance The autofocus system has just nine AF points, of which only one is cross-type, able to resolve detail in both horizontal and vertical planes. Even so, autofocus and metering are both pretty accurate. For shooting…

www.nikon.co.uk Squarely aimed at beginners, the D3500 is supremely easy to use. As well as the usual full auto shooting mode, it has scene and effects modes aplenty, plus an interactive Guide mode, which serves as a built-in photography course. Smaller and lighter than the preceding D3400, the new model nevertheless has a more comfortable grip area and greater stamina, with a class-leading 1,550 shots from a freshly charged battery. By contrast, the Olympus, Panasonic and Sony mirrorless cameras on test can only manage around 350 shots. A notable omission is a Custom Settings menu, featured in Nikon’s more advanced cameras – including the D5600. Performance Image quality is highly impressive, although the autofocus system leaves something to be desired, with just 11 AF points, of which only one is…

www.panasonic.co.uk Although it undercuts the Olympus E-M10 III for price, the G7 has a similar set of core features. Both share a 16MP Four Thirds image sensor, a 2,360k electronic viewfinder and a 3-inch 1,040k-dot touchscreen. (Here it’s articulated rather than just tilting.) Notable differences include a two-minute Bulb exposure time: it’s 30 minutes with the Olympus. The Panasonic also lacks the Olympus’s sensor-shift image stabiliser, instead packing optical stabilisation into its kit zoom lens. The body is also bigger, although both cameras weigh in at 410g with battery and memory card. Performance Like most Panasonic cameras, the G7 is adept at shooting movies as well as stills. The contrast-detection autofocus system has fewer selectable points than in the Olympus camera, but is a little better at tracking moving objects.…

Epson Perfection V550 Photo £219/$160 www.epson.co.uk Flatbed scanners are traditionally thought of as a more versatile but less finessed alternative to a dedicated film scanner – but our experience with the V550 was very positive. Naturally it can scan photos and documents, but it includes holders for 35mm film, 35mm slides, and 120/220 medium-format film. Scanning resolution can go as high as 12,800dpi. You might imagine that laying out up to a dozen 35mm film frames over the flatbed would result in fast scanning, but the V550 Photo still scans each frame individually and takes around one minute per frame at 3,200dpi. Scanning with Digital ICE automatic dust and scratch removal enabled adds around 20 seconds per frame. Compared with the Plustek OpticFilm 135 dedicated film scanner, the V550 delivers…

1 Nikon D850 John started shooting with this full-frame DSLR several months ago, and loves it so far. The high-resolution sensor allows him to crop into images if he needs to. “4K recording is great for my video work, and the ISO buttons make me happy,” he says. 2 Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 lens The zoom range on this lens is ideal for dogs. John isn’t keen on UV filters, though: “If you’ve got a very nice lens, I don’t think it makes sense to put a cheap bit of glass on the front of it.” 3 Nikkor 85mm f/1.8G AF-S lens John favours shooting portraits with this fast and light 85mm lens. The focal length is a classic for portraiture, allowing for tight head and shoulder shots (both people and…

In this crazy-busy world, we often don’t take the time to slow down and just absorb our surroundings. Our planet is a wondrous place, and photography is a great tool to capture beautiful and scenic locations. In this project you’ll discover the necessary steps to capture a slow seascape that encompasses that Zen feeling. To give this a go yourself, you will need to find the right location. I selected a seaside view, but it doesn’t matter if there isn’t a convenient shoreline within easy reach: you could go to a lake, a waterfall or a river – even some cities and towns have waterfronts. You just need to make sure there is moving water to capture the effect. To make sure you’re fully equipped for the job, you will…

How about one of humanity’s greatest achievements as the subject of your next photograph? It’s just celebrated 20 years orbiting our planet, but the International Space Station (ISS) doesn’t get as much recognition as it should. Few even know that it’s visible in the skies above, when it’s actually the brightest object, bar the sun and moon, that we can see from Earth. The ISS orbits our planet every 90 minutes – 16 times every 24 hours – and is unmistakable when you see it. A constant bright, white light that appears in the west, the ISS takes about five minutes to cross the sky before disappearing towards the east. It’s not actually the ISS that you’re seeing, but its vast solar panels. These solar panels glint in the sunlight…

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had the good fortune to study under the great British photographer John Blakemore at the Derby School of Art. He was an inspirational teacher, and his wise words still resonate with me and inform my picture-taking nearly 30 years later. Since those heady art-school days, I have always been interested in the idea of visual metaphors, something that John was interested in too. Don’t panic, it’s not all arty-farty rhetoric: it’s simply a case of embracing the often playful notion that a photograph can be something other than a photographic record, and enjoying the concept that by showing one thing, it’s possible to also allude to another. To that end, and with the idea of visual metaphors in mind, I’m sharing with…

Being passionate about a subject and investing time in it are fundamental to successful wildlife photography. “The more you put in, inevitably the more you get out,” says wildlife photographer Simon Roy. “This is not just time behind the camera, but research and planning beforehand.” Simon rarely ventures out with his camera just to see what he can find. “Most of my images are carefully considered. This is often the longest part of the process, saving time in the field and disturbance to wary creatures. I give thought to light, framing, shooting angle, depth of field and background. When possible, I’ll make my own props for complete creative control.” Simon also composes shots so they have potential for editorial use, following the rule of thirds and allowing negative space for…

Whether you have old, scanned-in family photos you want to spruce up or a constant stream of brand-new photos you’ve taken that need some TLC, Photo Retoucher from SoftOrbits offers a fast and effective way to clean up your shots – or even remove unwanted elements entirely. Photo Retoucher enables you to remove dust spots and scratches you may have picked up on your lens. You can also remove spots and blemishes from human subjects using tools like the Concealer Brush. The Remove tool, meanwhile, lets you erase parts of your shot using automatic processing technology – then replace it with new picture information so viewers will never know it was there. Founded in 2006, SoftOrbits is an award-winning software developer creating convenient yet high-performance software. Its range includes a…

With a decade as a writer and photographer behind him, James knows exactly which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter most. Layer Masks perform a very simple function: they let you hide or reveal parts of a layer. It’s similar to using the Eraser Tool, in that you can remove details and poke holes in an image. But with Layer Masks, the pixels are never completely erased, only hidden. You have the freedom to reveal them again at any time. Hiding a portion of one layer will allow the same area on the layer below to show through, just as if you took a pair of scissors to a paper collage. This can lead to all sorts of composite images and selective effects. Here we’re able to hide the…

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 Tim Russell Taken at Lake Bled in Slovenia, this landscape shot has fairly flat lighting from an overcast sky – but that means there’s lots of potential for boosting the mood of the scene. It was shot on a Canon EOS 7D Mark II with an EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens set to 80mm. The exposure is 1/500 sec at f/6.3, ISO 320. James Abbott James specialises in landscape and portrait images, and is an advanced Photoshop user. Raw Warrior 1 wants to create… A shot with heightened…

Camera Canon EOS 100D Lens Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Exposure 1/200 sec at f/2.8, ISO 12,800 Challenge 1 Fiona Luke When it comes to appreciating beautiful creatures, fish is by no means inferior to flesh. In recent months, we’ve enjoyed bracing days photographing fur, feathers or a combination of the two at nature reserves and wildlife parks. This month, though, fins can only get better in terms of comfort, as we take refuge in the balmy climes of Bristol Aquarium. And while there won’t be any mid-winter snow or wind to contend with, taking photographs in this environment is not without its challenges. Before any camera gear is broken out, consideration must be given to how best to shoot through the windows of a glass tank. Reflections – fellow…

1 Saturated colour Frame tightly on a clump of bright spring flowers, like crocuses, pop on a polariser and take a shot that’s full of deeply saturated colour. 2 Colour blur Long stemmed flowers such as daffodils move a lot in the breeze, so capture a bed of moving flowers with a slower shutter speed of 1/15 sec. Flowers growing around a tree work well: the tree’s trunk will remain sharp while the flowers blur. 3 Carpet colours As petals fall from fruit trees like a cherry tree, they can form a carpet of colour underneath. Shoot directly down for an abstract composition, but remember to remove any twigs or dirt that distracts from the colour. 4 Background wash A shallow depth of field works well with colour. Focus on…

The descent into madness has begun: I just found myself talking to a goat. To be fair, I am walking into Ardgour – which is from the Gaelic for ‘height of the goats’ – so maybe it’s OK. This is the first time I’ve carried over 20kg on this trip – twice what I needed for the south coast in the summer. I’m narrowly missed by a McDonald’s cup that’s hurled out of the window of a speeding car, sending ice cubes skittering along the road in front of me. While I’m wondering whether it was aimed at me or a coincidence, I look up to see a pair of white-tailed eagles with wings like barn doors, flapping close overhead. I’ve never seen this rare bird before; they are close…

www.nikon.co.uk www.sony.co.uk Until a few months ago, Sony had the full-frame mirrorless market pretty much sewn up – but the arrival of the Nikon Z series has posed a direct challenge to Sony’s supremacy. The Nikon Z 6 is a direct challenger to the Sony Alpha 7 III: both are full-frame mirrorless cameras, both have 24-megapixel sensors, and both are priced to appeal to enthusiasts and experts looking for a low-cost entry into full-frame photography. The sensor resolution is the same, and so is the ISO range. These cameras don’t offer as many megapixels as higher-priced full-frame mirrorless cameras, but the payback is bigger photosites, higher ISOs and lower noise across the range. Both cameras offer a standard range of ISO 100-51,200 (expandable to ISO 50-204,800), so there’s nothing to…

www.tokinalens.com 1 The lens has a large 82mm filter thread. 2 The push-pull focus ring enables swapping between autofocus and manual focus. 3 A focus distance scale is positioned beneath a viewing window, but there are no depth of field markings. 4 The zoom ring at the rear of the lens has a smooth action. 5 A rubber ring around the metal mounting plate blocks dust and moisture. Most of Tokina’s current lenses are wide-angle zooms, building on the success of its popular 11-16mm lens for APS-C format cameras, which dates back to 2008. A Mk II edition was launched in 2013, the most notable update being an internal AF motor in the Nikon-fit version, enabling autofocus with D40, D3xxx and D5xxx series DSLRs. This 11-20mm extends the overall zoom…

www.canon.co.uk Sitting at the top of Canon’s beginner range of SLRs, this one has mightier specs than the 2000D. The Dual Pixel CMOS image sensor enables vastly quicker and more effective autofocus in Live View mode, and the regular phase-detection module has 45 AF points, all cross-type. Handling benefits from additional buttons for important settings, and the vari-angle touchscreen works wonderfully with the Quick menu. It’s actually a more beginner-friendly camera than the 2000D, with an excellent range of Guided modes that help you learn the settings. Performance The competent autofocus system is backed up by a burst rate that’s twice as fast as in the 2000D, at 6fps. All in all, the 800D delivers a significant performance increase over the 2000D, and is a better value buy despite costing…

www.nikon.co.uk Stuck in a time warp, Nikon’s ageing D5300 is still on sale. The D5600 is smaller and lighter, and packs more punch. Its rear screen has the same size and resolution, of 3.2 inches and 1,037k dots respectively, but it’s a touchscreen that makes for a more intuitive and engaging interface. The vari-angle screen is great for Live View and movie capture. The camera is well-connected too, with Wi-Fi, NFC and Bluetooth, so you can link your camera and smartphone for use with Nikon’s SnapBridge app. Performance Overall performance is similar to that of the older D5300, with the same 39-point autofocus system. The 5fps maximum drive rate is the same but the larger memory buffer enables up to 11-17 raw quality shots. There are no phase-detection AF sites…

www.sony.co.uk Now five years old, the Alpha 6000 is the oldest camera in the group. However, it’s only about half the price or less of newer A6xxx series models, so it’s more suitable for beginners. The kit includes a motorised zoom lens, offering generous wide-angle coverage with a 24-75mm effective zoom range. As with other cameras on test (apart from the Olympus and Panasonic), there’s an APS-C image sensor with approximately 24 megapixels. The electronic viewfinder has a relatively low resolution of 1,440k pixels. The top panel of the camera is plain and simple but there’s a big bunch of of buttons around the back. The control system is intuitive and logical, compared with previous Sony designs. Performance Highlights include a rapid 179-point hybrid autofocus system that’s good at tracking…

Your pro tutor John Alexander John is a pro photographer and videographer based near Oxford. He shoots a myriad of genres, including weddings, pets and travel, as well as commissions for commercial clients. www.jeaphotography.co.uk Most of us love taking and seeing photos of pets, even if we don’t have any ourselves. Thanks to the rise of smartphones and social media sharing, dog photography has come on in leaps and bounds (excuse the pun) in recent years. Even if you’re not making a living from snapping other people’s furry companions, it’s satisfying to understand how you can improve your own photos of family and friends’ pets. John Alexander is just the person to guide others on shooting better pet portraits. He holds regular workshops in his home village of Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire,…

We all love to discover something new, to be in those places that beckon us with their attractiveness. Tourist photographers plunge into the wonderful world of architecture, where every street and alley carry the promise of something mysterious. This photo shows the building of the South-Eastern railway administration in the Russian city of Voronezh, a landmark of the city that many try to capture. I shot at sunset, and used a wide-angle 18-35mm lens on a Nikon D750, set to 18mm, to include the whole of the building in the frame. This is a combined photo, consisting of several exposures. The camera was mounted on a hill to open the perspective and rise above the road level. The basic parameters are: f/11, ISO 50. For the first and main frame…

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Ah, landscapes… there’s nothing like feeling the wind in your hair – and your camera. That being said, there’s much more to capturing the majesty of a scene than arriving, snapping and leaving shortly after. In reality, the work for great landscape shots starts well before you leave the house. Strong planning is vital. For a start, weather conditions should match what you want to shoot, be it fog, storm clouds or a clear sky and golden sunset. It’s wise to check where the light will hit your chosen location at the time of the shoot, too. As modern photographers, we’re lucky that there are many apps out there to help us with this. (Check out The Photographer’s Ephemeris via www.photoephemeris.com, for example.) For spring landscapes in particular, there’s a…

This house in Sørvagur is on the island of Vágar in the Faroe Islands. However, you will never find it looking quite as it does in this photograph. The image was made with a full-spectrum converted Olympus E-M5 camera and a 590nm IR filter, then digitally altered in Photoshop and Lightroom. Like a fairytale, the image is a fiction with elements of truth. In September 2017 I had just arrived on Vágar by motorcycle, and was nearly three weeks into my journey from London. I checked into a hotel across from the airport and decided to take a walk into the town. That day I was feeling unusually tired, not aware that I was harbouring a serious throat infection. Feeling feverish, I happened upon this small house, nestled in a…

Our Water Crowd Vote winners are chosen by the online community at Photocrowd, which hosts all entries for the Digital Camera 2019 Photographer of the Year competition. Photocrowd is a contest platform for the best photo contests and photo awards around, with a global community of photographers of all levels and interests. See all the entries at photocrowd.com/dcpoty Winner Doug Richardson The Prizes The prizes Our winner gets prizes worth over £7,100: £2,500 voucher to spend at £2,000 Rohan shopping experience Sony Alpha 7 III & 28?70mm lens worth £2,199 Rotolight Neo 2 kit worth £370 CEWE print worth £50 Each category’s Judges winner gets a Rohan jacket worth £249 Each category’s Crowd Vote winner gets a one-year Digital Camera subscription worth £60 The Judges’ and Crowd Vote Top 10s…

Jon is a professional photographer and writer. He also provides one-to-one and small-group tuition in both digital SLR and Photoshop image-editing skills. Dull, bland skies can ruin otherwise good landscape shots. You take the shot anyway, hoping to extract some cloud detail during a raw conversion – but on a heavily overcast day, there may simply be no detail to bring out, no matter how hard you try. On these occasions – which are annoyingly frequent in the UK – you can either chuck away the shot, or introduce another sky to create the kind of picture you wanted to take in the first place. Some call this process ‘cheating’, and some call it ‘creative’ – but there’s no doubt that a sky transplant can be transformational. Leaving the moral…

James is a professional photographer who specialises in landscape and portraits. He’s an advanced Photoshop user and has created hundreds of tutorials. There’s no compensating for creating special effects on location with your camera but there will always be occasions where you need to produce a specific technique during post-processing. Many software-based effects of this nature look poor and should be avoided, but there are a handful that are worth considering. For applying a large number of different effects, Photoshop includes a plethora of filters that range from one-click solutions to more advanced offerings, which require a degree of knowledge or trial and error to achieve the desired result. Here are four quick and easy effects that can be applied in a matter of seconds. You’ll also see how to…

Camera Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II Lens Olympus 14-150mm lens Exposure 1/320 sec at f/5.3, ISO 200 Winner, The Beauty of Plants category Lotus Tango by Kathleen Furey, Washington DC, USA “This image was shot at Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens in Washington DC. There are many stages of lotus growth on display at the Aquatic Gardens, but to come across two twisted dancing stems of Nelumbo nucifera was unexpected and quite magical.” OVER ALL INTER NATIONAL GARDEN PHOTOGR APHER OF THE YEAR Winner, Abstract Views category Fireworks by Jill Welham, UK “This image of three allium heads was created using a technique known as wet cyanotype. Photograms are created by placing flat objects such as leaves or flowers onto the surface of the treated paper, with a piece of…

Camera Canon EOS 100D Lens Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Exposure 1/1,600 sec at f/1.8, ISO 12,800 Challenge 2 Fiona Luke Interesting fact: Bristol Aquarium is home to over 5,000 creatures, although you wouldn’t necessarily think so while walking around it. For our second challenge, we asked our participants to concentrate on the aquarium’s non-fish offerings, and there were certainly plenty to choose from. On our walk around the building, we encountered an octopus, albeit a pretty shy one, as well as crabs, terrapins, and some elusive but colourful tree frogs in the rainforest area. But Fiona’s head had already been turned by the jellyfish near the entrance. They’re certainly visually enigmatic, but many other creatures in the aquarium are easier to photograph, so plaudits to Fiona for fully embracing…

NEW CAMERA LAUNCH! New Fujifilm X-T30 is a pocket powerhouse The company’s best-seller gets a compelling successor Fujifilm has unveiled the X-T30, the successor to its best-selling enthusiast CSC model, the X-T20. The X-T30 includes a range of technical benefits ported down from the company’s highly regarded X-T3. The manufacturer describes the X-T30 as “the little giant” – small camera, big performance. Use the X-T30 (383g) with the new XF16mm f/2.8 R WR lens (155g) and the combination weighs just 538g, offering big appeal as an ultra-light system. Leading the technical improvements is the incorporation of the 26.1MP X-Trans CMOS 4 APS-C image sensor and the X-Processor Pro image 4 processor from the X-T3. The new sensor debuted last autumn and is back-illuminated – the electronic wiring is at the…

www.canon.com 1 Canon’s smallest and lightest full-frame camera, the EOS RP weighs just 485g including battery and card. 2 The 54mm RF mount, ironically, is better suited to smaller EF lenses on the EOS RP. Despite rumours that it would be a professional-grade version of the Canon EOS R (which is indeed coming), the Canon EOS RP is instead a more populist version of the company’s full-frame mirrorless model. Indeed, the ‘P’ in the name stands for ‘popular’, in the sense of meaning ‘for everybody’. This tells you exactly who the EOS RP is intended for. The company listened to feedback and realised that there was a lot of interest in the EOS R from advanced amateur photographers: the kind who already own an APS-C camera (such as a Canon…

There’s no denying that most smartphones can take high-quality photos, and are easily pocketable. But if you want to get serious about photography, they’re a poor substitute for a proper camera. The latest models come in a baffling array of shapes and sizes, from super-skinny compacts with built-in lenses to chunky kits with hefty price tags. So what’s the best fit for your needs and your budget? A good beginner’s camera should be simple and intuitive, enabling you to get great results straight out of the box. However, it should also be sufficiently advanced in terms of features and specifications that it can grow with you as you learn new tricks and techniques. Ultimately, a ‘system camera’ with a few sophisticated functions in reserve, and that enables you to add…

www.fujifilm.eu/uk Like other recent models in Fujifilm’s SLR-style mirrorless stable, the X-T100 combines chic retro styling with practicality. The net result is a useful set of hands-on dials and buttons that ease the transition from basic and advanced auto modes to semi-automatic and manual modes. Typical of mirrorless cameras, it’s relatively compact, especially paired with the retracting 15-45mm kit lens. As well as a tilting touchscreen, the camera boasts a high-resolution 2,360k-dot electronic viewfinder. Performance Switch to the electronic shutter mode and you can freeze the action with a shutter speed of 1/32,000 sec. The maximum Bulb exposure of 60 minutes is longer than in rival Olympus and Panasonic cameras. The hybrid phase/contrast-detection autofocus system is highly competent and the 6fps burst rate is quick, although the limited buffer depth…

www.olympus.co.uk Thanks in part to its tiny retractable zoom lens, this Olympus makes a great travelling companion. It’s immaculately engineered and feels a top-quality camera, complete with a good selection of tactile dials and buttons that enhance handling. In these times of so much hype surrounding full-frame cameras, it might seem odd that Olympus and Panasonic are persevering with the Micro Two Thirds format, but the relatively small image sensor enables particularly compact cameras and lenses. A downside is that it can be a struggle to get a tight depth of field, for example when you want to blur the background in portraiture. Performance Clever tricks include Live Bulb and Live Time modes for updating the LCD display during long exposures, so you can literally see what you’re going to…

Beginners are really spoilt for choice these days when they select their first camera. The Canon EOS 2000D and Nikon D3500 are both good, attractively priced options, the Nikon stealing a lead with its interactive Guide mode. However, they’re both less sophisticated than other cameras on test, and you might soon find yourself wanting to trade up to a more exotic model. With this in mind, we’d go for the Canon EOS 800D. It’s dead easy to get up and running with, thanks to its great Guide interface, yet has seriously smart functions and features on hand for you to grow into. There are some seriously good mirrorless cameras on the market as well. Our current favourite for a beginner-level model is the Fujifilm X-T100, which rivals pricier SLRs for…