Table of contents for June 2021 in Digital Camera Magazine

Are you getting the most out of your lenses? This is the question we’re answering in this month’s feature (p60), so whether you shoot landscapes, portraits or macro, it’s essential reading. Packed with 12 pages of hints, tips and pro advice, there’s bound to be an unfamiliar technique or skill that will help you shoot better photos. Fresh inspiration for potential shooting subjects can be found in Photo Active (p16) and Stay at Home (p41), while Camera College (p72) continues with a masterclass on multiple exposures. Treat your eyes to the visual feast that is Hotshots (p82), with our highlights from the Royal Horticultural Society’s 2021 photo contest, and enjoy the work of leading pros Brent Stirton (p10) and Alok Sinha (p134). This month’s camera and kit reviews include the…

60 MINUTES OF VIDEO LIGHTROOM EDITING BASICS www.bit.ly/dc243develop Download 60 minutes of video training for Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity Photo. FILE & VIDEO www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc243 DIRECT THE EYE WITH VIGNETTES www.bit.ly/dc243vignette FOCUS-STACKING www.bit.ly/dc243stack RETRO ANALOGUE EFFECTS www.bit.ly/dc243retro PAINT WITH LIGHTBEAMS www.bit.ly/dc243lightbeams MAKE ANY LENS WIDER www.bit.ly/dc243wide MONOCHROME MAGIC www.bit.ly/dc243mono THE POWER OF SYMMETRY www.bit.ly/dc243symmetry…

Living close to Chew Valley Lake in Somerset means I am lucky enough to have an ever-changing subject on my doorstep. Getting out to the lake for a summer sunrise requires planning and preparation, but the pay-off can be some beautiful atmospheric shots. The light can be incredible at Chew Valley Lake whether it’s summer or winter, but a lot depends on visibility. Mist can create atmospheric shots, usually in the winter, while summer can mean crystal-clear mornings. Sunrise can bring some breathtaking lighting, especially with some cloud cover, and there will be a higher dynamic range in your photos for post-processing work. Taking photos of a lake means you are likely to have wildlife around. I can nearly always guarantee there will be either gulls swooping in the sky,…

Get this great Lowepro camera bag by subscribing today at: www.magazinesdirect.com/dcm/tahoe150 or call 0330 333 1113 and quote ‘93AY’ Make sure you use this URL or quote the code on the phone: other offers are available that do not include the backpack gift * Offer closes 31 July 2021. Offer open to new UK subscribers only. Pricing is guaranteed for the first 12 months and we will notify you in advance of any price changes. Please allow up to six weeks for delivery of your first subscription issue (up to eight weeks overseas). Your gift will be delivered separately within 60 days after your first payment has cleared. Gifts only available to subscribers on the UK mainland. Gift not available with a digital subscription. The full subscription rate is for 12…

Covid-19 has limited the amount of people we are able to engage with and see, but you can always use photography to expand your horizons. This project will show you how to create images that include multiple versions of yourself or another person within your home or garden. And as a fun extension project that’s a homage to the Invisible Man movies, I’ll also show you how to make faces disappear using Photoshop. By using a series of photographs shot with a camera on a tripod, you can create the clone effect very easily by overlaying the images and using various masking and erasing tools. This is fun to do with anyone in your household, and can be created using minimal equipment and editing techniques. All you will need is…

1 ‘A Scolding’ by David Reid “On a nature walk, I stumbled across at least 15 birds squawking and fighting over a tree stump. Then this female red-winged blackbird turned started to give me an earful.” Digital Camera says: A great capture, David: you must have been primed and ready with a telephoto lens to fire off this shot! 2 ‘Into the Wormhole’ by Tony Bushkes “This started as a bunch of cut flowers from the garden; thanks to Radial Blur and Distortion with Twirl in Photoshop, I finished up like this.” Digital Camera says: An eye-catching example of the ‘twirl’ phenomenon that has caught on hugely during the lockdown days. 3 ‘A Wynter’s Tale’ by Joan Wright “My new dog is in obedience training and has to learn to…

Anything beyond the standard focal length of 50mm takes us into the territory of telephoto lenses. These magnify the subject to make it larger than the eye’s unaided view. Telephotos are the weapon of choice for wildlife and sports pros, but have a much broader use in other genres, such as landscape and portraiture. Purely because of their length and construction, telephoto lenses are heavy, and therefore trickier to use. Fast, wide-aperture prime telephotos are expensive, but offer astounding quality. Telezooms have greater flexibility, but they also come with a variable aperture; so although a lens might be f/4.5 at its short end, it will likely be f/5.6 or f/6.3 at the long end – worth noting if you are in the market for your first long zoom lens. 1 Shoot…

You don’t have to combine two or more discrete subjects to create a clearly defined end result. Sometimes it pays to embrace the ‘multiple’ aspect of this technique, and combine many frames to produce a more impressionistic image. By moving the camera between each shot, you can emphasise the bustling nature of urban scenes, for example, or provide a sketch-like interpretation of a well-known landmark. You don’t have to move the camera by a significant amount – even a very subtle shift in the angle can be just enough. With scenes involving movement – such as crowds of shoppers in a street – allowing the subjects to move position between each frame will add interest. Try using a shutter speed that’s fast enough to prevent motion blur, though: sharply rendered…

If you use a high ISO to record the images for your multiple exposure, you’re more likely to see increased levels of visual noise when all the shots are merged. You can reduce the possibility of this happening by manually setting a low ISO. If you rely on Auto ISO, then make sure that the maximum ISO setting made available to the camera isn’t too excessive.…

With over a decade’s experience as a writer and photographer, James is also an accomplished image editor – and an expert in Affinity Photo. FILE & VIDEO www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc243 here’s more to a successful black-and-white conversion than simply removing colour. If you want to take control of your black-and-white photos, you need to tailor your conversions to the image. Colour, even in its absence, is important for this control, because the best black-and-white conversion tools let you finetune the brightness of colours as you remove them. Affinity Photo’s Black & White layer is one such tool. Much like a lens-mounted monochrome filter, it lets you control colour brightness so you can, for example, darken blues and lift greens so that a tree stands out against a blue sky. Simple and intuitive…

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. 20 FREE CUSTOM LIGHTBEAM BRUSHES digitalcameraworld.com/dc243 FILE & VIDEO www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc243 If you want to add striking lighting effects to one of your images, then the free gift supplied with this issue will have you beaming! It comprises 20 custom-made brushes, which will add amazing lightbeams to your shots. Whether you want to have rays of light boosting the mood in a window-lit interior, or streaming through the canopy in a woodland scene, you’ll find the ideal effect for the job in this 20-brush kit. The brush shapes aren’t limited either, as they’re designed to be applied to a fresh layer and then pulled into the exact form you…

James is a professional photographer who specialises in landscape and portraits. He’s an advanced Photoshop user and has created hundreds of tutorials. FILE & VIDEO www.digital cameraworld .com/dc243 Despite film emulsion being stable and reliable, analogue photography can throw up unexpected results that are less likely with digital photography. When you apply special effects to film, they can often create varied results with different images, even when the process itself is identical each time. This provides film-based photography with the ability to create more distinctive results. But while digital photography is much more consistent with great image quality much easier to achieve, it can still benefit from analogue effects being applied in Photoshop. The results can look great, and the process can be fun. These four digital techniques mimic the…

This eye-catching macro image of a nectar-gathering bee could be a cracker, but it looks like the brightness of the pink flower has tricked the camera’s meter into underexposing a lot of the photo – and that means some pleasing details in the bee’s body are lost. So let’s get busy… In Lightroom, we’ll start with a general shadows lift 1 by taking Shadows in the Basic Panel to +50. This lightens the whole image, but critically also the focal point of the insect, and recovers some lost detail. Framing could be improved slightly, too, so we’ll head over to the Transform Panel. Using Scale (120) and X Offset (+10.3), we can make the bee more prominent in the frame 2. Back in the Basic Panel, we can still brighten…

This new fast prime will be ideal for shooting landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, weddings and low-light photography, says Fujifilm. Optical construction features 15 elements in 9 groups, including three aspherical lenses, and one ED element. Autofocus is powered by a linear motor, and can be as fast as 0.04 sec in regular shooting. Light and portable at just 76mm long and 370g, the XF 18mm f/1.4 has weather seals, an aperture ring and a filter thread size of 62mm. www.fujifilm.co.uk; £879/$999…

Smaller and lighter than rival optics, the FE 14mm f/1.8 GM utilises 14 lens elements in 11 groups. Two XA lens elements will minimise astigmatism, coma, distortion and field curvature, while one ED and one Super ED element are there to suppress chromatic aberration. Sony is keen to highlight this lens’s control of ‘sagittal flare’, which is important for astrophotography, and says that a pair of high-thrust XD Linear motors will deliver fast, precise and quiet AF. www.sony.com; £1,400/$1,600…

Remembering African Wild Dogs will be the sixth book in the charity book series started by wildlife photographer Margot Raggett in 2016. She decided to take action after seeing a poached elephant in Kenya, and started asking fellow wildlife photographers if they would contribute images to a fundraising book – this request launched the start of something special. Remembering Elephants and its successors Remembering Rhinos, Remembering Great Apes, Remembering Lions and Remembering Cheetahs have between them raised more than £775,000/US$1 million for 50 conservation projects across 24 countries. Over 1,000 images in total were entered for Remembering African Wild Dogs, which will feature images from wildlife photographers including Marsel van Oosten, Art Wolfe, Frans Lanting, Greg du Toit and Charlie Hamilton James – included under the ‘Wildlife Photographers United’ banner…

www.fujifilm.co.uk The X-E4 is Fujifilm’s most compact interchangeable-lens camera. As the latest in the brand’s X-E series of mirrorless cameras, it has a rectangular rangefinder-like design rather than the mini DSLR-styling of the X-T series. It’s for enthusiasts who value a classic, compact design over all the bells and whistles of the X-S10 and X-T4. This is the fourth camera in Fujifilm’s X-E series, following the design of previous versions closely, but with Fujifilm’s latest 26.1MP X-Trans sensor. This gives it a modest increase in resolution over the previous X-E3 – but the real gain is a newer generation of back-illuminated sensor design, which gives a step up in all-round image quality. It’s the same sensor used in Fujifilm’s flagship X-T4. This means the X-E4 also gets a powerful on-sensor…

www.sigma-imaging-uk.com Sigma’s 85mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art lens has become a favourite of many portrait and still life photographers who shoot with Canon and Nikon full-frame cameras. Sigma also offers the lens in an E-mount option, for use with Sony mirrorless bodies. At 95 x 125mm and 1,130g, however, it feels a bit of a mismatch for relatively slimline Sony cameras, resulting in a distinctly front-heavy package. The new Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art lens is built purely for mirrorless cameras and represents a complete redesign, with an all-new optical path and autofocus system. It’s much smaller and lighter yet packs a lot in with a raft of high-end handling features that are absent in the older DG HSM lens. As such, it’s ideal for use with Sony and…

Brent Stirton Photojournalist One of the world’s hardest-working photojournalists, Stirton’s work appears in a new book about global conservation. We find out more on page 10 Lucy Masters Photographer Living close to a picturesque lake means that Lucy has a plentiful supply of atmospheric backgrounds to shoot. Tag along for a sunrise session on page 34 Gary Clarke Photographer With access to his favoured landscape haunts restricted by Covid-19, Gary found himself pivoting to macro photography. See the results on page 37 Jo-Anne McArthur Animal photojournalist With her book Hidden now on sale, we catch up with a pioneer of this new genre, and view some of the powerful images shot to improve animal welfare. Page 111 Jon Devo Photographer and writer Tech and photography are two subjects close to…

HOW TO GET YOUR DIGITAL GIFTS STEP 1 ENTER THIS URL www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc243 Enter the URL above into the destination bar of your internet browser – we’re using Google Chrome, but other browsers work in a similar way. Please do not enter it in any search field or search bar (see the examples above). This will take you to a page on our website. STEP 2 START YOUR DOWNLOAD Just click the highlighted link Here you’ll find all the gifts and videos to accompany this issue of Digital Camera. Click on the link labelled Download the disc for Digital Camera 243 and your download will start. STEP 3 ACCESS YOUR FILES Open the .zip In your Downloads folder, or wherever you chose to download your files to, double-click the dc243-disc.zip file…

Combining images together to make a fun and surreal scene is what Photoshop is all about! To make your book scene look authentic, you need to have patience when it comes to selecting and blending in the figures, so don’t rush these stages. For best results use Layer Masks with your selections, and zoom in close to your subject, working your way around the selection with a small brush to tidy up the edges. In step 1 of the tutorial below, I use the Pen Tool to make a Shape Layer of book pages, which I can then apply my grass image onto. The Pen Tool is by far the most accurate way for cutting out shapes with curves and straight lines in Photoshop. It can take a little time…

NEW SERIES Don’t miss out – subscribe today! See page 38 Crafting the perfect balance of exposure and tones is easier than you might think – especially if you’re using Lightroom Classic CC’s Develop Module. It has a host of handy tools and adjustments you can use to speedily work up each of your images with ease. The Develop Module features a large range of adjustment and tools, including Lens Correction, Tone Curve and much more. But one of the most powerful features you can utilise is the Basic Panel, which you’ll find on the right of the interface. These adjustable sliders enable you to enhance various aspects of your selected image, including Temperature, Exposure, Vibrance and more. The Basic Panel may be brilliantly simple, but it’s actually one of…

www.benedictbrain.com Camera: Nikon D810 Lens: Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 at 150mm Exposure: 1/125 sec at f/5.6, ISO 80 Lately I’ve been travelling vicariously through my hard drives. It’s a relatively satisfying antidote to the lockdown restrictions and the lack of travel – and a helpful reminder of just how lucky I am to have been to all the places I have visited. I’ve also noticed how many projects I seem to start, but never quite finish. I have stumbled through countless visual ideas and photographic musings that remain unresolved, unloved and virtually forgotten in my hard drives. Some of these ideas are best left there – but some have stood the test of time, and are worthy of resurrection or, at the very least, further enquiry. One such idea I once…

Thank you for posing the seven-day black-and-white photo challenge in issue 240, which I have really enjoyed doing. I can’t quite believe how liberating it feels to remove the colour from an image and explore tones, textures and shapes. It has really encouraged me to look at the world through fresh eyes, and I feel it’s providing a grounding for truly creating images rather than using images as a means of representation. I’ve selected seven photos taken for the challenge to share with Digital Camera readers, and would love it if you could give me some feedback. They were all taken on my Canon EOS M, which I have just upgraded to the Mark II. I’d like to add that, inspired by your feature in issue 237 (page 56) that…

Macro photography is a specialist area of photography that requires a dedicated lens, but it’s entirely accessible to enthusiast photographers. Because of the unique view it offers, a macro lens is often the third most popular choice for enthusiasts, after the general wide-angle and telephoto focal lengths. Although the term macro is embossed on the barrel of all kinds of lenses, true macro is defined as a reproduction ratio of 1:1 – also known as 1x magnification or life-size. This means that if you were to place the subject directly on the sensor, that’s exactly the size it would appear in the image. True macro lenses are usually short telephoto primes ranging from 60 to 105mm, so they also double up as a fast portrait lens. 1 Keeping it sharp The…

Shooting mode Multiple Exposure mode is usually enabled through the camera’s main menu, so you’re free to set your preferred shooting mode. You may find that the ISO that’s used for the first image is automatically set for subsequent ones, though. Blending mode You can select the way in which each image is merged together. It’s a bit like setting the blending mode in image editing software such as Affinity Photo, although the camera can also automatically adjust the strength of the exposure for each ‘layer’. How many images? The number of shots you’re able to take in a multiple exposure varies between cameras, but it’s typically nine or ten. If you need more, you can always choose your final blended image as the starting image in a second multiple…

You can create a rough and ready version of the Orton effect, a technique devised by landscape photographer Michael Orton in the 1980s, where he sandwiched an out-of-focus slide of an image with a sharp one to add a mystical glow. You can do the same using your camera’s multiple-exposure function and turning the focus ring between shots to lose the focus.…

Overall Winner and Winner, Gardens ‘Spring From The Air’ Oliver Dixon “Throughout lockdown in the UK, I wanted to document and share images of gardens and outdoor spaces in bloom that were unable to be seen by visitors. As a working press photographer, I was luckily able to get out and work in certain locations where it was safe to do so. “I set out searching for local destinations for photographs, both by drone and stills on the ground, and Loseley was a perfect spot. I worked closely with the owners to get permission to fly the drone from private land and capture a shot with a bird’s eye view that hadn’t been seen before. “I love the shapes that can be seen from the sky of the pathways as…

With over a decade as a writer and photographer behind him, James knows exactly which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter most. FILE & VIDEO www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc243 Focus-stacking is a great way to increase the depth of field in your close-ups, landscapes or any other type of scene where you want to achieve front-to-back sharpness. Sometimes this simply isn’t possible in one exposure – especially when you want to include details that are very close to the lens – but by shooting a set of photos with varying focus points, we can combine the sharpest parts into a single image later on. To shoot for a focus stack, simply use a tripod and focus on the closest point. Take a shot, then manually shift the focus slightly and take another,…

Canon’s forthcoming EOS R3, a pro camera aimed at sports and news photographers, will boast 30fps continuous shooting, a brand-new stacked backside illuminated (BSI) image sensor, “next-generation Dual Pixel CMOS AF” and Eye Control Function autofocus. The EOS R3 will sit between the DSLR flagship EOS-1D X Mark III and the current top-of-the-line mirrorless camera, the EOS R5. As this news was a development announcement, rather than a full product announcement, many important specs – including the EOS R3’s megapixel count and video capabilities – are yet to be revealed. But given what we do know, the EOS R3 has the new Sony Alpha 1 in its sights – at least in the all-important speed stakes, the defining feature of cameras for sports photography. The headline feature, which matches the…

www.dji.com The DJI Air 2S redefines what’s possible with drone photography, putting a one-inch sensor in a tiny package and surrounding it with sophisticated safety and compositional aids. On the other hand, it could be seen as just taking the already extremely capable DJI Air 2, released only 12 months ago, and bumping the specs a bit. Key features The Air 2S’s predecessor, the Air 2, sported a 48-megapixel camera with quad-Bayer filter, which many would see as effectively 12 megapixels at 1.6 microns. The new camera beats that with 5,472 x 3,648 pixels (20MP) at 2.4 microns. This is thanks to an upgrade in the image sensor size from half an inch to one inch. The Air 2S’s aperture is fixed at f/2.8, but the lens design means that…

Many of us easing out of lockdown recently have rediscovered the simple joys of ambling around city streets, feasting on the sights and sounds of bustling life. It’s only natural to want to capture this ‘new’ normality on camera. And if you’ve never been into street photography before, it’s a chance to try something new. But what is street photography, and how do you shoot it? Classic street photography is all about reacting to your environment, anticipating events as they unfold and capturing definitive moments. More often than not, classic street images include people set against urban surroundings, photographed candidly as they go about their lives. You’ll therefore need a camera and lens combination that you can use fairly discreetly, and that enables you to shoot with next to no…

Lens mount Nikon F Compared with Nikon’s new Z-series 35mm lens for its mirrorless cameras, this F-mount option is smaller, lighter and much less expensive. Both lenses have an f/1.8 aperture rating. The ring-type ultrasonic system is typically quick and quiet, as well as enabling full-time manual override. There’s a focus distance scale but it’s of limited benefit for manual focusing, as there are no markings between 0.7m and infinity, and only rudimentary depth of field markers for f/16. Optical highlights include one aspherical element, one ED (Extra-low Dispersion) element and Super Integrated Coating. Performance Bearing in mind that this lens is less than half the weight of the competing Sigma, it packs plenty of punch. Sharpness is mostly very good, and contrast is excellent, even when shooting wide-open. Sharpness…

Lens mount Sony E With its f/2.8 aperture rating, this Tamron is the ‘slowest’ lens in the group, but the upsides are that it’s very compact and weighs just 210g. Despite that, the build quality feels sturdy and solid, complete with weather seals. The lens feels well-balanced on the Sony full-frame mirrorless cameras for which it’s designed. The stepping motor-based autofocus system is near-silent but not massively fast, while the electronically coupled focus ring works with precision. Like the Canon RF 35mm lens on test, the Tamron can double up as a macro lens, delivering 0.5x magnification at its shortest focus distance of 0.15m. Performance Sharpness is exceptional even when shooting wide-open, although the f/2.8 aperture rating is modest. Other aspects of image quality are similarly impressive. Sharpness Scintillating corner-to-corner…

The best photo cards are a fantastic way to show a loved one that you’re thinking of them while adding the perfect personal touch. Whether you’re looking to send some festive greetings, want to post out the invites to your wedding, or simply would like to wish a friend a happy birthday, creating your own bespoke photo cards is an amazing way to show someone that you care. But rather than purchasing a generic cookie-cutter greetings card, a unique and heartfelt bespoke photo card featuring one of your own photographs will be much more personal. Play your cards right We tested five different photo card suppliers to see which offers the best service and end result. To ensure that the test was as fair as possible, we used the same…

9 ALL-NEW TIPS CARDS Our collectable shooting tips cards enable you to carry handy settings and suggestions around in your kit bag. This issue, get wallet-sized advice on wildlife portraits, business-friendly headshots and finding creative angles for architecture. NEW-LOOK TIPS CARDS! 9 subjects Techniques Settings Kit list 20 lightbeam brushes for Photoshop CC Add drama to your landscapes and interiors by painting in lightbeams! Look in the Gifts folder in your download for the 20 brushes, then turn to page 92 for Jon Adams’ guide to installing the brushes and adding your first set of lightbeams to a photo. Buyer’s Guide ebook 258 pages of the latest camera and lens reviews, plus buying advice for accessories! See the Gifts folder in your download.…

Brent Stirton is usually absurdly busy. On average he spends eight or nine months a year travelling the world, documenting issues such as Aids, wildlife crime, conservation and blindness. Often this will involve visiting dozens of countries in any 12-month period – but his normal workflow has been curtailed due to the global pandemic and, for the first few months of 2021, kept him grounded in his California home, from where he spoke to Digital Camera. Stirton was originally a print journalist in his home country of South Africa – but, at one point, rather than teaming up with a photographer to accompany him on stories, he saved up and bought a secondhand Canon A1 camera. Beginning a new storytelling path that combined words and pictures, he was soon training…

10 things to shoot, edit or create this month, including motion blur, macro and Hollywood glamour Although longdistance travel is challenging right now, zoos and wildlife parks are well within reach, and have given me the opportunity to improve my skills while capturing new images for my portfolio. The techniques needed are generally the same as any safari holiday, but with the advantage of knowing the animals are nearby. Avoiding any distracting elements and observing animal behaviours are the key elements to capturing natural wildlife images, so there is always a need to see outside of the image to seek out the best opportunities. There have been times, for example, when moving away from the fence has provided better images, and permitted me to see the animals move to new…

Camera Fujifilm X-T2 Lens Fujinon XF 56mm f/1.2 Exposure ⅛,000 sec at f/1.2, ISO 800 In a world where we all have a lot of material gadgets and gizmos, travel is fast becoming the best thing you can spend your hard-earned money on. Not only does it leave you with a lifetime of memories, but it also presents you with a brand-new canvas. It took a while for my love of street photography to develop; for many years I primarily shot portraits and fashion. The majority of my fashion work, however, was on the street, in gritty areas and alleyways you would never typically venture down. But down here are where unique opportunities lie. When I travel, of course I visit all the main tourist spots, but I dedicate time…

For more than three decades, my career has mostly been about shooting the bright and the beautiful. From humble GP beginnings to succeeding David Bailey as Olympus UK’s Principal Photographer, and from personal portraits to major advertising campaigns, my quest has always been to empower women and give them a platform in my images, to show off their inherent beauty. My father’s illness, and the fact that my parents weren’t getting any younger, made me want to come back closer to home. A 6,000 square-foot call centre in my home town fell empty and the prodigal son returned, making it my base of operations six years ago. It was a blank canvas to build my dream studio, and the hub for my internationally acknowledged school of photography. I now divide…

Gary Clarke is a selftaught photographer who started out in 2012, as a means of unwinding from his job in IT. He is now at the stage of slowly moving away from the day job, though, and describes himself as a semi-professional photographer. His favoured photography genres are landscape and seascapes. Following the rules during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 has meant that Gary, like many of us, hasn’t had the opportunity to travel around the UK – but it did provide a great opportunity to try some new techniques. He recently upgraded his macro kit to include a Sigma 150mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM macro lens plus a Sigma 1.4x teleconverter and a Nikon SS-MS1 Close-Up Speedlight Kit. This allows him to stay further away from bugs, with…

Having recently discovered a new accessory, I was keen to experiment with it and create some unique images. A simple glass sphere, a Lensball bends the light that passes through it, changing the perspective of how subjects are seen and helping to create intriguing photographs in the process. A Lensball is an inexpensive addition to your camera setup, and will help you become more creative while shooting a range of different subjects. My Lensball has already become a staple tool within my camera bag, and I have been using it for most subjects I have been photographing at home or locally. In this tutorial I will reveal how to use a Lensball and explain the different setups and the equipment you need. Then I will showcase a variety of subjects…

The technology within today’s DSLR and mirrorless camera bodies is amazing. The quality of any resulting image, however, is determined not by the camera’s processing power or the sensor’s pixel count, but by the glass you have on the business end! The optical system that captures the scene or subject and turns it into a focused image on the sensor is the starting point for a picture. No matter how advanced your camera body and sensor is, it’s the lens that does the heavy lifting. The lens in use is also the factor that determines how wide or tight your angle of view is, and how much of the scene is rendered in sharp focus. The former is covered by the focal length, which can be fixed or variable; the…

While the extreme ends of the focal range might get more attention, standard lengths that sit between 35 and 70mm are an important part of any lens line-up. One of the most popular standard lenses is the 50mm prime: it provides excellent resolving power and fast maximum apertures. With sensor crop factors to consider, a 30mm or 35mm focal length could effectively be a standard focal length on your camera. A 35mm wide-angle lens becomes a 52.5mm lens on a APS-C Nikon (1.5x) or 56mm on an APS-C Canon (1.6x). A standard zoom with a 28-70mm range is also a useful option with great flexibility, but doesn’t have the fast aperture offered by primes. 1 Fast and cheap A 50mm prime (or its focal length equivalent for those not shooting with…

Jenny Lewis has spent the last three years photographing the people who live in her Hackney neighbourhood, covering every age from birth to 100 in chronological order: 100 people, 100 years, one community. Paired with revealing quotes and short stories from each of her subjects, this tender series captures not just a vibrant pocket of east London, but the many vital moments of connection, contradiction, confusion, growth and reflection that we all experience in life as we age. Jenny’s portraits and interviews have captured a series of 100 potent close-ups and the riveting first lines of 100 stories. “I photographed Jill at home first and recorded the interview,” says Jenny of this shot. “She talked about the ceramics studio where she now spent a lot of time, the friends she’d…

What is mirror lock-up? Every DSLR has a mirror that enables you to look into the viewfinder and out through the lens. The mirror flips up when you take a photo and flips down just after; it’s the ‘clunking’ noise when the shutter button is pressed. It has to do this to get out of the way of the light during the time the exposure is being made. But this movement can cause vibrations within the camera body. Why would that matter? For a lot of shooting situations, it doesn’t matter. If you’ve set a fast shutter speed, those vibrations won’t have any effect on image quality; but if you are using exposures from about 1/8 sec and slower, the slap of the mirror and the resulting vibrations could cause…

The first ultra-telephoto for Sony full-frame mirrorless cameras, Tamron’s 150-500mm f/5-6.7 Di III VC VXD has a compact design, even when shooting at the 500mm telephoto end, which makes handheld shooting practical. Unsurprisingly for a 150-500mm lens, at 1,725kg it’s pretty heavy, but it does come with a tripod collar. Optical construction consists of 25 elements arranged in 16 groups, and includes one XLD (eXtra Low Dispersion) element, five LD (Low Dispersion) and two Hybrid Aspherical lens elements to control aberration. The new lens goes on sale in June. www.tamron.eu; £1,380/$1,399 Go to www.digitalcameraworld.com for the latest news, reviews & techniques…

Canon claims that its RF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM will be “the world’s first” autofocusing macro lens with 1.4x magnification – and it also offers bokeh control. While the focal length and aperture of the new optic are the same as the brand’s popular EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM for DSLRs, this made-for-mirrorless RF version possesses some very welcome new tricks. On top of the increased 1.4:1 reproduction ratio (which records images larger than life-size), thanks to the short back focusing and floating lens system, the RF 100mm f/2.8L Macro offers five stops of image stabilisation – which rises to eight stops when used with Canon’s EOS R5 and EOS R6 cameras. The RF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM also has a dedicated SA control ring – this…

www.sony.co.uk When it comes to 50mm standard primes for full-frame cameras, the most common choices are a budget-friendly f/1.8 lens or a more upmarket f/1.4 option. With the FE 50mm f/1.2 G Master, Sony joins an exclusive 50mm f/1.2 lens club with only two previous members: Canon and Nikon. The Sony lens undercuts both its competitors on price and, despite needing large front elements to let in lots of light, it’s noticeably lighter than the Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.2 and barely more than two thirds the length. The standout feature of any f/1.2 lens is its fast aperture rating, enabling a super-skinny depth of field and fast shutter speeds under very low lighting conditions, helping to freeze motion and enable handheld shooting without bumping up your ISO rating. But there’s…

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get top-end performance and fabulous image quality from a lens that’s compact and light yet robustly built, all at a really low price? That’s exactly what the Tamron 35mm delivers – and more besides, with refined handling and a bonus 0.5x macro facility. Sure, it only has a modest f/2.8 aperture rating, but that should prove perfectly sufficient for street photography. The only real downside is that this lens is only available for Sony E-mount cameras. Sigma’s 35mm Contemporary lens is a little heavier and much more expensive, but is a great buy for L-Mount as well as Sony cameras. The Canon RF 35mm is another standout lens for street photography. It’s faster than the Tamron with an f/1.8 aperture, adds a highly…

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