Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Digital Camera Magazine

Camera drone images are seemingly everywhere you look these days, but another area of image-making that’s rising in popularity is food. So for anyone inquisitive about this subject, our cover feature masterclass in capturing cuisine is essential reading. But if food is not to your photographic tastes, there are still useful take-aways from shooting it that will benefit other photographic disciplines – find out what’s on the menu from p40. Also this month, we go all Bristol fashion for our reader Shootout (p90) and present a starter guide to the wonders of photography for anyone who may have just received their first camera (p54). You’ll also find 10 all-new Photo Active projects, from p14, and some amazing images from SINWP Bird Photographer of the Year 2019 (p62). Looking for new…

70-200mm gives the best results “I love the image compression with this focal range. It blurs the background beautifully and helps create my look.” Use wide apertures “I use f/2.8 to f/4 most of the time. I don’t go higher than that on any shoot because I love the depth of field you get with the 70-200mm.” Keep the ISO low “On cloudy or sunny days I will use ISO 400-600; on a cloudy day, ISO 600-800. I try to keep my ISOs as low as possible.” Prevent shake “Because horses move so quickly, I aim to shoot at shutter speeds well over ½,000 sec. Speeds like this also prevent camera shake.” Manual or semi-automatic? “I'm happy shooting in Manual mode but my preference is to use Aperture Priority. It's…

Ice is a fantastic substance, with a structure that changes quickly when it starts to melt. For this project, I simply filled a small plastic container with about half an inch of water and put it in the freezer. If you want to go one step further, you could also add objects such as flowers or food colouring to your water before it freezes. Once your ice is frozen, you can break it out of the container, either in one piece or as several smaller pieces. I decided to break mine up, as the air bubbles inside the middle were more interesting to photograph. To take my shots, I selected Aperture Priority mode with the aperture reading between f/13 and f/16. Because you are shooting so close up, you want…

Most people would look at a pile of old rusty junk and not think anything of it – but for a creative photographer, it’s a dream! Rust and textures are your friend, and can open up many artistic opportunities. For this project I had access to a local boat yard, where there was an overwhelming amount of objects and textures to choose from. If you can’t arrange access to a work setting like this, just explore your local town or even hunt around at the bottom of the garden, and you’ll be surprised at what you can find. Look for the deterioration of objects and weathering of materials over time such as a mossy fence post or a rusty watering can. There are no rules when it comes to picking…

Suzanne Mathia is a landscape and nature photographer, workshop instructor and writer, whose work regularly appears in numerous publications. Although she was born and raised amidst the rolling green hills of the English countryside, she is now completely at home in Arizona, surrounded by the arid desert and swirling sandstone of the American southwest. Although her image here looks like a winter scene, it was taken at sand dunes at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. “Wandering through the dunes is an unforgettable experience,” she says. “Often there are no other footprints ahead, no people no plants, no nothing, just wind-created ripples and occasional oryx tracks. The gypsum is easy to walk on, and cool even in the hottest months. Every crest and dip in the dunes presents another…

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SHOOT FOOD IN ICE FREEZE YOUR FOOD FOR DISTINCTIVE RESULTS Create a frosty still-life abstract that’s sure to turn heads, by freezing small berries in an ice cube tray. 1 Prepare the water For the clearest ice, use distilled water and boil it twice in a kettle, then wait for it to completely cool down. 2 Freeze your fruit Add a small amount of water to each ice cube tray hole and freeze it. Once this water is frozen, place your fruit in the middle of each hole, top each up to the brim with your water and finish freezing. 3 Take the shot Your fruity ice cubes are now ready for their close-up! Take them out and place on a well-lit bright background. Zoom in to get a frame-filling…

Despite all the bells and whistles on today’s cameras, taking a digital photo boils down to just five easy-to-follow stages:…

Exposure – when light strikes the camera’s imaging sensor and an image is formed – is controlled by three variables: aperture, shutter speed and ISO. The size of the aperture (the hole in the lens) dictates how much light hits the camera’s sensor, while the shutter speed regulates how long the sensor is exposed to this light. The ISO determines how much light is required overall in order to record an image. It’s important to understand the relationship between these three variables: each decision you make in terms of aperture, shutter speed and ISO will have an affect on the look and feel of a picture, as well as its overall brightness.…

Mark Lynham Aviation photographer Title: The Dark Falcon Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV Lens: Canon EF 500mm f/4 II with 1.4x teleconverter Exposure: 1/1,600 sec at f/5.6, ISO 200 www.instagram.com/marklynham Attending airshows as a young boy clearly made a big impact on Mark Lynham: military aviation has gone on to be one of his biggest passions in adulthood. He attends as many airshows as he can in the UK, as well as some abroad, including the US. Starting his journey in photography nine years ago, Mark gained his Guild of Photographers Master Craftsman qualification, and was the guild’s Photographer of the Year in 2016, 2017 and 2018. For this image of the Belgian F-16 display jet known as ‘The Dark Falcon’ and flown by Stephan ‘Vador’ Darte, we see…

FILE & VIDEO Download the disc: www.bit.ly/dc225disc James is a professional photographer who specialises in landscape and portraits. He’s an advanced Photoshop user and has created hundreds of tutorials. Winter is a season of extremes. It goes without saying that the weather itself has the most profound effect on the way everything looks. But while this means difficult conditions are much more frequent, other aspects of winter weather, such as frost, snow and mist can really bring locations to life at any time of day. Even when a storm is approaching, the moodiness before the rain or snow can look incredible. These beautiful yet difficult conditions often mean that you have to work harder at the editing stage than with images taken during other seasons. In the image here, the…

1 Pan it With leaves blown off during autumn and only skeletal trunks and branches remaining, now’s the time to try some panned speed images. Try starting at around 1/15 sec and move the camera smoothly up or down as you take the photo. 2 Misty moments With low morning sun and mist, you can get wonderful lighting effects in woodlands. The mist will help to simplify your scene even more, giving pleasing receding tones. Focus on a tree with an interesting shape, and build your composition from that. 3 Bark-mad There are endless patterns to be found on the trunk of trees: species like birch, wild cherry and aspen all provide interesting shapes, texture and colour to concentrate on. Trying shooting three different types and combining them in a…

£479/$499 www.gopro.com GoPro’s Max is something special. Replacing the Fusion, GoPro’s first-gen 360 camera, the Max makes recording in every direction something that anyone can benefit from. The Max is definitely no one-trick pony, though: it doubles up as a traditional action cam, much like the GoPro Hero8 Black. And, like the DJI Osmo Action, it’s a solid selfie vlogging cam. It isn’t trying to be the best action camera, but rather, the only camera you’d want to take with you on an adventure. Just like the Hero8 Black and Hero7 Black before it, the Max has a matte rubberised body. This time, there’s a lens on either side, though a screen on just one. At the top is a record button, which can fire up a customisable recording preset…

The best thing about any interchangeable-lens camera is that you can mount the ideal optic for the shooting opportunity at hand. The worst thing is that additional lenses can be very expensive to buy and cumbersome to cart around. Many of us find that a brace of standard and telephoto zooms cover pretty much any eventuality, so we’re reluctant to spend a fortune on extra lenses that might end up just gathering dust. But what if you could get an extra lens for fairly little outlay, that was reasonably compact, light and easy to pop into a spare corner of your camera bag? And what if that lens enabled a different style of shooting to your regular zoom lenses? That’s a win-win situation – so we’ve rounded up a selection…

£134/$167 Unlike Canon, Nikon makes a ‘standard’ prime for its DX (or APS-C) format DSLRs, in the shape of this 35mm lens, which gives an effective focal length of 52.5mm. Also unlike Canon’s budget and mid-range lenses, it comes complete with a hood and carrying pouch. Build quality is pretty good for such an inexpensive lens, with a metal rather than plastic mounting plate, a ring-type ultrasonic autofocus system and a fairly well-rounded seven-blade diaphragm. However, there’s no focus distance scale, nor the weather-seal ring that’s often featured on the mounting plates of Nikon lenses. Performance Autofocus is reasonably quick and whisper-quiet and image quality is mostly good, although corner sharpness is a little disappointing throughout the entire aperture range. Digital Camera verdict This lens loses out to most full-frame…

£129/$97 Like the Canon and Nikon 50mm lenses on test, this one has a fast aperture rating of f/1.8. Unlike the other two, it’s designed exclusively for use with APS-C format SLRs. It therefore feels like a short telephoto prime with an effective focal length of 75mm. That’s often ideal for still-life and portraiture. The Pentax is a little smaller than the other 50mm lenses on test and noticeably lighter, at 122g. That’s mostly due to it having a plastic rather than metal mounting plate, and no autofocus motor. Instead, autofocus is driven by a motor in the host camera, via a helical thread. There’s also no focus distance scale. Performance Autofocus is reasonably quick, but noisy. Sharpness is mostly very respectable, but a bit underwhelming when shooting wide-open at…

£47/$49 the 26mm Toy is a more extreme version of the SLR Magic 35mm lens: it ramps up the blurring of off-centre areas even more, giving a ‘toy camera’ effect. It’s only available for Micro Four Thirds cameras. Like its 35mm sibling, it’s a manual lens, this time with aperture marking between f/1.4 and f/8, but the focus distance scale is replaced by basic near/far directional arrows. To add a bit of flourish to the control rings, the lens comes with a range of black, white and brightly coloured rubber grip rings. Performance The blurring effect away from the central region of the frame lives up to its billing, and can produce an almost swirly look. Another trick for focusing attention on the central area is that the lens produces…

Simon Roberts Fine-art photographer Simon has amassed many accolades for his distinctive take on the interaction of people and geography. He talks about projects old and new on page 134. Amy Lathrope-Reid Equine photographer Amy has developed her love of horses into a thriving photographic practice. Don’t horse around: join her on a photo shoot on page 8. Julia Wainwright Wildlife photographer Julia loves to capture wildlife through her long lens – and a trip to Yellowstone yielded a stunning bison photograph. She shares her insights on page 30. Keith Bernstein On-set photographer Keith captures on-set action on major film and TV productions. He reveals what it takes to excel in this demanding role and shares his work on page 105. Dan Mold Food photographer Dan writes for our sister…

As photographers, we now spend the majority of our creative time working within an instant digital world. This technique, however, gives you a brief moment of anticipation before the final image pops up on screen. The idea is that you shoot a portrait using a slower shutter speed (try around 2.5 seconds). Ask your model to move a little during the exposure, and they’ll appear in a series of ghost-like poses. Set your flashgun to fire at the end of the exposure, and the final pose will appear stronger and more definite, in contrast to the earlier movement. This technique is really about experimentation, and no two images will ever be the same. These portraits can easily be shot at home, even in quite confined spaces. All you need is…

Julia Wainwright is a keen amateur photographer who bought her first DSLR in 2010. “I joined my local camera club a few months later and began to develop my skills through workshops, photographic holidays and competitions,” she says. Julia has a passion for wildlife, and most of her work focuses on this genre. “I always try to tell a story or convey an emotion with my wildlife images,” she says. www.juliasimagesuk.com 1 Bad weather Don’t be put off by bad weather or heavy snowfall. This is where you can capture some distinctive images, like Julia’s shot of a bison making its way across the iconic Yellowstone National Park. If you can’t get to such exotic locations, there is plenty of winter wildlife on your doorstep and in the back garden…

The theme for this month’s shooting challenge is Depths of Winter – and we’re feeling cold just thinking about it! However, if you have a warm coat, a scarf, a hat and gloves, then you’re already all set for this challenge, and should be able to get on with it just fine. We know that winter isn’t the most pleasant time to be out and about capturing images, but the photographic opportunities are plentiful. From snowy scenes and starry skies to stormy seas, there is so much atmosphere and weather to be captured at this time of the year. While you’re out and about, take care of your kit. If it’s raining, a plastic bag may come to the rescue, while an umbrella can be the perfect accessory to lend…

Food photography has really grown in popularity in recent years. Many restaurants even encourage their diners to take shots, as a picture of a dish on Instagram that looks good enough to eat can open the door to potential new customers. There’s no doubting the role that the humble smartphone has played in this trend – phone camera technology gets better every year and as you are always likely to have it on you, it wins big on convenience, too. However, if you really want to take your food chops to the next level, you’ll need to shoot with a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, which will have a larger image sensor for better noise handling and cleaner pictures; a wide range of interchangeable lenses and better optics for sharper…

Where better to begin our journey into food photo heaven than with a starter dish? Appetisers are ideal stomping grounds to hone your skills with before you go onto a main course or dessert, which can be a little more involved. Starters are usually quite dainty, so it can be useful to use a macro lens to make them look larger in the frame, or use the 55mm or 70mm end of a kit lens to zoom in. As a rule, great photos will come when you shoot great food, so be sure to source the best ingredients, cook your starter with care, and take your time plating it up. If you don’t feel up to the challenge of cooking a dish, you could ask a culinary-minded friend or family…

Of course, it only makes sense to finish with dessert. The great news is you really don’t have to know anything about cooking to take amazing dessert pictures: there are so many photogenic store-bought options, which can be made even more mouth-watering by adding a scoop or two of ice cream. Remember to add a garnish as you did with the other courses: a dusting of icing sugar or a mint leaf placed on the ice cream will help create a strong focal point. As you take your food photos, the natural light will start to fade in the afternoon, so using a flashgun with a large softbox attached is a great way of replicating the windowlight look, for consistent and bright lighting. It also has the added benefit of…

Before you take a photo, you need to choose how the camera will record the image. We’ve explored the two most common file formats – raw and JPEG – in detail in recent issues, but the key difference between them is that a raw file is not an image, and has to be processed to create one. The camera does this to create its preview, which is why it pays to get the settings correct when you shoot. White balance This control lets you remove colour casts. You can do this later with raw files, but try to get it right in-camera for an accurate preview. Colours Most cameras let you adjust colour, contrast and sharpness by selecting different picture style/control or film simulation presets. Black and white You can…

Aperture Different aperture settings – known as f-numbers – alter the size of the hole in the lens to let more or less light into the camera. The aperture scale is measured in ‘stops’, although the sequence of f-numbers is a little confusing. The key thing to remember is that low f-numbers (such as f/1.4 or f/2.8) give you large apertures that let more light in, with higher f-numbers (such as f/11 or f/16) giving you smaller apertures and less light. Shutter speed Shutter speed is also measured in stops, but the sequence of numbers is more straightforward than it is with aperture. Its settings are measured in seconds (and more commonly, fractions of a second), and each time the shutter speed is doubled or halved, that’s one stop. So,…

Don’t rely on the image displayed on the camera as a guide to exposure, as the brightness of the screen is deceiving. Instead, use the histogram. You can view this alongside images you’ve shot when you play them back, or have it displayed ‘live’ on the Live View screen of an SLR or the EVF of a mirrorless camera. If the graph is ‘clipped’ on the left (shadows) or the right (highlights), there will be no detail in these areas. Adjustments Use ‘-’ compensation to move the graph to the left and ‘+’ compensation to move it to the right.…

Highly Commended Tracey Lund Bird Underwater Catching Another Bird “This was taken on a trip to Shetland, using a DSLR camera in a waterproof housing, attached to a polecam system. To be able to capture what goes on under the water as these gannets dive was a truly amazing experience.” 2nd Place John Erwin Grebe 3rd Place Feargal Quinn Ghostly Heron Highly Commended Andy Howe Male Kestrel Running “During the recent summer heatwave in the UK, we had some fantastic low-evening sun to work with. I’ve been working with a pair of wild kestrels near my home in Bedfordshire; this is the male. “This was taken during an evening session with the birds. I was lying on the ground, and positioned myself so the bird would appear in the frame…

FILE & VIDEO Download the disc: www.bit.ly/dc225disc With over a decade as a writer and photographer behind him, James knows exactly which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter most. Gradients are normally thought of as a feature for graphic designers. After all, why would photographers need a tool that creates a straightforward blend from one colour to another? Used in combination with Gradient Maps, however, gradients can become a powerful tool for toning and tinting your photos. A gradient map works by mapping colours onto the tonal range of your image, from shadow tones on the left of the gradient to highlight tones on the right. So you can tint the shadows with one colour, and the highlights with another. This means you can use gradient maps to create…

The original raw by Alistair Campbell his beautiful scene is near Ninh Binh, Vietnam. It was taken on a Fujifilm X-T2 and a Samyang 12mm f/2 lens, using an exposure of ¼,000 sec at f/8, ISO 800. It’s a great view, but our two Photoshop artists have their own ideas on how to immerse the viewer in the frame… FILE & VIDEO Download the disc: www.bit.ly/dc225disc James Abbott James specialises in landscape and portrait images, and is an advanced Photoshop user. Raw warrior 1 wants to create… A classic atmospheric shot James Paterson After over a decade as a photographer and writer, James knows which Photoshop tools matter most. Raw warrior 2 wants to create… An evocative, aspirational view…

FILE & VIDEO Download the disc: www.bit.ly/dc225disc Hand-colouring provides a highly intuitive way to give scenes and subjects a brand-new, stylised look. It was traditionally used to give black-and-white prints the feel of a full colour shot; now you can employ the digital version of the technique on colour images and give them an arty twist in the process. The key to success is to use a separate layer for each colour. By doing this, each different hue remains independent of the others, which makes it easy to adjust the intensity, clean up edges or even change the colour completely when you fine-tune the image. Using this method will produce a daunting-looking Layers panel, but as you’ll see, it’s just a bunch of simple changes stacked up on top of…

Challenge 2 Emily-Clare Negus After a necessary pit stop to ingest some warm drinks, our second challenge of the day began with a costume change for Meg – she emerged wearing a vintage Laura Ashley dress that had been found in a charity shop. When Arnos Vale Cemetery opened in 1839, Queen Victoria was new to the throne. Inspired by Père-Lachaise in Paris and later, London’s Kensal Green, Arnos Vale was established to provide a stylish yet spacious alternative to Bristol’s overcrowded parish graveyards. Its designers laid out a cemetery to be filled with sunlight and fresh air, with architecture and landscaping to echo that of classical Greece. For Challenge 2, though, we headed into Arnos Vale’s wooded area to shoot a Gothic look among the trees. Emily found this…

A lakeside shot needs help There is something worth rescuing in this lacklustre Lake District landscape photo – but right now it’s drab and uninspiring. Taking it in a hurry on a flat, wet day, the photographer could see some potential in the scene, but didn’t achieve it. However, the simple composition works, and it could be given some mood. I’m going to process it in Lightroom Classic. To start, I need to see if there is any detail in the clouds. 1 In the Basics Tab, I take Highlights back to -100, then run an Adjustment Brush over the top of the clouds and darken Exposure slightly. Back in the Basics Tab I do some whole-image work. 2 I cool White Balance to give it a slightly moody blue…

New Mark Power exhibition on now Good Morning America explores a country in the midst of change. View images from this ongoing 10-year project at the Magnum Print Room in London, until 3 April. magnumphotos.com; admission free PortraitPro 19 packs in even more AI goodness Anthropics recently launched the latest version of its popular image editor. PortraitPro 19’s new AI flourishes will aid skin smoothing, hair retouching and expression changes. anthropics.com; from £35/$45 (full); £27/$33 (upgrade) Steve McCurry’s India now out in paperback One of the definitive photographic flavours of the Indian subcontinent has just been released in paperback. India brings together 150 of McCurry’s iconic shots captured after 1978. phaidon.com; £30 Focal point Rounding up what’s new and exciting Raw video upgrade for Nikon Z 6 and Z 7…

www.nikon.co.uk The Z 50 brings Nikon’s mirrorless camera technology to the hobbyist market. Nikon’s full-frame mirrorless cameras are tempting, but not everyone can afford them! Nikon’s first stab at producing interchangeable-lens mirrorless cameras didn’t exactly set the world on fire: the 1-series’ relatively small, low-resolution 1-inch CX sensor – with a 2.7x crop factor – quickly fell behind its mirrorless rivals. The solution was the Z mount, which was introduced in late 2018 and so arrived somewhat late to the mirrorless party. But if you’re going to turn up late, you’re going to have to make quite an entrance – and the Nikon Z 50 has certainly done that. With the Z mount in Nikon mirrorless cameras, the company rethought lens mount design from the ground up. The initial two…

£329/$299 www.nikon.co.uk The Nikkor Z DX 16-50mm f/3.5-6.3 VR is the kit lens for Nikon’s new Z 50 APS-C mirrorless camera (see page 108) – and, in its own way, it’s as exciting as the camera itself. The first thing that strikes you is just how compact this lens is. The Z 50 is notably smaller than its full-frame counterparts; retracted, the Z DX 16-50mm barely protrudes beyond the camera’s grip. Cradled in the hand, it’s obvious this lens has a largely plastic build, but the upside is its light weight. Nikon really has made each of the optic’s 135 grammes count. A rather unusual addition is the tiny lens hood, which screws onto the lens much like a filter. The DX 16-50mm f/3.5-6.3 VR optics comprise of nine elements…

£142/$99 Like most ‘pancake’ lenses, this one is about an inch thick and a real lightweight at just 125g. It’s brilliant for stealthy street photography with a Canon APS-C format SLR, on which it gives an effective focal length of just over 38mm in full-frame terms. The f/2.8 aperture rating is also useful, and rather faster than in a kit zoom lens. Despite being inexpensive for an own-brand Canon lens, the 24mm features an aspherical element, Super Spectra coatings and a fairly well-rounded seven-blade diaphragm. Autofocus is handled by a stepping motor, with an electronically coupled manual focus ring. The autofocus system isn’t particularly quick, but it gets the job done. Performance Image quality is very good indeed, making you wonder why some prime lenses need to be quite so…

£149/$176 Just like the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens on test, this Nikkor lens is designed predominantly as a standard prime for full-frame DSLRs. As such, it’s ideal anytime you need a wider aperture than is available from your kit zoom lens. As with the competing Canon, it’s equally useful for portraiture on APS-C format bodies, where the effective focal length is 75mm. Similarities to the Nikon DX 35mm lens include seven diaphragm blades and ring-type ultrasonic autofocus with full-time manual override. It gains a weather-seal ring on its mounting plate and a focus distance scale. Performance Image quality benefits from impressive sharpness and contrast, even at f/1.8. Bokeh is smooth, although defocused lights take on a heptagonal shape when stopping down a little. Digital Camera verdict It’s not quite as…

Shortly into our shoot with equine photographer Amy Lathrope-Reid, she needs to get one of her models – the four-legged one called Roo – to look towards her. But she doesn’t need to make a gesture: instead, Amy just whinnies like a horse: “Eeeiiiiighhhhha-a-a-a!” In pitch, tone and volume, it sounds so much like the real thing it’s uncanny – and it instantly achieves the desired effect, as a curious Roo obligingly lifts his head and puts his ears forward. Directing human models can be a test for any photographer, of course, but add a horse into the mix and you’ll require a different set of skills. ‘Talking horse’ is just one of these, as is being able to anticipate the various behavioural tics of these elegant quadrupeds. None of…

"To get a horse to arch its neck or move its ears forward, my voice commands work well most of the time. They do eventually become numb to it, so I also use a large pop-out reflector or a mirror to switch the light, or even a lunging whip with a paper bag on the end. You can also rattle a crackly plastic bottle with stones in it, crunch crisp wrappers, use a feed bin, or things like that." Styling credits Make-up artist: Leah Jayne Hooper (Instagram: studio60beauty). Hairstylist: Charlotte Carlton-Smith (Instagram:charlottecsmith_mua). Photographer’s assistant: Leah Wren (Facebook: Leah Wren).…

Setting yourself up for off-camera flash might at first seem costly, but it needn’t be. For this project, I used just one bare flash with no modifiers, avoiding the extra expense of softboxes and other accessories. Let’s take a look at how you can quickly balance available light with just one off-camera flash. Armed only with my DSLR, a 24-105mm f/4 lens, an off-camera flash trigger and a flashgun, I headed out. On location I usually assess the environment and set up in a space that will give my subject and me the most flexibility to move around in. In this particular location I could have shot in any direction, but I wanted to concentrate on the beautiful and dramatic sky forming overhead. 1 Camera settings Once you’re on location,…

To explore the theme of urban photography in more detail, here I’ll show a few examples of major cities around the world, along with the places and spaces that make them perfect for photography. My aim is to encourage you to think about how you can apply the advice given in this series to a city near you. Start thinking about your own town or city, observing it as you would through the eyes of a tourist visiting a foreign city. Think about when you are on holiday: you might stop and look at an amazing door for five minutes. Try to look at your own city this way, and you’ll spot things you hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps you’ll discover a new building, or something unexpected in your local area.…

You don’t need lots of camera equipment to take brilliant food photos, or any still-life photos for that matter: it’s possible to get impressive results even with a simple DSLR or mirrorless camera and a kit lens. That said, acquiring some key accessories will really help you progress your food photography. These include a camera body with full-frame sensor, which will give you a better depth of field; a macro lens, which will allow you to focus much closer to the food; or a 50mm f/1.8 lens, which makes it easy to blur backgrounds. A flashgun is a great choice, too: it will enable you to keep on shooting if the daylight diminishes. Below, we’ve outlined our top picks that will work well for food photography – and plenty of…

Pasta is one of the easiest dishes to cook: just type “easy pasta recipes” into your favourite search engine to find a whole plethora of ideas, and pick one you’d like to cook up. Luckily, pasta is also one of the easiest meals to make look appetising, providing you follow the few simple rules I’ve outlined here. For this technique you’re changing the camera angle: instead of shooting with the camera almost level to the dish, as with the starter, you’re going to get up on a step-ladder or stool to shoot downwards. This will give you a classic shot that crops up on social media platforms like Instagram all the time – except yours will be worlds apart if you take the time to set up the lighting and…

Although an exposure is determined by a combination of aperture, shutter speed and ISO, each of your camera’s shooting modes arrives at that exposure in a slightly different way… AUTOMATIC Auto The ‘green square’ point-and-shoot mode will set everything for you – although, depending on your camera, you may have some limited creative overrides, such as making a picture look warmer or cooler. Scene modes Either individually selectable on the mode dial or grouped under a ‘SCN’ option, scene modes such as Landscape, Sports and Close-Up adjust the aperture, shutter speed and ISO – in addition to other key settings – based on assumptions about the type of picture being taken. SPECIALIST Your mode dial may feature a Bulb (B) mode, which is for exposures longer than 30 seconds; if…

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. FILE & VIDEO Download the disc: www.bit.ly/dc225disc You’ve done the work. You’ve checked the weather, you know when and where the sun will set. You’ve driven to the location and you’ve got all the gear you need – charged batteries, cards, the works. You’ve managed to remember everything. But the efforts doesn’t pay off, and you’re left with a drab shot. What are you going to do? Well, you could give up, or you could add a few Radial Filters to the images and bring some life back to it. In the pre-digital era, you probably would have used a filter similar to the…

Reader 1 Emily-Clare Negus Camera: Canon EOS 6D Location: Bristol Illustration graduate Emily has always worked in creative fields, so it was only time before she took up photography. Starting off with a Canon EOS 600D, Emily began to shoot weddings, but her innate curiosity led her towards experimentation and her current artistic style. “Taking part in today’s challenge is way out of my comfort zone,” she says, “as I don’t shoot ‘the finished article’, things like models.” Emily is familiar with Arnos Vale, though, having photographed here before. Gregory Crewdson is her current muse: “I see a lot of psychological tension in his images.” Instagram: @emilyclarenegus Reader 2 Denny Wong Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III Location: Bristol Denny has been a keen amateur photographer for the last nine…

Roving photographer Quintin is two thirds through his 6,000-mile photo walk around the whole of the UK coast. www.theperimeter.uk This month’s route Aberdeen to Dundee 7 days, 117 miles Total so far: 5,422 miles Being mistaken for a ship spotter is an occupational hazard if you’re hanging around Aberdeen Harbour with a long lens. As a result, I learn that the oil rigs have standby vessels permanently at sea that can hold 300 crew in an emergency and are constantly staffed by doctors and support crew. My new friend, a retired engineer, gazes inland to the city: “There’s a lot of grey granite in Aberdeen – silver in the sun, but very grey when it’s not,” he tells me. On passing the next headland, I’m face to face with what…

£1,699/$1,999 www.fujifilm.co.uk You have to admire Fujifilm’s daring and willingness to try something new. When reports of the Fujifilm X-Pro3’s then-unnamed ‘hidden LCD’ first hit the rumour sites, it seemed so bizarre that many people dismissed it out of hand as too outlandish to be true. However, it is true – and it’s borderline brilliant in its thinking. The Fujifilm X-Pro3 has its LCD on ‘backwards’, so that the screen faces inwards instead of out. The result is that there is no temptation to compose on the back screen, and the hassle of flipping the LCD down between each shot makes you far less inclined to stop and examine every picture you take – the ‘ooh ooh ooh’ sound of ‘chimping’ The X-Pro3 encourages you to shoot pictures instead of…

£1,769/$1,799 www.fujifilm.co.uk If you are a Fujifilm X-series camera user, you simply can’t get a zoom that offers you a wider view than the Fujinon XF8-16mm f/2.8 R LM WR. So you can understand why people could fall in love with a lens that is quite so big, and so expensive. The main competition for this lens comes from the more affordable Fujinon XF10-24mm f/4 R OIS, which is about half the weight, and has built-in stabilisation (unlike the XF 8-16mm). The difference between 8mm and 10mm sounds slight, but in practice the XF8-16mm’s coverage is noticeably greater. This makes this lens a stronger option for subjects such as interiors and architecture. Another wide (and more affordable) option is the Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero D. However, this lens lacks autofocus.…

£99/$125 The so-called ‘nifty fifty’ is one of the most popular types of prime lens on the market, and with good reason. You can get a much tighter depth of field than with a kit zoom lens, for blurring the background and focusing all of the attention on the main subject. The lens gives an 80mm effective focal length on APS-C format bodies – perfect for portraiture. The STM edition adds a gear-type stepping motor autofocus system, making it much quieter than its predecessor. The manual focus ring no longer rotates during autofocus. The number of diaphragm blades is increased from five to seven, improving bokeh when stopping down a little. Performance There’s some noticeable axial (or longitudinal) colour fringing when shooting wide-open at f/1.8, but image quality is very…

£132/$69 Available in Micro Four Thirds and Sony E mount options, this low-cost lens is made by SLR Magic and distributed in the UK by Holdan. It’s remarkably small and light for a 35mm f/1.7 lens. It’s a fully manual optic: there’s no electronic communication with the host camera, and focusing and aperture control are applied by control rings on the lens itself. The focus ring has distance markings on it, while the stepless aperture ring has markings at f/1.7, then in full f/stops from f/2 to f/5.6, then nothing until f/16. Go beyond this and the diaphragm closes completely. Performance Sharpness is pretty good in the central region of the frame, even at f/1.7. Towards the edges and corners, the lens aims to give a deliberately soft and blurry…

Edging ahead of its Canon and Pentax counterparts, the Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.8G delivers the best all-round performance and image quality. Even though it’s a little pricier, it’s still inexpensive and good value for money. Like the Canon 50mm, it works equally well on APS-C format and full-frame bodies, whereas the Pentax 50mm is specifically designed for APS-C cameras. The Canon EF-S 24mm pancake lens for APS-C format SLRs is great for street photography, and easily fits in a spare pocket for whenever you need a fairly fast, wide-angle lens. The Nikkor AF-S DX 35mm is similarly useful, this time as a standard prime on APS-C format bodies. Moving on to Micro Four Thirds, the SLR Magic 26mm f/1.4 Toy is our top choice for a cheap, fun lens. It…

CamRanger Mini £229/$200 www.camranger.com The original CamRanger was a clever box of tricks that connected via USB to almost all Canon and Nikon DSLRs, emitting a Wi-Fi signal so you could wirelessly connect an Android or Apple smart device to run as a remote camera control. This new Mini version does exactly the same, and is around half the size of the original. Remote range is increased to 120m, but battery life is slightly reduced at 3-4 hours. Once you’ve downloaded the accompanying app, you can wirelessly stream your camera’s Live View preview, then tap to focus and capture a still image with almost no perceptible lag. There’s a 1-2 second delay before the image is viewable on your smart device, but that’s no longer than on Canon or Nikon’s…