Innehållsförteckning för October 2019 från Digital Camera Magazine

What’s your favourite time for photography? It’s a given that autumn and spring will be near the top of the list, but trying to choose a favourite between them is tricky. With its promise of renewal, plus temperatures starting to rise, spring may have an edge in the contest, but there’s something irresistible about nature’s colour palette as it starts to wind down for winter. And that’s what we’re celebrating this issue – so if you’re looking for tips on shooting your best autumn landscapes, wildlife and nature, go straight to page 40. Also in this issue, we focus on art-led approaches to photography (p8 and p37), showcase the winning entries in Bird Photographer of the Year 2019 (p64), and demystify in-camera processing (p52). Finally, all the best to technique…

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If you’re keen to do a rainy-day portrait photoshoot, don’t wait for the weather to change – the best way to do is to fake it! For this photo shoot, I headed into the back garden and used a hosepipe taped in position on a tripod, plus a black background to make the rain sparkle. For a shoot like this, you don’t actually need much in terms of lighting kit. I used one external flashgun and my on-camera flash. If you use an external flashgun, instead of whacking up the power to the highest setting, keep it slightly lower and increase your ISO instead. (Try it at around 400.) That way the recycle time on your flash is much faster, meaning you can shoot quicker in-between shots to capture the…

It’s always exciting to arrive into a new place with a camera bag and a few empty memory cards. But every unfamiliar location has a lot to take in and learn about in order to make the best of your (often limited) time. I’m currently midway through a six-month period working in different parts of Mexico. But whether it’s in Haiti, Japan or Ethiopia, working as a travel photographer usually means hitting the ground running and working in a focused way to get to grips with a place. Assignments involve early starts, late finishes, and a whole lot of walking in between, all to produce a satisfying, creative set of photos that say something about a place. Sometimes you have to suffer a little: in Mexico recently, I was attacked by…

Have you ever wondered why your images don’t look like those that you see in glossy photography magazines or images trending on social media? Sometimes it can be difficult to translate what we see in front of us in to a photograph that portrays the same grandeur or sense of awe that we may have felt at the time. This often results in us looking back at our photos and thinking, “It looked a lot better in real life.” This is because our eyes and our brain see things differently in real life compared to a camera seeing something in 2D. Our eyes scan a scene as a whole and move around to see a view from many angles, and our brains are capable of processing the deepest shadows and…

When autumn leaves cascade to the ground and turn into beautiful multicoloured shades, they reveal a delicate structure of veins that are perfectly suited for close-up imagery. To capture detail at larger-than-life magnifications, your best bet is to grab a macro lens and a tripod. That being said, many optics – even kit lenses – are capable of focusing close enough to photograph a leaf in its entirety. Don’t just limit your macro shots to leaves, though. Berries, fruits and tree trunks also make interesting subjects. FILL THE FRAME 1 If subjects are visually spectacular, why not zoom in or move yourself closer so that they take up the whole frame? Honing in on repeating elements creates a powerful composition, especially with vivid hues. SHAPES 2 Foliage of all shapes…

These ideas are geared towards photographing the weather and lighting of autumn. Doing so will create mood and feeling in your outdoor scenes, as well as give viewers a visual clue of the time of year – without simply relying on autumn colours. Many photographic elements such as mist and silhouettes are best attempted in the early morning, when the light is low and locations are free from disturbance. A wide-angle lens is often recommended for natural scenes, but shooting the elements with a flexible telephoto lens can have more impact. Create a tight composition to draw the eye in. MORNING MIST 31 Fog is most prevalent around sunrise and can often be seen forming over large bodies of water and valleys. Arrive early to frame your composition before the…

Imaging sensor In a digital SLR, the sensor is blocked by a set of shutter blinds and a mirror, which have to move out of the way to expose the sensor to light. In a mirrorless camera, the sensor is visible when you remove the lens. Photosites Your camera’s imaging sensor is made up of millions of light-sensitive units called ‘photosites’. Each of these photosites measures the brightness of the light that strikes it, and creates an electrical signal in response. Bit depth With JPEGs, each photosite can register eight bits of data, which works out as 256 different shades of brightness. (Each bit doubles the amount of light, so 1 bit is 2 values, 2 bits is 4 values, 3 bits is 8 values, and so on.) When this…

Whether you want CEWE WALL ART for your home, office or a client, creating beautiful photo prints with CEWE couldn’t be easier. Opt for traditional framed pieces or break the mould with a canvas or acrylic print – CEWE has a style and size to suit every space. Creating the perfect CEWE WALL ART requires careful thought, and we’ve covered the basic steps below to get you started. Part of the planning is to envisage how your wall art will sit in your chosen space; the best way to do this is to draw out a sketch of your prints, keeping the dimensions to scale for accurate results. When you’re ready, trust CEWE to print your photos with its expertise and unrivalled quality. Steps to success: how to create your…

Editing your photos can transform them, bringing out the vivid colour and incredible detail you saw in person while you were taking the shot. But photo-editing skills take time to learn, and more time is needed to get the best from each image. Photolemur takes a different approach, doing all the hard work for you. Just drag and drop a photo onto the Photolemur mini-window, then watch as it analyses your shot in a dozen different ways before producing a brilliant result. Use the software to pay special attention to face enhancement. Go beyond the initial results with Photolemur Styles, which enable you to choose different looks for your photo. Photolemur is being offered free of charge until 31 December by Skylum. Other great programs in the Skylum roster include:…

With a decade as a writer and photographer behind him, James knows exactly which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter most. The Content-Aware Fill command works by rebuilding parts of your image, helping you remove unwanted objects, improve messy details or tidy up a composition. The feature has been a part of Photoshop for some time, but was recently given a welcome update, making it much more controllable than before. Previously you would make a selection, use Content-Aware Fill and then Photoshop would determine what to remove by analysing the rest of the frame and generating new pixels based on the content of the image. The problem is, it occasionally samples and uses parts that you don’t want to replicate. Here, for example, I want to remove the distracting…

What was the motivation for you to start this project? We won an award from The Royal Geographical Society to do the River Xingu. In 2007 we took a very small boat and for six months we went along the Xingu River, which is 2,500 kilometres long. We visited 48 tribal communities and every community said to us, “Please tell our story.” What was the biggest challenge you faced? We had to get permission from the Brazilian government, and they changed their minds every five minutes. We spent six weeks in Brazil the year before the expedition, setting it all up. How did you choose what to photograph? I document what I see. I never ask anyone to pose. I’m a photojournalist; that’s what I do. The light there is…

£549/$549 Excellent image quality at an affordable price www.sigma-imaging-uk.com Mount: Sony E-mount, L-mount Lens construction:8 elements in 7 groups Angle of view (35mm): 51.3° Number of diaphragm blades: 7 (Rounded diaphragm) Minimum aperture: f/22 Minimum focusing distance: 24cm Maximum magnification ratio: 1:4 Filter size: 55mm Dimensions: 64 x 46mm Weight: 215g Small, light and relatively fast, the Sigma 45mm f/2.8 is an all-round solid lens that could easily be overshadowed by its more overtly impressive counterparts – but this would be a mistake. Sitting within Sigma’s Contemporary lens lineup, the 45mm f/2.8 is available for both the Sony E-mount and the L-mount (for Panasonic, Sigma and Leica full-frame mirrorless cameras). There have been no announcements on whether the Sigma 45mm f/2.8 will also be made available in Canon R or…

For a home studio setup, or if you’re shooting indoors on location, there’s no beating the power and versatility of a conventional mains-powered flash kit. Prime options include the likes of the Elinchrom D-Lite and Interfit Honey Badger twin-head kits, which are easy to carry around, yet quick to set up and simple to use. The only real problem is if you want the versatility of being able to shoot outdoors using a flash head to supplement natural daylight. Mains-powered kits won’t be much use if there’s nowhere to plug them in, but there’s a growing range of battery-powered flash heads that are as powerful as most studio heads, and vastly more so than flashguns. When you’re supplementing the sun or even overpowering it to turn day into night, you’re…

For plentiful power with easy control, superb quality and all-round versatility, the Elinchrom D-Lite RX 4/4 To Go Set twin-head kit wins out. Taking its performance, features and quality into account, it’s also great value. The only limiting factor is that it’s not battery powered, so you can’t use it where there’s no access to an electrical mains outlet, unless you invest in a power inverter. For battery-powered flash, Elinchrom wins out again with its ELB 500 TTL To Go Set. The Profoto B10 Plus is eminently portable and works brilliantly, but it’s comparatively pricey. As a budget buy, the twin-head Interfit Honey Badger Unleashed kit delivers impressive performance at an affordable price. If you’re more interested in lower-power, constant lighting, the Manfrotto offers the best balance of price and…

Andrew S Gray Abstract photographer Based in a rural Northumbrian village in the UK, Andy teaches others how to capture artistic and Impressionist scenes. Using intentional camera movement, his images depict nature, abstract coastlines and landscapes. www.andrewsgray.photography While most landscape pros wax lyrical about the golden hours and finding the perfect light, abstract photographer Andrew S Gray (Andy, as he’s known to most) is happy to work with what he’s got. This is just as well: I’m meeting Andy on a bright, clear summer’s day that’s perfect for the beach, but less perfect for taking photos of the beach. The plan is to spend a day with Andy travelling to some of his favourite haunts around the Northumberland coast. I meet him in the early morning outside Alnmouth’s Old School…

1 COMBINE LAYERS I choose a number of frames from the same series to work on and blend together, usually starting with five. In Photoshop, select File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack, then select your images. It saves a heap of time adding images individually. 2 COLOUR CHANGE In Photoshop, I experiment with adding colours, layers and Adjustment Layers such as Hue & Saturation and Curves. I'll see how the different Blending Modes work on these Adjustment Layers and also change their Opacity levels. 3 BLENDING MODES Select the layers (altogether, or individually) and see how each Blending Mode alters the overall image. Use the Move Tool to overlay layers in different positions. The Blending Modes I use the most are Multiply, Lighten, Darken and Soft Light. 4…

On the day of this shoot, William Trostel and model Vasia met up to roam around the City of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. “I go into a lot of shoots with a set idea in my head,” he says. “This one, however, was not one of those shoots. We just grabbed a bunch of props and outfits, then roamed around the city and shot some ideas on the spot with what we had.” After some playful meandering in spots around the city, the pair then decided to head up into this parking garage. It was a bright and sunny day, but Will figured he could use the harsh shadows – as well as the architecture – to his advantage. “This is what we came up with as far as composition,” says Will,…

Food is something we all need and enjoy. If you also want to create a feast for your eyes and you’ve got an hour to spare, why not try this food photography project? For this simple setup, I used a watermelon and turned it into an umbrella, but there are no rules or limitations: the more creative you can be the better. Although I wanted to use the black watermelon pips as the rain drops, the pips in that particular melon were pretty small. I ended up sourcing some pomegranate seeds as the water drops, which worked just as effectively. You can be flexible with how you set up your camera. I handheld mine and shot at f/7.1, 1/100 sec, ISO 200; but as you are shooting on a flat…

Chris Bailey is a portrait photographer from Frome. He tells us: “I had the opportunity to shoot some headshots of actor Clem So.” Clem has appeared in many films including Skyfall, Spectre, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, as well as the TV series Doctor Who and Broadchurch. Chris reveals the shoot actually took place in his living room! “Shooting in a small place with minimal gear can really help push your creativity and make you think outside the box,” he says. “I find these types of shoots the most exciting: you always end up with fantastic results.” Chris found Clem’s persona and look to be full of so much character that he wanted to showcase him in the best way possible. “I decided to play…

Editor, Digital Camera Subscribe today and get this compact bag – it is ideal for days out or for city breaks Your new Vanguard camera bag Compact and stylish – holds a small DSLR or CSC with medium lens, 2-3 additional lenses, and accessories All-round padding for protection Space for a tablet & travel documents Incognito ‘non-camera bag’ design Great reasons to subscribe now! Get a Vanguard Vesta Strive 30 bag A compact and stylish messenger bag for a small DSLR or CSC, and your accessories Great savings Subscribe from only £12.50* and receive 13 issues a year, plus this great Vanguard camera bag worth £49.99 Free video disc & tips cards Each issue, you’ll receive a video disc packed with fantastic video tutorials, plus our regular pocket tips cards…

As the golden hours play such a big part in landscape photography, it’s a joy to know that sunrise gets later and later in autumn, especially when the clocks go back at the end of October. Aside from having more time in bed in the mornings, the sun stays lower in the sky for longer in the evening, making that golden ‘hour’ last a little longer, too. Autumn is traditionally a time for slowing down after a busy summer, so take time to really consider the framing and lighting of your scenes. Shooting with a low sun to one side results in elongated shadows; shooting into the sun works for dramatic sunrises, silhouettes and backlit images. Use ND grad filters to balance the exposure of a sky that’s brighter than…

Subjects that have fine, grid-like details near the resolution limit of the grid-like pattern of photosites on the sensor can create problems during demosaicing. The most common artifact is what’s known as ‘moiré’, which manifests itself as stripes or false colours across the area of fine detail. You can often see this effect if you magnify an area of tightly knit fabric, such as someone’s clothing. Other fine, repetitive patterns also show this undesirable effect – if there’s a TV, phone or camera screen in your photo, look out for it there. To combat this, many image sensors in cameras are covered by an ‘anti-aliasing filter’ or ‘optical low-pass filter’. This softens fine details that could prove problematic, with the softening effect being counteracted by sharpening processes in the camera…

As well as making adjustments to brighten or darken the whole picture, you may also be able to make selective adjustments to shadows and highlights. For instance, Canon cameras feature Auto Lighting Optimizer (ALO), and Nikon bodies come with Active D-Lighting: technologies that are designed to modify both the shadows and highlights and ensure detail isn’t lost in high-contrast conditions, such as a backlit portrait. The result is more subtle than a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image, as you can see in the above shot taken with a Canon 5D Mark IV (and that’s not necessarily a drawback). You can adjust the strength of this feature, or switch it off altogether – something which is usually a good idea to do when you’re shooting in Manual exposure mode, to prevent…

Fine-art photographer Camera: Linhof L679 Lens: Wide-angle 4x5 lens Exposure: Multiple-exposure; see text www.stephenwilkes.com This day-to-night photograph of the Sandhill Cranes is from a series on bird migration commissioned by National Geographic. In 2017 I travelled to the Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska to photograph the Sandhill Cranes at the Platte River, a rest-stop for birds halfway through their migratory journey. I photographed from a bird blind in an area I scouted, and it was built several weeks prior to the actual shoot. The blind was 25 feet high, and I remained in the blind with my assistant for almost 36 hours. It was extremely cold in the blind, particularly at night. We had almost no light in the evening, as any light would have disturbed the birds, and we had…

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. Grain is a funny beast. We do our utmost to get rid of the digital version of it (noise) in our raw files. But then we often end up adding an emulated analogue version of it back in, to give our photos a more organic feel. The huge irony is that in the film days, they were doing their best to get rid of grain in the photos, as it was seen as a defect. It’s amazing what a bit of nostalgia can do… Using grain helps remove that clinical digital feel when you’re looking for something extra in a photo. It’s rare that…

New Canon mirrorless But it’s not the eagerly awaited third model in Canon’s new full-frame EOS R system Canon made all the late August headlines with a slew of new launches. In addition to the EOS 90D (see our hands-on first look on page 110), the world’s biggest camera manufacturer announced a new mirrorless model, the EOS M6 Mk II, and two new RF lenses for its full-frame mirrorless system, plus some firmware updates and new printers. The M6 Mk II is essentially a mirrorless version of the EOS 90D. Smaller and lighter than its DSLR sibling, the M6 Mk II shares the same 32.5MP APS-C sensor and Digic 8 image processor. Continuous AF tracking and eye tracking is delivered via Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS AF system, and 14 frames…

£2,099/$2,495 A 6K camera that shoots raw video… at this price? www.blackmagicdesign.com Specifications Sensor: Super 35, 23.1 x 13mm Lens mount: Canon EF ISO: Dual Native ISO ranges: 400 and 3200 Resolution (raw) (60fps): 6,144 x 3,456 (6K), 6,144 x 2,560 (6K 2.4:1), 5,744 x 3,024 (5.7K 17:9) Resolution (ProRes): 3,840 x 2,160 (Ultra HD), 2,868 x 1,512 (2.8K 17:9), 1,920 x 1,080 (HD) Dynamic range: 13 stops Display: 5-inch Full-HD fixed touchscreen, Blackmagic OS touch interface Microphone: Integrated stereo microphone Construction: Polycarbonate/carbon fibre composite Storage: Dual SD/CFast cards, records RAW internally, external recording to USB-C drive Power: LP-E6 Battery with USB-C charging, lockable DC port – Weipu 2-pin connector Size: 178 x 102 x 97mm Weight: 900g The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 6K came out of nowhere, carrying forward everything…

£330/$320 A useful constant companion www.manfrotto.co.uk This lightweight 470g LED constant light is designed to slot into your camera’s hotshoe, via the supplied mini ball head. The ball head and the lamp itself can also be mounted on a regular tripod head for off-camera use. The kit is based on a rectangular panel that measures 26x4x15cm and contains 48 high-intensity LEDs. The version on test is the more expensive Bi-Color edition, which contains a mix of daylight and tungsten colour temperature LEDs. Performance The panel has a beam angle of 50 degrees and is rated at 1500 Lux at one metre. In our tests, this equated to a power range that enabled apertures of f/1.2 to f/3.5 at 1/60 sec, using a sensitivity setting of ISO 100. Digital Camera verdict…

The digital advantage Your digital magazines can travel with you – even if you delete them, they’re free to re-download at any time. Subscribe today by visiting www.myfavourite magazines.co.uk/photo Available on the following: Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch Get the free Digital Camera app for your iPad or iPhone at www.bit.ly/DC_app (UK) or www.bit.ly/DCW_app (the rest of the world), then browse through our back issues or buy a subscription using the app. Android, PC or Mac Zinio: www.bit.ly/DCW_Zinio Google Play: www.bit.ly/DCW_GoogleP Other options Digital Camera is available for Kobo, Kindle, Nook and more. It can also be found on the all-you-can read Readly magazine app. Binders for your print issues Prefer print? Keep your mags together with our binder, which neatly holds a year’s worth of issues. We also…

PHOTOLEMUR 3 (FULL VERSION) When you don’t have time to edit your photos manually but still want great results, Photolemur from Skylum uses smart technology to automatically improve your shots. See page 74 for full details of how to download your copy of Photolemur 3, plus a guide to help get you started. This download offer ends on 31 December 2019. NEW-LOOK TIPS CARDS! 9 subjects Techniques Settings Kit list 9 all-new tips cards Our collectable cards bring you condensed shooting advice you can store in your kit bag until it’s needed. Each card offers suggested exposure settings to try initially, plus tips for improving on that first test shot. This issue’s cards provide you with advice on everything from photographing horses to capturing underwater shots of fish, and from…

Drones have (ahem) taken off in recent years, and we know that many readers proudly own one. Whether you use yours to shoot video clips or still images, they’re a fantastic tool to have – as long as you’re following the rules. Here, I’ll cover the basic laws that you need to know, but also how to set your drone up to create powerful content. If your drone weighs less than 20kg and you’re not going to profit from your content, you don’t need a licence in the UK. However, if you want to use your drone for business purposes, you’ll need to attend a PfCO course approved by the CAA with the National Qualified Entity (NQE). Check out the Civil Aviation Authority website (www.caa.co.uk) if you think you fall…

More than 10 years ago, Randy Scott Slavin took a dive down what he calls “the panoramic rabbit hole”, when he started using a VR photography app called Photosynth. “It basically allowed you to do a 360 dance and stitch a 360x180 panorama,” he says. “The result was far from perfect and the stitch lines were present, but the idea was there. I fell in love with the warped look of the equirectangular panorama.” After a few weeks of shooting everything he could, Randy looked into creating photographs without stitch lines, shooting with a better camera and lenses so that he could print at a high resolution. At the time, there was only one suitable tripod head on the market, but once Randy combined the Manfrotto SPH 303 with a…

It can be a great technical challenge to shoot using a long exposure time. Not only do you need to think about how your subject is going to look in a blurred form, but the use of a long exposure gives you the chance to create something unique and surreal. Moving water during a long exposure time becomes an effective silky smooth area; people moving during a long exposure leave a ghostly trail; and trees swaying in the wind create a soft fan shape. There are many approaches you can take to this challenge and to make sure you stand out to us at the judging stage we’ll be looking for a creative approach. So get out the tripods, filters and remote shutter releases (or use the self-timer if you…

Autumn is the season of transition and colour. In the case of many natural subjects, it’s also a period of great spectacle. Landscapes become transformed at this time of year, with the luscious green foliage of summer giving way to chestnut, amber and fiery orange tones. Early in the season, cold nights are often followed by warmer days, a pattern that provides the ideal conditions for morning mist and fog. It’s a busy time in the animal kingdom, too, as creatures prepare for the winter months ahead by storing food. Another dramatic annual sight to be captured is stags locking antlers in ferocious battles, as they begin competing for females in the breeding season. Autumn is a photographer’s paradise, wherever you are and whatever your favourite genre is. Over the…

Although the animal kingdom is winding down for winter, there are still plenty of busy species at this time of year. If you’ve got your own garden, think about ways to entice different creatures with food and water, researching their behaviour if you’re not sure what to provide. At dawn on sunny autumn days, look out for flowers and foliage that have been decorated by dew and cobwebs. You might even be lucky enough to spot hedgehogs, birds and insects in milder weather, all of which make stunning subjects. ZOOM IN 21 For some skittish or distant animals, it’s impossible to get close enough for frame-filling shots without a big telephoto lens. 300mm is a good starting point, or you could use a teleconverter to lengthen an existing lens. A…

GuruShots is billed as the world’s leading photo game. It’s an online platform conceived to give global exposure to people who love taking photographs. GuruShots members start out as Newbies and compete with other photographers to win challenges, increase their ranking on the site and eventually progress to coveted ‘Guru’ status. Challenges are voted on by Gurus and the wider GuruShots community, and there’s a fresh challenge – for example, ‘Playing with Light’ – every day. Winners receive prizes from GuruShot’s sponsors, including Lowepro, Kodak and Lensbaby. Find out more at www.gurushots.com Honourable mentions More honourable mentions…

Colourful Chaos Liron Gertsman, Canada Birds in Flight Bronze “Scattered throughout the Amazon basin are clay licks where parrots, parakeets and macaws come to eat clay and neutralise the acidic fruits that they eat. Getting to the clay lick in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador, required a regional flight and a three-hour boat ride upstream to get to base camp. It took many hours of waiting over three days before we were treated to the sight of hundreds of cobalt-winged parakeets raining down on the forest floor. Seeing them and hearing the deafening roar of parakeet chatter was an experience I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I used a slow shutter speed to convey movement as the birds took to the air.” Dancing on Ice Caron Steele, UK Bird Photographer of…

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. Most artistic borders for images are created on-screen using imaging software, graphics tablets and digital brushes. But if you really want an authentic, hand-painted feel, where the brush strokes are constantly varied and the paint flows into itself in different ways, there’s only one way to do it! It may be messy and time-consuming, but loading brushes with paint and working them into different paper textures is by far the best way to get truly organic results – and that’s what we’ve done for you, to provide this issue’s selection of custom-made artistic borders. Using the borders is straightforward. They all work in exactly the same way, so…

James is a professional photographer who specialises in landscape and portraits. He’s an advanced Photoshop user and has created hundreds of tutorials. Photography is all about showing the world through your own eyes, irrespective of subject. Of course, focal length and exposure both play important roles in how images will look, and that’s even before we bring light into the equation. But even with the most dynamic composition possible, there are still ways you can make the focal point more prominent during post processing. In this shot of the most photographed tree in the UK – the lone tree at Llyn Padarn in Snowdonia – the tree is the clear focal point and is composed according to the ‘rule of thirds’. The only thing is, it’s a little lost in…

Our reader Paul Byers Great Dun Fell is 15 minutes outside of Penrith in Cumbria. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but once I’d started walking to the top, I couldn’t believe how clear the sky was. By the time the Milky Way had risen to a point where I could capture it, the temperature was -5 C. My Nikon D850 and Irix 15mm lens were doing a great job of capturing the detail of the Milky Way. I took eight shots of 10 sec each at f/2.8 and ISO 6,400, plus two foreground frames at ISO 800 while I light-painted on the domes to get extra detail. All the frames were stacked and blended in Photoshop. Our expert Andrew James This was only your second attempt at astrophotography,…

£1,209/$1,199 Canon’s latest decathlete DSLR has entered the stadium. Is this all-rounder its best APS-C camera ever? www.canon.co.uk Specifications Sensor: 32.5MP APS-C CMOS sensor Image processor: Digic 8 ISO range: 100 to 25,600 (expandable to 51,200) Max image size: 6,960 x 4,640 Viewfinder: Optical, 100% coverage, 0.95x magnification Metering modes: Evaluative, partial, center-weighted, spot Video: 4K UHD up to 30fps; 1080p FullHD up to 120fps Memory card: SD/SDHC/SDXC (UHS-II compatible) LCD: 3-inch articulating touchscreen, 1.04m dots Max burst: 10fps continuous/11fps continuous in Live View Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB Micro-B, Micro HDMI Size: 141 x 105 x 77mm Weight: 701g (body only, with battery and SD card) After more leaks than a post-iceberg Titanic, we’ve finally been hands-on with the Canon EOS 90D. It’s the official replacement for the EOS 80D,…

£349-£449 / $399-$499 Taking inspiration from vintage lenses www.lomography.com Inspired by Joseph Petzval, the inventor of the first portrait lens and widely considered to be one of the founding fathers of modern photography, the Petzval 55mm f/1.7 joins the intriguing list of ‘arty’ Lomo lenses. Built for Sony E, Canon RF and Nikon Z mounts, it’s the first Petzval lens designed exclusively for full-frame mirrorless cameras. The lens features a new bokeh control ring that allows you to change the quality of the bokeh. The higher the control ring number, the dreamier the bokeh. The lower the number, the sharper it appears. Its waterhouse aperture system enables you to insert plates into the lens to change the shape of the bokeh. The plates provided include snowflakes, stars and hearts. The…

£500/$470 It’s a flash kit with attitude www.interfitphotographic.com Taking its name from what is reputedly the world’s most fearless animal, the Honey Badger head makes a bold entrance in yellow and black. It has a maximum power rating of 320Ws, which isn’t far off the Elinchrom D-Lite kit. It’s a bit more noisy in operation because the small heads have cooling fans that run full-time, rather than just when the going gets hot. The kit on test is the dual-head option with softboxes and a wireless remote. The maximum range is 90m. Performance At the bottom end of the range, flash output is more subtle than in the D-Lite, equating to an aperture of f/7.1 rather than f/16 in our one-metre test at ISO 100 (with standard reflector and no…

£899/$1,000 A clever head plus power-pack www.phottix.com This Phottix kit includes a flash head and a separate power-pack, similar to the Elinchrom ELB 500. They’re connected by a heavy-duty cable and the power-pack enables switchable standard or fast recycling speeds. In standard mode, you’ll get the same 400 full-power flashes as from the Elinchrom kit. The battery takes three times as long as the Elinchrom to recharge, at up to five hours, and you can’t power the head from the mains unless you buy an optional AC Module (£150/$139). Performance Performance is good overall but high-speed sync isn’t available until you hit the higher end of the power range. Recycling time is near-instantaneous at most power settings. Digital Camera verdict It’s a solid, well-made kit. The standard Bowens S-type mount…

£899/$995 More of a lamp than a complete kit www.rotolight.com Costing nearly three times more than the Manfrotto Lykos, the AEOS is more powerful and has a few extra tricks up its sleeve. However, the kit only includes the circular LED panel, a mains power supply, a heavy-duty ball head and a filter pack. An optional carrying case costs £150/$165, and a V-mount battery costs £275/$300 (without charger) for up to four hours’ mains-free use. Good for stills, the AEOS really excels for video capture, with customisable fade up/down and a range of special effects. Performance The bi-colour LEDs have a 100,000 hour lifespan and, as with the Manfrotto, enable completely flicker-free output, this time with a colour range of 3,150-6,300 Kelvin. Digital Camera verdict It’s a pricey LED lamp,…

Cactus V6 II £89/$89 www.cactus-image.com The original Cactus V6 made waves thanks to its ability to simultaneously trigger flashguns from all major manufacturers, including Canon, Nikon, Nissin and Sigma. The cross-compatible hotshoe design also meant the V6 wasn’t picky about which brand of camera you mounted it to. This version II model can pull the exact same cross-compatibility tricks, and much more. The V6 II can now wirelessly transmit TTL signals to Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax and Sigma flashguns. There’s also cross-brand wireless manual flash power adjustment, zoom head control, and High-Speed Sync compatibility. The V6 II is also able to auto-detect the brand of flashgun or camera to which it’s attached, and programme itself accordingly. Range is excellent at 100+ metres. There’s the ability to manage four…