Innehållsförteckning för December 2020 från Digital Camera Magazine

Few things cheer the soul more than viewing a well-captured scenic landscape, so to provide some healing balm during these strange times, we’ve curated a landscapes special issue. Our cover feature (p62) will help you to approach landscape photography in new ways, by busting 10 common myths of the genre, while our Hotshots gallery (p86) showcases winning entries from Landscape Photographer of the Year 2020. Photo Answers fields some queries about shooting landscapes (p106), and our Group Test will help you choose an ND filter kit (p126). If you’d rather be creative indoors, though, Photo Active (p20) and Stay at Home (p45) offer a panorama of creative projects. Also this month, you can use our seasonal Gift Guide (p114) to buy some gifts for any photo fans in your life,…

HOW TO GET YOUR DIGITAL GIFTS STEP 1 ENTER THIS URL www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc236 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 files, videos and resources to accompany this issue of Digital Camera. Scroll to just underneath the image and click on Download the disc for Digital Camera 236 and your download will start. It should only take a few minutes on most broadband connections. STEP 3 ACCESS YOUR FILES Open the .zip In…

Art has been a passion my whole life, especially bright colours and abstract art. After modelling for a decade, I started getting into photography; a few years later, I ended up with my own studio – Neon Dreams in Hook, Hampshire. I decided to kit it out with neon lights and use prisms a lot in my photography, as well as long-exposure techniques. I love seeing the refraction of light and am always in awe of the random patterns I end up with. My style of photography is more experimental; I find a hit-and-miss style more interesting to work with. Working with prisms and long exposure, you may get 20 throwaway photos to one, but that one is magnificent. Of course, the main objective is to have fun and create…

The UK offers many breathtaking architectural sights, but perhaps none more so than the Painted Ceiling at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich. Recently refurbished, it is an amazing space, adorned with paintings on the walls and ceilings. No wonder it is referred to as ‘Britain’s Sistine Chapel.’ Wherever you visit, check if a licence is required for any commercial photography. If you visit the Painted Ceiling at Greenwich, there is a helpful page on the ORNC website. www.ornc.org/venue-hire/filmingphotography-faqs Plan your visit at www.ornc.org Zoom in and crop Always look for ways of creating a different eye-catching shot. This image is cropped in from the original, and lightened slightly, showing more detail in the painted ceiling of the dome. Shoot in a wide aperture to let light indoor without flash,…

Based in London at present, I am often to be found travelling in distant locations, as I seek to visit and capture the world’s most striking landscapes and environments. I am an award-winning landscape photographer from France, with a style that is both sober and minimalist. I use a long-exposure shutter technique. I freeze the time for a couple of seconds and frame its emotions at this precise moment. I read the beauty and the simplicity of the place, and re-transcribe it to us. My composition reveals a game of texture, material and a new geometry – lines that you can’t expect. The long-exposure technique offers a large and novel playground for creativity. My post-production work allows me to fine-tune or perfect the reality that I feel when I’m on…

As you’ll see from page 74, Camera College has returned to the magazine… and for the next nine issues it will be the place to visit for our monthly reader photo challenge – that’s why you won’t find issue 236’s challenge issued on this page. This month, Camera College gives you all the hints, tips and insights for shooting garden macro images, and culminates in a reader photo challenge where the winner, as judged by the editorial team, will win a copy of Serif Affinity Photo software worth £49/$50. Subjects planned for the forthcoming series of Camera College include food photography, light trails and star trails, smoke art, dramatic landscapes, multiple exposures, motion blur, fine-art still life and pet portraits. So below, we’re publishing the top three entries for issue…

ater offers the potential to create great effects for photography, whether it’s on surfaces or windows. Here, with colder weather approaching, we are going to capture condensation through a window, to create artistic photos that look like paintings. Using a wide aperture, you can create a shallow depth of field, enabling you to focus on the condensation and make the background subject out of focus. You can also use some of these shots to create a ‘grunge’ style image library, which you can use to transform your original photos into something with a completely different style. WHAT YOU’LL NEED • Camera • Wide-aperture lens • Manual focus capability • Time: 30 minutes BONUS 10 grunge effects Add overlay textures created from condensation images to apply to your own photos. digitalcameraworld.com/dc236…

Landscape photography is littered with rules, guidelines and maxims that get passed on from photographer to photographer. But, just like any other area of photography, the often-quoted ways of working aren’t laws that you’re forced to stick to. In fact, breaking away and experimenting with your approach to shooting the great outdoors can be liberating. Over the coming pages, we’re going to dispel some of the most prevalent myths of landscape photography, and show you that contemporary practice can be a lot broader than merely sticking to received wisdom. While the landscape photographer traditionally gets up early and stays out late to capture as much detail and sharpness as possible within every scene, a more modern approach celebrates experimentation and often turns convention on its head. Today, the first rule…

Landscape photographers go to great lengths to retain detail in skies. After all, the last thing we want is our wonderful scenic image to be ruined by a great glaring area of nothing at the top of the photo. You can’t argue with this logic either, which is why we resort to all sorts of techniques and tricks to balance exposure, such as HDR photography and using graduated filters. This helps us to avoid overexposure and retain every little bit of detail that might be available in the scene. However, there will be times when embracing the lack of sky detail, and thinking carefully about how you compose your shot, can result in an image that is different from the norm yet still has bags of impact. When you lose…

It’s a natural assumption that including people within your landscape photos can somehow detract from the beauty of the scene. This can be true sometimes: if you genuinely want a wild, unblemished landscape with an absence of human interaction, the last thing you need is a Gore-Tex-clad passer-by, grinning at the camera! However, where it’s appropriate, the inclusion of a figure within the frame can add a powerful element that helps to tell the narrative. It’s also an immediate way to get a sense of scale in the scene, as viewers will quickly gauge the size of the surrounding environment by comparing it with the figure. How people interact with the landscape, whether they’re working within it or purely enjoying it, can establish the context your shot needs. TOP TIP…

With over a decade’s experience as a writer and photographer, James is also an accomplished image editor – and an expert in Affinity Photo. Sometimes colours need a subtle boost to make your images shine. Affinity Photo offers an array of colour controls that let you achieve this with ease. We mostly use these tools to boost the existing colours in a scene so that the image ‘pops’ off the screen or out of the print. But if you like, you can also use these tools to completely change a colour from one shade to another. In this tutorial we’ll focus on the excellent HSL tool. This stands for Hue, Saturation and Luminosity: three factors that control the shade, intensity and brightness of the colours in the image. Not only…

With over a decade as a writer and photographer behind him, James knows exactly which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter most. The Magic Wand is one of Photoshop’s best selection tools, especially if you need to target an area of an image that is uniform in colour or tone, like the backdrop to the bonsai tree image here. The tool works by seeking out similar pixels to the point that you click on, so it can be a huge help while you’re creating a fantastical composite like this, or for any time when you need to quickly lock on to part of an image. Making a successful selection in Photoshop is often mostly about choosing the right tool for the job. There are lots of great tools to…

£799/$749 www.canon.co.uk Specifications Sensor: 24.1MP APS-C CMOS (22.3 x 14.9mm) Image processor: Digic 8 AF points: 45 cross-type (viewfinder), Dual Pixel CMOS AF (Live View) ISO range: 100-25,600 Max image size: 6,000 x 4,000px Metering zones: 384 Video: 4K UHD at 25p, 24p; 1080p (Full HD) at 60p, 50p, 30p, 25p, 24p Viewfinder: Pentamirror, 95% coverage, 0.82x magnification Memory card: SD, SDHC, SDXC (UHS-I) LCD: 3-inch vari-angle touchscreen, 1,040k dots Max burst: 7.5fps (Live View), 7fps (viewfinder) Connectivity: Wi-Fi 2.4GHz, Bluetooth 4.1, USB 2.0, mini HDMI, 3.5mm microphone jack Size: 131 x 103 x 76mm Weight: 515g body only (with card and battery) We’ve been waiting to test the Canon EOS 850D since it was first announced in February 2020. The global pandemic meant worldwide supplies came to a grinding…

eutral-density lens filters are enormously versatile, enabling you to easily create effects that are difficult or impossible to produce in editing apps. Two-stop and three-stop filters are popular for giving the option of using wide apertures under bright lighting conditions, so you can gain a tight depth of field without suffering overexposure due to the limitations of your camera’s fastest shutter speed. Six-stop and 10-stop filters go further still, giving the possibility of shooting long exposures even on a bright, sunny day. For example, where an aperture of around f/16 at ISO 100 gives you a shutter speed of 1/30 sec, a six-stop filter slows the exposure to two seconds, and a 10-stop filter gives you an even longer 30-second exposure. A favourite use of high-power ND filters is to…

Steve McCurry Visual storyteller Also often referred to as a ‘master photographer’, Steve’s work needs little introduction. But you won’t know the images in his new book – see some from page 12. Doug Allan Film-maker and photographer His work has graced some of the finest documentaries ever made about wildlife and the natural world. Discover the secrets of Doug’s success from page 134. Abstract Reality Experimental photographer Model-turned-photographer Abstract Reality (aka Natasha) uses neon lighting and long exposures to create modern-day psychedelia. See page 20. Jon Devo Photographer and writer A photographer as well as a keen follower of technology, Jon soon hopes to witness an explosion in connectivity as cameras and camera phones collide. Page 118. Luis Cruz Fashion photographer Bristol-based portrait and fashion photographer Luiz specialises in…

We’ve probably all experimented with shooting through objects now and again. Whether it’s a simple fence railing to add a blurry foreground or a natural frame, or maybe even some broken glass or a plastic bag to create some light leaks, it can be a simple and fun technique that always produces a distinctive result. Prisms are able to bend light, glares and reflections before they enter a camera’s lens. Placing a prism in front of your lens gives you the ability to quickly manipulate the light and subject matter in your compositions, allowing you to bring a new dimension and give basic situations a new lease of life. Prism photography has caught on quickly, thanks to its easy and relatively cheap setup. The use of the hashtag #prismphotography has…

Based in northern Italy, I’m a nature and wildlife photographer specialising in Nordic wildlife and landscapes. My photographic vision focuses on capturing suggestions and emotions, using light and elements such as snow, ice and mist. I try to celebrate the pristine beauty of a landscape or the fleeting encounter with wildlife, with simplicity – giving as much importance to the unseen that is left to the imagination. My favourite subject has always been the brown bear. I’ve always thought of them as creatures with a double soul. In some apparently awkward and slow moments, they’re almost like big puppies; then, just a moment later, they become the very manifestation of the power of nature. The most important thing is respect. Make sure that the bears hear you and always know…

Getting to suitable locations for a shoot can be easier said than done in these uncertain times – and for overseas locations, you might as well forget about it. So if you can’t get to Japan, why not let Japan come to you? With pre-printed photo backdrops, you can transform a home studio into all manner of exotic locations, from enchanted forest glades and tropical paradises to grungy backstreets or industrial scenes. These backdrops are usually made from hard-wearing rolls of thick vinyl, which unlike traditional paper backdrops, can easily be wiped clean when you’re finished. You’ll need some form of artificial lighting, as well as a backdrop support. A home studio kit, consisting of a pair of flash heads on stands, is ideal, enabling you to construct controlled lighting…

Surely you can only shoot a landscape when you’ve trudged three miles uphill at dawn and are looking out on an unspoiled wilderness? Nonsense! You can shoot apply all the same elements of compositional landscape design anywhere you like – including right in the heart of the urban environment. Cityscapes are just landscapes with lots of buildings and different colour palettes – and the results you get can be just as evocative and interesting as anything you’ll take in the countryside. Don’t change your approach when you’re in the city. Look for interesting light by shooting early and late in the day, and hunt out shapes, textures and layers of interest to give your photos depth. This way, your urban landscapes will have a beauty and dynamism all of their…

There’s a tendency to believe that great landscapes only occur in ‘honeypot’ locations like National Parks. While it’s true that famous spots offer a wealth of opportunities, it’s also true that they will have been photographed to death, and the results you get may well be met with a shrug from a viewer who’s seen it all before! Take a critical look at your local area, though, and you may be surprised. Jettison your familiarity and, with fresh eyes, spend a few hours finding five local scenes with potential. They may seem dull in flat light, but how would things appear on a misty morning, during a sunrise, with a coating of a frost, or with brooding storm clouds? Weather conditions change everything, so get your local list together, shoot…

9 PAGES OF EXPERT ADVICE! 26 ORGANIC BORDER EFFECTS Transform your scenic photos! This month Step by Step: Organic borders Present your landscapes to perfection with the gift in this issue’s download Tool School: The Magic Wand Explore the hidden features in one of Photoshop’s cornerstone selection tools Fundamentals: Male portraits How to bring out the character of your headshots in Lightroom or Camera Raw Get The Look: High-contrast colour Four different ways to present colour in your images, for Photoshop or Elements This month’s video tutorials and start files Our digital download includes 84 minutes of video that provide more details on the techniques in the tutorials – see p8 for full details. FILE & VIDEO www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc236 Download files whenever you see this icon!…

A revolutionary super-telephoto lens £749/$699 www.canon.co.uk Specifications Mount: Canon RF Autofocus: Yes Image stabilisation: Yes Lens construction: 10 elements in 7 groups Angle of view: 4 degrees Diaphragm blades: None Minimum aperture: f/11 (fixed aperture) Minimum focusing distance: 4.5m Maximum magnification ratio: 0.14x Filter size: 82mm Dimensions: 93 x 200-270mm Weight: 930g Canon’s new RF 600mm f/11 IS STM and RF 800mm f/11 IS STM primes for EOS R-series mirrorless cameras offer a very different experience from the brand’s off-white super-telephoto lenses you see massed at global sporting events. The design concept of the RF 600mm f/11 IS STM and its 800mm sibling focuses on downsizing and keeping the weight off. To start with, the lens has a relatively narrow f/11 aperture rating. That’s not such a limiting factor as…

From £229/$249 www.cokin.com Cokin has been producing square filters and filter systems since 1978. Its current high-end range of Nuances Extreme filters is made from shock-resistant tempered mineral glass, with a new addition in the typically square shape of the ND8 three-stop filter. The new Full ND kit is launched off the back of this new offering, adding existing ND64 six-stop and ND1024 10-stop filters of the same quality. Three sizes are available: medium, large and extra-large (or P, Z-Pro and X-Pro in Cokin’s terminology), with 84mm, 100mm and 130mm widths respectively. The size you need depends in part on the diameter of the lens’s filter thread, but Cokin also recommends that the shortest focal lengths for the three sizes on a full-frame camera are 24mm (P), 22mm (Z-Pro) and…

£89/$129 (filter only) www.leefilters.com Lee Filters is a British company that has been going about its business of making premium filters and gels since 1967. The company has put all of its considerable know-how into its Stopper range of filters, which are available in 85mm, 100mm and 150mm options. They’re not available as kits, but as individual Little Stopper (six-stop), Big Stopper (10-stop) and Super Stopper (15-stop) filters, in the respective sizes. The SW150 Mark II system is noteworthy, as it comes with a variety of bespoke filter holders. These attach to specific ultra-wideangle lenses that have integral hoods and no attachment thread, normally making the use of filters impossible. Taking over from its range of standard and ProGlass ND filters, which range from one-stop to threestop densities, the Stopper…

It’s worth pointing out that this quartet of test filters and kits is a tiny fraction of the options that are available to you. There are many factors to consider while choosing your filter system. A simple circular filter may be ideal if you only intend to use it occasionally, while a square filter holder system is preferred for frequent use. Double-check the filter size is appropriate for your lens, and bear in mind that the price increases as the filter size increases. You’ll also need to get to grips with the different labelling different manufacturers use: some describe a three-stop filter as an ND8 (2 x 2 x 2), while others use a decimal system (ND0.9). While all the filters on test do a good job, on balance our…

To edit an image to this degree, most photographers would use Photoshop. But using Lightroom can highlight the clever and original ways you can expand your editing needs. Once you master the technique, you could even achieve your results faster than in Photoshop! All you need is an image taken in the daytime – ideally an industrial landscape or cityscape, which involves lots of light sources. One way you can achieve the most realistic effect is to keep an eye out for where light would naturally bounce and reflect, allowing you to create natural highlights and shadows. 1 Darken the entire scene Bring your chosen image into Lightroom and select the Develop Module to start editing. Decrease Exposure until your sky area looks dark enough to be considered nighttime. Reducing…

Luis Cruz is a Bristol-based portrait and fashion photographer, who is best-known for his vibrant and dreamy portraits. Luis has worked in some of Bristol’s most prestigious studios, and photographed for some of Bristol’s iconic fashion brands like Burnt Soul. This image was taken during one of his location fashion shoots commissioned by the eco designer Linda Thomas, who creates fashion from up-cycled clothing, redesigning beautiful materials such as cashmere, merino, silk and linen. If you want to shoot in woods with natural light at this time of year, it is very important that you get there good and early, as it gets quite dark quickly after 3pm. Check the weather forecast the night before and make sure you have waterproofs on you. “Try to look for contrast,” says Luis,…

SPECIAL SECTION Projects to try in the comfor t of your own home! LOOK! 10 grunge effects to download Some degree of lockdown seems to have returned to our lives, and signs are it could be with us for a while yet. So it’s just as well that our section devoted to enjoying photography at home, an appealing blend of practical projects and creative inspiration, will help you keep calm and camera on. Read through the following section and try out one of its new projects today – and if you take a shot that you just have to share, send it to digitalcamera@futurenet.com with the subject line ‘Reader Images’, and you could be in our reader gallery! Shoot abstracts and make a grunge library Make creative gold from a…

1 ‘Circle of Tangents’ by Peter Baker “This was taken for a camera club competition titled ‘Pasta’. I wanted something more eye-catching than regular photos of food on a plate. I started by taking shots above a jar of spaghetti, which captured little more than the chopped ends, so I tried smaller and smaller containers – each one letting the spaghetti fall at a different angle. This shot suggests a bend in the straight spaghetti, and reminds me of the Mathematical Bridge in Cambridge, with its straight pieces of wood forming a curve of tangents. For lighting, I fired a flash down a rolled black card. I added a vignette during the editing stage, and dodged and burned to enhance the 3D effect.” Digital Camera says: What a distinctive image,…

hen you start thinking outside the box about landscapes and break them down into a set of components, you’ll discover that you need four things in the viewfinder: foreground interest, a pleasing arrangement of shapes for the eye to lock on to, a sky at the top to set the desired mood, and a light source to illuminate the scene. Using this foundational way of thinking, you can slip through a secret door that opens up into an engaging, creative adventure, blurring the boundaries between two distinct photographic disciplines: landscape, and still-life. You’ll find that the biggest challenge in this fun project isn’t in the technical camera work or the subtleties of lighting (a desk lamp is fine if you don’t have an LED light) – it’s trying to avoid…

Shooting landscapes? Then you’d better grab that wide-angle lens, as you need to get as much as possible into the frame. Or should you? Of course, wide-angles and landscapes are an excellent match, but all experienced landscapers know that a telephoto lens is also an extremely powerful tool. A telephoto can help to pick out a part within the wider scene that is more interesting than the whole, and this in turn helps to simplify the elements. When you consider that simplicity is often the foundation of a powerful composition, it pays to always have a longer lens with you. With a telephoto lens, you can emphasise the shapes and repeating patterns of the landscape. This avoids all the clutter often seen in chaotic, wide-angle compositions that lack impact. TOP…

If you’re fairly new to landscape photography, it can make total sense to assume you want to shoot on sunny days. However, if you only venture out when the weather’s at its best, your images can lack drama. The more unpredictable the conditions, the greater your chance of shooting something different that captures the atmosphere of your chosen landscape. And if the fair-weathered photographers are at home with their feet up, your shot is going to be an exclusive! To really control the mood, use a filter. If you prefer the traditional way, a physical neutral-density graduated filter positioned over the lens will retain extra sky detail for added oomph. However, if you shoot in raw format, you can emulate the effect in raw conversion software and get a huge…

Overall Winner ‘Woolland Woods’ by Chris Frost “Taken in a wooded area close to Milborne St Andrew in Dorset, this was my third visit to the area in a matter of days. On the previous days, both devoid of morning mists, the light had been harsh and unappealing – but the third day delivered stunning conditions, with mist swirling through the trees. My low shooting position allowed more emphasis to be placed on the wild garlic and on the pathway.” Nikon D3200 with 10-20mm f/4-5.6 lens; 0.5 sec at f/11, ISO 400 Overall Youth Competition Winner ‘Counting Sheep’ by Joshua Elphick “I captured this photo on the South Downs while out on a walk with my sister. We spotted this sheep standing well away from its herd. As I slowly…

Jon is a professional photographer and writer. He also provides one-to-one and smallgroup tuition in both digital SLR and Photoshop image-editing skills. 26 organic border effects to download Bonus digital gift Landscape Special! Now you frame a photo can have a dramatic impact on the viewer’s perception of the scene you’ve captured. This is true of a physical frame you’d hang above the mantlepiece, but it’s also true of any creative treatment you add to the edges of the photo itself. In this month’s download, you’ll find a set of 26 organic borders – textured, fine-art edge effects that have been hand-crafted with real brushes and acrylic paint. Adding one of these to your landscape shot will immediately inject an extra dose of artistry to your work. Applying them in…

James is a professional photographer who specialises in landscape and portraits. He’s an advanced Photoshop user and has created hundreds of tutorials. Applying a colour effect to an image is a great way of adding your personal stamp, and in some cases creating an editing style you become known for. Vintage effects are growing increasingly popular, as is colour grading, but often reduce contrast rather than increasing it. It’s what’s fashionable in photo editing now, but the results can be modified by increasing contrast. Contrast can be added to Adjustment Layers in varying amounts using the Overlay, Soft Light and Vivid Light Blending Modes. The advantage of using Blending Modes is that they can modify the appearance of different types of layers without the need to apply a range of…

ollowers of Canon camera releases might do a doubletake when they clock that the EOS 850D is our main review this issue – it was launched a little while ago, before Covid-19 first locked us all down and disrupted the rhythms of international freight. Better late than never, though, so we were pleased to be able to put this well-connected all-rounder through our real-world and lab testing. Find out if this 24.1MP APS-C sensor DSLR has what it takes to compete in a marketplace becoming ever more packed with mirrorless cameras. Also this issue, we test a new prime lens for sports and wildlife shooters who use Canon’s full-frame mirrorless system – the RF 600mm f/11. With a clever retractable design and fixed aperture, how does this slimline and light…

£1,099/$1,499 www.olympus.co.uk Specifications Mount: Micro Four Thirds Full frame: No Autofocus: Yes Image stabilisation: 3 stops Lens construction: 21 elements in 15 groups Angle of view: 12-3.1 degrees Diaphragm blades: 9 Minimum aperture: f/22 Minimum focusing distance: 1.3m Max magnification ratio: 0.17 (wide) / 0.57x (tele) Filter size: 72mm Dimensions: 86 x 206mm Weight: 1,120g (excluding tripod bracket, caps, lens hood) The Olympus M.Zuiko 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 IS represents the key strengths of the Micro Four Thirds format: compact size, light weight, and a ridiculous amount of reach for such a small package. This is all made possible not only thanks to the clever design of the lens itself, but because of the small size of the Micro Four Thirds image sensors inside the best Olympus cameras. Their 2x crop factor…

From £69 www.hoyafilter.com Hoya is a legendary name in lens filters, but it has always focused on the circular screw-in style. This is a good format for UV and protection filters that you might leave attached to your lens most or all of the time, and works well for circular polarisers, but it isn’t so convenient for shooting with high-power ND filters. The problem is that when you shoot with a DSLR, six-stop and 10-stop filters give you a very dark or almost black viewfinder image once they’re on your lens, so you’re shooting blind. It’s therefore easiest to frame the shot, set the focus distance and work out the exposure, then simply slot a square filter into a holder attached to your lens and take your shot. Repeatedly screwing…

£80 www.srb-photographic.co.uk This new kit from SRB Photographic comprises a square filter holder with two circular screw-in filters. As counter-intuitive as that sounds, it’s an ingenious arrangement, as the filter holder can accommodate two square or rectangular filters with a width of 84mm (the same as Cokin’s P size), but it also has an 82mm diameter circular screw thread at its centre. The Elite Bundle kit is supplied with a screw-in circular polariser and a 10-stop ND filter, either of which can screw into the holder and effectively avoid any light seepage. This might sound like a similar arrangement to the Hoya circular filters on test with an added layer of complication, but in practice it’s much easier to use. A quick-release catch on the filter holder lets you compose…