Innehållsförteckning för May 2024 från Digital Camera Magazine

STEP 1 ENTER THIS URL www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc281 Enter the URL www.digitalcameraworld.com/dc281 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. This will take you to a page on our website. STEP 2 JUST CLICK THE HIGHLIGHTED LINK Click on the link labelled ‘Download the files for Digital Camera 281’ and your download will start, delivered from our own server. Please override any browser warnings about downloading from a non-secure source – our server is safe! STEP 3 ACCESS YOUR FILES Open the. zip In your Downloads folder, or wherever you chose to download your files, double-click the dcm281-files.zip file icon. Then when it expands, double-click on Digital…

1 DJI Mini 3 Pro Ultra-light camera drone with 4K 60fps, plus forward, backward and downward vision sensors. “I use this in case there are lots of people around,” says Kennedy. “It’s quiet so it doesn’t get noticed and, as it weighs less than 250g, you can fly a bit closer to people.” 2 DJI RC controller “Both the DJI RC and the RC2 have built-in touchscreens for monitoring the video feed and changing settings. More convenient than attaching your phone, but a bit more pricey.” 3 Freewell Dual focal length ND filters “The aperture on the DJI Air 3 can’t be adjusted, so using neutral density filters for video will enable shutter speeds of 1/50 sec or 1/100 sec. This will give you the best shot quality, plus a little…

You know spring has finally arrived because if you head for your local woodland, instead of it simply being a damp bog with trees, it has been painted blue, purple and green thanks to the flowering of bluebells. This woodland flower is a perennial and tends to grow in dense patches so, once a year, a sea of purple and blue appears, especially in mature woodlands. Bluebells usually flower between late March and early May, with the average first flowering date over the past 20 years being around 14 April. Most flowering tends to happen in April, which is when you can best experience that carpet of blue-purple colour. Remember not to pick any, though, as they are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and they contain harmful…

We’ve all been there – that day out in the country, hoping for some golden summer light only to discover it’s another cloud-filled day, enveloping your destination in a blanket of grey misery. Rather than packing up and going home, take your photos anyway, with a view to converting them to mono when you get back. In fact, for punchy mono conversions, lots of clouds is actually a good thing because they add texture and definition to the sky, as you will see with this project. So, here we have a brick cottage, a winding pathway and a church in the background, but there is no sign of the sun and the light is completely flat. We used Affinity Photo for this project, but Photoshop has near-identical black and white…

While Photoshop’s Generative Fill is impressive and will undoubtedly improve over the coming years, let’s not get complacent. Areas of an image created with Generative Fill AI can often look a little messy and weird, so while it is a useful feature, there’s still merit in mastering the ‘old-school’ tools for cleaning up your shots. We’ve also found that while Generative Fill can be a useful starting point, it often needs a little cleaning up with tools such as the ones we’ll cover below. The Spot Healing Brush is brilliant for running over blemishes and distractions, while the new Remove Tool is like a souped-up version of the Spot Healing Brush, powered by AI. The Clone Stamp Tool offers pin-point control and accuracy, letting users source pixels from around the…

1 Start drawing Grab the Pen Tool from the Toolbox or hit the shortcut ‘P’ to make it active and zoom in on your subject with Ctrl+Plus. Click on the edge of your subject to place your first anchor point, then click on your next point but hold your mouse down and drag and you’ll see you can add a curve to your path line. 2 Delete Anchor Points The next point you make will be affected by how much curvature the previous point had. This can be helpful, giving your path a natural curve and flow. But if you have a harsh break angle this will be undesirable, so hold Alt and click on your most recent Anchor Point to fix this problem. 3 Path applications Once you have…

The Hue/Saturation command allows you to control the Hue, Saturation and Lightness of your colours. The Hue setting allows you to shift the colour range, while Saturation controls how punchy or muted the colours are. Lightness simply makes those colours lighter or darker, depending on where you drag the slider. While Hue/Saturation can be accessed by going to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation or by pressing the keyboard shortcut Ctrl/Cmd+U, we recommend instead applying it as an adjustment layer for extra control and a reversible, non-destructive workflow. To do this, go to your Adjustments panel (Window > Adjustments) and choose Hue/Saturation, or alternatively, go to your layers panel (Window > Layers) and click on the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon (it looks like a half black, half white…

This month: Get colours right Expert hints and tips on how to get perfect colour every time, in every situation Our advanced digital imaging devices make capturing colour pictures so simple that they can be mostly left to their own devices. Light passes through the lens, is picked up by the sensor, analysed by the image processor using algorithms and artificial intelligence and the result recorded on a memory card. Whether that light is supplied by the sun, LED lamps or candles, the camera does a great job of delivering a decent result. Indeed, most of us are happy enough with the outcome and go no further. However, for better photos, going further is part of the job. While the camera is a mightily effective machine, it can’t see what’s…

GET YOUR CREATIVE CURVES ACTIONS Turn to page 90 to find out more! Curves may have a reputation for being complicated, but they can be tackled at different levels of complexity. Besides, there is a huge number of adjustments that can be achieved, ranging from corrective to creative and beyond. Here, we’re going to take a look at some of the more creative ways they can be used to stylise photos. As always, we’ll cover four individual techniques. The approach we’ll take not only applies each technique in isolation for an effective result, but also allows the effects to be stacked to create a complete editing effect that covers a range of techniques. We’ll cover adding moodiness, making shadows appear cyan, warming up the highlights and applying an ultra-dull matte…

Bracket with three shots, or five? Q I read in Tech Check that you always use three bracketed frames, so why wouldn’t you use five bracketed frames for even more detail? Tom Osman A Over the years, I’ve found that three different exposures, even on exceptionally contrasty scenes, usually gives you enough dynamic range to create well-exposed final images from the frames, as long as you are shooting raw format rather than jpegs. If you’re shooting jpegs, then a five-stop exposure range might be necessary when the contrast range is extreme. However, my advice would always be to shoot raws anyway. The key to capturing all the information you need is within the amount of exposure you are bracketing. First of all, you don’t always need to bracket frames since…

www.panasonic.com Almost every camera system has its own compact wide-tele superzoom lens, however, despite a couple of third-party L-Mount options filling this gap, the Lumix S range had missed out. Until now, that is – Panasonic has decided it’s time to offer its own first-party solution with the Lumix S 28-200mm f/4-7.1 Macro OIS. Never a company to do things by halves, this is also the world’s smallest and lightest 7x zoom lens for full-frame cameras. With wide to tele focal lengths covered in one package, these lenses allow photographers to travel light, so are useful if you don’t have much space in your bag – or don’t like frequently changing lenses. With some recent impressively compact optics, Panasonic sees this as an opportunity to deliver Lumix shooters a do-it-all…

Magnum Photos member Peter van Agtmael’s new book is called Look at the USA: A Diary of War and Home and the title describes the book perfectly. Over the past couple of decades, van Agtmael has been chronicling significant events, and the aftermath to them, in the US and overseas, including spells in Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost 200 photographs feature in Look at the USA, which can be a difficult read at times, with so many images of war and conflict. But van Agtmael’s use of diary entries alongside the images provides some useful context and allows the photographer to zoom out from the pictures to offer a wider view to the reader. Born in the USA but now resident in Paris, van Agtmael spoke to us from the French…

For someone who’s a qualified marine biologist as well as a photographer, it’s fitting that we’ve chosen to do a shoot by the sea. Fergus Kennedy is a drone user and author, whose second book on drone photography is published this month. He’s also a native of Sussex, so today’s masterclass is being held at Tide Mills, just east of Newhaven Harbour. Taking its name from a flour mill that was demolished in 1901, Tide Mills is one of Kennedy’s favourite haunts. It’s convenient for him to get to, there’s an appealing mixture of natural and man-made topography to capture from the air and its shingle beach adds texture to top-down photographs. The day Digital Camera arrives, though, mist has put paid to any chance of a high flight ceiling…

Technically, true macro photography is when you magnify your subject via a ratio of at least 1:1, but people often use the term ‘macro’ to refer to any close-up image. If you’re interested in pursuing this fascinating genre, you will need to have the right gear. The most important tool, of course, is a dedicated macro lens, but that’s not the only solution – and it certainly isn’t the cheapest. If you’re on a budget, you may prefer to try extension tubes, close-up filters or the reverse-lens technique. The best time to photograph insects is early in the morning or late in the evening when they are roosting and therefore relatively inactive. This means you can take your time and work around them without creating a disturbance. Instagram: @jazart72 How…

The latest theme of our monthly photo challenge is ‘Perspective’ – where the camera is positioned in relation to the subject being photographed. As perspective can have a dramatic impact on a photo, we’re looking forward to seeing what you come up with to meet this challenge. Enter via email or Facebook Email your entry to digitalcamera@futurenet.com with ‘Perspective’ as the subject, including a brief descriptionof the image. Or look for the ‘Perspective’ post at www.facebook.com/digitalcameraworld and upload your entry into the feed. Enter by 23 May (only one image per reader, please). The winner will be announced in issue 283 (July), on sale 21 June (Please note that this competition is only open to readers based in the UK). WIN A £50 CEWE WALL ART VOUCHER! Submit your best…

ENJOY DIGITAL BACK ISSUES DATING FROM 2009!* Read issues 90-279 of Digital Camera on your computer or mobile device when you subscribe! Page 40 *2012 when using Pocketmags iOS users can access our back issues archive dating from 2009 by downloading the Digital Camera app from the Apple App Store (www.bit.ly/app_DCM). Android and desktop computer users can access our back issues archive dating from 2012 by using the Pocketmags app (www.pocketmags.com) or the Pocketmags website. Find out more at: www.magazinesdirect.com/digital-instructions/…

One of the perks of Adobe moving to its Creative Cloud subscription model is that you’ll pay a set monthly fee, but you’ll have access to the newest version of Adobe software at no extra cost. It’s currently £10 per month for the Photography Plan, which gives you Adobe Photoshop CC, Lightroom CC as well as Lightroom Classic. Head to your Adobe Creative Cloud app to check that you’re using the latest versions and have access to the latest features and tools. We’ll kick things off in Photoshop CC with the often-overlooked Crop Tool (right). A crop is one of the most simple, yet effective edits you can make to give your images more impact. Here’s how to get the most out of it… PHOTOSHOP CC 2024 INTERFACE The Photoshop…

1 Select the Brush Tool The Brush Tool (B) is handy for painting new pixels onto your image or on layer masks to blend different images and adjustment layers together. You can reduce the Flow and Opacity in the Tool Options bar at the top of the interface to make your brush strokes both more subtle and gradual. 2 Set the edge hardness Click on the Brush Preset Picker in the Tool Options to bring up a range of different brushes you can choose from. Here, you can also set the Brush Size and Hardness. A Hardness setting of 100 per cent gives you defined brush strokes with a hard edge, while lowering this gives you softer, feathered strokes. 3 Choose your colour On layer masks, you’ll only have the…

Dodging and burning harks back to the days of film, where photographers would use pieces of paper or card to shield the photosensitive paper to ‘dodge’ it and make that area brighter or have a hole in a large sheet of card ‘burn’ in specific parts of your exposure to make them darker. This often took lots of trial and error in the darkroom but it’s much easier to pull off in Photoshop’s Dodge and Burn tools. Working on a digital image, we can see our contrast adjustments and work non-destructively, reverting back to the original image if needed. Here’s how to use these powerful tools… 1 Dodge or Burn The Dodge and Burn Tools (O) can be activated by clicking on their icons from the Toolbox, the Dodge Tool…

Neural Filters are different from Photoshop’s usual batch of filters in the Filter Gallery because they are powered by Adobe’s machine learning Sensei AI. This makes them a fantastic resource for pulling off difficult edits, such as turning an image from day to night, or even changing the season from autumn to winter (or vice versa). It’s extremely easy, with plenty of options and sliders to help you get the exact look you’re after in just a few clicks. To begin, open up Photoshop CC and go to Filter > Neural Filters. On the right, you will see a list of Neural Filters you can choose from, as well as upcoming ones that are on the waiting list. If you haven’t used a Neural Filter before, you may need to…

10 BONUS ADJUSTMENT PRESETS Turn to page 90 to find out more! In 2023, Adobe introduced a revamped Adjustment Panel in Photoshop – before, this panel simply showed icons of the Adjustment Layers on offer. However, after the update, we had a range of thumbnail presets, each of which applied a variety of adjustment layers to our images. The problem was that the handful of default adjustments were, for the most part, not great. Thankfully, things have improved with a recent addition to the panel in the latest version of Photoshop (25.5 or higher) and we can now create our own adjustment presets. As we aren’t stuck with the standard default effects, we can take advantage of all the best features of Adjustment Layers, which have long been one of…

Sigma 50mm F1.2 DG DN Art Super-fast compact standard prime for L-Mount and Sony E-mount promises outstanding optical performance The leading third-party lens manufacturer looks to have pulled out all the stops with the design of this new standard prime, which will be ideal for low-light landscapes, travel shots and portraits with beautiful bokeh, says the brand. Sigma claims that its new optic is the world’s lightest 50mm f/1.2 lens for full-frame mirrorless cameras – it weighs 745g (in L-mount specification) while it measures 109mm x 81mm (length x diameter). The optical design includes no fewer than 17 elements in 12 groups, including four aspherical elements. This complex design corrects spherical aberration, sagittal coma flare, axial chromatic aberration and what Sigma calls ‘double-line bokeh’, not just for edge-to-edge sharpness but…

www.sony.co.uk Opening the box containing the new Sony A7C II is a real déjà vu moment – only a few weeks have passed since I unwrapped the brand new Sony A6700 camera. The A7C II has a similar design to that camera, except with a full-frame sensor. The A7C was released two years ago as a compact form of the Sony A7 III and was meant to be Sony’s new champion for content creators who wanted the most compact camera possible that was both easy to travel with and would fit into cages and rigs while offering full-frame professional quality. Since then, Sony has gone hard into its ZV range of cameras which aims to court more video-centric content creators. For some time, those who cared more about stills were…

Most people have heard of Stephenson’s Rocket, the steam locomotive designed and built in 1829, but Robert Stephenson didn’t actually invent the first steam engine. That honour went to Richard Trevithick, a Cornishman whose Penydarren tram road engine hauled 70 men and 10 tons of iron some 10 miles, at 5mph, in 1804. However, Trevithick’s design was ignored, leaving it to Stephenson to grab the glory. By the 1920s and 30s, the golden age of steam was in full flow. At the height of steam train popularity, there were over 30,000 miles of track in the UK, transporting goods, commuters and holidaymakers, but the Beeching cuts of the 1960s and then electrification meant that steam engines were consigned to the heritage sector. In Britain, there are now over 100 heritage…

PART 2 OF 4 Part 3 in issue 282, on sale 24 May Removing clutter and annoying items from your photos is standard practice and there are a number of tools available to help do this. Which one you use is something of a personal choice, whether that’s the Clone Stamp or Patch tool, for example. Adobe has always introduced new tools that do much the same job as the old ones, just slightly better. And here we are with Generative Fill, the AI-driven content filler, which can do what those other tools did before, but better and with more variety. In this issue’s example, we’re going to look at both removing elements that we don’t want and adding new ones that weren’t there to start with. Adding and removing…

OVERALL WINNER and 1st PLACE, 7IM Abstract Views ‘Birdscape’ June Sharpe Location: Kent, England “The layered branches of this conifer reminded me of the dancing cranes often featured in Japanese woodcuts. I added a fill layer and used the exclusion blending mode to alter the colours in post-processing. This enhanced the feeling of movement and the sense of the ‘birds’ dancing in a fantasy woodland.” Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Settings: 1/350 sec at f/5.6, ISO 800 WINNER: Plants and Planet ‘Mangrove Tree (From Underwater)’ Leena Roy Location: Bunaken National Marine Park, Sulawesi Island, Indonesia “A mangrove tree surrounded by numerous roots on the seabed, which I photographed from under the water, looking up. Mangrove forests not only act as carbon banks but…

Launched into Photoshop Beta in May last year, and then officially released into Photoshop CC 2024 version 25 in September 2023, in just a few months, Adobe’s Firefly AI has grabbed headlines and is nothing short of impressive. In its current state, it makes short work of removing objects from a scene, extending an image, or even placing new elements within the frame. All of this could, of course, be pulled off manually before, though it often took a significant amount of skill and time to do. The new Generative Fill AI does a great job at pulling off tricky tasks, though it inevitably gets it wrong sometimes and will likely require some cleaning up, which we’ll explain here. New elements added to scenes can also look a little low…

1 Make a simple ‘S’ curve Go to your layers panel, click the Create new fill or adjustment layer icon and choose Curves. Drag up on the curve line at the highlights and down on the shadows for a simple S curve shape; this will help to boost contrast. You can reduce the layer opacity or use its layer mask to fine-tune the effect, too. 2 Reduce contrast If you’re looking to reduce contrast, click on the very top right point of the curve line and drag it down to dull down the highlights. Now go to the very bottom left point and drag upwards to make the shadows more faded. Again, you can control the effect with layer opacity and the layer mask. 3 Drag to change values In…

1 ‘Lone Tree in the Devon Countryside’ by Daryl Baker “This is a favourite local spot of mine and I usually try to visit when the forecast is for mist and fog. One morning, I decided to head down before sunrise to try to capture the early spring colours and golden hues. The conditions worked out perfectly that morning with the golden light mixing with the shadows and rolling countryside. The main subject I wanted to capture was the single tree standing alone on the crest of the hill – I’ve captured a few wide-angle shots of this tree in the past but this time, I was aiming for a more unique take. For me, this image depicts my passion for landscape photography. “Devon has lots of Areas of Outstanding…

A strophotographers are known for going the extra mile… and that’s certainly the case for Josh Dury, as he sought to bag a photo of the rare total solar eclipse that plunged parts of the USA into darkness on 8 April. Dury, who has shared his top tips for astro success in issues 270 and 277 of Digital Camera, lives in the south-west of England but still managed to make the 4,650-mile journey to Dallas, Texas. “The trip required months of extensive planning with changing forecasts, April showers and changes to the jet stream making this event a ‘miracle eclipse’ to capture,” he says. But his hard work paid off, and between 1.40-1.44pm, Dury was rewarded with this shot of the totality, which lasted for just 3 mins 52 secs.…

BONUS POLARISER PRESET Turn to page 90 to find out more! The circular polariser is probably one of the only physical filters that you need as a digital photographer. All of the others can be replicated easily in software; graduated filters are right there as a masking option; warming or cooling can be done with White Balance, even those 10x filters can be emulated by taking a series of photos and blending them. However, the circular polariser is different. Polarisers work by allowing light to come from only one direction and so reduce light reflections. This light could be on the surface of water, or it could be the sheen on leaves. Using a polariser will therefore allow you to see below the water or to enhance the green colours…

Remembering Tigers will be the ninth book in the charity book series started by wildlife photographer Margot Raggett in 2016. She was prompted to take action after seeing a poached elephant in Kenya and started asking fellow wildlife photographers whether they would contribute images to a fundraising book – this request launched the start of something special. Remembering Elephants and its successors, Remembering Rhinos, Remembering Great Apes, Remembering Lions, Remembering Cheetahs, Remembering African Wild Dogs, Remembering Bears and Remembering Leopards, have raised more than £1.1 million ($1.4 million) between them for 70 conservation projects across 31 countries. Just under 1,000 images were entered for Remembering Tigers, which will feature images donated by many of the world’s leading wildlife photographers, including Art Wolfe, Andy Rouse, Greg du Toit and Will Burrard-Lucas.…

By now, the dust has settled on the monumental announcement made by Nikon that it was set to become the sole owner of rogue camera brand RED Digital Cinema. After years of vying for hybrid camera supremacy and struggling to overcome Sony’s sustained dominance, as well as the resurgence of competitors such as Canon and Panasonic’s Lumix, Nikon seems to have chosen a nuclear option in a bid to turn the tide. People paying attention to camera world news would have already been wowed by the news that RED had just launched the world’s first commercially available large format global shutter camera, in the form of the RED V-Raptor X. So it was even crazier when the announcement came through shortly after that the company’s founder James Jannard and current…

www.fujifilm.com I love that tilt-shift lenses enable me to do things in-camera that are difficult or impossible to replicate during editing without some serious compromises. This Fujinon GF 30mm F5.6 T/S is one of the best tilt-shift lenses on the market right now, and arguably the best of all time. It will also go down in the history of top Fujinon GF lenses, full stop. So what exactly is a tilt-shift lens? In essence, it has a moveable front section that allows you to tilt the optical path in relation to the camera, or to shift it up and down. The tilt function changes the plane of focus, effectively allowing you to alter the depth of field irrespective of the aperture setting. That can be useful in landscape photography where…

If you use Lightroom, Capture One or other software to view and process your raw files, you’ll have formed a good idea of the quality you can get from your images. Use DxO PureRAW 4, though, and you might just have to change your mind. Almost all image editing tools can now process raw files, using the software’s proprietary ‘demosaicing’ process to turn the red, green and blue sensor data into full-colour images. However, some do raw processing better than others, and even the best photo editing software has weaknesses – sometimes that’s the raw processing quality and noise handling. Key features Normally, this is somewhat academic because you’re at the mercy of your photo editor’s own raw processing but PureRAW 4 changes all that. It generates part-processed ‘Linear DNG’…

The digital advantage Digital magazines can travel with you – even if you delete them, they are free to download again later. Subscribers can now access issues of Digital Camera going back to 2009 (iOS) or 2012 (Pocketmags). To subscribe today go to: www.magazinesdirect.com/categories/photography-and-design Available on Available on the following: Apple iOS devices Get the free Digital Camera app for your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch at: www.bit.ly/app_DCM (UK) or www.bit.ly/app_DCW (outside UK) Then browse through our back issues or buy a subscription (see page 40 for offers) using the app. Android, PC or Mac Zinio www.bit.ly/DCW_Zinio Pocket Mags www.pocketmags.com Other options Digital Camera is available for Kobo, Kindle, Nook and more (see above). It can also be found on the all-you-can-read Readly magazine app: https://gb.readly.com/ Printed back issues Prefer…