Innehållsförteckning för No. 372 från Photography Week

Welcome to the world’s No.1 weekly digital photography magazine. If you’re already a reader, thanks for your continued support and involvement; if you’re new to Photography Week, you’ve come to the right place! In addition to expert advice, brilliant tips and step-by-step tutorials, every issue features interactive galleries of the best new photos, how-to videos on essential shooting and editing techniques, and in-depth reviews of the latest camera kit. But that’s not the whole story. Photography Week is more than a magazine – it’s a community of like-minded people who are passionate about photography. To get involved, just follow any of the links below and share your shots and comments – your photo might even appear on our cover! JOIN THE PHOTOGRAPHY WEEK COMMUNITY AND START SHARING! FACEBOOK http://tiny.cc/7s2zgy TWITTER…

Short telephoto lenses in the 85-135mm range are regarded as the best choice for traditional portraiture because they compress perspective a little, which flatters facial features. An additional benefit is that they also give shallow depth of field (DoF) at wide apertures, such as f/4 or f/2.8, so you can throw backgrounds out of focus. If you want to do this but also keep all of a subject’s face in sharp focus, use an aperture of f/5.6 and focus on your subject’s eyes. If you use a wider aperture, depth of field can be reduced to the point where parts of the face aren’t sharply focused – such as the tip of the nose, chin and forehead – although this effect can work well, as it focuses attention on your…

Wide apertures are a miracle in low light, especially when you need to shoot handheld, because they allow you to keep the shutter speed as fast as possible to reduce the risk of camera shake or subject movement. The type of lens you use can make a big difference. A 50mm prime lens is brilliant in low light; as well as being small and light, it also has a super-wide maximum aperture of f/1.8, f/1.4 or even f/1.2. So, for example, if your zoom has a maximum aperture of f/4 and the fastest shutter speed you can manage is ¼ sec, a 50mm lens at f/1.4 in the same situation would give you a shutter speed of 1/30 sec, which is fast enough to shoot handheld. Add to this the…

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2 HOURS Don’t let a little rain stop you from getting out and about with your camera! Just after a heavy rain shower can be the perfect time to head out and capture an environmental portrait with a difference, by using the reflections found in puddles as the subject for a fun photo project. The mirror-like reflections in the water surface enable you to explore an alternative perspective, and flipping the image so that the reflection becomes the main point of focus gives a surreal quality to your shot. With a little practice at trying out angles and perspectives, you’ll soon perfect your shots. Making sure you have your settings dialled in beforehand can speed up shooting too, while using semi-automatic exposure modes, such as aperture priority, means your camera…

It’s been rumored for months, and now DJI has unveiled the DJI Mavic Mini, a super-lightweight, palm-sized, foldable drone. The company says the Mini is “portable, easy to fly, designed for safety and perfect for everyone who wants to experience the fun of flying”. It’s also affordable, at £369/$399. DJI has a dominant position in the prosumer drone market, but has come under increasing threat from regulation in key markets like the UK, USA and China, all of which require registration of drones over 250g. The Mavic Mini comes in at just under that crucial limit, making it much easier to buy and enjoy, or to give as a gift. Indeed DJI seems to be attempting to corner this relatively new area of the market, coining the term ‘FlyCam’ for…

This set of images shows how the feel of a portrait changes as you stop the lens down to increase depth of field. They were all taken with a 24-70mm zoom at 70mm on a full-frame DSLR, and the lens was focused on the subject’s eyes. F/2.8 SHARP & SOFT The eyes are sharply focused, but everything else gradually blurs away. This adds a gentle softness to the portrait, and draws attention to the eyes. F/5.6 GETTING SHARPER Again the eyes are sharply focused, along with much of the subject’s face and forehead, but the ears, neck and shoulders are still out of focus. F/8 LESS BLUR Here you can see that the whole of the subject’s face is sharply focused, while the ears, neck and shoulders are less blurred.…

Depth of field is reduced as focal length increases, so a 200mm lens at f/4 will give you less DoF than a 100mm lens at f/4. By using a telephoto or telezoom at its widest aperture, you can experiment with the differential focusing technique, where you focus the lens on an element in a scene but let the rest fall out of focus. This makes the sharply focused element stand out in stark 3D, and the longer the focal length and the wider the aperture, the more obvious the effect is. Differential focusing works well on all kinds of subjects, from landscapes and architecture to still life and people, and a 70-200mm or 70-300mm zoom at the long end will produce strong results. You need to focus the lens carefully…

Achieving extensive depth of field requires the use of small lens apertures, but the more you stop down, the more image quality can be affected due to diffraction. The solution is to use a technique known as hyperfocal focusing, which allows you to maximise depth of field for any aperture/focal length combination by focusing the lens on a specific distance – the hyperfocal distance. That distance can be calculated using a simple formula – you can even buy apps for smartphones that do it for you – but to save you time and hassle, we’ve included hyperfocal distance charts on the next page for full-frame DSLRs, and 1.5x and 1.6x crop sensors. To use the chart, find the focal length you’re using along the top, the aperture (f-number) you want…

Also known as miniature faking, the idea behind this is that you photograph life-size subjects and scenes but make them appear to be models or miniatures. The easiest way to achieve this is by shooting with your lens at its widest aperture, so depth of field is minimised. Doing so throws much of the subject or scene out of focus, which creates the illusion that it has been photographed from close range so must be small. Lenses with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 or wider will give a decent effect. However, tilt/shift lenses are far better, as you can shoot wide open with reverse tilt applied to reduce DoF to practically nothing. A cheaper alternative is to use a Lensbaby, which only has a small ‘sweet spot’ while everything else…

PIGGIN’ OUT LES WIGGIN “Cute new-born piglets climb over one another to suckle their mother, while she takes a well-earned nap. This was taken on a farm in Shropshire, England.” http://tiny.cc/9y87dz CITY 5 WILLIAM WOOTTON “This is a view of the Doha skyline in Qatar. I shot the image during the night, from a vantage point that offered an unobstructed view.” http://tiny.cc/jn97dz BOAT OF CRUMMOCK WATER ALAN SMITH “This was taken in the UK’s Lake District National Park, at the south end of Crummock Water near Buttermere.” http://tiny.cc/kap8cz RIPCURLING MARK TUNSTALL “Taken on Treyarnon Beach in North Cornwall on a late October afternoon. A lone body boarder contemplates the incoming surf.” http://tiny.cc/lvjafz PETAL ART HELEN GEORGE “A dahlia flower photographed indoors, using my Panasonic DMC FZ200 with a Raynox M-250…

The main technical aspect of photography is capturing a well-exposed image, although given the levels of technology that modern digital cameras boast, it’s not exactly difficult these days. But the two main controls you use to achieve an exposure, the lens aperture and shutter speed, also control other factors that have a big influence on the success of every photo you take, so understanding what they do and how they do it is crucial. The main role of the lens aperture is to control the flow of light through the lens to the camera’s sensor, which it does using a series of f-numbers – the smaller the aperture, the bigger the f-number and the less light is admitted (you already knew that, of course). But those f-numbers also control how…

One of the factors that affects depth of field is the distance the lens is focused at. The closer the subject is to the lens, the less DoF you get for any lens focal length or aperture, while the further the focusing distance is, the more DoF you get for any lens or aperture. This effect is seen at its most extreme when shooting close-up and macro images, as the camera-to-subject distance may only be a few centimetres. Once you get down to these small focusing distances, DoF is severely reduced, to the point that even with your lens stopped all the way down to f/22 or f/32, you’ll find that much of your subject is out of focus. Go the other way by opening up the aperture, and DoF…

You may think that apertures are only about depth of field, but they can also be used to reduce or increase the amount of motion you record. The more you stop the aperture down, the slower the shutter speed gets to maintain correct exposure, and the more you open up the aperture, the faster the shutter speed becomes. For example, let’s say you’re shooting a waterfall at f/8 and you’re getting a shutter speed of 1/30 sec. You’re not going to record much movement in the water at 1/30 sec, but if you stop the lens down to f/16 the shutter speed will drop to ⅛ sec, and you’ll see a big difference. This approach can also be used to greater effect when using a 10-stop or similar ND filter…

When it comes to HDR, the key is to treat the technique like a utility rather than an effect, because it’s the ‘effect’ side of things that gives HDR a bad name. Photoshop’s HDR Toning command is a case in point. The command offers a range of presets that seem to cover all the worst crimes of the HDR ‘look’, from eye-popping saturation to crunchy, halo-tastic edges. But if you bypass these horrors and treat it instead as a tool for teasing out detail at the tonal extremes, HDR Toning becomes a very powerful command indeed. The feature is designed to be used with 32-bit HDR images, which are created by merging several bracketed exposures into one (using either Photoshop’s Merge To HDR command or a dedicated HDR application). However,…

FIVE THINGS TO LOOK FOR… 1 A thick mount is no good with a wide-angle lens: vignetting caused by the filter may affect the image. 2 A polarising filter shouldn’t introduce any noticeable colour cast; slight tints can be easily corrected though. 3 You don’t want to get water on your filter, and hydrophobic and antistatic coatings keep dust and spray at bay. 4 A polariser can restrict up to two stops of light. Premium polarisers use higher-transmission glass to minimise this effect. 5 Got lenses with various thread diameters? Buy filters to fit the largest, and mount them to others with stepping rings. B+W XS-Pro Digital HTC Kasemann MRC Nano £110-300/$86-249 (30.5-86mm) www.schneideroptics.com B+W’s premium XS-Pro circular polarisers come in a huge range of thread diameters to suit lenses…