Digital Photographer

You don’t have to travel great distances to capture images with drama and intrigue, and our latest technique features can both be tried close to home. On p22, explore ways to shoot urban images. On a city break you can hone so many photo skills, with

Our technique editor Peter goes to great lengths every month to bring you practical camera advice and pro tutorials. This issue, he inspires you with fresh ideas for shooting on a city break (p22), using composition, perspective, colour and more. He

While often regarded as the younger sibling to Adobe’s flagship Photoshop CC software, Photoshop Elements is still remarkably powerful. This in-depth book will help you to master the different workspaces, plus discover advanced edits, essential trick

After several weeks of rumours and delays Sony has finally revealed the ZV-E10, a mirrorless camera aimed at the vlogging market. The camera offers an affordable entry point to the Sony range and is pitched just below the A6000 range. While sharing m

There was a time when attempting to blur the background in one of your photos was an arduous task and it very rarely produced satisfying results. The advent of smartphone tech has moved things forward however and now a mode which diffuses background

As with many live events The Photography Show and The Video Show had to go virtual last year. However 2021 will see the triumphant return of the Show between 18-21 September to the NEC arena in Birmingham. One of the highlights is always the Super St

The results of the 14th annual iPhone Photography awards are in. This year the top prize was a little unusual too, for a photographic competition, as the winning image has gained its creator a bar of gold. The honour went to photojournalist Istvan Ke

1 Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III “It was a toss up between this body and the OM-D E-M1X, which is a bit chunkier.” The model has in-built focus stacking of up to 15 frames, plus RAW image editing, which allows Geraint to share his images on Instagram qui

When you shoot insects with flash, you’ll likely be capturing little to no ambient light, and the benefit of this is that you can use a smaller aperture, increase the depth of field but also lower the ISO level. Geraint uses a flash for 90% of his im

Macro photography is, at first glance, a niche genre. After all, if bugs and beasties aren’t your thing, why would you want to learn to shoot them? However, the skills you can glean from capturing subjects up close and in sharp focus can be applied t

1 Setting up Select manual us focus and exposure mode, so that exposures will be consistent for each frame of the stack. Enable grid lines onscreen to help with subject alignment. 2 Shoot the sequence pre-compose your image, then begin moving the c

Insects are inherently small, which makes them not only a challenge to focus on, but also to track. They are generally more mobile in warmer weather, so by photographing them in cooler temperatures, you’ll be more likely to capture a sharp result. “F

Cityscapes and travel photography go hand in hand. For photographers there is very little more enjoyable or creatively motivating than heading off to a new and exotic city, to explore the many and varied image opportunities. One of the biggest reason

When travelling to any unfamiliar location, planning is key to ensuring an efficient and productive shoot, which is also safe and enjoyable. Today there are a plethora of tools we can use to plan a city-based shoot down to the finest detail. Using on

Not only is this likely to be the most noticeable but it can also put other landmarks in context. When shooting a skyline use this as a compositional ‘full stop’ and use it in the background of other images, to suggest the relative location. A ‘tour

If there is one aspect which sets apart professional photography from the tens of thousands of images visitors to a city create every day, it’s lighting. Shooting during the middle of the day definitely has a place in our photo schedule, but there ar

A favourite time for photographers, sunrise and sunset offer fantastic colour and softer-yet-directional lighting. This works well for images of both old and new buildings as they will glow with high Kelvin colours. Watch out for loss of detail in th

1 Find your composition Since we will be shooting extended exposures first find a good composition. Arrange the scene to emphasise movement once the shutter is opened (ensure objects are moving past the camera or away/towards the camera). 2 Secure

By their very nature cities are static features of a landscape, in that once a building is constructed, it rarely changes during its lifetime. For some buildings their design and position has remained the same for several hundred years. This makes ca

Evaluative metering will often fail to give you either accurate or dramatic exposures in many city scenes. Switching to Partial Mode in medium contrast settings or Spot Metering for high contrast, midday images will give you the option to choose a ba

Having the ability to see the bigger picture is not always an advantage, not least when trying to convey to viewers of a two-dimensional photograph what it was like to visit a city they may never have seen before. Wide vistas or views of entire build

Bright walls, painted plant pots, murals – these are all subjects which give an excellent impression of a city’s personality and the people who live there. Make sure you are shooting RAW, change your white balance to a mid-range preset, like Daylight

Look for a position higher than street level to capture a view across the city. Use your knowledge of an urban setting to locate places which offer interesting lines of sight and which align with sunset or sunrise. This gives a unique perspective and

It’s a challenge to get across the energy of a city location in a single 2D image so anything we can do to exaggerate the character of the place is of benefit. Shoot from a low angle with an ultra-wide lens to stretch the height of buildings, creatin

By their very nature cities are hard things to photograph. The majority of scenes are built up along a vertical axis, since buildings are often taller than they are wide. Where they are short but wide you then have lots of negative space between them

1 Start mid-range A trick to prevent ‘setting bias’ – getting carried away with one setting choice and forgetting to try others – is to zoom to the median focal length of the lens. For a 24-70mm this is around 50mm. Capture images on either side of t

During the past year many photographers have had to resort to finding their inspiration much closer to home. This has not been an issue for me as, for the past 30 years, I have ceaselessly explored the photographic possibilities of my garden and surr

Out of all the visual elements, colour is perhaps the most powerful in its ability to control emotional responses. Much research has been done to understand how colour can affect our moods. In order to understand colour schemes it is important to see

This portable system is something I have been using for over 30 years. The requirements are to have a system for holding the backgrounds behind the subject and the reflectors in front of the subject. I use a sheet of MDF as the base of my portable st

When you use the panning function on a tripod head to produce images for stitching into a panorama, parallax errors can be introduced. This is because the point of rotation is under the camera, so the view shifts as you rotate the head. To stop this,

Avoiding camera shake is critical when using a macro lens for close-ups. To avert this, I use my Nikon’s Exposure Delay Mode. I use a remote shutter release to avoid jolting the camera body as the shutter is pressed, or use the self-timer option. A s

The settings for taking multiple exposures can be found in the Shooting menu of most cameras (if your camera has this feature). The number of shots you can combine depends on the model of camera you have, but for example’s sake we’re using the option

Difficulty level: Intermediate Time taken: 1 hour For quite some time after I picked up my first DSLR (a Canon EOS 5D Mark II) I saw some great images knocking around, and remember thinking to myself “do these people just have a better camera than m

Off to one side at around 45° is a good place to start, about six feet from your model. Make sure it’s at least head height or above to retain a more flattering light. When shooting on location I’ll remove the honeycomb to allow a little light to spi

In our modern fast-paced world, where emails ping on our smartphones and Instagram helps us to see what shots we’re missing out on at every second of the day, it can sometimes feel like we’re working all the time – or need to be. A dramatic outlook,

I switched to my backup camera, the Fujifilm X-T3 as I had a few more lens options there. The XF 16-55mm f2.8 is an absolute workhorse, and I have an adjustable ND filter that fits. I originally bought it to shoot video (as you are limited with shutt

Detail in landscape photography is extremely important, and several techniques can be used to enhance it. One that’s all about maximising shadow and tonal detail is exposing to the right (ETTR). Exposing to the right is a technique where you use the

I’m hoping to do a city photo shoot this summer with a model. I’m not used to shooting in an urban environment as most of my shoots are rural. Any advice? Julia Hampton Firstly you need to be aware if you are shooting on private land. In the city,

I’m a location portrait photographer and I’m thinking about buying a second camera. I currently have the Canon EOS R5 and another would be really handy so I could have a wider-angle lens attached as normally I shoot with an 85mm but like to go wider

NAME: Closed Dreams DATE: October 2018 KIT: Canon EOS 5D MARK III Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L USM WEBSITE: www.diciccophotos.com “My advice for capturing a similar image is that you need to have a lot of patience positioning the lights one by one, all

What do you do? I work as both a photographer and model, which I’ve been doing for over ten years now. I capture portraits, couples, maternity shoots, Oxford photo tours and nurseries mainly out on location with natural light. As a model, you might

How has the last year or so been for you? It’s interesting that you ask me. I thought I was doing all right actually, but I think that there’s so much lost over these virtual mediums. Part of it felt like, “Oh yeah, it’s really great, because we can

The International Portrait Photographer of the Year Award, which is in its first year, follows a similar format to the International Landscape Photographer of the Year Awards (now in its eighth year). Pros and amateurs worldwide were invited to enter

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, inc

In our next competition, Urban and street scenes, we want images which capture the colour, movement and dizzying perspective of city environments. Why not use our city break photography feature from this issue for inspiration? Enter at www.photocrowd

For our latest competition in association with Photocrowd, we challenged you to submit your best summer shots. After working through all the brilliant entries, the winners have been selected and presented here. Both crowd-voted and expert winners wil

Our team of trusted and expert reviewers score gear thoroughly to help you make better buying choices.

Mirrorless is very much the present and every bit the future. The briefest glance at where all the focus has been for camera and lens development over the last few years makes that starkly obvious. For those making the transition from a conventional

Price: £749 (approx. $1038) body only Just over a year ago, Olympus sold its camera business to a private equity firm and subsequently a new company called OM Digital Solutions was formed. The Olympus Pen E-P7 is the first camera to come from the ne

Olympus rates the E-P7’s Image Stabilisation shutter speed compensation at 4.5EV and it’s useful for both low light stills and handheld video where it keeps shake and wobble at bay. As is becoming more common, the E-P7 battery is charged in-camera vi

In addition to Olympus’s usual array of Picture Modes and Art Filters, the Pen E-P7 has a switch on its front that enables you to select one from a collection of four colour and four monochrome profiles. These profiles are editable with control over

Once you have Panasonic’s Lumix Sync app on your phone, it may take a couple of attempts to pair it with the GH5 II and get the Wi-Fi connectivity working, but from then on, it’s easy to stream to Facebook or YouTube or via RTMP/ RTMPS to your prefer

Price: £1,499/$1,698 body only Panasonic’s GH-series of Micro Four Thirds cameras have been popular with keen videographers and are also very capable stills cameras. The GH5 II upgrades the GH5 and is aimed at photographers, content creators, live-s

PRICE: £2,149/ $2,197 FOCUS DISTANCE: 37cm WEIGHT: 935g The first thing you notice about the LUMIX S Pro 24-70mm f2.8 is just how solid it feels. There’s a lot of metal used in the construction and it almost gives the impression of being machined f

PRICE: £909/ $1,086 FOCUS DISTANCE: 50cm WEIGHT: 750g It’s not the first time we’ve seen a full-frame lens with similar focal lengths, but the likes of the Canon EF 28-300 f/3.5-5.6L IS USM were positively monstrous by comparison – that particular

Website:www.peakdesign.com Price: £33 / $45 Sometimes you want something to carry a few small accessories such as a spare battery, memory cards, a lens cloth and a filter or two along with your wallet and keys. Step forward the Peak Design Field P

I never really know how to answer the question, “What kind of photographer are you?”. I’m just not sure where I fit. I heard the term ‘genre fluid’ the other day and I thought maybe that hit the nail on the head. I’m often photographing in the landsc