Digital Photo - June16

DIGITAL PHOTO JUNE 2016 ISSUE 208

Improve every shot you take

56

PROJECTS

TIPS & IDEAS TO DO NOW!

MASTER THE ART OF

ISSUE 208 JUNE 2016 £4.99

MASTER THE ART OF LIGHT

LIGHT the

ULTIMATE GUIDE

RAW SECRETS

Use our easy guide for perfect pics every time

All the DSLR & Photoshop skills you need to know

RAW EDITING SECRETS

STAY SHARP!

Wave goodbye to camera shake

GET SHARPER SHOTS

Compose for impact

Use natural framing to make your images stand out

Canon EOS 1D X MkII Full test of the fastest pro DSLR on the planet!

Photo answers

Top tips for creative wildlife pics

INSPIRING TECHNIQUES FOR STUNNING IMAGES!

WWW.PHOTOANSWERS.CO.UK

JUNE 2016 ISSUE 208 £4.99

Make beautiful mono

Shoot artistic still-lifes

Create digital sunshine

Get colourful & creative with portraits!

PLANET PHOTO Your fresh fix of inspiration from the world’s best photographers THE SMALL PICTURE

What a buzz!

Taking a closer look can often change your regard for a subject.

Take Vasily Menshov’s extreme macro shot of this wasp. While we usually think of these flying stingers as pests that bother us at barbecues, seeing the intricacies of their make-up gives a new-found respect. The Moscow-based software architect combined his specialist macro lens with a technique called focus stacking. This involved shooting 65 individual frames before merging them together to ensure the shot was completely sharp throughout.

VASILY MENSHOV

Camera Canon EOS 5D & MP-E 65mm lens Exposure Various Software Photoshop Visit 500px.com/vamenshov

GET THIS SHOT To shoot a focus stack like Vasily’s, the subject must be absolutely static for many minutes. Pro macro shooters source dead insects and attach them to a foam board so they remain still for the entire time.

8 DIGITAL PHOTO

The Canon 65mm MP-E macro lens allows a magnification of 5x lifesize, and this shot was achieved by focus-stacking 65 separate shots together.

DIGITAL PHOTO 9

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SCULPTING

LIGHT Want to try the freshest portraiture techniques in photography? Follow our easy projects and bring perfect light to your people pics...

MATT HIGSS / BAUER

L

ight is the most important creative tool in photography. When you take a picture, you don’t actually photograph the subject or scene in front of your lens. Instead, you photograph the light reflected from it, and embracing this core concept will help you understand that light – and the way it’s directed, sculpted and channelled – will make the biggest difference to your images.

‘Waiting for the light’ is a phrase often quoted by expectant landscapers as they brave the elements in the hope of a magical moment. And because their light source is natural, and is filtered through the atmosphere from a single star 93 million

22 DIGITAL PHOTO

miles away, you can see where the ‘hope’ fits in! But for people pictures, the stage isn’t so vast, and this smaller scale allows you to redirect natural light to control the way it strikes a subject, or augment it with man-made light sources like flashguns.

Over the coming pages, you’ll find a set of great projects that’ll reveal how you can sculpt your lighting to get outstanding portrait shots. The projects reveal how you can use simple kit like reflectors or flashguns to get striking effects that’ll make your pictures pop. Every one is a ‘must’ for your repertoire of camera techniques, so if you’re looking for a new way to shoot a great portrait, turn the page, and get stuck in!

CREATIVE

LIGHTING SPECIAL

Lit with a flashgun from above and continuous lighting from the sides, a long exposure of 2secs was used to capture the model as she turned her head. The brief burst of flash froze the movement.

DIGITAL PHOTO 23

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND

GET IT RIGHT WITH

RAW

Organise your workflow and follow our easy route to get pro-quality RAW conversions every time WORDS & PICS BY JON ADAMS

A

RAW is a special file type that comes straight off the camera’s sensor.

Every camera shoots RAW files to start with, but most then convert them into JPEGs using preprogrammed settings. However, DSLRs, CSCs, bridge cameras and more advanced compacts give you the opportunity to output the RAW file so you can change these settings

guide, you’ll be able to get great results from any picture you take in RAW format. Follow it through and try it with your own files, and if you want to practise it with the landscape image we’ve used, you’ll find the DNG file in the Start Images folder.

You’ll also find a video of this entire process on the CD, so load it up and watch the whole process unfold on screen.

“ If you want to take full control of the way your images look, shooting in RAW format and processing the file is the route to the best possible quality” yourself in specialist RAW conversion software. These settings include the colour, contrast and even the overall exposure, so if you want to take full control of the way your images look, RAW is the route to the best possible quality.

A RAW is bespoke to the camera model that created it, and each camera manufacturer has its own file extension. Canon use .CR2, Nikon use .NEF, Olympus use .ORF and Fuji use .RAF, for example, but they’re all RAW files which can be read by RAW conversion software – providing it’s more recent than the camera model used.

Elements and Photoshop have Adobe Camera Raw built in, so that’s what we’ll use in this tutorial to take you on the perfect path to great-looking pics.

With all the controls, panels, and options on offer, the RAW conversion process can appear confusing and difficult. But with our 32 DIGITAL PHOTO

Opening your RAW files Double-click on a RAW file to load it into your RAW conversion software. If it opens, then you’re up and running and can get stuck into the creative process. If you get a message

1

VIDEO LESSON ON THE CD

saying your software can’t open the file, then the most likely reason is because they’ve been created by a camera more recent than your software. Updating your software is the first thing to try, but if that’s not possible because you’re not using the latest version of Photoshop or Elements, then there’s a free workaround which will save you having to buy or subscribe to the latest version.

Adobe DNG Converter is free to download, and will convert your CR2, NEF, ORF or any other supported RAW file into the universal DNG format. This will open in pretty much any RAW package under the sun, so you can start taking full control of your photos without splashing any cash on unnecessary software upgrades.

See the panel below if you need to convert your RAWs, but if they open without needing a conversion, you can skip this step and start improving your pics immediately.

Using Adobe DNG converter

If your camera’s RAW files can’t be read by your software, download the latest DNG Converter from www.adobe.com/downloads/ updates.html Choose the Windows or Mac version in line with your computer system, and follow the instructions to install it.

Place all the RAW files you

want to convert into a folder.

Click on Select Folder at the top of the dialogue box, and navigate to the folder with your pictures in.

Now choose the location you want to save your converted images. If you want to keep them in the same folder, just leave this on Save in Same Location. Now click on

Convert at the bottom of the dialogue box, and the process will get underway. If you have a lot of files, this is the time to put the kettle on!

Once the files have been converted, double-click on the DNG version of the one you want to open, and it’ll load up into the Adobe Camera Raw interface.

VIDEO LESSON ON THE CD

After

JON ADAMS

RAW processing allows you to transform the look and improve the quality of an image.

If your RAWs won’t load into your software, the free Adobe DNG Converter will turn them into a universal RAW format that can be read by most RAW software.

Before Straight out of the camera, a RAW file won’t look as good as a JPEG of the scene, as it is in an unprocessed state. But extra data is recorded, and RAW processing injects the contrast, colour and detail you want to reveal.

NOW FOLLOW THE RAW GUIDE DIGITAL PHOTO 33

PHOTOSHOP GENIUS

CONTROL LIGHT & SHADE TO RESCUE YOUR PICTURES Reduce the destructive impact of heavy shadows on a picture by taking charge of contrast in mono TECHNIQUE & PICS BY JON ADAMS

At a glance You’ll learn How to balance unattractive contrast and repair the damage caused by destructive shadows You’ll need Photoshop or Elements Time required 15 minutes Difficulty level Medium

On the disc Video lessons Watch as Jon runs through this picturesaving Photoshop technique on your computer screen.

Start images Try out the project using Church.jpg which can be found in the Start Images folder.

C

ontrast is a vital ingredient in a photo, but it doesn’t always appear where you want it!

Take a look at the start image below and you’ll see that the direct sunlight has cast a heavy shadow straight through the subject. This presents a challenge that’s very difficult to fix in a colour shot. By converting to mono, you can push things much harder and tease out extra detail in the shadows. The result is a better-balanced picture full of atmosphere – a far cry from the original.

This rescue mission makes use of Selections, Layers, Adjustment Layers, Layer Masks and the Dodge & Burn tools, so follow it through and you’ll have completed a core set of essential Photoshop skills in a single project.

Taken in the village of Ilam in Derbyshire, the church is elegantly framed by the flat-topped pyramid of Thorpe Cloud in the background. But the harsh contrast has blown the sky and cut the subject in two with a horrible shadow.

70 DIGITAL PHOTO

JON ADAMS

Before

MONO TO THE RESCUE

VIDEO LESSON ON THE CD

After With the destructive shadow removed and a new sky created and positioned, the shot has a new lease of life.

DIGITAL PHOTO 71

CAN ONE LENS REALLY DO IT ALL? They’re the Swiss Army Knife of optics, but how good are superzooms? We put two of the most popular models head-to-head to find out…

TEST BY MATT HIGGS

S

witching between focal lengths suitable for wide landscapes at one end of their range, to the kind of telephoto reach required for wildlife photography at the other, superzooms offer unrivalled flexibility. If you’re looking to keep your kitbag lightweight, but don’t want to be restricted in the subjects you can tackle, they’re the ideal solution. While historically, superzooms were often low-grade in the image quality they produced, more recent developments have seen them overhauled to offer much more impressive performances.

Prime lenses may still offer the pinnacle of sharpness plus large, fast apertures, but investing in a set capable of covering the same focal range would set you back a small 102 DIGITAL PHOTO

fortune. Now, for all but professionals who intend to make poster-size prints, the superzoom has come of age.

Leading the way in this part of the market with the sheer broadness of their focal range, are the Sigma 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 C DC Macro OS HSM, and the Tamron 16-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD Macro. Both of these superzooms cost less than £400, offer advanced features, and are available in a wide variety of fits. Designed for use with APS-C size bodies, they have a full-frame equivalent reach of 450mm at their longest focal length, yet manage to remain compact.

We pitted them against each other to discover which big-range optic offers the best bang for your buck…

How we did the test The two lenses were taken out onto location to shoot a variety of real-life scenes at a range of focal lengths and aperture settings. To ensure a direct comparison could be made, the camera used for the test was tripod mounted so its perspective remained unchanged as they were switched over.

Upon returning to Digital Photo HQ, the superzooms were fully tested again at a range of focal lengths and all available apertures using our studio lens chart. The RAW image files from both shoots were then converted to DNG, imported into Lightroom, and compared side-by-side with all optical correction and sharpening options turned off in the software’s menu.

SUPERZOOM HEAD-TO-HEAD

RONNYBAS / ALAMY

“ Compact, lightweight and affordable, a superzoom is the ideal solution for those who want to travel light”

SIGMA

TAMRON

18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 C DC Macro OS HSM £345

16-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD Macro £399

Quickspec

Quickspec

Focal Range 18-300mm

Focal Range 16-300mm

Max aperture f/3.5-6.3

Max aperture f/3.5-6.3

Min Aperture f/22 Min Focus Distance 39cm Diaphragm Blades 7

v

Min Aperture f/22-40 Min Focus Distance 39cm Diaphragm Blades 7

Image stabilisation Yes-OS

Image stabilisation Yes-VC

Filter size 72mm

Filter size 67mm

Lens hood Yes

Lens hood Yes

Size (DxL) 79x102mm

Size (DxL) 71x106mm

Weight 585g

Weight 540g

Fits Sigma, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony

Fits Canon, Nikon, Sony

Visit www.sigma-imaging-uk.com

Visit www.tamron.co.uk

DIGITAL PHOTO 103