Digital Photo May 2009

F LA SH FLASH PART 2

OFF-CAMERA FLASH

Don’t restrict your creativity by confining yourself to built-in flash – enjoy the bigger, brighter benefits of off-camera flash TECHNIQUE BY PHIL HALL

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AST MONTH’S Essential Camera Skills explored the basics of flash and what you can achieve with the humble built-in variety that most D-SLRs feature.

But as you become more proficient and confident with built-in flash, you may feel restricted by its reach and creative options. So, where do you go from here?

Luckily, there are many types of flash available with more power and advanced, creative features.

Narrowing down which one is the right flash type for you can seem daunting at first, but they are easily categorised, which makes the decision making that bit easier. Let’s take a look at the different types of flash available...

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TECHNIQUE

TAKE LANDSCAPES FURTHER

PAUL MORGAN

YOUR EASYTO E GUIDTER T BE ICS SCENW! NO

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GEAR

WIDE ZOOM

LENSES TESTED

Perfect for landscapes, a wide-angle zoom opens up a whole new view on the world. We test every affordable model we could get our hands on...

TEST BY PAUL CARROLL

WHAT WE TESTED Every affordable ultra wide-angle zoom lens suitable for the digital photographer:

» Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM . . . . . . . . . .£649 » Nikon 12-24mm f/4G AF-S IF-ED DX . . . . . . . . . . . £799 » Olympus 9-18mm ED f/4-5.6 ZUIKO . . . . . . . . . .£439 » Olympus 11-22mm f/2.8-3.5 ZUIKO . . . . . . . . . . £539 » Pentax 12-24mm f/4 DA ED AL IF . . . . . . . . . . . . . £525 » Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM . . . . . . . . . .£399 » Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM. . . . . . . . . £679 » Sony 11-18mm f/4.5-5.6 DT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . £425 » Tamron 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 Di-II LD (IF) . . . . . .£380 » Tamron 11-18mm f/4.5-5.6 Di-II LD (IF) . . . . . . . £370 » Tokina 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 AT-X DX . . . . . . . . . . . £479 » Tokina 12-24mm f/4 AT-X PRO DX II . . . . . . . . . . .£450

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Photoshop Masterclass

» Your expert guide to the tips, tools & techniques that really matter...

Cloning & Healing

BEFORE

IMPROVE YOUR SHOTS

BY REMOVING UNWANTED DISTRACTIONS IN MINUTES

V LESIDEO ON SON T CD!HE 4

AFTER 1

2

3

Distractions ruin even the best images, so it’s vital that they’re eliminated in Photoshop.

Here’s how...

TECHNIQUE BY MICHAEL TOPHAM

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UNDERSTANDING RAW PULL-OUT GUIDE

“ THINK OF RAW FILES AS NEGATIVES THAT ARE PROCESSED WITH COMPUTERS AND SOFTWARE INSTEAD OF ENLARGERS AND CHEMICALS...”

BE A RAWRT E EXPH OUR WITLL-OUT PU UIDE! G

DISCOVER RAW PHOTOGRAPHY Get to know the advantages of RAW and you’ll be well on the way to understanding how this powerful file format can take your photography to the next level...

IF YOU’VE BEEN happily capturing images in the universal JPEG file format, which allows you to view, edit and share your images easily, you may be wondering what’s the point in switching to RAW? The answer is 02

DIGITAL PHOTO PULL�OUT

simple – quality and control.

Although the term RAW looks like a clever acronym, it’s not; it’s exactly what the name suggests – raw picture information recorded by your camera’s sensor at the time of capture. When

capturing RAW images, the picture information is written to a memory card without any adjustments being applied by your camera’s image processor.

When JPEG files are written to a memory card, a whole series of automatic adjustments are applied in a split-second, such as changing the exposure, altering the saturation or adding some sharpening. The camera then discards the information it considers is no longer required.

With JPEGs, therefore, you end up with a smaller, compressed image file that doesn’t contain

the same amount of depth or detail as a RAW file.

You’re in control One way to understand RAW images is to think of them as digital negatives. Just like photographers working with film, negatives are the starting point of a creative process that turns the initial shot into a finished print using different darkroom techniques to produce a range of different results. RAW files offer the same advantage of control for digital photographers, with the only difference being UNDERSTANDING RAW