Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2025 i PhotoPlus : The Canon Magazine

BRILLIANT BIRD PHOTOS Learn to take better photos of birds with our top tips from Slimbridge reserve Page 8 Ahh, the Great Outdoors. Breathe it in. We know that outdoor photography is incredibly popular with you, our Canon enthusiast readership, so this issue we’ve got a special Outdoor Photography guide. Better still, it’s with one of the world’s best landscape and nature photographers, Canon professional Guy Edwardes. Check out his amazing photos and inspirational tips from page 28, with advice on landscapes and coastal scenes, wildlife and close-ups of nature. Also inside, our PhotoPlus Apprentice Steve gets top tuition from Canon pro Fiona Turnbull, learning how to take stunning photos of all types of birds, on a day out at WWT Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire. See page 8. We have some…

OYSTERCATCHER, SHETLAND ISLES I CAPTURED this shot from a low point of view in early morning light, at 400mm with an EF 100-400mm lens, just as the bird opened its beak. WHITE-TAILED EAGLE, ISLE OF MULL I SHOT this off the back of a fishing boat, the dark green countryside providing an effective backdrop. My RF 100-500mm lens was perfect here, shot at 500mm, and f/8 at 1/1250 sec. BROWN HARE, WILTSHIRE LYING on the ground let me get close to this beautiful brown hare enjoying an early morning scratch. Shot at f/4, my EF 400mm f/2.8L with a 1.4x Extender nicely blurred the surroundings.…

01 QUEENSTOWN AURORA BY LARRYN RAE WINNER (AURORAE CATEGORY) Larryn took this image of the aurora australis in the mountains in Queenstown, New Zealand. He told us, “It’s a 19-image panorama capturing all the fast-moving beams that lit up the sky. I am especially proud of this image as the aurora came out of nowhere and I was the only person there to capture this surprise display. Due to my understanding of how and when aurorae occur, I was able to put myself in the right place at the right time. My Canon EOS R5 H-alpha modified camera caught all the pink hues of the aurora beams which makes for an incredibly dynamic final image.” Lens Tamron SP 35mm f/1.4 Di USD Exposure 8 secs (sky), 30 secs (foreground), f/2.8, ISO3200 02 CORONAL…

Lens Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Exposure 1/50 sec, f/11, ISO200 Holwell Lawn, Dartmoor, Devon. 10:49am. 20 July 2012 In the spring of May 2000, I started wandering around on Dartmoor. It was the antidote to my boring job as a water engineer and it was also a time of great excitement. Life was good. I was engaged to my Canon T90, the camera my uncle always lusted after. I had a FD 50mm f/1.4 and a lot of badly conceived ideas. You'd find me slipping down dewy cliffs on the Devon coast in my trainers, looking for opportunities similar to ones I'd seen in photography magazines. Yet it was Dartmoor that had me captivated. Initially, I believed that compositions would simply crash into the car as I drove around the…

THE MISSION Light up your home photos with a torch Time needed One hour Skill level Advanced Kit needed • Canon EOS body • A tripod • A torch or LEDs PRO TIP When creating painting-with-light photos, it’s best practice to shoot every individual piece of light painting on its own exposure. This will give you several frames to piece together at the editing stage so you’ll have more control over how each element is blended together when compositing the finished result in Photoshop. The word ‘photography’ consists of the Greek words for light (photos) and drawing (graphe); and if we think about photography in this way, our pictures can be crafted even in absolute darkness – by adding our very own light sources. In this project, I’ll show you…

THE MISSION Do your bit for the AI-photography counter-revolution Time needed 5 minutes Skill level Beginner Kit needed Photoshop CC Trust in photography is at an all-time low. In an era of GenAI and deep fakes, any image must, by necessity, have its authenticity questioned. There is more need than ever for tools that we can use to prove our images are genuine: transparency in AI image editing and a bulletproof digital signature for our own photos. The Content Authenticity Initiative could be part of the solution. Spearheaded by Adobe, it will create an ecosystem of trust, led by a ‘CR’ watermark pinned to images, that reveals a trail of provenance. Built into Photoshop and Lightroom CC, this feature lets us create a log that accompanies the image to show…

JOIN IN THE FUN! One of the great things about photography is being able to share your view of the world. In this issue, our photographers had revelatory experiences with the joys of colour We want your photos and stories! For your chance to show off your images in PhotoPlus, email three to five high-resolution JPEGs, along with a brief synopsis – explain why you took the shots, the location, whether they’re part of an ongoing project or a one-off shoot, and anything else unusual or interesting. Also include Canon EOS camera, lens and exposure details. Email images and info to photoplus@futurenet.com Catch us online at www.facebook.com/photoplusmag www.instagram.com/PhotoPlusCanonMag www.twitter.com/photoplusmag Lens Canon RF 24-105mm F4L IS USM Exposure 15 secs, f/4, ISO1000 PROJECT INFO NAME: Chris Penney LOCATION: Magpie Mine, Bakewell, England MISSION:…

Flatford Mill BRIAN IRELAND, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA SAYS… My daughter has a copy of a John Constable Flatford Mill painting on her wall and I wanted to see if I could capture a similar picture with my camera. While visiting the UK, I explored the area around Dedham and Flatford. This, I believe, is the best shot that I took. I fit a polarising filter and used a tripod. I captured RAW images with my EOS R10 and edited them in Lightroom to both darken the sky and increase the contrast to make the clouds more detailed. BRIAN SAYS… It’s a great idea to try and capture such a photo with inspiration from a great painter, and fortunately the scene has changed so little since. You have controlled the exposure well,…

The Canon EOS R1 is the camera I’ve been waiting for since the entire EOS R System was launched back in 2018. What is a camera system without a flagship? A top-of-the-tree standard-setter to showcase the Canon system and provide all the trickle-down goodness for the next half-decade. I’ve reviewed every top-tier pro sports camera from every camera manufacturer – and after countless testing hours with the R1, 3500+ photos and endless 240p video, I can safely say the Canon EOS R1 is the best flagship sports camera on the market. As you may know, it has a whole lot of tech in common with the new Canon EOS R5 Mark II – but the R1 has plenty of USPs that make it the obvious and indispensable choice for professional…

Letter of the Month I always look forward to reading the next issue of PhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine, but I was even more eager this month! After reading part 1 of your Budapest Apprentice article (issue 226), I couldn’t wait to check out part 2 of your big weekend photo trip. You didn’t disappoint, and it was great to see the different photos your Canon pro Jeremy and Apprentice Peter captured, from the sweeping scenic shots of the city and river on the Buda side, to the more creative shots on the Pest side – the interiors of St Stephen’s Basilica are something else! My wife and I are now more excited than ever for our own photo trip we have planned in May. Thanks for the top shots and…

FACTFILE WWT SLIMBRIDGE THE WETLANDS & Wildlife Trust reserve at Slimbridge is midway between Bristol and Gloucester, on the estuary of the River Severn. It opened in 1946, covering around 800 acres of wetland reserve. It has the world’s largest collection of captive wildfowl, and it’s home to nearly 3000 birds of around 200 species, including six types of flamingo. Plus hundreds of thousands of birds visit the reserve through the year. Winter is a great time to go, as more than 30,000 wild ducks, geese and swans fly, feed and roost here. Slimbridge is open 364 days a year, seven days a week. It opens at 9:30am, but WWT members can get in earlier. www.wwt.org.uk/slimbridge CANON PRO NAME: FIONA TURNBULL CAMERA: CANON EOS R5 FIONA, 65, is a Glaswegian and studied…

21 TOP PRO TIPS! LANDSCAPES COAST & WATER WILD LIFE-CLOSE-UPS As we move from winter into spring, a whole host of new photographic opportunities will present themselves in the great outdoors. In this big Canon skills guide, I will provide some tips and secrets that will hopefully inspire you to get out and about with your Canon camera as the days get a little longer. I will explain some of the techniques and Canon equipment I use for capturing my own landscape images, including shooting rivers, coastal scenes and the Northern Lights. I will also suggest some of the very useful functions now available on the latest Canon cameras for improving image sharpness and for increasing your success rate when photographing wildlife. Plus I’ll suggest methods to increase the impact…

THE MISSION Take pro newborn portraits with flash Time needed 1-2 hours Skill level Intermediate Kit needed Canon EOS R and kit lens or 50mm F1.8 • Flashes • Large softbox Your babies are only newborns for a short period of time and change ever so quickly. As they grow into toddlers, some will even say they look completely different to how they did as a newborn. Newborn photography is the perfect way to capture a precious moment in time that will give you memories that last forever. The great thing about having a newborn photoshoot is that your photographer will take control: making a relaxing environment for your baby and giving you a little time to relax. At this busy time of feeding and changing, it’s a chance to…

THE MISSION Add a colour tint to black-and-white images with a gradient map adjustment in Affinity Photo Time needed 15 minutes Skill level Easy Kit needed Affinity Photo It might sound like it has something to do with complex topography, but a Gradient Map is in fact a tool for adding colours to images. The ‘gradient’ part is simply the mix of colours we choose. So we can choose a blend of two, three or more colours and they will blend into one another. The ‘map’ part is where it gets more interesting. An image can be represented as a scale of brightness, from dark tones to midtones to bright tones. We can use a gradient map to map colours onto this scale of brightness, so that the shadows are…

The Canon RF 16-28mm F2.8 IS STM is a brand-new lens option that follows on from 2024’s Canon RF 28-70mm F2.8 IS STM, and is the second non L-series lens in Canon’s recent history to feature weather-sealing. The tagline for the new wide-angle zoom is “epic views, stable shots” – a clear reference to its super wide-angle full-frame focal length, ideal for cramming in large spanning vistas from landscapes, interiors and skies, and that it’s stabilized, to bring you sharp handheld photos and video. We got hold of a beta sample and, while we can’t give a final verdict on image quality until we can run lab tests on a production model, we’re eager to see how it can perform. Design and handling It has a controversial ‘twist-to-pop’ design to…

What to look for Canon EOS camera ranges Canon splits its EOS range into mirrorless cameras and DSLRs. Its older DSLR line-up includes beginner, enthusiast and pro ranges; the EOS 4000D is the most basic, the 850D for intermediates, the 90D and full-frame 6D Mk II for advanced enthusiasts, and the full-frame pro-level 5D and 1D lines. Over the page are the two EOS mirrorless ranges: Canon’s smaller, older APS-C EOS M cameras, and Canon’s EOS R System APS-C and full-frame cameras that offer the very latest digital technology. The APS-C crop-sensor EOS R50, R10 and R7 are smaller, affordable entry-level options. While the EOS R8 up to the EOS R6 Mark II, R5 Mark II and flagship R1 are full-frame for serious enthusiasts to professionals. Canon’s EOS R cameras…

THE NO.1 MAGAZINE FOR CANON USERS! JP Baudey/Faydit Photography FREE VIDEO GUIDES! In the next Canon Skills chapter… • Masterful moonrise shots • Using black mist filters for springtime photos • Taylor Brady’s outdoor group photo tips • New Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity Photo tutorials PLUS ALL THIS… • Super Test: We test the best Canon standard zooms for mirrorless• Canon Profile: Ace action sports photographer and Canon Ambassador, Lorenz Holder• Canon cheats: Learn to take your best-ever photos with our quick fixes ISSUE 229 ON SALE 27 MARCH 2025 * Content subject to change…

DIAL M FOR MANUAL “MANY beginners rely on Av or Tv semi-automatic modes, but I prefer Manual mode for more control over my exposures,” explains Fiona. “In Manual mode I can independently set my shutter speed and apertures, depending on what lens I’m shooting with, and what I’m photographing, whether it’s a stationary duck on water, or a swan in the air.” GIVE AUTO ISO A GO ISO CAN be a tricky setting to change when you’re tracking birds in your frame, and have your eye to the viewfinder, as it often requires a combo of dials and buttons you can’t see without stopping shooting. “Auto ISO has improved a lot in EOS R mirrorless cameras, so I use it when shooting in Manual mode to keep things simple. I…

media://hotshot-5.jpg/ BE OUR NEXT APPRENTICE Do you need help to take your Canon photography to the next level? Let us know what genre you’d like help with and we could pair you up with a top pro for the day! Send an email to photoplus@futurenet.com with ‘PhotoPlus Apprentice’ in the subject line, and include your Canon kit, telephone number and address. STEVE’S COMMENT “Thank you to Fiona and PhotoPlus for choosing me as your Apprentice. I’ve learned some great pro tips and techniques. I was thrilled to discover how to artistically capture one of Slimbridge’s flamingos. Fiona showed me how to achieve this low-key effect by dialling down exposure compensation, a technique that I have always wanted to learn. Wildlife, and especially bird photography, often means sitting still waiting for…

Reasons to subscribe today • Subscribe to PhotoPlus for essential Canon camera techniques, tests and photography projects every issue • Free delivery to your door or device every month • Pay less than in the shops. Subscribe now and enjoy a 50% saving off print issues – that’s just £3 per issue! OPTION 1: SAVE 50%!* PRINT SUBSCRIPTION EVERY 6 MONTHS FROM £19.46* • 6 PhotoPlus print issues delivered to your door • Get print issues for only £3 each • Digital access to over 110 issues when you subscribe!** OPTION 2: SAVE 50%!* DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION EVERY 6 MONTHS FROM £22.71* • 6 PhotoPlus digital issues for your device • Get digital issues for only £3.50 each • Instant digital access • Available on iOS or Android FREE! Full digital…

THE MISSION Capture a starling murmuration, then blend the frames to make interesting bird trail photos Time needed One hour Skill level Advanced Kit needed Camera, tripod, Photoshop Astarling murmuration is one of nature’s most spectacular displays. During the colder months in the UK, skies can be filled with thousands of starlings, soaring, banking and swirling in a dazzling symphony of motion. There are a number of factors that cause murmurations. Starlings are sociable birds and they like to roost close to one another in the cold. The UK population swells during autumn, bolstered by migrant starlings from colder places like Scandinavia. At sunrise and sunset the birds like to flock together to confuse predators like peregrine falcons. You’d think it would be easier for a bird of prey to…

THE MISSION Enhance your landscapes with a feathered edge Time needed 10 minutes Skill level Intermediate Kit needed Adobe Lightroom If you have some of your fine-art landscapes to show off, presentation is key. Why not elevate it with a border to the finished image? In this case, we’re talking about having an even, feathered edge to the image which will leave it surrounded in white. Given that Lightroom Classic doesn’t allow you to add pixels or remove them without copying from other parts of the image (even content-aware removal is still based on existing pixels), you may be wondering if this is even possible in Lightroom. Well, it is. In the Effects panel, you have the Post-Crop Vignetting tool. Usually, this tool is used to darken edges with a…

Lens Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM Exposure 1/100 sec, f/10, ISO100 THE FASHION industry never stands still. It’s a dynamic and competitive landscape, constantly evolving with new trends, tech and social media platforms. This would be a challenge for any photographer, but amidst the noise, Amanda Akokhia stands out. Her work often champions individuality and diversity, and her blend of strong technical skills, sense of vision and storytelling have made her popular with major brands. Based in London, Amanda made the journey from studying law to making beauty and fashion photography her whole career. She’s shot for the likes of Disney, Forbes, and Warner Bros, but her commitment to using photography as a force for positive change is what sets her apart so clearly. As a fashion creator, Amanda doesn’t shy away…

GuruShots is billed as the world’s leading photo game. It’s an online platform that gives global exposure to people who love taking photographs. GuruShots members start out as Newbies and compete with other photographers to win challenges, increase their ranking on the site and eventually progress to coveted ‘Guru’ status. Challenges are voted on by Gurus and the wider GuruShots community, and there’s a fresh photo challenge every day, such as the Night Photography featured here. Winnersreceive prizesfromGuruShots’ sponsors, includingLowepro, Kodak and Lensbaby. Check out www.gurushots.com to find out more.…

SECRET ISO TRICKS Photographers want to make great photos, and one route that many take is to acquire new cameras. Typically a new camera offers a multitude of new capabilities and one of them is enhanced ISO performance. Yet this is one of the last things some use to improve their photos. The outdated idea that high ISO means noisy photos needs putting to rest. I recently heard from a photographer complaining about poor sharpness of some daylight photos of small birds in a tree. The photos were taken with an 800mm lens at ISO400, and a shutter speed of only 1/100 sec! When raising the ISO, the camera electronics amplify the signal from the sensor. It’s important to understand that a more modern sensor starts with a cleaner signal…

THE CONTENDERS We don’t want to argue the point with St. Francis of Assisi when he said, “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle” – but for photography you’re going to need something a lot more powerful. Constant LED lamps have become popular for videography but lack the kind of intensity that’s far preferable for stills. There’s no real substitute for a decent flashgun, or ‘Speedlite’ as Canon calls them. Despite being supremely compact and lightweight, flashguns can pack a real punch, making a huge difference to the quality of lighting in almost any scenario. They can light up a room to transform gloomy interiors, and fill in the shadows of sunny-day portraiture. All of the flashguns we’re featuring this month are dedicated…

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