Table of contents for Issue 5 2023 in Digital Camera User

Camera technology is moving on at a pace. There are new mirrorless full-frame cameras, great new lenses and a slew of tech and accessories to easily dispose of your disposable income. Their price tags can be eye-opening and wallet-emptying. There is an upside to this though. Older generation gear on sale that is considered ‘out of date’ is generally more accessible with prices to match. The latest stuff is great as eye-candy, but the last generation camera is going to get you images just as good as long as you know how to get the most out of it. We have a some neat little examples of gear that may not be hot off the shelf, but it is still damn good and more than fit for purpose. Take a…

Tripods come in so many varieties these days that it can be hard to choose one from another and, in many cases, the costs of particular brand leading models can be prohibitive and put the more cost-conscious photographer off getting themselves this most invaluable piece of kit. Either that or they invest in a very cheap model that ends up being about as stable as soggy cardboard. Happily, though, there is a middle ground that offers good build quality and value for money in the shape of the Benro GoPlus Travel S1. When teamed with a B2-PU60 ball head, this tripod becomes a versatile travel companion. The 180° centre column allows very flexible camera positioning possibilities. You can use it vertically, horizontally and even invert the column entirely. The legs…

With digital cameras being so convenient to use, it’s very easy to come home from a family day out with fifty or sixty photos in your camera and a two-week holiday can easily produce several hundred snapshots. If you’re a keen photographer, who’s had a digital camera for a few years, by now you’ve probably got several thousand photos on your hard drive, probably scattered between dozens of confusingly labelled folders. Unless you keep your collection well organised, finding any particular photo can be extremely difficult. Some people keep photos in named folders, with a folder for each theme, but what if a photo fits into more than one theme? Some people prefer to sort their photos by date and indeed some photo handling programs do this by default, but…

All but the most basic budget compact cameras have a selection of shooting modes, usually chosen by a dial on the top or back of the camera. Easy-to-use, mainly automatic cameras in the range will only have a few shooting modes, while the more sophisticated cameras such as the DSLR may have as many as a dozen, including manual exposure options and user-programmable special settings. As newer models appear in the range or older models are updated, the shooting modes available will be revised and possibly expanded. Shown on this spread are some of the most often used modes selected from the mode dial on the top of the camera and in some cases, from the menu screen on the back of the camera. Auto The camera will analyse the…

Photographers have a phrase, the “golden hour”, which refers to the first and last hours of light in the day, but particularly the special light one only sees at dawn. To capture a shot like the one on this page requires not only precise control of exposure, but also the dedication and patience to wake up while it’s still dark and get set up to take the photo before the sun rises. Since that beautiful morning mist depends on the weather conditions, you might have to try several mornings in a row to get a shot this good. You have to be really committed to your art to go above and beyond! As for the technical aspects of the shot, the photographer has used a medium wide focal length of…

“The bottom line is that if you can shoot an image that contains interesting shapes, patterns and tones, but you cannot easily recognise what the object might be, then you have your abstract.” By its very nature, defining what an abstract really is can be a source of much philosophical discussion. In the broadest sense, an abstract is something that is symbolic and does not represent reality. In photographic terms, then, an abstract image is something that does not reflect reality. This does create something of a problem because everything around us is real (hopefully), so any image contains some element of reality; therefore it can’t be abstract by definition. Let’s cut through all the nonsense and be a bit more logical about it. Perhaps an easier way to think…

The weather is a fickle creature and, more often than not, it seems to pick the most inopportune moments to bail on you and replace that warm sunlit day with a grey overcast sky and drizzle. Unless you live in Nevada, or other similarly sun-drenched locations, you have no doubt had bad days stop play. However, we would like to share a little trick with you to transform a grey day into something approaching a warm, sunny, evening. Not only that, this is a neat trick that can give you extra shooting time even if it was a lovely sunny evening, but the sun had set. Your own lights can replace the sun’s influence on the scene and keep you shooting for longer. We mention this because a warm sunny…

Shots like this, that combine dark foreground with bright sky, are prime candidates for a graduated filter. In this case, we’ve increased the overall exposure slightly, pulled back the highlights to bring detail into the sky, and reduced the shadows to bring out texture in the rocks. We then applied Texture and Clarity too bring out all the little details inthe rocks and increased colour saturation. The result is a striking and colourful shot worthy of any picture postcard.…

1 Category Selector Here can you can select which effect you want to apply to your image. There are six categories of effects to choose from. 2 Basics Contains the Basic effects Brightness and Contrast, Correct Skin Tone, Crop Photo, Levels, Lighten and Darken, Resize Your Photo, Rotate and Straighten, Sharpen and Vignette Effect. 3 Colour This category contains Enhance Colour, Lomo Camera Effect, Remove Colour Cast and Saturated Film Effect. 4 Black & White This section has a number of effects centred around monochrome. Black and White, B&W Colour Pop, B&W Selection, High Key, Line Drawing and Low Key. 5 Fun Edits You can find a lot more creative edits under this category. You have some diverse effects to try out such as Double Exposure, Effects Collage, Meme Maker,…

“A new camera with an eye-watering price tag is only as good as the person using it. An experienced photographer with an 9 year old APS-C compact camera will still take amazing photos. Now it’s your turn.” These days, it can be too easy to imagine that the latest camera, with the most megapixels and a host of bells and whistles will mean you can capture better images. Not really true. Yes, a new 50MP DSLR will capture massive images with more detail, but if you’re not in control of your technical skills, that will count for naught if your images are blurry, badly composed and suffering from incorrect exposure. The best shot you take does not require billions of pixels or a huge price tag. It requires a good…

“Setting off with an analog camera and a roll of 24 exposure colour negative film meant you had be somewhat selective with the shots you took. Could you imagine that today?” There was a time, not that far back in the day, when taking photos was limited to however many rolls of film you had on you. Setting off with an analog camera and a roll of 24 exposure colour negative film meant you had be somewhat selective with the shots you took. Could you imagine that today? You could actually take a burst of 24 shots with a three second button push without blinking these days. That does create issues of its own. Your computer could groaning under the weight of gigabytes of data. What do you do with…

“It is useful to know this because if you ever shoot in manual mode, you’ll have an idea of what settings to tweak to achieve manually what the camera does automatically.” When you start out with a new camera, if it is a model aimed at the newcomer, it will come with many aids for capturing your images dependent on what situation you find yourself in. These so-called shooting modes set the camera up in different ways that you may not be aware of. With that in mind, our shooting mode guide will give you the low-down on what exactly is happening each time you select a new mode. It is useful to know this because if you ever shoot in manual mode, you’ll have an idea of what settings…

“Part of being a photographer is knowing what lens and camera combination to use for any given situation.” Ever seen a shot and wondered how it was done? Part of being a photographer is knowing what lens and camera combination to use for any given situation. Then, it’s a case of knowing the optimum settings to get the best out of the scene. It all comes with experience, but we can help you on your way with some examples of images and an exploration of how it was done. Photography can be at once both simple and complex, but hopefully some examples will point you in the right direction to producing those ‘wow’ shots for yourself.…

“There often comes a time when you feel a bit ‘meh’ about your hobby and it all feels a bit stale. If your photography has ground to a halt and you can’t see over the lip of the rut you’ve got stuck in, take a peek at some of these project guides.” Variety is the spice of life, so they say. It certainly helps stave off boredom and that is a key issue when you are a budding photographer. There often comes a time when you feel a bit ‘meh’ about your hobby and it all feels a bit stale. If your photography has ground to a halt and you can’t see over the lip of the rut you’ve got stuck in, take a peek at some of these project…

The human eye is a wonderful thing. An organic marvel that is unparalleled in its complexity. We see the world as it happens in real-time but cameras allow us to compress time or expand it to show us things in whole new ways that our eyes cannot do. It has been determined that our eyes, although not governed in the same way as the moving parts of a digital camera, can detect flashes of light as short as 1/100s. Depending on the health and age of the viewer it can in some cases be as short as 1/200s. Given the way our eyes and brain perceive and process the things we see then, we have a natural ‘shutter speed’ of about 1/200s. This means that we can turn to our…

“Have you experienced the problem of having your computer awash under a flood of countless gigabytes of digital images?” Have you experienced the problem of having your computer awash under a flood of countless gigabytes of digital images? Are you scratching your head wondering where certain images have disappeared to? Many of us will go through this process, but with a little discipline and some help from Lightroom, you can turn your random collection into a proper archive.…

1 Select Grid view by pressing G. By default, photos are listed in the order of shooting date, with the newest at the bottom. You can change the sorting criteria to Rating with the Sort: pop-up menu on the toolbar at the bottom of the view window. You can reverse the order so the highest rated are at the top by clicking the A-Z button. 2 The rating of an image is shown by a row of 0-5 stars below the image in all view modes. You can change the rating in several ways: by clicking on the row of stars below the image and dragging to the appropriate position, by tapping the number keys 0-5, or by right-clicking and selecting Set Rating from the menu. 3 As well as…

“For its relatively modest one-time outlay, this program has the power to deliver so many of your day-to-day editing needs in an easy to understand package.” We continue to explore more of what is on offer from Elements. Unlike Photoshop, Elements is broken down into a number workspaces that can be tailored to suit your particular style of working or what you may need to accomplish a specific image editing task. If you want Elements to take control and use some clever AI to alter your photos, you can, or you deep dive into the expert mode which behaves more like its big brother Photoshop. For its relatively modest one-time outlay, this program has the power to deliver so many of your day-to-day editing needs in an easy to understand…

1 The File Menu Most of the File menu options will be made available to you in this particular workspace, since all the tools and effects parameters are there to be used manually with little or no guidance from the program. 2 The Open Button Common to each workspace, click on the Open button to view any recently active images you have been working on or to create a new blank file ready to be worked on. 3 The Tools Panel This panel contains all the essential tools you are going to need for powerful and flexible image editing. It is broken down into View, Enhance, Draw, Modify and Colour sections. 4 Document Tab Each image that is open will be marked by a document tab to identify each image.…

“New photographers can get overwhelmed by all the new settings they have to employ to get a good exposure and get a little flustered and in some extreme cases, decide not to pick up a camera again.” Are you a new photographer? Have you just upgraded to a DSLR from your cameraphone and looking to take more inspired photos? We all have to start somewhere and chances are you’re not going to be creating sensational photographic works of art the moment you turn your new camera on. Despite professional photographers wanting us to believe it, they are not all born perfect master of their art. Mistakes happen, lessons have to be learned and experience has to be gained. It is also probably worth noting that you don’t have to be…

The new EOS R lens mount system comes with four new lenses, built specifically for this system, which will give you unrivalled clarity and image quality across a range of prime and zoom lens types. Utilising the image stabilised 15-35mm wide-angle zoom lens, 24-70mm f/2.8 and the 24-240mm f/4-6.3 zoom, gives you a great set of lenses to capture every detail. They are built to new levels of quality and, if you choose any of the L-series lenses, you ‘re assured of top-level optical performance and build. Don’t worry if you have already invested in other EF and EF-S lenses as Canon have made the new EOS R system compatible with their vast range of existing lenses. A lens mount adapter is available that allows you to use all your…

There is a slight, but annoying, problem when it comes to printing photos from your digital camera on any of the standard photo paper sizes. The majority of digital cameras shoot pictures with a standard aspect ratio of 4:3, the proportions of a traditional domestic TV or computer monitor. There are also more and more cameras coming along that can shoot in 16:9 format, suitable for widescreen TVs and monitors and some can even shoot in the 3:2 aspect ratio of 35mm film and 6 x 4in snapshot print paper, but if there’s a camera out there that can shoot in the 1.4142:1 ratio of international paper sizes, then we’ve never seen it. What this means is that if you print your digital photos on A5, A4, or A3 paper…

A very important part of photography in general and landscape photography in particular is to ensure that your prime point of interest, your main elements are in sharp focus. Nothing ruins a shot more than the image being fuzzy and blurry when you need it to be tack sharp. The problem however, is that in many cases in landscape photography you have a foreground element as well as a distant object that you want to be in as sharp focus as possible at the same time. Shooting with a wide-angle lens and setting a very narrow aperture of f/22 or even f/32 will yield greater depth of field but you will also run into the optical phenomenon known as diffraction, which is a softening of the image due to the…

Careful control of depth of field by adjusting aperture and focal length is one of the most striking creative techniques available to the photographer, and you don’t need any special equipment to do it, just your camera and a zoom lens. For this insect image, the photographer has used a 100mm, fast macro lens with a large maximum aperture of f2.8. This has resulted in a narrow depth of field, but by carefully focusing on the creature’s body the effect of this narrow plane of focus is to isolate the insect against what could otherwise be a distracting background of the green leaves and grass both behind, and in front of, the subject. One consideration to bear in mind is that when working with very shallow depth of field, precise…

We love our pets. In fact for most people they are more than mere pets and become more like family members, the recipients of love, affection and lavish attention. It is likely then that their owners, at some point, are going to want photographs of their furry friends (or scaly, feathery or otherwise). We have a dog, and the number of photos that include him specifically outnumber those of all other family members put together. However, pet photography presents its own special problems. Animals, as we all know, can be unpredictable, lazy, aggressive, hyperactive and downright cute. If you’re thinking of trying pet photography, here are a few useful pointers to get you started. Pet personality profile You don’t need to sit the pet in question on a psychiatrist’s couch…

“While it is certainly true that the natural world is very accessible, it can be another thing altogether to create memorable landscape images.” There is often a misconception among budding photographers that landscape photography is something of an easy option when deciding on a subject to capture. Sometimes it only takes a twenty minute drive to transport you from your local town and put you among the marvels and beauty of the natural world. While it is certainly true that the natural world is very accessible, it can be another thing altogether to create memorable landscape images. It isn’t just a case of arriving at a destination, firing up your DSLR and snapping away like a mad thing. The skills you may have that enable you to operate your camera…

In the last section, you imported your images into Lightroom and the Library module is where you’ll see the result of that process. The Library module is where you can view and scroll through your image catalogue, select images for sharing or development, add and search for keywords and build collections. It’s comparable to Adobe Bridge, the file browsing and viewing app that installs alongside Photoshop, but the Library module has a lot more functionality. Loupe View After the Grid view, the other one that you’ll find yourself using most often is the Loupe view. A Loupe is a small handheld magnifier used by photographers to closely examine a negative or print, to check sharpness and spot minor flaws. Lightroom’s Loupe view performs a similar function. It magnifies the selected…

1 Quick Collections are a temporary method of quickly organising a group of photos that you want to be able to find easily. In this example, we’ve got a series of macro close up photos of flowers and we want to group all the photos of certain colours of flower. First, find the folder containing the photos in the Folders sidebar tab. 2 Go through your photos and use CTRL-click to select all the photos that you want to add to the Quick Collection, in this case all the shots of flowers that are red, orange and yellow. Once you’ve highlighted a few, right-click on any of the selected shots and select Add to Quick Collection from the menu that appears. 3 You can see that photos are added to…

1 You have two options to create your effect. The first is the Simple option where you blur the image and then click and drag a gradient that defines an area of focus. 2 The second option is the Custom approach, which involves making a more detailed selection of the subject that you wish to remain in focus, whilst blurring the rest of the photo. 3 You start the Custom process by using a Quick Selection Tool and dragging it around the outer edge of the subject you wish to remain in sharp focus. 4 You can use different brush sizes and if the selection goes wide, you can switch to Subtract selection to remove areas that have strayed outside your subject's outline. 5 Use the Subtract tool and with…

If you’ve used older versions of Elements or Photoshop, the main components of the toolbar will be familiar to you. There have been updates and additions to the tools available but most will be recognisable for what they are and you should be able to get to grips with the newest ones without too much issue. Although each tool has additional options displayed down in the Tools Options Panel, if you hold the Alt key and click on a toolbar icon, you can cycle though all variants of that particular tool to get to the one you want. Here is a breakdown of the toolset available in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2019. The Tool Options bar The Tool Options bar appears at the bottom of the Photoshop Elements window and it…