Review Digital Camera World 06-12-2013

Digital Camera World

14 photo editing tips and tricks every landscape photographer must know Jun 11th 2013, 23:01 In-camera technique is, of course, important. But your prowess in the digital darkroom is increasingly crucial to the success of your images and crafting a look that defines you as an artist. This is especially true with landscape photography. In our latest photo editing guide we offer 14 photo editing tricks and tips that every landscape photographer must know. Whether starkly beautiful, bursting with colour or magnificently minimal, no other type of photography offers more potential for stunning imagery than landscapes. Travel halfway around the world or look out of your back window, if you look hard enough, you'll find a scene worth capturing. In this tutorial we offer up a variety of tips, advice and Photoshop techniques to help you capture and enhance your own awe-inspiring landscapes. We've gathered together some of the finest professional landscape photographers out there to showcase their best shots and quiz them on exactly how they approach their craft in the age of the digital darkroom. Alongside these insights from the pros, we've got a fantastic variety of Photoshop techniques for you to try, from fundamental raw skills on tweaking exposure and revealing detail, to adding breathtaking light rays, making innovative 'dotscapes' and even building a landscape from scratch. You'll also find a selection of videos among this month's project files that go into some of the techniques featured here in greater detail. Although approaches to shooting landscapes have changed over the years, a few things remain constant. Besides an eye for photo composition, a sturdy tripod, quality lenses and a good deal of patience are still among the most important ingredients for success. Essential photo editing tricks for landscapes: 01 Master HDR Image by Jeff Morgan Pro photographer Jeff Morgan says I have been asked many times why I first build the HDR image in Photoshop and then Tone Map it in Photomatix, since it seems the logical thing is to do it all in one program. I appreciate the image quality you can get from the full control of Camera Raw. You should always take a lot of care to set the white balance controls, the lens correction and the noise reduction to the optimum for the HDR image set. You can then simply save all the images as Tiff files for processing in Photomatix Pro, but since the Remove Ghosts option in Photoshop is so good I find it better to build the HDR image directly in Photoshop CS6. Turning off Align Images when building the HDR image in Photoshop is the best bet. It doesn't appear quite pixel-accurate, because it will slightly blur my tripod shot images. You can now save the HDR image as a 32-bit Tiff file in Photoshop CS6 for export to Photomatix. I personally love the look you can get with Photomatix's tone mapping. There are lots of adjustments to play with, allowing you to get just the look required for the subject. The bottom line is that Photoshop offers a much better Raw converter – and it's also really great at removing ghosting when required. However, Photomatix offers a very specific look with its tone mapping adjustments that I find very attractive. I really do enjoy getting the best of both worlds. See more of Jeff’s work READ MORE 10 reasons your photos aren’t sharp (and how to fix them) 34 Photoshop effects every photographer must try once Crop photos the right way: classic mistakes and how to avoid them Adobe Lightroom: what every photographer needs to know about the ‘alternative Photoshop’ PAGE 01 Master HDR PAGE 02 Blend raw exposures PAGE 03 Combine several photos into panoramas PAGE 04 Reveal more detail with Layer Masks PAGE 05 Control the tonal range PAGE 06 How to make light rays PAGE 07 Use Lightroom’s Adjustment Brush PAGE 08 Use Selective Adjustments PAGE 09 How to use focus stacking PAGE 10 Make a ‘Dotscape’ PAGE 11 Make a surreal scene PAGE 12 Light painting PAGE 13 The key to editing in black and white PAGE 14 Raw tonal control READ MORE Digiscoping: how to use a spotting scope with your camera for ultra-close images Jun 11th 2013, 10:00 If you’re struggling to get close enough to your wildlife subjects to create images with any real impact, why not try digiscoping? In this quick guide we’ll show you how to use a spotting scope with your camera to nearly double your magnification. All images by Chris Rutter Normal 400mm or 500mm telephoto lenses aren't powerful enough to get close enough to many wild animals. However, digiscoping, where you attach your DSLR to a spotting scope, can give an equivalent magnification to an 800mm lens or more. For digiscoping you will need an adapter, which are made by many of the main scope manufacturers. Most digiscoping adapters have a 'universal' attachment, known as a T2 mount, that are available in a range of camera fittings. Spotting scopes don't offer the automatic functions such as focus or a variable aperture that you'd have with a telephoto lens, and the effective aperture of most is between f/8 and f/16, so you'll need plenty of light to use them effectively. You'll need to use high ISO settings to get shutter speeds fast enough to prevent blur. Despite these limitations, digiscoping offers a relatively accessible way to get huge focal length optics for your DSLR. Digiscoping step-by step: how to attach your DSLR to the spotting scope and the best settings to use 01 Attach the adapter Before you can attach your camera to any spotting scope, you'll need to fit an adapter. There are various types for different telescopes and manufacturers. We used a Nikon for our shoot, and with the Nikon adapters you take off the standard viewing eyepiece and fit the FSA-L2 or FSA-L1.   02 Attach your camera Once the adapter is fitted to the scope, you can attach the camera. With the Nikon versions the camera fits straight onto the adapter, but for other makes of scope and adapter we would have needed to use a T2 adapter in Nikon F fitting to fit the camera to the adapter.   03 Camera settings With no electronic connections, the range of exposure modes and metering using any adapter is limited. On most cameras you can use manual or aperture-priority modes, and centre-weighted metering. In changing light conditions, aperture-priority mode is best.   04 Auto ISO You can't adjust the aperture when using a spotting scope, but the automatic ISO setting allows your camera to adjust the exposure without relying simply on the shutter speed. Limit the ISO to 1600, and set the minimum shutter speed to 1/500 sec to get sharp results.   05 Frame your shot Using the huge magnifications available with digiscoping, finding and framing your subject can be a challenge. Move the telescope until you spot an obvious feature in the viewfinder, look where it is in relation to the area that you want to shoot, then reframe the image.   06 Focusing You will have to use manual focus, and this can be difficult to judge due to the limited depth of field and the small maximum apertures of most spotting scopes. Roughly focus the scope on the area you want to be sharp, then fine tune your focusing slowly until it is spot-on. PAGE 1: Digiscoping step-by-step PAGE 2: Best digiscoping adapters READ MORE Free bird photography cheat sheet Wildlife photography in any environment: free photography cheat sheet Zoo photography: a fool-proof method for capturing animals through glass 9 things you need to know about using a super-telephoto lens

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