Photography News

A telephoto lens that fits into a jacket pocket changes how you think about traveling with your gear. When you want reach without the burden of a heavy lens, size and weight matter as much as sharpness and build quality.

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The Fujifilm X100VI has quickly become one of those rare cameras that changes the way you think about shooting. It’s compact, unassuming, and yet powerful enough to handle both stills and video without making you feel like you’re compromising.

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A budget lens with a fast aperture can open creative doors that expensive glass sometimes can’t. The 7Artisans 75mm f/1.4 lens is a strong example of that: compact, solid, and priced at just $180. You’ll give up electronic contacts, autofocus, and weather-sealing, but what you get in return is a lens with real personality and a look that isn’t sterile or overly corrected.

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  1. Community

Villages provide plenty of photo opportunities and most of us have one just a short drive away. The village community is one area to focus on, there's usually a few local speciality shops - maybe a hardware store or cobbler.

 

2. Portraits

Pluck up the courage to ask to photograph the employees at work. The worse that can happen is they say no, but if they accept you will have a brilliant opportunity to shoot environmental portraits. Try shooting with a wide-angle lens to include as much background while catching the owner at work. If it's fruit and veg you could have them weighing up a purchase, carrying a sack into the store, arranging the fare or even handwriting a display price ticket. While a cobbler could be banging at a heel or shaping a key. A butcher could be hacking away at a joint or arranging slices of meat.

Take this idea outdoors and follow the locals around catching them at the bus stop, crossing the road, chatting to neighbours over a fence. Whatever you do respect their privacy. It's best if you get chatting to them first and ask for permission, then you won't feel awkward and no one gets into trouble.

 

3. Flower Photography

Villages tend to have interesting flower displays, especially those who aim to win best-kept village awards. So if you're looking for colourful chocolate box style shots check out the local regions of the Campaign To Protect Rural England (CPRE) website. Use a wide-angle lens from a viewpoint close to the flower display and include the houses/street scene in the background. Or shoot with a telephoto to compress perspective and focus totally on the flowers.

Many Derbyshire villages have a summertime activity called Well Dressing, where they dress a well in pictures made of flowers and petals. This is a great opportunity for colourful shots.

 

 

4. Activities And Events

Look out for village activities, many have charity events at the local church. It may be a bring and buy sale, a flower or cake stall, jumble sale, book or record fair. All offer great photojournalism style options. Shoot with a telephoto lens to catch people unaware in a candid fashion. Shoot with a wide-angle to get the hall with all the stalls in. Use ambient light for more atmospheric photos.

  5. Chocolate Box Views

To get some ideas about which villages have good photographic potential look at calendars in stationery shops or jigsaws in toy shops. The popular calendars and jigsaws will have pretty village scenes – thatched cottages, quaint river scenes, floral street scenes. They usually have the location printed on them. You can plan a trip and take in two or three villages in one region.

Look out for vintage life in a village. It's the place you're likely to find a Victorian post box, there may be old street signs, and architectural details found in old buildings or monuments. Villages often have war memorials that make good focal points.
 

5. Pubs

The village's local pub might have an interesting pub sign to photograph. Shoot from further away with a longer lens to avoid a distorted shape. Nip inside and you could find a warm fire and local characters. Rest the camera on a table to take ambient light shots.

Once you've done your excursion, consider making prints of your best shots into postcards and selling them in the local cafe/gift shop/post office.

 

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Optical distortion is something that affects all lenses to some extent. However, the effect is more pronounced in certain lenses and can be used to give a different spin on an otherwise 'normal' view of an object. 

Although it distorts images, it is not always a negative effect and it can be used in different situations to create abstract or more creative shots of subjects.

Below, we've listed what types of optical distortion there are and how they can affect your images, either in a negative or positive way. 

• What is Curvilinear distortion?
• What is Pincushion distortion?
• What is Mustache distortion?
• What is Chromatic aberration / purple fringing?
• What is Vignetting?

 

What is Curvilinear distortion?

This is where lines that should be straight in your image appear curved or bowed in some way. There a quite a few different types of this distortion, but the most common you will come across is barrel distortion, where vertical lines appear to curve outwards like a barrel. This type of distortion is most common in wide angle or fisheye lenses. The effect will be really pronounced in the fisheye as the effect is more deliberate here.

This can be used in portrait images to create unique looking images where the facial features are stretched and warped, this works equally well with humans and animals. 

 

 

 

What is Pincushion distortion?

Pincushion distortion is the opposite of barrel distortion, as the lines bow inwards. The effect is usually quite subtle and can only really be seen in square or rectangular objects when they are shot straight on, such as architecture with windows and doors, and other straight lines. This effect tends to be more of an issue in long telephoto lenses. Pincushion distortion is a lot less pronounced than barrel distortion and so it is often not noticeable in images unless you look really closely. However, it can also be corrected quite quickly and easily in photo editing software. The majority of modern cameras will provide built-in options to correct for this as well.

 

Extreme example of pincushion distortion, from an uncorrrected image, from the Sony E 18-105mm lens - you can see corrected versions in the review.

 

 

What is Mustache distortion?

Mustache distortion is basically a combination of barrel and pincushion distortion. Some lenses display both at the same time. It is most commonly seen in wide angle zooms and makes straight lines in images appear wavy. It can be noticed on the horizon, for example when photographing seascapes, particularly if the horizon is near the top or bottom of the frame.  

 

 

What is Chromatic Aberration?

Chromatic Aberration creates colour fringing on an image, usually around the lines and edges on the image, but it can also be present in other areas of the shot, where there are areas of high contrast, for example a black tree branch, against a bright sky. It usually appears as a purple, glowing halo giving "purple fringing", or can appear as red/magenta lines, often with green/cyan lines as well.

 

An example of chromatic aberration can be seen above, note the megenta and cyan / green lines on the edges of the window frame. You can see an example of purple fringing below, where the gravestone is up against a bright (blown out) sky. 

This can often be corrected either in camera automatically in modern cameras, or in photo editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Lightroom.

 

Purple fringing can be seen around the top of the gravestone.

 

 

What is Vignetting?

All lenses have a little vignetting - it's the term used when the image is darker at the edges than in the centre, due the curvature of the lens. Vignetting can sometimes be used to your advantage as a stylistic tool, to highlight the main aspect of your image in the centre. Most modern cameras will automatically correct for vignetting, depending on the lens used, and this can be corrected in photo editing software quickly and easily, or alternatively added to give a creative effect and style to your photo. See our guide on how to add a vignette to a photo in Photoshop.

 

Severe vignetting can be seen in this image.

 

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Photographers love to brag about their hours in the edit cave. There’s a strange badge of honor attached to 2 a.m. Lightroom binges, as if suffering through endless slider tweaks somehow makes the work more “serious.” But here’s the truth: clients don’t care how long you sit in front of a monitor. They care about turnaround time, consistency, and whether the final product looks polished. So, why not save time wherever you can?

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I've created a video to show how you can make mood boards. In fact, I've done a rebrand via mood boarding for Selena Gomez and her Rare Beauty brand. There are profits in play if you learn how to mood board correctly. I hope this video helps you.

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A growing number of photographers and creatives, once loyal to Adobe, are walking away. Is this the slow decline of Adobe's monopoly on the creative world?

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When you’re working on your craft, it’s not always easy to know where you stand. You might think you’re still at the beginner level, but your habits and results may already show you’ve moved on. Recognizing those shifts matters because it changes how you should approach learning and practice.

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The OM SYSTEM M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO II is one of those lenses you can carry almost anywhere without worrying about what you might miss. It covers the 24-80mm equivalent range, which means you can handle landscapes, portraits, events, and travel with just this one piece of glass. Having a constant f/2.8 aperture across the zoom range makes it even more valuable, since you don’t need to compromise in low light or sacrifice depth of field control.

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The Fujifilm GF 32-64mm f/4 R LM WR doesn’t get as much attention as some of the flashier primes in the GFX system, but it has been a quiet workhorse for years. If you spend most of your time balancing lifestyle, portrait, travel, or food photography, it offers a flexibility that helps you move between different kinds of images without swapping gear constantly.

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The Mitakon Zhongyi 55mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro is built for a very specific purpose: letting you see the world closer than most lenses allow. Extreme macro work pushes both your skills and your gear, and this lens gives you access to magnifications that would normally require specialized, expensive equipment. If you’re looking to capture the tiniest details in everyday subjects, this lens offers something unusual and challenging.

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A small, bright, ultra-wide lens can make your kit far more flexible. If you’re shooting landscapes, waterfalls, or night skies, carrying one compact prime instead of a heavy zoom changes how long you can stay out and what you can bring back.

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As Times Square is a popular location for tourists, it can be hard to shoot photos, particularly panoramas as people will often get in front of your lens, movement becomes blurred and when trying to stitch shots together, people often end up looking like they've got sliced in half. There are times when the square isn't so full of tourists but as photographer David Clapp explains, the photos aren't as interesting: "Even though shooting at busy times proved to be very complex and very stressful both in the field and in post-processing, I didn't want to go out 5am when there was no one about as it ruins the buzz intensity."

There are a set of steps which you can stand at the top of and shoot down onto the square, however if it rains no one sits on the steps, blocking the view and you're not allowed to use a tripod at the top of the steps as you will be told it's a 'safety hazard'.

A way to shoot Times Square without having to fight the crowds is to shoot up at the tower blocks and billboards that decorate the square.

Here's one David took looking vertically up at the tower blocks:

 

 

Moving your lens away from crowd level removes one problem but it's replaced with another and that's adverts changing constantly. If you want to blend images together, as David did for the above shot which is made up of three images, getting your timing right is crucial.

"The only way to do this is to shoot with the camera in Live View mode and wait until some kind of 'rest' occurs before capture. You can see I caught the 'eye' in the bottom left half way through transition. Still, it works. However, I am not altogether happy with the lighting of this image. The weather was so unstable that it made dusk shooting a lottery."

A way to really exaggerate the size of the structures in a city is with a fisheye lens. In the shot below, David moved down a few streets away from Times Square to shoot these buildings at a crossroads.

 

 

"I opted for the same technique I tried a few days before, using a faster shutter speed to capture two images for a blend, so the adverts wouldn't change between images. It works really well, but in the end the ambient light was good enough that I could process the image from just one RAW file."

For the next shot, David had to position half of his tripod on the pavement and the other on the road (watching for traffic in the process).

 

 

"This fabulous subway sign helps to set the scene even further, giving a title to the cluster of buildings rising upwards into the sky," he explained.

David increased the brightness in the centre of the photo with a circular gradient fill on a curves adjustment layer. He did this to give the impression that the lighting was consistent all the way up to the top of the tower blocks, which it wasn't.

This was shot following exactly the same concept but this time David twisted the camera and lens downwards, to show the full tower block above the road.

 

 

"These buildings are a riot of colours and lines. I love the cross-shaped gap in the middle, in particular," said David. "The image potential in Times Square is huge, all these shots were taken from the same place, give or take a few feet, but it does take serious refining."

To see more of David's work, visit his website: www.davidclapp.co.uk

 

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- Partner Content - 

 

The EOS RF mount’s inner diameter is 54mm, which is the same as the EOS EF mount. But with no reflex mirror, the back focus distance of the mirrorless mount is much shorter, which makes new lens designs possible.

 

The full frame or 36x24mm format became popular for stills photography around 100 years ago, with Leica leading the way in the 3:2 format’s growth. Later in 1934, Kodak gave the format a huge lift by introducing the pre-loaded 135 film cassette.

In the early days of digital system cameras, full-frame took a backseat as consumer models adopted the APS-C format, but it wasn’t long before it caught up. The full-frame Canon EOS 5D arrived in 2005, just two years after the APS-C format EOS 300D, the first consumer-level digital DSLR.

 

The relatively low lit interior of IWM Duxford was not an issue for the EOS R with its good high ISO skills. The exposure was 1/160 sec at f/8 using ISO 25,600 and the noticeable noise vanished after treatment with Adobe Lightroom’s denoise tool. Image by Will Cheung.

 

Canon’s full-frame mirrorless journey started with the EOS R, which was released in 2018. Despite its vintage in digital camera terms, it remains a capable model with much to commend it, and that’s why we have based our £2000 full-frame kit on it.

MPB has excellent condition samples of the EOS R in the £744-809 price range. That compares with current Canon full-frame models; the 26.2 megapixel EOS RP is £1049 and the 24.2 megapixel EOS R8 is £1629 (all body only prices). Of course, those two cameras are more recent and thus offer superior performance in some areas, but nevertheless the EOS R has plenty going for it.

At the EOS R’s heart is a 30.3 megapixel Dual Pixel CMOS AF sensor, which uses advanced phase detection with 5655 AF positions (in single point AF mode) for quick and accurate autofocus for stills and video, even in challenging lighting conditions.  

The EOS RF lens mount plays a significant part in the impressive AF performance of all EOS R cameras. With 12-pin connections compared with the 8-pins of the EOS EF mount, that allows faster communication and data transfer. 

Another notable benefit of the new EOS RF mount and its shorter back focus is that EOS EF mount lenses can be used on EOS R mirrorless cameras without losing functionality via an adaptor. With the vast number of EOS EF lenses around, new and used, it means those photographers new to the EOS R system are not limited when it comes to lens choice.

 

In terms of controls and layout the EOS R has a similar design and feel to Canon’s long established and massively popular DSLR cameras.

 

The EOS R saw the debut of the Touch Bar, a customisable touch control. It wasn’t generally well received by reviewers but it has potential once you get used to it.

 

As you’d expect, image quality out of the EOS R is first-rate, typically Canon with a rich but lifelike colour rendition and low levels of noise at all speeds until you get to ISO 3200 and beyond. Images shot at ISO 1600 and 3200 are very smooth and raws look great even without denoising. In fact, even shots taken at ISO 25,600 can recover very nicely with software denoising and fine detail isn’t too badly impacted, which is a remarkable performance given the extreme ISO.

Let’s move on to lens choice. Since the RF system’s arrival, Canon has progressed quickly on its lens system and there’s an extensive range to choose from. There are a few gaps and many of Canon’s RF lenses are beyond our theoretical budget, which limits our options. Also, right now there are no third party autofocus options for Canon’s full-frame mirrorless cameras, which is a negative point to bear in mind, although, hopefully, this might change in time.

For our £2000 full-frame outfit, we have spent £744 on a decent condition EOS R body, which leaves £1256 for lenses. Naturally, it is a matter of personal taste but with Canon’s RF lenses, there is the possibility of going for primes or zooms or a combination of the two types.

 

Raw files from the EOS R have plenty of scope when it comes to recovering highlights and shadows in editing software. Shot with the RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM on the EOS R using an exposure of 1/200sec at f/4 and ISO 3200. Image by Will Cheung.

 

In terms of primes in our price range, there is a good choice in the wide-angle and standard focal lengths but at telephoto, there is just the RF 85mm f/2 Macro, which from MPB costs in the range of £434-469. Add the RF 24mm f/1.8 Macro IS STM at £524 and RF 50mm f/1.8 STM £159-189, and you have a good three prime lens kit that is photographically reasonably versatile with the benefit of fast apertures and comes within our budget.

If having a more powerful telephoto lens is important, a mix of primes and zooms would work. For example, our £1256 budget would allow the RF 28mm f/2.8 STM, RF 50mm f/1.8 STM and RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM. At current MPB prices, that trio would cost around £1024, which leaves enough for protection filters and a spare camera battery. Such an outfit would be portable and suit a wide range of subject genres.

For maximum flexibility, there’s the option of a three lens zoom outfit. Taking the RF 15-30mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM, RF 24-105mm f/4-7.1 IS STM and RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM at MPB’s used prices – going for good condition samples – that powerful three lens outfit would cost in the order of £1227. While the maximum apertures of these three zooms are nothing special, that is offset by having focal length coverage from 15mm ultra-wide to 400mm telephoto, which means a very broad range of subjects can be covered.

 

The RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM is a great photographic all-rounder. The interior of Peterborough Cathedral was taken with a handheld EOS R using an exposure of 1/15sec at f/4 and ISO 200. Image by Will Cheung.

 

A final option to consider is to keep it simple and just go for one lens to partner the EOS R. A used RF 24-240mm f/4-6.3 IS USM from MPB would cost £729, leaving enough for a few accessories. The other single zoom option is the RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM. Of all the zooms discussed here, this is probably the most capable performer and it’s priced accordingly, £764-1079 from MPB, but it’s still comfortably within our budget with funds left over for a protection filter and a nice bag. 

MPB’s vast stock of used imaging gear is checked over by experts, comes with a free 12 month warranty and each item is individually photographed, so what you see on its website is what you get. With MPB’s help, buying a versatile full-frame outfit with our £2000 budget is no problem, and there are many options when it comes to deciding which optics to go for.

 

With the EOS R’s 30.3 megapixel resolution there’s ample potential for large prints and cropping without software interpolation. The exposure was 1/400sec at f/6.3 and ISO 100. Image by Will Cheung.

 

At a glance: Canon EOS R

 

Announced 2018 Sensor 30.3 megapixels, Dual Pixel CMOS Format 36x24mm, 6720x4480pixels ISO range 100-40,000 (expansion to ISO 50, 51,200, 102,400) Continous shooting 8fps, 5fps with AE/AF tracking Video 4K UHD, Full HD Weather sealing Yes MPB price range EOS R body, excellent condition £744-809

 

The EOS R’s compact body feels great in the hands and the contoured handgrip allows a secure hold and key controls are readily accessible.

 

 

 

News from MPB: Shoot creative wide aperture landscapes and hone your nature photography skills

MPB is the world’s largest retail platform for imaging gear but it offers so much more with buying guides, interviews with experts, videos and podcasts and technique advice. 

Two recently published features on MPB’s website cover two hugely popular genres, landscape and nature. 

In Learn: Top 5 Tips for Nature Photography Beginners, MPB chats with five leading exponents of the genre. Aimed at newcomers to the subject, there’s plenty to get you on the road to successful photos with essential camera and technique advice. Click here to enjoy this feature. 

Traditionally, landscape photography is all about small f/stops and extensive depth-of-field but this MPB feature breaks convention and looks at the creative potential of shooting with fast aperture lenses. Outdoor shooter James Popsys shows what can be achieved with two f/1.4 prime lenses so check out his technique-packed feature here.

 

MPB Explained

You need kit to take photographs and produce videos, and taking the used route is a cost-effective way of making the most of your budget and keeping up with the latest developments in imaging technology.

MPB is one of the biggest used retailers with bases in the UK, Germany and the USA.

Trading with MPB the process is fair, safe, painless and incredibly easy.

Whether you have kit to sell, want to make a purchase or part exchange, start by going to the MPB website which is intuitive and straightforward to use.

If you have kit to trade, just start typing the name in and a list of suggestions from MPB’s huge database will appear. If a name on that list matches your product click on it and add its condition; if not, continue typing in the whole name and condition.

It’s worth bearing in mind that MPB’s database covers much more than cameras and lenses so if you have, for example, a photo backpack, tripod or filters to sell these can be shown as you type in their name too.

With all your kit listed, add contact details and a quote will appear in your inbox soon afterwards, although manually entered items will take one working day.

If you are happy with the quote, accept it and follow the instructions to get the kit ready for courier collection on a day to suit you. For higher-value deals, an MPB account manager will also be in touch, so you have a personal point of contact if you have any queries.

Once received by MPB, you will get a notification and after checking by its product specialists you will receive a final quote. This can vary from the original quote if there is a missing item —like a battery not being supplied—or your assessed condition differs from the actual condition.

A quote can go down, but it can also increase if the kit’s condition is better than your assessment.

The whole process doesn’t take long and MPB are in touch by e-mail at every step so you’re never in the dark, and only when you are totally happy with the deal, pass on your payment details or pay the balance in the case of part-exchange. Either way, the money or your new kit will be with you soon after.

Get A Quote From MPB Today

 

About MPB

• MPB is the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video kit.
• MPB is the simple, safe and circular way to trade, upgrade and get paid.
• MPB is not a marketplace, instead buying directly from visual storytellers and evaluating all items before reselling MPB-approved kit.
• MPB's dynamic pricing engine provides the right price upfront for all items.
• Circularity is at the centre of MPB, promoting sustainability, diversity and inclusion in everything they do.
• MPB prioritises inclusive recruitment and supports employees with extensive training and development. They promote inclusive visual storytelling and an inclusive circular economy.
• MPB's business model is 100% circular. All packaging is 100% plastic-free. Their cloud-based platform uses 100% renewable electricity.
• MPB recirculates more than 570,000 products annually
• MPB provides first-class customer service. Customers can receive support through their Help Centre or by speaking directly with a kit expert.
• MPB's product specialists are trusted by thousands of visual storytellers in the UK.
• MPB is rated ‘Excellent’ on Trustpilot with over 37,000 reviews.

Visit The MPB Website

Raw is practically a religion. It preserves sensor data, maximizes editing latitude, and lets you recover mistakes that would wreck a JPEG. That’s all true... and still incomplete. “Shoot raw or you’re not serious” turns a tool into a dogma. Tools aren’t moral; they’re contextual. The job dictates the format, not the other way around.

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Wide angle lenses can make the biggest landscapes look small and dull. You’ve seen it yourself: mountains that felt huge when you were standing there shrink to a disappointing background when viewed on your screen. That gap between how it looks in person and how it looks in the photo is the problem this video tackles.

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The term "the decisive moment," made famous by renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, describes the fraction of a second when the significance of an event unfolds in front of the lens. However, in today's "spray and pray" digital age, it begs the question: Has the essence of the decisive moment been lost?

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The Leica M11 is not just another digital camera. It’s a tool that forces you to slow down, commit to a process, and engage with your work in a more deliberate way. Whether you’re using it at a wedding, traveling abroad, or making everyday family photos, this camera asks you to be intentional. That alone makes it worth considering if you want to create images with more care and attention.

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The DJI Mic 3 isn’t just about better sound, it’s about cutting down the number of compromises you make when recording. Whether you’re working outdoors in shifting conditions or indoors with multiple voices, the updates here are designed to solve real problems you’ve likely run into before.

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