Whether you’ve got an entry-level camera or a professional DSLR, your camera is nothing without a lens. Photography, by its very nature, requires light in order to generate an image, and your lens is the means by which your camera gathers that necessary light. While contemporary compact digital cameras and ‘bridge’ or ‘superzoom’ cameras are improving their fixed optics all the time, a digital SLR offers you the option of choosing which lenses suit your indiv

We’ve all had great shots spoiled by blur. One of the first jobs most of us do with any new set of images is work through them to discard the technical failures – and poor focus is one of the main reasons for failure. Some images are blurred because of bad focusing or insufficient depth of field. Many more are blurred, though, because the camera moved during the exposure. The popular theory is that there are ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ shutter speeds for handhe

Given the scale, number and ambition of the effects that can be generated in Photoshop, you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s nothing it can’t do; that there’s no photographic filter effect that can’t be reproduced digitally. However, that’s not the case. Many special effects are better done in Photoshop, but many more conventional filter effects are more difficult, less effective or impossible when they’re attempted digitally. First, there are th