Welcome

The new season has certainly put a spring

Fuelling his passion

Alistair Campbell shadows Sam East on a shoot with a Maserati sports car

The beauty of backlighting

Get out in the soft spring sun and conquer the basics of backlit portraits, says

Close to the action

Patience is key to capturing creatures, says

Darling buds

Capture emerging spring plants with a macro lens and create dreamy DoF effects

Spring clean 101

Dust off the winter cobwebs and give your sensor a little bit of love

Try an unlimited phone plan

Fiona Georgeson Powell gets smart with her Huawei to shoot colourful urban scenes

Put a ring on it

You can shoot portraits with one simple LED light, says

Try cross-processing

Create interesting and unpredictable colour shifts for exciting results, with

The Isle of Skye

There’s no need to chase the light and rush your landscape photography, says

The focus stack endgame

Concluding our two-part focus stack project, here’s how to edit the images together in Lightroom and Photoshop

Deerly beloved

Put some spring into your step and capture roe deer, says

FRESH & NEW WAYS TO CAPTURE

SPRING

Discover Filter Forge 9 Professional

Find out how to use this month’s terrific free software download

YOUR FREE SOFTWARE

Download and install Filter Forge 9 Professional

The power of Luminosity Masking

Get to grips with this Photoshop Channels trick and make use of our free actions

Use colour grading for a cinematic look

Add movie magic to your photos in Lightroom

Enhance moody landscapes

Explore some editing techniques in Photoshop that will work in harmony with poor weather conditions

THIS MONTH’S BONUS SOFTWARE EXTRAS

Improve your shots with our Actions and Presets

Photo Answers

Dumbfounded by depth of field? Clueless about colour space? Send your technique and camera questions to digitalcamera@futurenet.com

The art of seeing

Embracing vertical orientation, Benedict Brain rediscovers the joy of making diptychs

Hotshots

The winners f rom the International Garden Photographer of the Year 2023 awards

Reader gallery

Digital Camera readers show how they’ve been getting creative, submitting images across a range of genres

Shot of the month

Tube Mapper Luke Agbaimoni continues his project with ‘Symmetry & Imperfections’

In Focus

The latest photography news from around the globe

Behind the lens

Fresh interest in the landscape photographer’s images of Bristol Harbour has led to a new book about the series

Scanning ahead…

Curious about the advantages of AI image generation, Jon Devo gives it a real-world test

KitZone

New gear, buying tips and the world’s toughest tests

Benedict Brain

Our regular columnist has just published his first book about photography – but it isn’t a ‘how-to’ technique manual, as Niall Hampton discovers

Back issues

Download our digital editions, or buy in print while stocks last

What the f-stop?

How much do you really know about photography? Test yourself to the max every issue with our tricky trivia quiz!

Panasonic Lumix S5 II

£1,999/$1,997 (body only)

Canon EOS R50

£789/$679 (body only)

Canon RF 15-30mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM

£669/$499

Laowa 90mm F2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO

£569/$499

Filter holders

Looking to take creative control of your exposures? Then you’ll need one of these