Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
Adobe has released another set of updates to Lightroom. Both feature performance and bug fixes and the CC version has some new features. It's actually a little confusing as to which feature is in which version, but anyway. The big news is the new "Guided Upright" feature, and the re-design of the Lens correction panel into two separate panels.
One of my absolutely favourite places in Dublin City is on the banks of the Grand Canal between Portabello and Mount Street. It is a beautiful stretch of walkway, with leafy green trees and gorgeous benches. I spent a bit of time there recently in the gorgeous summer sunshine and I captured lots of photos of the place.
I was doing some more shooting with the X-Pro 2 over the weekend, and It was a lovely sunny summers day. I spent a bit of time by one of my favourite places in Dublin City, the Grand canal, taking pictures and generally giving the camera a good workout. While I was mostly shooting stills, I did shoot some video with the camera too, and I have some thoughts about the process and the results.
I love images of patterns and textures, which I guess comes from years working in design and animation. However, I do love how some modern (or relatively modern) architecture can make some really interesting graphic shapes when taken in the right light and from the right angle. Dublin's Trinity College has some great buildings for taking these kinds of shots.
In this latest installment of my ongoing rolling review of the Fuji X-Pro 2, I'm looking at some various observations that I've discovered while trying out the camera. I have been keeping notes as I go out with it, and so, consider this a sort of behind the scenes, un-cut version of what will become the eventual review.
One of the things that I often find frustrating when working in Lightroom on both a laptop and a desktop, is keeping my presets in sync. I often have presets on my desktop, which I will use quite often, and then when I switch to my Laptop and I try to find them, I realise I don't have them. I've been thinking for a while about ways to help alleviate this problems, and I've come up with a solution. This won't be for everyone and I'm sure there are lots of other ways to do this, but it should you an idea of at least one way to go about keeping your presets in sync.
In my previous article on using a custom calibration for the Sony A6000 in Lightroom, I mentioned that it can also be helpful to tweak the in-camera white balance defaults. A few people have asked me what I mean by this, so I've decided to do a very short tutorial on how to do it (it's not very complicated.)
If you're looking to evaluate the X-Pro2 and you want to see how the images look for yourself, I've put together a few images as samples for you to download as raw files. I've tried to give a range of subjects, and to include some that would traditionally be tricky for certain converters.
Summer has come to Ireland, and unusually we're having a prolonged spell of good weather. The up side of that, for the photographer is that with it comes some really nice light, at least if you know where to look. The other advantage, well for me anyway, is that it makes me get out. I fond it hard to look outside and see the beautiful sunshine, and not take my camera and go outside.
One of my main reasons for getting an X-Pro 2, apart for the obvious one of having the camera to use, was so that I could keep my e-book guides up to date. To that end I've been doings some testing with the various different raw converters out there, and here are my preliminary findings so far.
I finally got out to do some proper shooting today, and I had a lot of fun with the X-Pro 2. I decided to focus on trying about the film modes, and even though I was shooting Raw + Jpeg, my goal was to focus on the Jpeg, and in particular the Film Simulation modes. What I was especially keen to try is the new Acros simulation. I have read a lot about it since the X-Pro 2 first came out, so I was expecting good things. I was certainly not disappointed.
After years of using my trusty little Fuji X-E1, I’ve finally decided to upgrade, and I’m now the proud owner of an X-Pro 2. In the past I have owned an X-Pro 1 but I sold it as I wasn’t happy with the camera at the time. It’s interesting to return to the larger form factor, and it’s also interesting to see how far Fuji has progressed, even since my X-E1. I want do a full review, but I also wanted to document my journey of discovery with the X-Pro 2, so I’ve decided to combine the two into a sort of rolling review, in the form of a diary.
In my recent guide for processing X-Trans images in Iridient Developer, I talked about different workflows for working with the software in conjunction with Lightroom. Specifically I discussed the alternative approaches of either finishing your images in Iridient Developer or partially processing them and finishing them in Lightroom. On a recent shoot I had the opportunity to use the latter of these two workflows and I thought I'd share the results.
When I finished writing and published my recent Iridient Developer X-Trans guide, I wanted to try and see what a print copy would look like, so I uploaded it to Blurb and ordered some copies. I got the copies in the post today, and I’m really happy with the results. The print quality is pretty good for print on demand, and the binding and cover is great. Because they came out so well, I’m making them available for sale via Blurb, so if you would prefer a print copy to the e-book then you can get that now too.
I'm starting a new section here on the blog dedicated to photoblogging. I've been writing and blogging about photography for many years now, and before that I used to blog about Apple and technology in general. My workflow and style of blogging has changed many times over the years, as has the software and web services that I use. In this article, I'm going to discuss some of the current tools that I make use of when photoblogging.
While I do most of my posting on this blog, and it’s pretty much the main port of call for visitors, the blog is actually not my main photography site. I actually have a main site, which acts as my portfolio an has details about my photography, my writing and so on, as well as contact information ad the like. It’s my online business card so to speak. It also has a companion blog, which I often refer to as the “Photos Only” blog.
I'm always trying to improve my digital download store and provide the best possible experience for my customers (within my limited skills!) To that end I've made a few changes to the store and added a few new features.
I recently wrote a guest post on the Fuji X Passion website. Fuji X Passion is a blog and soon to be an actual printed magazine for Fuji X shooters. They asked me to talk about my recent Iridient Developer X-Trans book, and so I wrote a little piece about the book, with some more details about why I wrote it, and the thought process behind it. You can see the post here.
