While we see a renaissance of sorts when it comes to photo editing software, in my opinion, the management side has taken a back seat. If you look at many of the recent developments across newer and updated applications, most of the development has been on the image editing side. Lightroom, for example, has seen only minor changes to the database side of the application in years. There are lots of new technologies out there that would be really useful to photographers if they were all together in one application, and yet, in my opinion, there’s nothing that does everything. At least not yet.

If there has been one company more outspoken than any other on the subject of APS-C sensors vs Full Frame it has been Fujifilm. Because of the insistence of company executives that their X-Trans technology makes their smaller sensor superior to full frame, many fans of the company’s products have been active and vocal supporters of this viewpoint. It has reignited an argument that many had previously considered settled: the merits of full frame vs cropped sensor.

In the world of digital imaging, it's often easy to get overwhelmed by the number of images we create. I personally have hundreds of thousands of pictures, and managing them can be a real chore. It’s also very easy to import a set of images, go through them once or twice, maybe share a few and then never look at them again. I know I’m guilty of this, but It’s important to occasionally revisit your older photos. 

There wasn't much announced in yesterday’s WWDC keynote targeted at photographers, apart from some new search suggestions and ways to share in Photos. There was, however, a couple of features in the MacOS finder that could actually prove quite useful. Those are the new gallery view and EXIF information in the finder.

Sometimes, it’s all too easy to get a bit too caught up in getting the perfect shot, or trying to live up to some expectations that you set yourself when out shooting. I do this all the time, and sometimes, I perhaps take photography too seriously. This is fine when its work related or for a serious project, but it's also important not to lose sight of the joy of photography. Sometimes it’s good to shoot something for the fun of it, and not be too worried about the outcome. 

Today, Fuji launched the newest camera in its lineup, the budget conscious X-T100. Its kind of a cross between an X-A5 an X-T20, and I have to say, I think this is a really interesting camera. It gives you a well-equipped body, with a high-quality EVF but with a Beyer sensor instead of X-Trans. This means that you don’t have to worry about any changes to your workflow to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of working with X-Trans files, but still, have all the other advantages of a Fuji camera.

I’m starting a new series here on the blog, where I discuss my sources of inspiration. These are the things, and people that have inspired me over the years, both photographically and otherwise. Today I want to discuss the work of the great Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai. 

Quicktime is one of those things that people love or hate. Whatever your feelings on it are, it does do one thing really well, and that provides a way of allowing any application to open any movie file, so long as they have the right codec installed. Instead of an application having to directly support multiple video formats, they can just support QuickTime, and then if there’s a codec for the format installed, they can read that format. Which got me thinking, we really need something similar for images.

While Fuji no doubt has a great range of lenses, and it certainly has some high-quality Primes, there are a couple of holes in its lineup still, in my opinion. There is one lens, that is very popular on some other systems, and it’s the lens I miss the most from when I had it for my Canon 5d. For me, it’s the ideal walk around focal length, and that is a 24-105mm equivalent. For a Fuji X-series system, that would be a 16-70mm.

I’ve been running my own eCommerce store for a few years now, for selling my own eBooks and Lightroom presets. It’ always been a bit of a challenge, both technically and logistically, but it's getting harder and harder. The problem is that the EU is tightening the rules on privacy and data, and few if any of the commerce solutions are properly up-to-date on this. Many still aren’t even fully compliant with current VAT legislation.

This may seem like something of an obtuse question at first, but bear with me and let me explain what I mean. When you take a photograph of something, what is the most important thing to you about that photograph? Is it the subject of the photo - the person, place or object that you captured? Our is it the photograph itself - the art of the image, the style of the photo, or the creative way that you captured it?

Without a doubt, my all-time favourite TV show is Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. Every time I re-watch the show, it reaffirms my belief, that for me, it is one of the best TV shows ever made. Aside from the story, the performance of the cast, and its optimistic viewpoint, what I most remember about my first time watching the series when it originally aired, was that it got me interested in cinematography for the first time. 

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing this piece for a little while now. I have a draft of it going back two years, and every time I try to write it, I stop, for fear of the inevitable backlash. You see, for me, while the internet has undoubtedly been a positive influence on photography as an art form, and as a way to help new and up and coming photographers, it can also be an overwhelmingly negative force. 

A couple of sites have been reporting over the last few days about the upcoming 7.2 release of Lightroom. Adobe have decided to focus on performance for this next release, and as a testament as to how important they feel this is, they’ve sent beta copies to various photography websites and news organisations ahead of time to show how serious they are about it.

With cameras constantly being released, I have found that a lot of the commentary around certain brands and models revolves around comparing the tech specs. People argue about things like minute differences in dynamic range or noise response as reasons to pick one camera over another. But there's so much more to choosing a camera.