Since OnOne released their Raw software late last year, the company has been putting out major updates at a fairly regular schedule. A significant release was announced yesterday, and as part of it, the list of features included improved X-Trans support. In previous versions, the raw conversion of Fuji X-Trans files was extremely poor. I covered it in a recent post, and I pointed out the severe artifacts. So has it improved?

A while ago I released a set of Free Lightroom presets for Fuji users based on my own “variations’ of the Fuji Film simulation presets, or more specifically, the corresponding colour profile in Lightroom. Well, I’m pleased to announce that the follow up to that first set is now available. 

I was recently working on a photo of Dublin’s famous Ha’Penny bridge that I had taken with my X-Pro 2 and an idea came to me. I was processing the image in Lightroom, and I wanted to see what it would look like in different converters. As I’ve written so much about it, and as I had an image that I was working on for a real world project, I thought that while I was at it, I should try a whole bunch of different converters and see what kind of results I got.

I’m really proud of how well my T-Pan set of Lightroom presets turned out. I’m not just saying that as a shameless plug. I set about creating something that would work well to emulate black and white film, and I think the results work really well. I’m sure it’s not perfect. It’s not a full simulation as such, but rather an artistic interpretation, but I think it comes close. To see just how close I decided to do a little experiment

Today was a busy day for Fuji as it launched three new cameras and a whole series of lenses. The biggest headline grabber will of course be the new medium format Fuji GXF. While fuji Announced the development of this camera back at Photokina, today was the official launch, with a release date and price set. Fuji also announced the release of the X100F, the latest version of their original X-Series camera, and the X-T20. I’m not really a “news” site, so for full coverage, I’ll send you to the excellent roundup over on Fuji Rumours. Below is some select bits and pieces that I’ve found particularly interesting.

When Capture One 10 was announced just before Christmas, I was very excited by the initial results that I saw with X-Pro 2 files, but I’ve realised now that my enthusiasm may have been over-rated. Since that time, I’ve been trying to lock down some base settings to use as the basis for some recommendations for my guide and to be honest I’ve had difficulty coming up with results that work for everything. It’s been a process of discovery, and I've learned some interesting things along the way. I’ve come up with some experimental settings, and I wanted to put them out there for people to try. 

The creator of Iridient Developer has just released a public beta of a new product. It’s the company’s first Windows application, but it’s not a full version of Iridient Developer. Instead, it’s something that I think is even more interesting. He’s created a DNG Converter specifically for Fuji X-Trans files. 

One of my photographic new year's resolutions is to take a more project-based approach to my photography this year, rather than the somewhat haphazard approach I took in 2016. With that in mind, the first idea that I came up with was to shoot the first sunrise of the new year.

Last weekend here in Dublin, there was a special Christmas edition of the monthly Dublin flea market, and I went along with my camera (of course) to check it out. It wasn’t exactly a typical Christmas market, more of a special extra large version of the normal market for Christmas. 

Capture one has long been a rival to Lightroom, and I’ve been suggesting its use for Fuji X-Trans shooters for some time. However, Capture One Pro 9 seemed to be lacking in the quality of its conversions for X-Pro2 users and there were a number of issues holding it back. Today, Phase One launched a new version, Capture One Pro 10, and I’m happy to say that those issues are gone. 

This is pretty old news at this point, but as I hadn’t covered it before, I thought I’d touch on it briefly. A while ago VSCO released an updated version of their Film series of Lightroom Presets to support the Fuji X-Pro 2 and XT-2. I finally got around to trying it out, and I’m liking the results.

With most cameras that are released these days having video, it may seem like a pointless exercise to point out the benefits of having the feature. However, if you read the comments on reviews of new cameras (and you probably shouldn’t for your own mental health) there’s always someone who complains about the video functions, saying that they are a photographer and “real photographers” don’t care about video. Even if you don’t like shooting video, I think that there are times when it’s a real benefit to have video in your camera, and the other day I came across a perfect example.

I recently posted a piece about shooting some photos using the in-camera Acros mode on the X-Pro 2. While I posted Jpegs straight from the camera in that post, I’ve also been working on matching the effect in Raw. This might sound like a straight forward process. You just set the colour profile, right? Well, after experimenting for a bit, there seems to be more to it than that.

I've been suffering from something akin to writers block when it comes to photography lately. A lot of things are getting to me and frustrating me creatively. While Autumn had been my favourite time of the year for photography for many years, a few weeks ago it was the anniversary of my mother’s passing away, and that has changed my feelings about the season. Autumn is now a reminder of that sad time, rather than the celebration of colour that I used to see. I'm sure with time this will pass, but this year was difficult. On top of that, the weather has been dark and cold, so that hasn't exactly helped things. I wanted to try and channel some of these feelings and reflect the mood of both the environment and myself, and so I headed out the other day to try something a little different. 

A while ago I wrote a post about the settings that I use on My X-E1. In that piece I mostly covered the Jpeg settings that I used on the camera such as the shadow and highlight tone and so on. Since then I’ve moved to an X-Pro 2, and recently a reader gave me the idea of doing a follow up article to talk about the settings that I use on my X-Pro 2, so In this post, I’ll talk again about the image settings, but also about some of the other camera options that I have set.

Affinity Photo is one of the more interesting Photoshop competitors out there, and it has a powerful feature set. I find myself using it more and more for various tasks, and its speed makes it a very useful software tool to have in your arsenal. The software has its own raw processing engine, and while it hasn’t ben updated to include X-Pro 2 support yet, you can still open and edit X-Pro 2 raw files with the software thanks to a semi hidden feature.

I have just updated my Fuji X-Trans Lightroom guide with some significant changes. I’m calling it “version 1.5” and it contains some updated information, including some notes on processing 24mp X-Trans files, such as those from the X-Pro 2. I also tried to incorporate as much of the feedback and questions that I’ve received since the initial release. I also used the opportunity of releasing an updated edition to make some other changes and include some additional detail. If you had previously purchased this guide, the updated version is available for free to download from your account

I was walking through a local park here in Dublin the other day, and I loved how the low Autumn sun was creating these lovely patterns of Dappled light on the ground. In the shadows of the trees there were patches of sunshine that danced as the breeze blew the leaves. It was quite beautiful and relaxing, and as I had my trusty X-Pro 2 with me I decided that I would shoot some video as well as stills.