Yesterday Adobe released a big update to Lightroom Mobile for iOS which adds a number of features including local adjustment tools, and more importantly RAW importing and editing.

There are times that it feels like I’m playing a constant battle with hard drive space. I’m sure that many photographers feel like this at one time or another (or all the time). My Lightroom Library is a giant mess. I’m the first to admit that, and it’s not particularly well organised. I have images littered across multiple drives and I’ve lots of older projects which I don’t really need access to the raw files, but are still online. So, once again, I’ve started trying to tame the beast, and I’ve a few new strategies for dealing with it that I thought you might find interesting.

If you are an X-Pro 2 shooter and you’re using planing on using Capture One, then there are some important things to know. First of all, at the moment, Capture One only supports the X-Pro 2 in a preliminary fashion. There are a number of important features lacking in support at the time of writing this. In particular Capture One does not yet support X-Pro 2 compressed RAW files and it does not support any kind of lens correction on X-Pro 2 images. 

Fuji today announced the new X-T2, the successor to the popular X-T1. Like the X-Pro 2 it features a 24mp sensor, but unlike the X-Pro 2 it has 4k video. There’s not really much I can add to the already wide ranging coverage of the release. if you’re looking to find out more, I suggest you head over to Fuji Rumors which, as always has covered the launch in quite extensive detail.

There have been a couple of software updates recently that I haven’t covered because I was busy with other things. Capture One received a semi major update, and Apple updated its Raw software for MacOS. Both of these are of interest to Fuji X-Pro 2 shooters, not so much because of what’s in them, but because of what’s missing.

As I mentioned on my main blog recently, I've been scanning in lots of my old negatives and slide film recently. One of the patterns that's emerged from looking at my old shots is that I had an interest in Street Photography even from the early days of my photographic interests. Of course I didn't know it was a genre called "Street Photograhy" at the time. I just like taking pictures around the city. Most of these were taken between 15-20 years ago, on my trusty Canon Eos 5.

Last week I posted some black and white photos from my time in the little town of Heppenheim in the German countryside. I had taken a lot more photographs while I was there and I’ve finally had the time to go through them to my satisfaction. The residents of this sleepy little town clearly lit as you can see a real sense of pride in the way the buildings are adorned with flowers and decorations. Photos were taken with a Fuji X-Pro 2 and Nikon D700

One of the things that people love about their Fuji X-Series cameras is the film simulation modes and the rich colour that they give out of the camera. Many of these film simulation modes are based on actual films that Fuji makes, or used to make. Provia, Velvia and Astia are slide films, while the new (in the X-Pro 2) Acros is based on the Neopan Acros film. Lately I’ve been scanning some of my old film in and I realised that I have photos taken with some of these films, so I thought I’d share what the real thing looks like.

In the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, just outside of Dublin, is a beautiful old 18th century estate and gardens, called Powerscourt. The estate features a restored mansion and some pretty impressive stately gardens that are kept in perfect condition. The house and gardens have been used in several movies, most notably the Count of Monte Cristo. Images taken with X-Pro 2 and 18-55mm f/2.8-4 Lens.

After being without it for a while, I finally managed to get my trusty old film scanner back out of storage recently. I had been thinking about shooting more film lately, but I had been kind of disappointed with the results that I was getting. I had put my film scanner in storage some years ago when I had moved house, so I was relying on scans from the Lab. Lab scans done at the time of processing are very poor, especially compared to a dedicated film scanner. So, before I gave up on the project, I wanted to remind myself of what a good quality scan could be like, so I retrieved my old film scanner and I think the results will speak for themselves.

Apple's Photos App on the Mac (and iOS) has some interesting and unorthodox tools for adjusting your images. The Light and Colour sliders are interesting ways to alter your photos, and even on their own, the smart algorithms which adjust the individual parameters of a collection of adjustments, can often lead to interesting results. If you want more control however, you can tweak the individual parameters in the Light and Colour section separately. In this short post we're going to take a look at the controls in the Colour adjustment group.

Yesterday Adobe released a major update to many of its Creative Cloud Apps, including Photoshop. The updates include a number of new features, and further integration of Creative Cloud Libraries and Adobe Stock. Photoshop in particular includes some interesting new features.

Apple's Photos app for the mac has some nice adjustment tools, and while it may not be the most robust or professional level application, you can achieve some nice results in it. Unfortunately, if you go through the process of creating a nice look on your images, there's limited ability to save that look independent of the image. There's no way (currently) to save presets, and there's no equivalent of Lightroom's previous button.

Apple teased some interesting developments at last week's WWDC that will have a particular impact on photographers. It showed off some impressive scene and face recognition technology running on iOS as well as some new ways to organise your photos. Perhaps the biggest new feature though was one that wasn't really unveiled during the keynote. It snuck into the background of a slide, which got keen observers excited, and was later confirmed to be true. IOS is getting the ability to capture RAW photos, directly from your device’s camera.

Last week I was travelling in Germany and I got to spend some time in the beautiful town of Heppenheim. Heppenheim is a little town about 40 minutes outside of Frankfurt and is filled with some really pretty medieval buildings. I had been there last year too and I had gotten some nice shots, but this time I was trying to do things a little differently, and so I was focussed more on the details. Images were taken with the Fuji X-Pro 2.