With all the fuss recently about the Sony A9 and its electronic shutter, I thought I would try out the one on my X-Pro 2. I had dabbled with it before, but I always thought it was a bit of an odd experience, so I didn’t really do much with it. I had also read various reports of it introducing rolling shutter effects, so I hadn’t payed it much attention. However, I was out doing some street photography the other day, and so I thought that I might as well give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised.

I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I read this post in the official Lightroom blog this morning. It seems that Adobe has finally agreed to what its users have been telling them for years. Lightroom’s performance is abysmal. 

I happened to be in the right place at the right time the other day to capture an amazing sunset. While travelling back on the ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, the sea was calm and the sky was beautiful, and as we reached the middle of the journey the sun set on the horizon, in a beautiful display of reds and golds.

If you follow photography news at all, you’ve probably read about this new site called pixelpeeper.io (not to be confused with Pixelpeeper.com). It’s a web application that lets you see what Lightroom edits were done to an image, just by uploading a Jpeg to it. Now, on top of that they’ve added the ability to see what Lightroom preset was used on an image (if it was something like one of the VSCO presets), again just from uploading a Jpeg. I have mixed feelings on whether or not this is a good idea, and I’ve gone back and forth in my mind as to whether I agree with what they’re doing or not

While I’ve talked about Affinity photo before at various times, and I’ve briefly covered the application for processing Fuji Raw files, I realised that I haven’t really looked at it in depth. In fact, a reader recently emailed me about it, and it was only then that I realised that I hadn’t explored the application’s RAW processing in detail. 

I recently spent some time in Galway city, in the west of Ireland, and while I was there I was taking some photos around the harbour and the railway station. As I was capturing the images, it occurred to me that they had an urban decay feel to them, and I thought they would be perfect for my Industrial Iron set of presets.

It’s been over a week since I stared offering a membership option on Patreon, and I want to thank those who’ve already joined up. I also realised that I didn’t explain it very well the last time I posted about it, so allow me to elaborate a bit.

In this video I take a bracketed exposure that I shot on a Fuji X-Pro 2 and starting with Capture One, I look at the process of creating a HDR using Aurora HDR. I then do some additional editing in Luminar, before bringing the final image back into Capture One. 

This may seem like a relatively obtuse question at first but bear with me. I found myself wondering if people actually consider this when reading some online commentary. Who is your audience? Obviously, if you’re a professional, then you are shooting for you clients. But for amateurs and enthusiasts: do you take photos for family or friends? Do you take them for yourself? Do you take pictures for the general public or certain interest groups?

I was in Galway yesterday, which was the longest day of the year, and I wanted to capture the sunset over Galway bay looking out to the Atlantic. As it was the longest day, it was kind of a special sunset, marking the end of the lengthening evenings and the start of the long march back to winter. Unfortunately it was cloudy, but there was still some nice light, and the beach at Salthill in Galway is dramatic in and of itself.

As I mentioned last week, I had recently borrowed a friends Nikon D800 to try it out. I’ve long had a D700 and it is one of my favourite cameras of all time. While the D800 is getting old now, and a generation behind, I was still curious to use it. Shooting it was an interesting experience and I thought I would share a few random thoughts on using it. So, in no particular order, here are some of my findings. 

In this video I take a look at using X-Transformer and Lightroom for Processing Fuji X-Trans files from an X-Pro 2. I walk through the process from the start to finish, and I demonstrate some of the techniques that I have in my eBook guide on using X-Transformer. 

Macphun have just released a new and updated version of Luminar. The update features some big new features, as well as a lot of little improvements. I’ve had a chance to use the beta version for a few days, and there are some interesting new features in the application.

I am a little late on this one, with WWDC over a week ago now, but I wanted to share some thoughts on the keynote and the announcements. In particular, I wanted to have a look at them from the point of view of a creative professional and a photographer. I’ve been an Apple fan for a long time, and I love using my Mac and iOS devices, despite occasional frustrations. Recently, I had begun to question Apple’s commitment to both the Mac Platform and creative Professionals. After this years WWDC, I no longer have any doubts.

I’m happy to announce that I’ve just launched a Patreon Membership Page. For a while now, people have been asking me for a way to support the site and the things that I do, and while I’ve had a great response to the eBooks and Presets that I publish, they’re not for everyone. aWith that in mind, I wanted to create a way for anyone who wants to support my photography writing, and the research that I do, in a reasonable way.