Yesterday Phase One released the newest version of Capture One, Capture One 11. This new update features several major new features as well as some changes under the hood. The biggest difference in the upgrade is the new layers system, but there are also a lot of little features too.

I’m really enjoying shooting more Vlog style videos recently, and i’ve been trying a few different options for recording. All of the cameras that I have that record video, have some limitations, but I didn’t want to have to buy a new camera, and so I wanted to try and make the best with what I have. Of all of the models that I have that shoot video, I prefer the A6000 for this kind of thing, but it lacks a front facing screen. After a bit of research I found a really cheap option on Amazon. 

As many of my readers shoot with Fuji cameras, and many of you have expressed an interest in using Luminar 2018 for processing Fuji files, I wanted to give an overview of what I think is the best way to work with Fuji files currently. This is just an overview, and doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail. I am planning do a proper guide for this, but for now, this is a basic outline of what you need to know. 

Ever since Lightroom CC was announced - The new cloud based cut down desktop version - not to be confused with the old normal version - I have been thinking about ways to get around some of its limitations. The solution was to create a set of presets that allowed you to apply some of the effects that Lightroom CC is missing. 

For a while now, I’ve been running a series of posts here on this blog called “Street Photo Diary”. I’ve also been practicing and testing various setups to allow me to produce “Vlog” style videos. After much testing and messing up, I have finally come up with a reasonable setup and idea, and that is to make a video version of my “Street Photo Diary” series. And so, a new monthly (for now) video series is born, also called “Street Photo Diary” !

You’ve probably seen this already, if you follow pretty much any photography blog out there, but Luminar 2018 is now shipping. There seems to have been a lot of interest in it, and I’m thinking about doing a guide to help users get the best from it. I may also do some presets at some point.

There is a pretty amazing exhibit on in Dublin Zoo at the moment. The “Wild Lights” experience, is an art show of sorts, featuring animal shaped lanterns which are all around the zoo, mimicking a real zoo experience, only in lights. The artwork was created by a group of china artists, and is really something to behold. My wife and I recently paid a visit to see the exhibit and it was amazing.

As promised, here is the Luminar questions and answers video that I talked about last week. I tried to answer as any of the questions that I’ve received regarding the upcoming release of Luminar 2018 as possible in this video, although I may have missed a few (and I didn’t want to make it too long)

I was out shooting some street photography the other day, and I was also doing some testing on a few different things. I wanted to try out some different settings for doing “VLOG” style videos, and I still have the RX100 that I borrowed, so I figured I would try that. Unfortunately, it was also really cold and breezy, and while the picture from the RX100 is great, the sound, not so much.

As part of my ongoing Fuji Jpeg book project (which is progressing - but still a little bit away) I recently set about working on some recipes for getting various looks. One of the main things I wanted to try, was to see if I could get something similar to “street pan” in look. This is a type of film that gives you high contrast black and white and is a popular “look” with photographers who shoot street photography on film.

There’s been a pretty big response to the coverage of the pre-release of Luminar 2018 from everyone, and I know people may still have questions about it. With that in mind, I’m going to do a Q&A video later this week, where I’ll answer as many questions as I can regarding the upcoming version, and if possible I’ll demonstrate the answers.

A little while ago I put up a poll on the site here, asking if people were planning on using Lightroom CC or not. It was in part, to answer my own curiosity as to whether or not people were going to use it, but also to gauge interest for supporting it in the future. Now that it’s been up for a while, I thought I would share the results.

In my first look review of Luminar 2018 I mentioned that you could possibly use LUTs for matching Fuji Film simulation modes in Luminar 2018. I dd some research and found some free LUTs online, and having tried them out, it certainly seems like this will work. 

Today, Skylum, the company formerly known as MacPhun, announced the next version of its flagship application Luminar. Luminar 2018, which is now available for pre-order, is a significant upgrade over the current version, and I have been lucky enough to get to use a beta version over the last little while. To me, this isn’t an incremental update, but a dramatic upgrade, and it almost feels like an entirely new application.

Lightroom Classic is essentially Lightroom 7 in Adobe’s weird new naming scheme. If you look in the about box, you will see the version number is listed as a 7.0 release. While a numbered upgrade like this is normally a major feature release, Lightroom Classic seems to offer relatively little in terms of new features since the previous version. The main areas are the new masking tools, improved importing and overall performance improvements.