I recently set about testing my new(ish) Sony 16-70 mm lens out for street photography, and I decided to film it for another episode of Street Photo Diary. I was also trying out a new GoPro to film the POV shots. I had previously used an old GoPro Hero Session to do these, but the quality wasn’t great and the battery, which can’t be replaced, would only last about a half an hour (after a few years of use).

In this video I show you a quick tip on how to avoid one go the most annoying problems with Lightroom’s processing engine: Clarity Halos. That is the issue of dark or bright halos or blurry shadows you get when you use too high a clarity setting on a high contrast image.

Yesterday Adobe released Lightroom Classic version 12 along with the corresponding versions of Lightroom Desktop, and Photoshop Camera Raw. All of these feature some significant improvements to masking and other new features. For the purposes of this post, though, I’m only going to talk about Lightroom Classic.

DXO today announced new a new version of the company’s flagship Raw editing Software: DXO Photo Lab, as well as a new update to the company’s lens and distortion correction application, DXO Viewpoint.

I haven’t really been taking that many photos over the past few months for various reasons, which has been a bit frustrating for me. I do have a little collection that has been slowly gathering over the past few months, and so it’s time to resurrect a long-running series, that I used to do ages ago: “Random Acts of Photography”.

I wanted to get a more flexible lens option for my mirrorless cameras, as I’m kind of stuck with primes apart from the Fuji 18-55mm. Which is fine for certain types of photography, but not ideal when you want flexibility. I really wanted to get the 16-80 Fujifilm lens, but you just can’t get it anywhere right now, especially here in Ireland. It’s been on the waiting list at most of the stores in Dublin, and you can’t even get it on Amazon. The other option I have been considering is the Sony equivalent, which is the 16-70 f4 Zeiss to use on my A6000. Recently, I saw that my local camera store had this lens second hand at a great price, and so I went in to check it out.

Just a quick note to let you know about an offer our affiliate partner DXO is having at the moment. They are currently offering 25% off the NIK collection of plug-ins. I’m a little late on this though, and the offer is ending soon on the 14th September.

The giants causeway is probably one of the most famous natural attractions on the island of Ireland. Located on the northern coast of Northern Ireland, the famous landmark is a series of volcanic rocks that formed into hexagonal columns. It’s somewhere I always wanted to see in person, with the formation being featured in geography text books when I was younger, not to mention practically every tourist board promotion for the region. Finally this past weekend, I got to see it in person.

My first reaction: “Is that it?”

Many, many years ago (sigh) I did a course in Film and Video production run by the local government here in Ireland. It was only ever run once, but it was actually a great course, and I probably owe my entire career to that course. I learned so much from that and much of the experience still serves me today. But there was one class that I always remembered more than any other, and it’s an interesting story, and I wanted to share it, because I think there’s a valuable lesson in it for everyone.

It’s hard to believe that it’s August already. Here in Ireland it’s technically Autumn now, and already you can feel the change in the air. And speaking of change, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting very regularly recently, so I want to apologise. As well as being busy with client work, I’ve also been doing some thinking and I’m hoping to make some big changes soon, on the website and in a broader sense.

DXO labs have just released an update for DXO Pure Raw 2. Version 2.1 is now fully native on Apple silicon, and leverages Apple’s M1 and M2 processors. This release also adds support for the latest Canon Eos R series of cameras, and adds some improvements to the batch processing workflow.

I’ve just published a new photo essay over on my Photo Stories blog. I had visited a nearby urban farm back in May and taken lots of photos, and I was captivated by the colour and texture that images of nature. You should check out the blog post here before you carry on. As I try to keep my Photo Stories blog relatively gear and “technical nerdy stuff” free, I wanted to talk about the technicalities of the images here.

When it comes to photography, I have a lot of differing tastes. I don’t just mean photographic genres, bur rather images that appeal to me. I like good composition and storytelling as much as the next person, but I also have an affiliation for colour and texture. And sometimes, Nature provides us with an abundance of both of these.

This is a little trick I stumbled across the other day - almost by accident. I was working on editing a photo in Lightroom, and I had made quite a few edits, but I just couldn’t get it where I wanted it. I said to myself: “I wish there was a way I could just dial all the adjustments back a little”. Then it occurred to me - there actually is a way to do that. It requires a few steps and a little roundabout thinking, but it essentially gives you a way to adjust the overall amount of your adjustments with a single slider.

Alexander Svet from the popular Capture One focussed site “Alex on Raw” has released a new book on Capture One. Titled “Capture One Hidden Features”, the book contains “200+ Pro Hints To Enhance Your Capture One Workflow”. Alex was kind enough to send me a copy to review, and also provide my readers with a 10% discount.