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?”

A little while ago I wrote my first impressions of the Fuji X-E4, but having been using the camera for a little while now, I wanted to follow up with some more observations. I often find that a problem with camera review is that they are written after only a short time with a camera, and often miss out on things that come to light later. So, that’s the purpose of this review. It’s not to slam the camera or say it’s the greatest thing ever. It’s to highlight some things, both good and bad, that I’ve discovered while using it, so that if you’re considering purchasing one, you can be fully informed.

The Enhance function in Lightroom has been around for a while now. It was originally called “Enhance Details” but changed its name to just “Enhance” when the super resolution feature was added. For Fuji shooters, Enhance offers a way to get improved demosiacing inside of Lightroom without having to use third-party software. Using it on Fuji RAF files can provide significantly better rendering of detail in Fuji files, but it does come with some downsides.

My most popular series of videos on YouTube by far was “street photo diary”. It’s a series that I loved creating, but it has been on hiatus since 2019 and the pandemic hit. Well, I’m delighted to say that I’ve finally created a new episode, and it’s up on YouTube now. In this video I take my new Fujifilm XE-4 on a photo walk around Dublin City to see how well the camera works for Street Photography, and to see how it will fare as a replacement for my ageing Sony A6000

This time last year, I posted a story on this blog called “Virtual Spring”. We were in the midst of lockdown and I couldn’t get out to get any photos of the changing seasons. While autumn has always been my favourite season to photography, spring is a close second. I love as the bleakness of winter gives way to new life, and it clears out the cupboards of one’s mind, as it were.

DXO quietly released the latest update to DXO Photo Lab sometime recently. I don’t know when exactly this was as there was no press release or anything and I wasn’t really paying that much attention to the software update notices, but it’s actually an important release for two reasons. It brings improvements to Fuji support and improves the way Fuji cameras are handled in an important way. It also makes us aware of a bug in the latest MacOS and offers a work around. Read on for more details

If you’re a Fuji shooter, you shoot RAW and use Lightroom Classic, then you probably regularly use the Fuji Film simulation colour profiles when processing your images. However, what if you want to customise those profiles? What if you’re not 100% happy with the colour balance for example, or you’d like to match some customisation options that you’ve set in-camera. Well, it’s actually easy enough to create your own custom versions of these colour profiles and in this video I’ll show you how!

Ever since it came out last week, I’ve been getting lots of questions about Pure Raw 2. I had outlined a first look at the software last week, both here and on my YouTube Channel, and I’ve had lots of comments and queries on various aspects of the application. So, I thought I’d try and address some of the key things people had questions about in this post.

Yesterday (Feb 21st) Sigma officially announced that it would start releasing lenses for Fuji’s X-Mount. The initial lenses to be released would be a trio of f/1.4 primes that already exist for other mounts. These are a 16mm, 30mm and 56mm. While this has been rumoured for a while, it’s an interesting development, as these lenses are well regarded on other platforms.

It’s been a while since I updated my recommendations for Lightroom processing of Fuji files. Since then, Lightroom has been changing quite a bit, and so, while I had planned it before but never got around to it, I’m now in the pre-production stages of re-writing my Fuji Lightroom guide. One of the big things I’m changing is how I recommend people process their Fuji files for the best results.

One of the questions I regularly get asked is how to match the in-camera Fuji options when shooting RAW. While most RAW converters offer film simulation modes, and these are pretty close, for some they’re still not good enough. Others regularly contact me asking about how to match other options exactly, like highlight and shadow tone modes and so on.

Having used Fuji X-Series cameras now since the original X100 (which I still have) and the X-Pro1 (Which I don’t) I’m always following what the company does, even if I don’t always agree. Today, Fuji announced the X-T4 and its interesting because I think it represents a maturing of the line.

When I talk about Processing Fuji raw files, I mostly cover Capture One and Lightroom (with X-transformer). While I still think that Capture One is the best overall option, there is another application that I've been using a lot lately, and that is Exposure X5. While it is not as fully featured as Lightroom or Capture One, it does have some unique attributes. For Fuji Shooters, it offers some appealing options, depending on your preferences.

One of the new features in the recently released Lightroom 9.2 should particularly appeal to Fuji shooters. Thanks to the new RAW defaults options, you can now automatically apply the correct colour profile to match what you shot in-camera. It's pretty straightforward to use, so in this post, I'll show you what to do.

I've been covering how to process Fuji X-Trans files on this website for quite a few years now, and I still regularly get questions from people asking me what the best option for processing Fuji RAW files is. I generally try and not directly answer that for a few reasons, the most obvious of which is that the answer is subjective. What I might find the "best" isn't necessarily what someone else might find the best for them. So, in the past, I've tried to present lots of different options, and let people decide for themselves. But, today, I' going to break my own rule and tell you what I think are the best options, in my opinion, in order of preference.

With Phase One having already announced Capture One 20, I wanted to just update you on what is happening with my current Capture One Fuji Guide. The guide, which was launched relatively recently, is currently written for Capture One 12. 

While Lightroom supports Fuji Film Simulation modes via colour profiles, you still have to set them manually. This means that if you have shot using multiple modes on a single shoot, if you’re working with the RAW files in Lightroom, it can be a pain to replicate the right ones manually. While Capture One will set the right modes automatically based on what you shot with, there’s no way to do this in Lightroom natively. There is however a plug-in that will do this for you.

For photographers shooting with Fuji cameras, getting the best from your camera’s RAW files can sometimes seem like a challenge, especially if you’ve been mostly using Lightroom. Because of the way Lightroom converts Fuji RAW files, there can often be smearing of fine detail, leading to a water colour effect, as well as issues with strange “worm” like artifacting in areas of solid colour. While not everyone is bothered by these issues, for many, it is a reason to consider other methods of converting RAW files. 

For me, the best current option is Capture One and this is why…
(This is an edited excerpt from my new Capture One Fuji Guide)