Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in Fuji X-Series
Among the several things announced by Fujifilm this morning, including the new XE-3, the company also revealed that they are working on some new software for converting raw files. The software, called “Fujifilm X Raw Studio” works in a somewhat unique way. Rather than processing your raw files on your computer, it connects to your Fuji camera and uses the cameras processor to do the conversion.
Fuji Rumors has been detailing what they believe to be a major firmware update coming to the X-Pro2, possibly as soon as this week. The big feature slated to be announced is that Fuji will bring 4K video to the camera. I really hope this turns out to be true, and I will be delighted if it is the case. I do have a few other things that I would like to see along with the release too, so here is my relatively modest wish list.
I was recently discussing the original X100 with a friend on twitter, and we were talking about how it is still a really great camera, even though it does have a few limitations. With that in mind, I wanted to put together a little short retro review, so In this video, I take a look at the original “classic” Fujifilm X100.
I’ve said on my blog many times that Autumn is my favourite time of the year for photography. This isn’t just about the wonderful colours of the falling leaves. It’s also abut the Autumn light, and here in Ireland it’s already starting to be noticeable. In this issue of my on-going street photo diary series, I look at images shot on a sunny Autumn day in Dublin city, taken with a Fuji X-Pro 2 and 18-55mm lens.
The makers of Picktorial have just introduced a new add-on for the software specifically for Fuji X-Trans shooters. Called “X-Pack”, it brings a set of colour profiles to match the Film Simulation modes. It’s available now from the company’s store as a $15 add on. I’ve been lucky enough to get to test it and I’ve created a little video showing the profiles in action.
I know this might seem light a little bit of a strange thing to be covering, as it’s pretty much been something that people have been talking about since the X-Pro 1 first came out, but recently I’ve been taking another look at using Jpegs from my Fuji X-Pro2. This started as a bit of an experiment, but it’s blossomed into a full project for me. Let me explain.
I’ve recently been using some non Fuji lenses with my X-Pro 2 and the other day, I was trying out my old Nikon Macro lens with the camera. Despite being a macro, I had mostly been using it as a short telephoto, with its 105mm focal length being useful, especially as the 1.5X crop adds to the throw. However, over the weekend I got to use it as it was intended, for some macro work, and the results were pretty great.
As an experiment, and part of an ongoing project, I decided to launch Aperture the other day. It was the first time I have used the application in a long time, and It was an interesting experience. Because it has been so long, and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The reasons that I wanted to try it out, was that I wanted to see how files from X-Transformer were working in various different applications other than Lightroom. The result was both eye opening and depressing at the same time.
I have updated my Iridient X-Transformer Guide with new information to cover the latest release. The new update of the guide (v1.2) covers beta 4 of X-Transformer, and includes details on using the new plug-in as well as the new options for preserving the film simulation modes as colour profiles.
I’ve been playing around with Luminar a lot lately, and in particular I’ve been using it as an extension to Apple’s photos to quickly process Jpeg Images from my Fuji X-Pro 2. I’ll have more details on this in a future post, but for now, I wanted to share some of the looks I was getting.
Iridient Digital has released a new version of X-Transformer. The update, which was released last night has a number of improvements and new features, the most significant of which is a new plug-in for Lightroom which will make it easier to send files to the application. It also now has the ability to automatically embed which film simulation you used into the DNG as a corresponding colour profile.
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.
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 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.
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.
When Capture One was recently updated to 10.1 they made some significant changes to the way X-Trans files are supported. I have been in a bit of a quandary as to what to do about my Capture One X-Trans guide. I originally wrote this quite some time ago now, and it was several versions ago. I have kept updating it, but it was getting a bit messy. I am planning to do a completely new version, for just 10.1, and structuring the guide differently. However, I didn’t want to leave existing readers hanging either. With that in mind I’ve created a supplement for 10.1 and it is included free with the existing guide.
I’ve been promising this for a little while now, and I’m happy to announce that my guide for Iridient X-Transformer is now available. It took me a bit longer to get it finalised that I had thought because I kept doing different tests and tweaking the results and I also kept tweaking the text till I was happy. Called “Processing Fuji X-Trans Files with Iridient X-Transformer and Lightroom”, This guide is designed to help you understand and get the best results from using Iridient’s X-Transformer Software in Conjunction with Lightroom to process Fuji X-Trans raw files.
While exploring the German Town of Darmstadt, I came across an impressive sight. I was walking out through the town, when I wandered into a large open square with a very unique looking set of concrete structures and an imposing, but starkly beautiful building down the far end of it. I had read about it previously in the guide books, but it was something else to see it in person. It was like something out of a science fiction movie. It was the Darmstadt State Theatre.
