Photography

I think Cobalt Image may have taken away my last excuse for working on a collection of the last few years’ work. DNGs I shot with the Q2 and RAFs from the X-Pro3, X100V, and X-T4 all fit with each other now. I went on a brief “use it for everything!” over the past day, trying it out on a little of everything from the past few years. This afternoon I took a step back and realized I want to preserve a record of what I’ve been up to with my edits as much as my subjects, so I’m grateful Lightroom has a versions feature: As I pick things for the collection, I can save a snapshot of my favorite edit up to now, then make a new proof for a collection using Cobalt. ...

I took my iPhone 13 Pro along as my sole camera for a quick camping trip to Vernonia. I’ve only had the phone for a week and was pretty excited about its new RAW format. I like the images I get out of it, but in a qualified sort of way that I’ve felt about iPhone photos for a little while now: Computational photography is a wonder that can do some amazing things. I have to do a lot less work to get a nice image out of an iPhone in weird lighting conditions than I do with one of my Fujifilm cameras, especially when dynamic range is challenging. ...

Once we recognize that all things are impermanent, we have no problem enjoying them.

This week was packed and long in a way I haven’t had to deal with in a while. One day started at 7a and went to 10p, schedule filled the entire time. Another went from 8a to 11p, with a 20 minute break that went to someone else’s problem. Yesterday was a mere “start at 8:00, go to 5:30” day, but the cumulative sleep loss and churn of the week made it a day to be gotten through, not won, punctuated by doubling back on things that should have been handled but simply had not been. ...

When I first got the X-Pro3, I wondered if I was going to have that nagging “oh, this wasn’t the right thing” feeling I’ve had over the years when a camera doesn’t quite click with me. Back in my point-and-shoot days, it was with Canon’s followup to one of the Powershot S-series. In my early dSLR days, it was Pentax’s followup to the K10D, and then the Nikon 5000. Back on the point-and-shoot side, it took about a week to decide the Fuji XF10 was largely a dud. ...

When I was in the market for a better-than-high-end-of-the-low-end camera a few years ago, I glanced briefly at the Fujifilm X-Pro2. I’d been shooting with the X100S for a few years and had come to really enjoy the rangefinder feel and I appreciated the hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder. I ended up with an X-T2 instead, and the decider was pretty much the tilting LCD: The X-Pro2 didn’t have one, and I appreciate being able to get down kind of low to photograph a subject, or shoot from the hip on the street. ...

I still hear people skeptically asking “did you have to touch it up in Photoshop?” as if the purity of the image has somehow been diluted. As someone who came up in film, the question never made sense to me. This is what people did before there was Photoshop. https://t.co/Uz7avrBQmk — Mike Hall (@pdxmph) January 19, 2018 Maybe that was a little disingenuous, because I do understand the question. As someone replied to me, there’s Photoshop and then there’s Photoshop. There’s a picture that starts from a good place and ends up, with some digital darkroom work, in a much better place; and then there are pictures that start from all kinds of places and end up in a really bad place. And some people just don’t like photographs to not be “real,” for a definition of real I would be able to understand, even if I didn’t agree with it. ...

A while back I found a really interesting blog post by Peter Evans on using Fujifilm film simulations to emulate the look of famous photographers. It was interesting as a study in using digital technology to reconstruct some of the elements of each photographer’s style, but also because it helped my understanding of the highlight and shadow tone settings gel. The film simulations are one of my favorite parts of shooting with my Fujifilm cameras, and I love the way the highlight and shadow tone settings can dramatically affect the mood of a photo without needing to do much in Lightroom. ...

I promised an email to a friend about my Fujifilm X-mount lenses, but figured I might as well blog about them and include a few samples. Prior to buying an X-T2, I usually had a general-purpose zoom of some kind (18-200mm) plus a prime or two (35 or 50mm) . My couple of years with a Fujifilm X100S got me back in a prime lens mood, and most days when I’m picking something to walk around with, I’ll go with a prime. I have a single zoom, and when I’m carrying a bag with a few lenses in it, it’s usually one of them. ...