Still I have some images from the last year I wanted to share to continue my streak of taking part in Jim Goldsteins Blog Project. You can find all of my entries going back to 2008 right here on my blog.

I hope that I can take more photos again next year.

This year I took a lot of images early in the year but then I didn’t get many chances to go out and take photos besides a short vacation in November. Due to this most of my favourite images are from two days in March… My absolute favourite image has to be the one you can see above – I just love the effect the lights were causing with the statue as an unintended highlight of the lighting.

The rest of my best of you can find below – and more images in the gallery section.

Have a look yourself:

Getting rid of Lightroom

So during a “let’s be more frugal” phase in the summer I decided to cancel Lightroom – until I found out that while I paid for it monthly, it is a yearly contract and if you want to cancel sooner you will have to pay half the sum the rest of that year would cost you. So I decided to keep Lightroom around till that year ended, which it did in November. This, coincidentally, was just after they announced the changes to Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic – which is another change I understand from their perspective but that doesn’t make sense for me personally (I feel like the writing is on the wall for it to be all cloud based and I cannot justify the costs of keeping my 2 TB library in the cloud).

As a side note: I am focusing on Lightroom here because it is very seldom I do extensive enough editing that Photoshop comes into the equation at all.

I prepared for the cancellation by exporting all of my edited photos to JPG files and saving all the meta-data I had added to sidecar files for the RAW images and saved them to the jpgs for those files. This way, hopefully, when I find a new home for my photo library I won’t have to re-do everything again. Hopefully this time it will work smoother than when I had do abandon Aperture in 2015.

Life after Lightroom

Shortly before my subscription ran out, a blog post appeared on Lightroom Killer Tips about what happens if you cancel your Lightroom CC subscription and turns out: it leaves the Library Module completely functional! It just disables the Develop module and all of the other modules. Which is interesting to me and gives me an out if I don’t find any app I truly like for library management (my hope, really, is the Library module being teased for Luminar in 2018).

Since the stars were truly all aligning for this switch, also around the same time Thomas Fitzgerald added a blog post on his blog about the current state of Lightroom alternatives. This blog post was of interest to me since a) as we have established, I’ve wanted to jump ship and b) he is also shooting Fuji which is an issue with some RAW converters. He lists all apps by which part of the Lightroom workflow they can cover and gives recommendations on which he prefers.

For me it was clear that I would try out different apps once I actually took some photos again. This happened over the Christmas break when I went to the local botanical garden to see their winter lights. So off I went to download Irident Developer, Capture One Pro, and One1 RAW – in addition I already own Affinity Photo, RAWPower and Luminar. I didn’t consider the  Photos app by Apple for this because the reasons I didn’t switch to it when Aperture was abandoned still stand – it just isn’t made for a library this large.

The test image comparison

For a short first, let’s see what they can do, I used one image of the ones I had taken to see and compare the results of a very quick, no more than five minutes, edit. I know that the image isn’t super sharp but I felt it was a good extreme case image with the powerful violett light and the steel and glass structure over it. So this is why I chose this image. All images were exported from their app and then I re-sized them using Preview on the Mac to be an even 1,200px wide.

Fuji JPG out of camera with Velvia profile applied

Capture One Raw version

On1 RAW version

RAWPower version

Irident Version

Luminar Version

First impressions

I’ve only opened them up so far and taken a first look at how they behave with one image so take these observations as very early first impressions:

• Affinity Photos RAW Engine and that image didn’t really want to work together. The colors got all mushed up. But Affinity to me is more of a Photoshop alternative so it gets a pass here.
• RAWPower is pretty awesome but is only for processing the files and doesn’t have any library functionality at all
• Luminar did okay but it didn’t blow me away for this.
• Irident Developer has made a name for itself with Fuji-Shooters because their RAW support is really good. The app isn’t very good looking but gets the job done, what it is missing though is true library management (you can open a folder of images at once though and sort it)
• Capture One is not a good looking app but it worked pretty well for me in my quick tests. Like any app of its calibre there is a steep learning curve to get to know all buttons and options
• One1 Raw felt a bit more user friendly to me – though I don’t like the result I got as much as I did the Capture one version.

My current plan is to test both Capture One and One1 Raw further to see which one I like better and which fits my workflow better and then probably buy one or the other. If both don’t make the cut, I’ll go with Irident Developer because it can be a good go in between until hopefully better library management options emerge.

You can find my favourites below and in the corresponding gallery. Overall I have to say the photos from the night show in Disneyland have to be my favourite. We got lucky with our position so that I was able to take a lot of great photos of the illuminations.

Below you find my selections of favourites (as always I had a hard time deciding) and you can also click through here to go to the gallery of the images.

This weekend I wanted to try something different: my trusty Fuji X-Pro2 and shooting only with my 35mm lens. The Fuji offers several ‘film simulations’ that mirror analog Fuji films in the digital world. With the X-Pro2 Fuji shipped the absolutely beautiful ‘Arcos’ simulation which is a very moody b&w film. So I decided to also only use that simulation for the jpgs (I was shooting RAW+Jpeg but the camera only showed me the b&w).  Additionally, I also decided to use the optical viewfinder and not the digital viewfinder (I had that small in a corner though, which was awesome).

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R: 35 mm with ¹⁄₁₈₀ sec at f/1,6 with ISO200

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R: 35 mm with ¹⁄₁₈₀ sec at f/1,6 with ISO200

With this setup I decided on going to one of the main cemeteries in Frankfurt which still have some graves dating back to the 19th century and see what would happen.

It was interesting to shoot only at 35mm. Most of the time when I am not doing Macro photography or animals I will be using a wide angle lens so for a while in the beginning I was always too close to the subject and had to move back to get the view that I was looking for. But I got into the groove of it relatively quickly.

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R: 35 mm with ¹⁄₇₅₀₀ sec at f/1,4 with ISO200

Another issue crept up due to the b&w and shooting jpg directly: it was super sunny and most of the statues were aged copper, so almost black. I had to do a lot of exposure correction to get the faces to show any details. But I found it interesting since usually it would be something I’ll fix back at the computer but with shooting straight to jpg I wanted to do it in shot.

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R: 35 mm with ¹⁄₄₂₀ sec at f/9,0 with ISO400

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R: 35 mm with ¹⁄₄₂₀ sec at f/5,6 with ISO400

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R: 35 mm with ¹⁄₂₁₀ sec at f/5,6 with ISO400

The b&w also means that you have to think in b&w – which is harder than it sounds at first blush. If you have a creme colored statue with green foliage behind it, in color there is no issue at all. Go to b&w and suddenly the contrast between the two starts to fade and the statue isn’t as pronounced as you would see it in color. This opens up a lot of new ways to think about framing and what is a fitting background (which to me is often just as important as the subject).

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R: 35 mm with ¹⁄₁₈₀ sec at f/4,5 with ISO400

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R: 35 mm with ¹⁄₁₈₀ sec at f/4,5 with ISO400

In the end it was a very interesting experiment because it makes you think about framing a lot more. You have to deal with the limitations you have set for yourself and think about their impact on your shooting. At least for me it made me much more aware of what I was doing and feel much closer to my camera and the output. Definitely an experiment I’m going to try again at some point!
You can find the whole gallery here.

A week before launch my local photo shop had a day where they had a guy from Fuji in with the new gear they announced in January (there is also an update to the X-E2 and the new X70). I decided to head there to have a first look at the camera but also to see the Fujinon 100-400mm lens in person. This is a pretty huge lens that makes the camera look hilariously small and it clocks in at almost 1400gramm in weight. In addition to the camera and lenses the Fuji guy had brought some images he had taken with the camera and lens in the weeks prior to show what is possible. I loved how they looked but I unfortunately also loved the versatility of the lens. So with my bank account screaming I also ordered the lens…

Front and back view of the new X-Pro2. Image courtesy of Fujifilm

The Fujinon 100-400mm connected to the Fuji X-T1. Image courtesy of Fujifilm

Last week both of them arrived and I decided to take them out to the zoo on Saturday morning (which is a way better time than Sundays – less crowded). A lot of the controls of the X-Pro2 are very similar to those on the X-E2 that I have become used to but they have moved all of them to the right side of the display and also added a joystick like Canon has on some of their DSLRs. All of this made working with the camera a very similar experience which was very helpful. Truly new for me is the ability to also change the ISO setting with a wheel at the top of the camera. Fuji took a page out of the retro book here with a combined shutter speed and ISO dial like some cameras in the 70s had. You pull up the wheel to change the ISO setting and push in a button to move the shutter speed. This is taking some getting used to but I’ve already become better at it and soon it will be very easy to do, I’m sure. Additionally, the auto-focus is a lot faster than before which is excellent and due to the new processor the whole camera is much speedier.

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR: 280.4 mm with ¹⁄₆₀ sec at f/5,2 with ISO250

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR: 234.8 mm with ¹⁄₁₂₅ sec at f/5,0 with ISO400

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR: 261.2 mm with ¹⁄₆₀ sec at f/5,0 with ISO1600

More of a new experience was the lens. As I’ve stated before this thing is huge! Once more I was glad that years ago I switched from the camera strap that comes in the box to a sling by black rapid. This means that while walking the camera and lens will be resting on your hip and along your leg, making it a much easier proposition. It also helps greatly with getting the weight off your neck. That being said, handling the lens is still getting some getting used to because it is big and not really something you can easily handle when changing settings when you have the camera pressed to your nose. But the picture results absolutely speak for themselves here. They are very sharp and the image stabilizer works great os that I got sharp shots even at the long end of the length when shooting upwards (which my shoulders and arms greatly complained about).

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with Touit 2.8/50M: 50 mm with ¹⁄₆₀ sec at f/2,8 with ISO2000

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR: 234.8 mm with ¹⁄₁₂₅ sec at f/5,0 with ISO200

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR: 100 mm with ¹⁄₄₀ sec at f/4,5 with ISO3200

The second test was yesterday: This week there are light sculptures all over Frankfurt. This of course is the perfect playground to take the camera out for more experimentations. I really enjoyed handling the camera with the much more compact 10-20mm lens. Here I could really test changing settings with one hand while still looking through the view finder. It worked great. I also did some testing with high ISO. Fuji has put an emphasis on great performance with high ISO values and it really shows. I’ve set my Auto-ISO setting now to 200-3,200 and even went up higher yesterday when I wanted to handhold a shot that I wouldn’t have been able to get with the tripod I was carrying. The camera didn’t break a sweat and the noise was absolutely fine and Lightroom did a great job reducing it, too.

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF10-24mmF4 R OIS: 24 mm with 0,5 sec at f/14 with ISO5000

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF10-24mmF4 R OIS: 18.2 mm with 30,0 sec at f/10 with ISO200

FujiFilm X-Pro2 with XF10-24mmF4 R OIS: 10 mm with 2,0 sec at f/8,0 with ISO200

Lightroom is an issue still though. As I said, the camera came out this month and Lightroom already supports the RAW files from it but I feel like they still need work. Some of the details in the areas that aren’t sharp look very mushy to me. Unfortunately Apple hasn’t shipped support for the files yet so I cannot compare with that but I did compare it with the RAW converter that Fuji ships and the details were better there so I hope Adobe will solve this soon, too.

I’m sure I’ll write a bunch more about the camera and what I like and dislike about it soon but for now I leave you with the galleries of images from the zoo and the Luminale.