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Tags: photography | bastibe.de
A review of my experience of the Leica M240 camera| bastibe.de
The RAW photo conversion, retouching, and editing software with AI-powered noise reduction, leading optical corrections, and easy file management.| DxO
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic gives you all the desktop editing tools you need to bring out the best in your photos. Easily organize photos on your desktop and share them in a variety of ways.| www.adobe.com
It's that time of the year again when all image editing programs come out with new versions. This comes at an inopportune time, as I feel restless of late. So, naturally, I had to try them all. Or maybe I just wanted a justification for buying DxO PhotoLab, because people on the internet speak so well of it 🙄. For the following comparison I downloaded trial versions of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 (€155), Capture One 22 (€350 or €220/a), Darktable 4.0 (free), DxO Photolab 6 (€...| bastibe.de
You know what I like to see when I import photos from my Fujifilm camera into Darktable? Each RAF file has tags with the aspect ratio, DR mode, and film simulation, is exposed correctly, cropped correctly, and has the correct film simulation applied. However, that is not the default. Darktable, like most raw developers, is camera-agnostic. agnostic ăg-nŏs′tĭk noun [...] One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something. Which means that Darktable does not know about any Fujifilm-specif...| bastibe.de
A while ago, I bought an RNI film pack for Capture One. That's a set of presets that makes your digital photos look similar to analog film scans. However, since then my other image editor, Darktable just released a new version, I'm now back to using Darktable instead of Capture One, thus without access to those presets. Here's how to export Capture One presets to LUTs, to make them accessable to other programs. The fun thing is, LUTs are just PNG files that contain a table of colors. You know...| bastibe.de
When I bought into the Fuji system, I selected the XF 18‑135 f/3.5‑5.6 R LM OIS WR as my main zoom lens. This is a lens with a very wide focal range, that is commonly called a “travel zoom” because you could travel the world with just this one lens. And indeed I happily did. In 2019, Fujifilm released a second travel zoom lens, the XF 16‑80 f/4 R OIS WR. Ever since, I have wondered how this new 16‑80 compares to my 18‑135. But given that these lenses are somewhat similar, few pe...| bastibe.de
With version 3.0, my favorite photo editing software Darktable started the journey towards a scene-referred editing pipeline. Which means that most edits are no longer bounded between a fixed black zero, and a white one, but can range between zero and infinity, like light itself. This is the norm in video editing and video games, but unique in photo editors at the moment. The scene-referred pipeline has brought changes to pretty much all parts of the editing workflow. I have been frustrated w...| bastibe.de
Some of my photographic lenses are reknown for their outstanding sharpness, others are said to be mediocre. But somehow I never quite saw a big difference in sharpness between them. Do older lenses have less resolution than the newer ones? Can a dedicated prime lens resolve more detail than a multi-purpose zoom lens? Let's find out. These questions recently came to a head for me, in the choice between two compact cameras: A Fujifilm X100T, 16 MP, with a 23 mm lens, and a Ricoh GR III, 24 MP, ...| bastibe.de
About half a year ago, my second child was born, and all that precious free time I had used for photo editing evaporated. So I started looking for faster photo editor, as a temporary replacement for Darktable. Based on my research last time, I chose Capture One. During the last six months, I got to know the program well, and want to share my thoughts on it, and how it compares to Darktable. Let's start with a bit of background about my photography, to put my views into context. I learned phot...| bastibe.de
Most cameras have the option to capture raw images, i.e. un-processed image data right from the image sensor. In theory, these images are pure physical measurements of light, and should therefore be very comparable between cameras. But are they? To investigate, I took a raw picture of a color target with each of my five cameras, and compared their output. Capturing accurate colors is a surprisingly intricate matter, as the color depends on the spectrum of the illumination, the reflective spec...| bastibe.de
A common trope in discussions about cameras on the internet is: “sensor size trumps all”, and as a corollary, “smartphone cameras suck”. Which is obviously false to anyone who has ever taken a good picture on a smartphone (with its tiny sensor). The argument, however, goes like this: Bigger pixels1 can capture a greater dynamic range, and bigger sensors are made from bigger pixels. Therefore, and here is the dangerous leap, cameras with bigger sensors take better pictures. But I curre...| bastibe.de
It bit me again: I got software envy. What if I could develop my pictures faster with a different RAW developer? What if they looked better than they do now? Questions like these keep me up at night. The Problem Choice. There are so many RAW developers out there. And they all have rabid fan bases, and apparently unique rendering. How to choose? Here are my house rules: Must run on Windows or Linux Must run acceptably on my Surface tablet Must run acceptably with files on a network share Must ...| bastibe.de
Darktable is my favorite RAW editor. It's a program for developing digital negatives ("RAW files") to JPEGs. But, I've long struggled with matching the quality of the out-of-camera JPEGs of my Fuji camera. Let me explain. Today's cameras capture an astounding amount of detail, far more than monitors can display or printers can print. And then they crush it down to a printable and viewable JPEG file. But that crushing operation is idiomatic for each camera, irreversible, and not always appropr...| bastibe.de
We went on a once-in-a-lifetime vacation this year. Six weeks in the USA, roving New England in an RV, and going on a helicopter tour around New York City. I have spent months thinking about the perfect camera for going on this trip. I went on several vacations with various permutations of cameras and lenses as a test-run. I data-mined my existing photographs to find the perfect setup through science. And I scoured the internet for untold hours to get it right. Here's what I took with me: Fig...| bastibe.de
So I bought a new camera. Now I need new lenses. In this post, I am looking for a standard zoom lens, i.e. something that covers a bit of wide-angle, all the way through the normal range, up to a bit of telephoto. In Fuji's lineup these needs are met by the XC 15‑45 mm f/3.5‑5.6 OIS PZ (€ 150, 136 g, 4.4 cm) the XC 16‑50 mm f/3.5‑5.6 OIS II (€ 150, 195 g, 6.5 cm) the XF 18‑55 mm f/2.8‑4 R LM OIS (€ 250, 310 g, 7.0 cm) the XF 18‑135 mm f/3.5‑5.6 R LM OIS WR (€ 500, ...| bastibe.de
A common internet wisdom about photography is that bigger camera sensors capture more light. So if you want to work in low light, you need a full frame camera, and a bigger sensor always produces better image quality. I have struggled with this a lot. It just doesn't make sense: Lenses can focus light on any surface, so why should the surface size matter? The answer turns out to be… disappointing. Big-sensor cameras allow for larger (practical) apertures, and lower base ISO. But less noise ...| bastibe.de
Normally, when you take a picture of something too bright, you get bloom: An all-consuming brightness that plunges everything around it into pure whiteness. Ugly. But if the light source is reeeally tiny, and your aperture is teeeensy as well, you get something else: sunstars This particular sunstar has fourteen corners, and therefore comes from a seven-bladed aperture (in my Fuji XC 16-50). It happens because tiny apertures are not perfectly circular any longer, but instead, in my case, sept...| bastibe.de
I am an amateur, as in "lover of", photography. I love cameras as tactile devices, I love how photography makes me consider the world as art, how that little viewfinder can reveal unknown beauty in well-known places or people. And I love looking at my photos, and remembering vacations and meaningful moments. For me, photography is about finding beauty, and capturing memories. However, most of the writing on photography seems to be focused not on my needs, but the needs of professional photogr...| bastibe.de
Download Luminar Neo - photo editing software for PC and Mac! Simple photo editor with AI that helps edit your photos as you imagine it in your eyes| skylum.com
Lightroom lets professional photographers and photo enthusiasts make amazing photos from anywhere through photo editing and organizing.| www.adobe.com