My wife enjoys sunrise high up in the mountains.. and FujiRumors enjoys editing in Capture One Pro
Leaving Lightroom
It was inevitable, because:
I use Lightroom standalone
Adobe now offers only subscription model
Newer cameras are not supported on LR standalone
I don’t want to join a subscription model
So I had to look for alternatives, and although my lovely Fujifilm X-E3 is still supported in Lightroom standalone, I figured out that, since I am going to leave Lightroom anyway at some point, I better do it now.
Luckily we live in times, where there are a lot of valuable alternatives, such as:
And after a summer spent at home hiking my mountains (you can see my wife and me caching sunrise at 8,200 feet here) and editing pictures with a mix of different software, I decided to make Capture One Pro my main software of choice.
I will leave Lightroom, use Capture One Pro 12, but always keep an eye also on Luminar 4, Picktorial and ON1 Photo RAW…. but especially on Luminar 4.
And yes… X-Trans files and Capture One do get along very well :).
The learning curve?
Well, that actually went faster than I’d have expected, as Capture One is just a very good software overall, but there are also lots of quick tip C1 youtube videos you can check out for help.
The book has nothing to do with photography, but in one short passage, the protagonist of the story stumbles on a picture of his parents, that he thinks does not represent, who they really were, and that triggers him to one of the many rants you can read in the book.
Every photograph—whoever took it, whoever is pictured in it—is a gross violation of human dignity, a monstrous falsification of nature, a base insult to humanity. […]Photography is the greatest mockery in the world, the ultimate mockery of the world.
Now, let’s skip Bernhard’s stroke of genius, where, if you read carefully, he basically flips the whole point around, in reality accusing the hypocritical nature of the society he lives in, and hence, photography, by being a “monstrous falsification“, is nothing but a accurate mirror image of the many hypocrisies, falsehoods and contradictions of modern world.
But we’ll talk about it when we meet for a beer one day. I just strongly recommend you the book, and as The Wall Street Journal writes:
Not every raving maniac is a genius. Many are called but few are chosen. It’s a pretty exclusive club, but Bernhard made it. . . . Like Swift, Bernhard writes like a sacred monster. . . . He is a remarkable literary performer: a man who goes to extremes in ways that vivify our sense of human possibilities, however destructive.
I just start with Thomas Bernhard, because of Luminar 4! (yeah, I know, my mind can take strange ways sometimes).
More precisely, your comments about the fake sky replacement.
Some of you think it’s cool, and some think it’s a “monstrous falsification” of reality.
I did stay out of this discussion so far, but now I’d like to say a few words.
If we think back at Thomas Bernhard, the risk of falsification is intrinsic to the art of photography. And maybe, until a certain degree, also inevitable. So what’s the problem of replacing the sky? Is it any different than removing a little mole from a face of a model? Aren’t both falsifications of reality?
Or isn’t removing a mole even worse, since that’s a permanent condition of a person, whereas the sky changes from day to day anyway, so replacing the sky is actually less of a falsification than removing something that won’t ever change?
The point is one, and only one: you are all right!
Those who say they would never replace the sky, since they do not want to keep memories of moments that never happened, and those who decide to combine several real images into one and to make a composite image, just for the sake of creating something beautiful.
It’s one of those topics, where there is no right or wrong. It’s your personal judgment that matters.
The only advice I feel to give is that, if you are going to share a composite image on social media, just add a quick note that this is composite art work. So we can enjoy its beauty, but also know that there is some additional art work behind it.
Sorry for this more philosophical digression. But you know… we are Fujifilm shooters, we don’t just think at specs all the time ;).
And since we speak of Luminar 4, down below, you can see a guy faking the milky way into the sky. And you know what? I am fine with it (as long as I know it’s a composite).
Hamish Gill lost his Fujinon XF23mm f/2 during a hike in the wilderness. And 4 months later, while passing on the same way, he found it again.
But he didn’t expect it work, since the weather was quite bad during these 4 months:
“We had a lot of rain in June through say mid July. Then it was like an oven outside from mid July until last week. Seriously, from mid August until last week it rarely got below 95 degrees with most days getting into the lows 100’s. It would be 90 degrees at 9 PM some days. Then suddenly on Wednesday night the temperature dropped. It was actually in the 30’s yesterday when I found it. We had also heavy thunderstorms Thursday night through Friday AM too.”
So did it work again?
“I am absolutely astounded it still works. The auto focus is like nothing every happened. The aperture and focus ring turn smoothly. There is a slight discoloration on one side on the barrel. It’s the widest part, so it’s probably the part that was touching the ground. The paint is still on the lens too.”
