Lesson learned. About a year ago, I thought that my SmugMug subscription had become too expensive so I cancelled it. Spent a lot of time trying to find a solution that would be cheaper, more sustainable (regarding my long term economy), and make my life easier. Tried a few solutions, looked at even more - but the solution I come up was quite frail and required different parts/tools. End result was that I was uploading less photos, and it felt like too much work every time I needed to share something.

Recently, I learned a few things about what it going to happen the next 12 months and I realized that my current way of handling things wouldn’t work. It’s simply too fragmented and I spent too much time agonizing over how I should do things. And doing them also took too much time … time I rather spend on taking/editing photos and thinking about how I can improve.

So yes, I’m back at SmugMug and I already feel more relaxed. Expensive? Yep! Worth it: Well, I feel calmer and I’ve shared more photos the last few days than the last 9 months, so yep.

I can’t help being impressed by the “new” (this camera was released in 2018) camera sensors. I was out on the ice today, sunny and … well, lack of light wasn’t a problem. I wanted to take a photo of Albus and this is what I see in the viewfinder

No surprise, it was really bright and I took the photo towards the sun. I hoped that I would be able to create a cool silhouette photo from it … but when I came home I pressed “Auto” in Lightroom and …

I’m amazed that the sensors are able to handle lighting conditions like this so well.

Trying out my new wide-angle lens

What a chunk of glass. I bought an old secondhand wide angle zoom 14-24/2.8 (full frame), I’m going to be careful so I don’t topple over 😄

I wonder if Adobe has decided that’s time to kill Lightroom Classic. There are several bloggers/youtubers who suddenly are saying that they are only using Lightroom “cloudy” now.

I’m getting more and more impressed by Ricoh GR IIIx. Today, I got the idea to try to use it for sports photography … indoors … and I’m impressed. Sure, I used a flash but still.

The combo of a GR IIIx and FlashQ20ii is a small and very powerful combo.

I’ve had a number of surprises lately, most of them have been “Ohh no, even more problems/complications that needs to be solved”, but yesterday I got a nice surprise.

The last few days I’ve seen posters all over, they announced a martial arts competition that will be held in a few weeks. The poster had a nice design and in addition to the usual info (when/where/etc) there was a nice action photo that showed what it was all about. I really liked the editing of the photo and started to wonder if I could do the same type of editing to one of my photos - I had been photographing the competition last year. So yesterday evening I opened Lightroom and started to search for a photo to try this style on … and after a minute I realized that it was I who had taken the photo on the poster 😋. Since I don’t have the poster at home I can’t be 100% sure but just 99% sure. So the answer was “Yes”, this kind of editing works on my photos 😁.

I usually remember or recognize photos I’ve taken, but this was edited (background removed) and I probably took around 750-1500 in two hours at this event, so I think I have a good excuse for not remembering it.

(and yes, I’ve had given them my photos to be used freely … you have to help other martial arts clubs)

Hmpf, I had decided that I wouldn’t but any new photo gear this year, but during the weekend I had several “interesting” experiences with the Tamron 70-200/2.8 F-mount that I use with an adapter on my Z7. Let me put is this way: angry, missed shots, and elevated blood pressure. And I have two similar events scheduled in the future … so here I sit with the cursor hovering over the “buy” button for a new lens.

Using this F-mount tele zoom on my Z mount camera using an adapter isn’t without problems. Lots of “lockups” (camera needs to be restarted), problems with auto focus (total lack of focus, hunting for focus, no auto focus at all), and various other things. This isn’t good when doing sport photography.

I see a new native Z mount tele zoom in my near future.

Wise words

“The best bit about being a photographer is the time between taking a photo and seeing it on the computer, because there’s still hope.”

Steve Bennett

That came as a bit of a surprise. I spent a few minutes playing with On1 Photo Raw and the first impression was “quite nice”. It felt “light” compared to LR, but since I’ve been using LR for many years now I feel a bit awkward but still. I need to play more with this. Compared to LR, On1 Photo Raw feels more like a cross-plattform app that doesn’t really behave like a macOS app. But it definitely felt more modern and “slicker” than both LR and LR Classic.

Need to play more with it … and watch a few tutorials.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day … no, I’m not talking about the Apple event thingy (it will be a couple of years before I’ll upgrade my iPhone 11). The interesting thing will be to see if Panasonic is going to release the Lumix G9 II - and what the price will be.

Just trying to understand the properties of this lens/camera combo

One of the things I appreciate with the GR IIIx is that the RAW-files are more or less exactly the colors I see. They are so much closer to my reality than any other camera I’ve tried.

Sigh, I’ve started to see how people are posting AI generated photos claiming they are real photos. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I would be very interested in an updated version of the Lumix GM5.

I haven’t written about The Photowalk podcast for a while … so it’s time to promote it again. Are you interested in photography? Are you mostly interested in the photos, the stories behind the photos, the photographers? Then I really recommend that head over to The Photowalk web … read more

Playing around with shadows

And depth of field

Just for fun while waiting for different stuff

Another experiment in editing, this time I tried to exaggerate the colors and texture. It could have been a pretty OK photo if the tree had been more separated from the forest in the background and the tree to the right hadn’t been in the picture. Well, I’ll learn … hopefully.

A little experiment in editing and color grading, I wanted to see if I could the it to look like some post-apocalyptic photo but failed. The are too many lights, the walls are too clean, etc.