Capture One Initial Reaction

My first impression of Capture One 11 Pro for Sony is based on about a month’s usage and a lot of time watching YouTube tutorials.

First off, Capture One is a “big boy’s tool”, and at first glance appears much more complex than Lightroom Classic CC let alone the simplified and web-friendly Lightroom CC.  It clearly has tethered operation for studio shooting right at its core and is designed to meet the needs of the professional fashion and beauty photographers who will buy the 100 megapixel Phase One cameras.

Big wins for me so far are:

1. It allows me to shoot tethered with my Sony A99ii (Lightroom only supports Nikon & Canon).  In fact Phase One (maker of Capture One) seems to have a generally more healthy relationship with Sony than Adobe does, which rather pleasantly results in a much lower price point for Sony users
2. It doesn’t crash my current ageing laptop with anything like the regularity that Lightroom Classic CC does
3. It is impressively quick and doesn’t seem the least bit fazed by the A99ii’s 85MB RAW files, which are small by comparison with the files produced by the Phaase One medium format camera the software was built for.

Coming from a background of using Adobe products on a daily basis, Capture One seems to have more in common with Photoshop than it does Lightroom, in particular the use of layers and output in TIFF format.

My current hero, Ted Forbes speaks highly of Capture One vs Lightroom. which alone means it is worth a look, in my opinion.

 

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Learning Macro Photography

Macro photography promises to fulfill one of the objectives of photography as an art form: to see the world in a new way; to show the viewer something new and interesting.

 

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Initial Thoughts on Dog Photography

My lovely dog Harley joins me on 90% of my daily photographic outings.  We combine his exercise with my deliberate practice of the art of photography, which means that Harley is amongst that small set of dogs that understands the command: “Get out of shot”.

When the scene would benefit aesthetically from a man in a bright red ski jacket positioned on the thirds, I have learned that a dog for him to be walking, justifies his presence artistically, and in any case is impossible to avoid.  Increasingly, Harley is becoming the subject of my images, and I am learning the challenges of photographing a very black and very white dog.  He will “stay” and look in my direction when called, and we are currently working on his looking interested whilst doing so.

Although many of my images are labelled something like, “Collie in Woods”, the canine aficionado will spot that Harley’s no pedigree.  He was a rescue from Battersea Dogs Home where be was billed as a “Sprollie”, i.e., half springer, half collie which is apparently a very fashionable cross.  Subsequent DNA analysis revealed that he’s actually only 3/8 collie, a quarter greyhound a quarter saluki and one eight “undetermined”, politley a “lurcher”, less politely “mongral”.  In any case delightful.

This is definitely a post that I expect to revisit in the future. So, if you have any ideas or thoughts, please post comments below.

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Purpose of a Defined Post-Processing Workflow

I firmly believe that having a plan, or defined workflow, for post-processing leads to huge efficiency gains and better images, even if you don’t stuck to it.

I’m starting with RAW images straight from the camera’s memory card.  I import these into Lightroom (in my case Classic CC) where I do the bulk on the selection and processing; final tweaks I do in Photoshop CC.

There are some steps in the process that are more applicable to different styles of photography than others, i.e., portrait, Landscape, Macro, etc.  My familiarity, is greatest with Landscape photography at present, so I will inevitably lean in this direction, but will add sections relevant to other styles, to the extent that I can.

I’m a PC user (sorry), so if you need to translate to Mac: <CTRL> = <cmnd>, and “right click” = who knows!  But everything else should be the same, and certainly the overall principles apply.

12 1/2 Steps.

This is a post that I particularly expect to revisit in the future. So, if you have any ideas or thoughts, please post comments below.

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Tips and Tricks for Photographing Parkrun and other Running Events

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As I say in my profile, I’m not a complete beginner, I’ve been photographing the runners at the Black Park Parkrun on the second Saturday of odd months for long enough to have received my “25 Volunteer” t-shirt a while ago.

This post covers some of the tips I’ve picked up on the way, including much that I have learnt from George Mardall (the main Black Park Parkrun photographer).

Parkrun is a fantastic institution that is encouraging hundreds of thousands of medium fitness people to get out of bed on a Saturday morning and do something great for themselves.  I am very proud of even the tiny level of support I can give it.

This is not a “know everything” post.  I intent to come back to it in the future, with some hopefully major improvements.

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