Good news! Luminar support came back to me quickly and it's now up and running. The problem with the email address was that somehow the latter part (@outlook.com) has been changed to @hotmail.com. I'm assuming there is some manual process of registering the licence and someone has selected the wrong extension from a dropdown list. Naturally I would never have been able to work that out for myself.

The other issue of the error message about the database error has disappeared too but they addressed it with this reply:

"Please note: File > Catalog > Open is for opening catalog files, not photos. If you try to open a photo like this, you will receive a Database Opening Failed error."

...which indicates they either didn't read or didn't understand the issue i.e. the software wouldn't install because of this error so I never got a chance to open anything!

So they get a good rating for their response time, not so good rating for their processes and their product knowledge.

Did you miss the " "?

I have an X-T3 and have it configured to use the front command dial to change the aperture (yeah I know that's very old school, and I'm happy to admit I'm still living in the DSLR world). But it works for me.

Overall I'm very happy with this setup but the only complaint I have is to use it in this way I have to set the aperture ring to "A" and it's just too easy to accidentally knock it off this setting.

I've been thinking of putting some sticky tape over it to hold it (or maybe some superglue ). Has anyone else come up with a smarter way to do this?

Thanks!

Some time ago I downloaded a trial copy of this and ran it through its paces on a number of images. This example of a tree beside a fence is a good example of what it can do. I don't claim that this is a great work of art, it's just an example. I did two things to the original, I replaced the sky and I added the birds. Both were a single mouse click (though that's not strictly true as I tried a few different skies before deciding on this one). In adding the sky you might notice it has also removed the electricity high-tension wires that ran through the middle of the original.

This is only one of its party tricks, it's also a reasonable photo editor, allowing you to adjust the many things you might otherwise do in Lightroom or PhotoShop. I think for the price it's a worthwhile acquisition.

That's the good, now for the bad.

Last night I decided to go ahead and purchase it. I paid my money and downloaded the installer. Once I ran this I tried to start the app and I got an error, something about a "database error". I did a bit of Googling and found this appears to be a common complaint (and has been for a couple of years so why is it still happening?). There was a suggestion that the catalog folder should be renamed, then during reinstallation another folder should be specified as the catalog folder. So I did this and progressed past this error. The restarted app then asked me for my email address and validation code, which I provided. It rejected the email address saying it was invalid. I tried a few more times (typing it in and copying and pasting) to no avail. So I decided to raise a support ticket. It didn't take long to realise this wasn't going to be solved quickly. There were lots of people with this problem and no suggestions of how to fix it. And their support website itself stated that due to the "higher than average" number of support calls there may be a significant delay in getting my call attended to. So then I went back to the web page that I downloaded the app from to investigate their "30 day money back guarantee" but of course I can find no way to initiate this.

On this basis I would find it difficult to recommend Luminar 4 (or any of their other products). I'm happy to recant this if the problem is solved in a reasonable amount of time.

YMMV.

(Download)


(Download)

Yes it was Vietnam where the French had a big influence (they colonized it in the 19th century). Baguettes are common. Here in Australia there are lots of bakeries run by Vietnamese immigrants who came here after the Vietnam war. As well as making the best baguettes they have introduced the Banh Mi (or Vietnamese Pork Roll) which is a baguette containing pate, sour pickled daikon and carrot, cilantro, chilis, mayonnaise, sliver of cucumber and meat (often pork). They are delicious!

BTW that meal I photographed was shared between two of us and cost about $4.50 in a nice restaurant with a view of the river. If we ever get the chance to travel internationally again put Vietnam on your list of places to go, it's a photographer's paradise. Here's an example photo that my wife took with her phone outside a market:

(Download)

Hahahaha! Too true!

I agree with this 100%. In fact all my gear has come at zero cost because I buy cheap and sell at a margin. Once you know the value of things this is easy to do.

Definitely the most honest answer here ... :-)

Tokina 100mm f/2.8 Macro is also highly recommended.

+1 for this lens. I bought mine s/h for AUD$250 and am very happy with it. If I was to nitpick I'd complain that it doesn't have its own focussing motor so can't take advantage of the focus stacking feature on the D850 but that's not a feature I use often so I can live with it.

Here's one I convinced...

(Download)

Hahaha! I love your honesty!

Tonight I realised I was running out of disk space so decided to do some photo reorganisation. This involved moving everything that wasn't 'current' to an external storage device thus freeing up room on the primary drive on my laptop. While doing this I came across the photos I took on a holiday to S.E. Asia a couple of years ago. This was when I first started to explore 'serious' photography. Here is a small sample of some of the images I took.

Since I took those photos I've gone from the original camera I had (D3100 with 18-55mm kit lens) to a D850 (with a plethora of f/2.8 and faster lenses) and an X-T3 with another plethora of lenses. If I was to be perfectly honest with myself I'd say I've wasted my money. I reckon I'm perfectly happy (from a technical standpoint) with those photos and I doubt my current equipment could do better.

This is not to say that the acquisition of new camera and lenses doesn't provide its own joys but from a picture taking perspective I doubt it adds much...

Does anyone else ever get this feeling?

(Download)


(Download)


(Download)


(Download)

It surprises me that no one ever seems to be concerned about this, they just abrogate responsibility to 'someone' to provide a reliable service without any knowledge of that company's capability to do that. It wouldn't surprise me at all if those companies then offshored that responsibility to someone else to save money. I often read about security breaches where identity theft on these sorts of sites is common. The first you'll know about a failure is when you've lost your photos. Well I guess they're only photos...