The LX100 is a great little camera, and capable of taking excellent sharp images.
The only advice that I would give is to play around with the customisable image settings. Nearly everyone agrees that the out-of-the -box noise reduction setting on this camera is way too aggressive, resulting in soft mushy images which can initially look as if there's something wrong with the camera! Do an internet search for alternative settings for this camera, and it will make a huge difference to the image quality.
I bet at least part of the reason for Adobe moving to a cloud-based system was to cut down on piracy. I seem to recall a few years ago a spokesman for Adobe saying that they estimated that about three out of five copies of Photoshop in use were unlicensed. Certainly, if you ever visited Moscow six or seven years ago, many a street corner would have a stall selling pirated copies of the latest version of Photoshop (and many other items of expensive software) for the equivalent of about £4 or £5 - complete with a "crack" to allow the program to be installed and run independently of a legal licence, and without the need to log-in to the Adobe website. At a time when the most comprehensive licensed versions of Photoshop were selling for several hundred pounds each, the loss of revenue for Adobe must have been massive. Almost every adolescent seemed to have a pirated copy of Photoshop installed on his/her PC. Who can blame Adobe for switching to a more secure system of licensing their products?
DXO Optics Pro 9 is being offered as a free download at the moment:
www.techno360.in/dxo-optics-pro-free.
While DXO not a complete editing program, it does a great job on RAW files and is worth using in conjunction with any of the regular photo editors. Version 9 is not the most recent version, but it's free at the moment and definitely worth having!
Its normally quite an expensive program.
Isn't there a rule on ebay about not editing shots?
The best way I've found is to use a table pushed up against a well lit wall, with the white side of a length of Christmas or birthday wrapping paper attached at the top edge to the wall, and draped down in a gentle curve over the top of the table. Sit the items that you wish to photograph on the paper just where it curves over the table-top. This will give a nice white seamless background to the photograph. If the object is black (such as most camera bodies) make sure that you have wiped or blown every last speck of dust off the surface, then smooth and peel off the adhesive side of a strip of Sellotape all over the glass surface of the LCD display in order to leave it pristine and sparkling (this is a really good tip!). Take your photographs using a camera on a tripod without flash, in order to avoid harsh shadows. I think it helps to slightly under-expose your images to ensure that the blacks are a really deep glossy black, and to minimise evidence of specs of dust and fingerprints.
bsprague wrote:
If you want to do it without liquids, look at LensPen.
I completely agree about using LensPen rather than liquid cleaners or wipes It has a soft activated charcoal felt pad (at least I think that's what it is!) at one end and a brush at the other. You remove superficial dust with the brush first, and then lightly rub the greasy fingerprint with the felt pad - and bingo the finger print is gone! Its entirely lifted off, and not just smeared around like so many cleaners do. In my experience it leaves the lens surface absolutely sparkling, without a trace of the offending fingerprint. Much, much better than cleaning fluids or wipes, and completely safe for coated camera lenses. Can't recommend it enough.
Have you checked that the camera settings are not accidentally locked in "macro" mode. I know it sounds ridiculous, but its happened to me a couple of times before realised what was going on, and can be quite easily overlooked.
Inexplicably blurry and out-of-focus images are the result.
Equipment has not been mentioned so far, but make sure that you know your own camera inside out. Its no good having to flip through camera menus when fleeting key moments are passing by. Smiles fade very quickly if the photographer has to fiddle about with his camera.
Its worth going to the wedding venue in advance if possible, and working out where and how to get the most interesting shots and what exposure/flash settings you're going to need. Always shoot RAW so that you have some latitude to correct exposure problems in PP. A couple of shots taken of a color calibration card (or at least a calibrated grey card) immediately before or after shooting at planned sites will enable you to get the colors bang-on in PP for printing.
Don't be afraid to take control of the situation with conventionally posed wedding photographs. Instruct people in no uncertain terms where you want them to stand in order to get the best shots. Remember there will be lots of guests with smart phones pushing in front of you to get their own photos. In fact professional wedding photographers often use the trick of getting their assistant to stand prominently in the field of view (pretending to arrange the bride's train or similar) until the last moment, as a "spoiler" to frustrate wedding guests own photos!
Lastly, if you're making prints (or having prints made for you) get them done quickly. Hundreds of guests' blurry smart-phone shots will be out on Facebook before the wedding's even finished. Interest in even beautifully taken professional shots will have waned somewhat after a couple of weeks!
It seems to me that there is a misunderstanding about the term "grey market". As I recall, the term was introduced to describe goods that were purchased wholesale in one country (where the items are relatively cheap) and sold for a profit in a second country by an unofficial importer (where the same items are more expensive). If the camera has been sold by an officially registered dealer in Germany, and you have the receipt, then it is definitely not a grey import.
Grey importers usually offer their own dubious warranty, which may not be worth the paper its printed on!
Hi jcboy3. When you say that you've added "the rear UV filter" to the Panasonic7-14 lens, does that mean that there's a custom rear filter available for this lens now? I remember reading I the past that some people using this lens with Olympus cameras had made their own rear mounting adapters to do this. Are there now filter adapters commercially available for this purpose?
Have a look at the relatively new Olympus Pen-F (micro four-thirds). Its a beautifully made camera with great image quality. Its fast and light with some interesting new features - a real pleasure to use!
No one's mentioned varifocals! I've been using these with computer screens for years now, without any problems.
I find that they're OK with most camera viewfinders too - once you get accustomed to them.
My guess is that virtual reality is going to take the world by storm in a year or two, and heaven knows how that will affect the sales of conventional cameras. From what I've read, Lytro are already going down this path, and I expect that future developments in VR will have a dramatic effect on the whole direction of photography.
Has no-one else got a Fuji X100T? It has an optional digital split-screen for manual focussing. I don't find it particularly useful or accurate - but its there never-the- less!