Photo 150 - a yearlong photo challenge

BTW, nice to see Dyxum old timers posting again! We were all here during the big transition from film to digital to waiting for Minolta, Konica-Minolta to launch a DSLR. The Dyxum Postcard Exchange has been my primary reason to come back, along with some sporadic participation in Week 50mm, but it's nice that this yearlong challenge will keep me engaged here. Dyxum is definitely one of the more chill corners of the Interwebs. It's really noisy out there!! Ha.

ADub128 wrote: Yes, Lightroom is a sticky app for sure. At least there are both Windows and Mac versions. At roughly US$10/month it's not bad. I wonder what monthly fee would make me switch? In the old days, film costs plus processing was higher than this, right? Right now, my biggest LR peeve is that I have to login each time I fire it up, or at least it feels this way. ....

The price point is only part of the thing here. But, MS Office is about $5/mo and offers significantly more 'things' than LR. LR is a one trick pony.

MS gets most of their income from the enterprise, but suffered from a lot of illegal trade with people swapping copies of office at home. Their solution vs the old price of the full version of Office is remarkable.

A Pro photographer - someone earning good bank from their camera - could be delighted with the $10/mo option. Version updates of LR and PS used to be eye watering! Having that spread out and having the update at 'no extra' is a nice idea. Except when Adobe break something or make their product even slower. In which case, um, tough!

I personally used PS Elements (perfectly good enough) and have used LR since v1. I re-bought PS Elements every 3-4 versions/year and LR every other version. But now (LR specifically) I am not allowed to do that - I must pay the rent. Or leave. Moving away from LR (all my digital files since 2005-2015) and all the edits is painful. But it is a lesson learned. I'm now considering not even using a Raw app at all. Just keeping: Raw file and a destructive TIFF to edit in 'whichever photo app' I chose. My Archive Project will help me decide. I liked using LR (v3 and v4, when it was actually good). So I'm sure I'll enjoy Capture One ... just not convinced I need a raw editor (I don't do batch edits though).

ADub128 wrote: Yes, Lightroom is a sticky app for sure. At least there are both Windows and Mac versions. At roughly US$10/month it's not bad. I wonder what monthly fee would make me switch?

The thing that made me switch was getting the a7Riii last year, whose raw files LR5.7 won't process. I got C1 (just for Sony) when it went on sale during Back Friday. It wasn't really much different from just a 12 month subscription to LR. It also seems to handle Sony colours really well, and well, I also like the layer function it has.

I got ACDsee home studio as a trial (the duplicate finder is wonderful) and then they had a NY sale so I got it. It may be cumbersome running 2 programs rather than one, but one specialised for photo management and one for processing does have some synergies. Being able to export a batch of selected pics from ACDsee to C1 is not really a big deal.

One - positive - I forget on the Adobe situation. While I've used PhotoShop proper (20 years ago) at my dad's place. I've only ever wanted or needed Lite. And I've used Lite (later renamed to Elements) since version 1.

I personally have no need for the extra things that are inside PhotoShop (just like most people use about 5% of what Excel can do) ... but the Adobe Rental Agreement does provide you with the full version of PhotoShop. And that is something that I can see being a stretch for the hobby photographer as a one off purchase.

ADub128 wrote: I get access to Premiere Rush too, for video editing. Yet another app that I don't crack open. I'd like to get into more video, but the learning curve is too steep at the moment.

That's a whole another can of worms! Why are my hobbies always the expensive ones?

I thought I'd give my macro lens (Sony FE 90mm f2.8 Macro G OSS) a try as a portrait lens, as it is a medium tele prime and I've already set up lights and backdrop in the garage. My assistant (SWMBO) was tied up with an online bridge competition so I tried to encourage Ollie and Rosie to sit for me by myself!

There isn't a lot of room and they are big dogs so it was a disaster. They would sit next to each other okay but as soon as I backed off to take the shot they would join me, for a treat! In desperation I managed to fire of one in focus image (animal eye AF is good, but not that good) before Rosie was on me to give me a good licking.

Please accept this as my feeble excuse for this week's Project 1 shot.

When the ring flash turns up I hope to focus ( ) on real macro images, and even try some image stacking

dCap wrote: Having never actually installed Capture One - I'd not realized that there is a Sony flavor and then a FujiFilm flavor (which I'd need for like one whole month of shooting!)

Fwiw, you can get the C1 'all camera' version. Their pricing strategy (discounts for single brands) means they are more attractive to those of us who shoot one system.