Reviews on gear and software

From MacBook to Windows8 machine

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I guess this title will already have some people questioning my motivation, and over the last few days I’ve had a lot of questions when I posted something online about this “switch” so I thought let’s explain it in a mix of a review and tips/technique blogpost so I can point people towards this post when they ask 🙂

 

Let me start that with I love Apple products.
We own several iPhones, iPads and our studio runs on a few MacPros a MacBook Air, MacBook Retina and iMacs.
According to some we would qualify as Apple Fanboys, however I’ve always said that I just like the products and if something would come up that better suited my needs I would without a doubt start using that products. So let me introduce the replacement of my MacBook Pro Retina 15″….. the Sony Duo 13 i7,8GB,256GB.

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PhotoJoJo cool presents for Photographers

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Small gifts for great photographers by Annewiek Doorhof

 

A few weeks ago I saw an add of PhotoJojo.com (Google knows my interests, mmm). This online webshop sells the most marvellous stupendous outrageous fantatabulous prodigious tremendous photography curiosities on earth. Really these are their own words. They have been mentioned in Scott Kelby’s online show The Grid a few times. So they must be reliable.

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As it is always difficult to buy small presents for the coming holiday seasons, especially for a man who has “everything” he needs, I took a look in this shop. Many of you know Frank is into analogue photography nowadays, or better said this is his analogue revival (we bought a fridge especially for al the analogue stuff, and it’s already filled up), and this webshop offers indeed a lot of great gifts, ranging from cheap to expensive. But most of all (in this case) Photojojo sells a lot of analogue gadgets and has free shipping in the US. Because we planned on doing a workshops with our big “small flash” friends of ExpoImaging in Santa Cruz, I  already earned 12 USD for shipping, having the shipment sent to them (hey we are Dutch after all).

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FujiFilm X-E1 vs Leica M9

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Let me start off by saying that I’m a FujiFilm user, I’m good friends with FujiFilm and I’ve been using all their cameras and own a FujiFilm X-E1. However I also own a Leica R4 with some lenses and I love that camera for analogue, and am also connecting those lenses to my X-E1 and soon Sony A99. In my reviews I however always try to take a 100% neutral view on the products so I have to start by saying that there was NO preference what so ever to start with and the review is 100% my honest opinion.

 

Of course some people will say that you need at least some weeks of experience with a rangefinder before being able to do a comparison, I agree and disagree. Over the years I’ve shot with a lot of different cameras ranging from the Zeiss folding cameras with zonefocus only, Lomo, 35mm ranging from all manual to full auto (ended up with the R4 from Leica and Mamiya 1000S), Medium format and even some box cameras. With digital the list is even longer including all FujiFilm cameras and at the moment I still use the Mamiya RZ67ProII with digital/film back on a regular basis, so I think I can pretty quickly adjust to a new camera and I’m used to doing stuff manually (especially focus). Truth being told a camera can grow on you, the remarks you read in this review are based on the experience I have with different cameras and the way the M9 felt in my hands. On the subject of pictures I can be very very short, they were shot during a small photowalk in Rotterdam lasting less than 1 hour because the time I had with the camera was limited I decided to first get familiar with the camera in the studio and at home and shoot some quick comparison shots during our trip to Rotterdam. Most of the review is based on the 2 days getting familiar with the camera, but I don’t want to bore you with my personal shots of my wife and son 🙂

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Topaz ReStyle

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Today Topaz will be release ReStyle.
Their new plugin is aimed at photographers that are into “tinting” their images. As you probably already know I find this a very vital step in my workflow. At the moment I use mainly Alien Skin Exposure 5 and DxO filmpack for my tinting, but… I have to say Topaz has released (again) something very interesting.

 

ReStyle is a plugin that has not the well known “polaroid” “astia” etc. presets but uses names that actually doesn’t really have any connection with film types. In one way this is a very good idea because to be honest most filters that use film names are in fact also just tints that try to emulate something close to…. and often they don’t succeed 100% which of course is logical because with analogue photography there is a huge difference between the way you develop, the age of the film, the used camera etc. etc.

 

Topaz doesn’t even try to hint at film types and they are 100% aiming towards a total tinting solution.
Now I have to be 100% honest, the first time I played with ReStyle I mailed Topaz that this really didn’t had any attraction to me, the way the tinting was presented, the catagories etc. just doesn’t hit base with me. However a few days later I started playing with it and decided to leave all the canned looks for what they were and just select one that looked OK and just started changing those around a lot, and slowly I started to REALLY enjoy ReStyle, at the moment I actually use it a lot in my workflow. I still use Alien Skin and Film pack (DxO) of course but sometimes you want something a bit different, maybe add some graduation filters, add some different tints etc and I have to be honest ReStyle is HUGELY customizable.

 

As usual with Topaz the pricing is very nice again, the plugin is priced at $59.99 but till the 31th of August when you use the code restyleit you will get a cool discount and get the plugin for only $29.99 (which is a no brainer in my opinion). If you order please support our work and use this link http://www.topazlabs.com/716.html as always I’m not sharing/promoting a product because we use an affiliate code but because I use it myself and I like it 🙂

 

So let’s see some results:
All shots were tinted with ReStyle and sharpened with Clarity (also Topaz), skin was retouched with Clean 3 (also Topaz), so one could say that the whole workflow here was Topaz.

Lenaa Augustus 3 2013 Glamour workshop -33-Edit

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