Part 2: Lightroom Alternatives - An Intro to ON1 Photo

A look at the pros and cons of RAW converters

By johnhilvert in Articles and Tips on Jan 30, 2018

John Hilvert continues his flirtation with a Lightroom alternative. Three guidelines must be followed before choosing an alternative. He stresses the importance of having a safety net and embracing a strategy to strengthen a successful migration to sidestep heartaches and confusions learning to use a new raw editor.

He offers great reasons to switch, notwithstanding two irritating gotchas for Pentax users.

Flirting with RAW editors after Lightroom

Time to change or chill?

By johnhilvert in Articles and Tips on Jan 8, 2018

John Hilvert commences his series on the ups and downs of finding viable post-processing alternatives to Lightroom. He likes ON1 Photo Raw 2018 but inertia has its merits along with a dozen other offerings. Things seemed easier when it was just a choice between film-processors, D-76, Dektol or Rodinal.

How to Modify the DA* 60-250mm F4 for Full Frame

By bdery in Articles and Tips on Nov 5, 2017

Pentax’s K-mount has one of the most comprehensive APS-C lens lineups on the market. On the other hand, the digital-era full frame line-up is growing but still small. With the release of the Pentax K-1, many users have taken to testing APS-C lenses to see if they can, in fact, be used on full frame.

With its zoom range, fixed aperture and excellent image quality, the Pentax DA* 60-250mm F4 is a lens that many photographers would have liked to see working on full frame. Sadly, using it in full frame mode without modification leads to dark corners at the wide end and fully black corners at the tele end, as you can see here.

The culprit is a flange on the rear baffle of the lens. Easily accessible, this baffle can be removed, modified or replaced to allow full frame operation.

In this article, we present a step-by-step method to modify the lens, as well as various options to replace the baffle. We also test thoroughly the lens’s optical performance after the modification to evaluate the impact of the change.

Is the modification worth it? Can the 60-250mm be used reliably in full frame mode? Read on to find out!

Modifying the DA* 60-250mm F4 for Full Frame

Mobile Photo Editing: Snapseed for Beginners

User friendly photo-editing app for your phone or tablet

By Jeff Lopez in Articles and Tips on Oct 5, 2017

Snapseed is a user friendly photo-editing application currently developed by Google. It has a very comprehensive layout, which at first handles very differently to other popular photo editing apps, but in time you will probably begin to like it a lot. Although it's not up to the magical prowesses of desktop imaging editors, like Adobe Lightroom and CaptureOne, it certainly holds up it own in terms of versatility and power to these, and I would say it is the best mobile photography editor in Google Play. This article does not pretend to be a full tutorial, it is mostly focused on a beginner's approach to it, yet there will be some examples that explore some really good "pro" wise features that will be useful as we learn to use it. Before anything, I must mention that this review is based on the Snapseed Android version, (Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Android 6) and the examples will be JPG. Recently Snapseed added basic RAW support (as of version 2.17), but RAW file management is very poor. It needs some very complicated workarounds which I prefer not to discuss inside the article.

Guide: DSLR Lens Resolution Testing at Home

Using freeware programs and charts

By beholder3 in Articles and Tips on Sep 21, 2017

Many enthusiasts spend a lot of money on camera gear and then want to know how good it is. While every experienced photographer can tell the optical qualities of a lens from fitting sample images there are ways beyond subjective quality evaluations. These are about testing lens sharpness and resolution using either an optical bench (which costs more than the average new car, so not really a good fit for "homegrown" testing), or shooting test charts and analyzing the results mathematically.

The article is about the latter: resolution testing at home using freely available test charts and software to analyze it.