Spend the morning introducing a friend to the delights of Lightroom, surely the most competent and complete photo processing program on the planet.
I take him through the elegant cataloguing, keywording and search facilities, more than sufficient for me to ensure that I can gain easy access to any one of my more than 50,000 photos in my library, and where I can select, process and where necessary delete, more than 1,000 photos at a time after a heavy photo session.
He declares himself not really interested in that because he can already manage his images by keeping up to three copies and renaming them and fuck knows what else he does; but it sure as hell is not nearly as elegant as Lightroom. Anyway, I abandon further discussion on the cataloguing features and start on the develop module where he perks up and declares himself interested, whilst reminding me he can do pretty much all of this already, albeit using three or more ancient programs, none of which offer non-destructive editing I am sure.
Developing his images is not as good as it could be because he only shoots JPEG. When I suggest RAW might give him better photos, he complains about the file size. I refrain from pointing out that the 3 JPEGs of the same image that he maintains nowadays might be smaller than using a single RAW file and Lightroom; it’s just not worth it.
Get Lightroom installed on his laptop and send him away, doubting he will ever use it again.
After a frustrating morning, I spy a rather attractive plant on the balcony and decide to point various cameras at it:
First up is the Panasonic GF1 with a second-hand Yashica macro lens, total value of the gear; around 24,000 baht. Lovely, manual focus; easy to shoot.
Next is the 33,000 baht Fuji X100. Auto-focus with an attempt at manual focus refinement. A bit of a click and hope exercise.
Last, but by no means least when it comes to weight and price, we have the Canon 1D with the 300mm F2.8 lens and an extension tube; a 300,000 baht combination. Manual focus using the rather clunky Liveview feature.
Which is best? Not much to choose between them. Looking at the full size images, the Canon has a certain crispness to it; but not 267,000 baht’s worth of crispness. Plus it’s a massive, ungainly combination. Using the Fuji is a reminder that it doesn’t shine with macros, and using the GF1 is a reminder as to what a bloody wonderful little camera it is, even with a 3,000 baht second-hand lens on the front which wasn’t even designed for use with that camera. By far and away my tool of choice if I was going out to shoot flowers and the like.
The GF1/Yashica combination celebrated its win by taking a couple of even closer-up shots. Rather pleased with the second one, after I had tweaked it a bit in Lightroom:
