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The perspective controls in PL8 would seem to be adequate for most circumstances, I would suggest. Neverthe less thanks very much to you Chris for the tour round the additional and impressive functions offered in Viewpoint. Affinity Photo has some quite sophisticated perspective controls as well,

Fantastic photo of that waterfall! You have the perfect exposure.

Beautiful photos, Chris - thanks. Fall is my favourite time of the year here in Canada, with the fresh fruits and vegetables, fall fairs, autumnal colours, and of course, my birthday. I was at a Conservation Area a week and a half ago - it's very popular, so you have to reserve a 2 hour spot to get in to see Tew Falls and Dundas Peak lookout. The colours were gorgeous and the 134 foot waterfall was spectacular. Some of the people, not so much. I didn't take my tripod and filters because I knew that it would be crowded, but I did manage to get some unobstructed views and was shooting the falls handheld at 1/8s which turned out ok (only one of them, but that's all I needed!). I always have a circular polarizer in my bag, but usually forget to take it with me when I head off down the trail - need the equivalent of mitten strings it would seem..... Unfortunately, the gorge is mostly a limestone cliff, so there's no safe way to the bottom to get a different perspective.

Rainy season just finished here in Thailand so I must get round to some of the waterfalls where I live. Spoilt for choice 😊. Some nice images there from that location.

DXO Viewpoint is great software and I use Viewpoint 4 quite frequently, to the extent I sold my tilt-shift lens because I very rarely used it. What you didn't point out in your photo of the interior of the cathedral, is that you could have included more of the ceiling by forgoing the 3x2 format and using an unconstrained format. I tend to be non-conformist and use whatever crop gives me the most of what I want in my photo. A good demonstration of the software.

I shoot with Fuji 100s and 50r medium format and seven lenses. I’ve sold four of the seven and now use my Leica Q2. I also dumped my 50r as well. It’s refreshing g! I spent 2 months in the Northwest US past summer, came home with 19,000 images and more than 10,000 were taken with the Leica!!! I’m 68 and last December I broke my right arm; here I am 11 months later and I’m still having issues which ism why I’m reducing my load. And I’m dumping 12 of my 14 different bags. SUBSCRIBED!

Va a la Región de Valencia para documentar las consecuencias de la Dana?

For a number of years, I've been thinking of purchasing a used tilt shift lens, but always balked at the last moment, so using software to correct my images is a good workaround, although it's not the same as getting it right in the first place. However, it is - initially at least - cheaper than purchasing the lens! The sticking point for me is that I don't take many architectural photos; on the other hand, I don't usually like the distortion in the ones that I do take. A dilemma, for sure. As you point out, you have to leave room in your original capture to allow for the cropping that inevitably follows the corrections. Another informative video....thanks Chris. Wonderful photographs from inside the cathedral. As a side note, I just read about the major flooding in southeastern Spain. I hope that you're okay...

Great points on fixing wide angle lens images of buildings. I love the Stain glass windows in this Church.

Excellent and interesting video

Guess they need a “mountain” edition 😉

So this was an occasion where I used a single lens the Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III for 95% of the shoot and for a few details, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS II. It was plenty on the day and although I struggled to get the full frontage in shot, I could have rescued one of the shots with ViewPoint 5 and added a little more sky.

So true. When cooking who concentrates on the saucepans?

What if I want to move the watermark where I want?

Number of points: DXO make no claim for AI in their lens softness control. Lens softness characteristics are based on the results for each supported lens obtained in their optical labs. Sharpness is applied in varying amounts across the frame to match the lenses optical characteristics; generally lenses are sharper in the centre and sharpness decreases as you move towards the edge of the frame. There is a control, (bokeh) which attempts to limit sharpening of out of focus areas which we don't usually want sharpening. Most programs use the manufacturers lens data embedded in the raw file, which is what is used for jpg corrections. In the case of lenses designed for software correction, which is very common in modern designs, DXO's lens corrections are often far superior. In order to overcome the restrictions of in camera jpg processing (limited computer power and time 20 FPS) these corrections can often involve a crop to remove barrel distortion, a simple distortion to correct by computer. Thus some lenses have a true optical FOV which is wider than the data engraved on the lens and the crop delivers the quoted FOV. By varying the lens correction and unchecking maintain aspect ratio, in DXO you can see what is happening. Due to the demosaicing process where each individual pixel has to be reconstructed from the surrounding information (pixels) essentially 3/4 bayer pixels are interpolated to produce 1 RGB pixel, sharpness is related directly to the accuracy of the demosaicing process. You see this for example in LR where over the years they have improved their demosaicing engine and I think refer to them as Process Version?, it's a long time since I used LR. This is also why Foveon sensors produce such sharp images as each pixel is an RGB pixel and no interpolation is needed. Traditionally, a raw file is demosaiced into a RGB file and processing such as noise reduction is carried out on this RGB image, not the raw data. DXO is unique in that noise reduction is applied as part of the demosaicing process (apart from HQ) which is why DeepPrime noise reduction is so good. Applying noise reduction during demosaicing also means that you can resolve more detail/sharpness as you are processing a noise reduced data and therefore it is easier to define edges etc. Other processing such as white balance and chromatic aberration is also part of the demosaic process. Therefore when looking at DXO you need to be aware that using the different noise reduction methods fundamentally impacts the final result you see in the exported file. Prior to exporting you can only see the true result in the small preview window found in the noise reduction tab. It is also worth bearing in mind that when you look at the full screen image it will contain far fewer pixels than the camera image, you can determine how many pixels are displayed by simply measuring the screen image and relating it to the camera pixels. Even on a high resolution 4K monitor the image may only contain 2,500 pixels so what you are seeing is the result of throwing away most of the pixels eg 60mp Sony file, and the processing used to do this directly impacts what you see. DXO does not apply sharpening to the screen image correctly below 75% magnification. Other programs like LR do a better job but you are still looking at an image where most of the data has been thrown-away and reinterpreted into the small version you see on screen. You can only truly assess sharpness at 100% magnification ie pixel level. Programs like Capture One have a soft proof function that not only soft proofs colour but also sharpness. I hope this extra geeky information helps.😃

Thank you! at 72 I some time ago decided to limit myself to one body and 2 lenses for any given outing. I think the way you explained your intent to tell a more personal story by limiting focus (no pun intended), is a little different approach. I'll be more mindful of decluttering my compositions going forward. At least I'll try. Thanks again. (new subscriber)

Two years into a new hobby, 66 yrs old, using local UK bus service and carrying the day's food and water. I soon realised carrying too many lenses/possibilities was a pain and stopped taking the tripod. Yesterday I was thinking about the flash as I trudged along. I'll get to where you are, kit wise, Chris, when it all falls into place. ( hopefully soon). PS good video and one lens approach is on the horizon.

Thank you, Chris! As a 69-year-old busyhead myself, this was a refreshing video that inspired me a lot!

Best wishes for a speedy recovery Chris. I really enjoy your channel for its content and your laid back style.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Chris. As it happens, I just got my COVID shot this morning, as well as a flu shot, so both arms will be a bit sore for a day or so. A thoughtful and inspiring video, thank you very much. A technical question: I have an APS-C sensor Nikon D500 camera which means that any lens that I use has an equivalent field of view 1.5X that of a full frame sensor. Thus I would need somewhere around an 8 to 16mm wide angle lens to get a similar field of view to your Canon 11 to 24mm. I'm worried about the edge distortions that this could cause. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Alex

Ich wünsche Dir recht gute Genesung. Grüße aus Deutschland

I wish you a complete recovery. I have had some serious health problem myself in the last few months and I know how it can impact the creative process. I have just returned to photography after a hiatus of a few weeks. This video has inspired me to think about doing more photography and creativity in general. Thanks very much.

A great video Chris. I can certainly agree with your approach. Like you, I shoot just about everything but people. I have just turned 75 and a couple of years ago I went on a shoot and took everything I thought I could possibly need including the kitchen sink and struggled to get it all back up the steep climb from the beach to the car. I realised this was somewhat stupid and resolved to always take less. Now, I think long and hard about the shoot I am undertaking and take the bare minimum I think I will need - sometimes just one body and lens; sometimes two bodies and lenses attached as I hate changing lenses in the field. This generally works very well and has not limited my photography, but effectively makes me think more about what I am taking and become more creative. I also have the 11-24mm F/4 lens which is a great lens, although probably a little niche. I also use DXO PhotoLab 8 and enjoy your videos.

Thank you very much for discount code!

Excellent demonstration and review!

When I was your age, I could carry all the Canon gear I could want including four TS-E lenses., my 5Ds, maybe my Sigma 180mm macro lens. Eventually I sold the 5Ds, replacing it with a Lumix S1R. It's a better camera, I use my TS-E lenses with an adaptor. An I have a remarkably light 14-28 with a 67mm filter thread. Panasonic likes 67mm filter threads. 47.3 Mpx, 187 high res option. I've been using M43 cameras for most of my recent photography, all have focus bracketting, all have 80 Mpx high res modes and some other tricks your Canon cameras do not. My Olympus 60mm macro lens is tiny. I was diagnosed with AML Leukaemia last April, that's slowed me down a bit. A 6 Kg camera bag is the most I can sensibly carry. In July I bought an OM-5 and 12-45 F4. For anything lighter, you're down into compact phones. It can make photos your Canon cameras cannot, it has four stops of live ND, does focus bracketting, shoots at a decent framerate (but nothing like the OM-1 II), lots of stabilisation. I'm autistic, one of my difficulties is with loud noises such as your music. I was going to subscribe, until I heard that .Look up sensory dysfunction.

Hello Chris. Thank you for the ideas in the video. I have had a similar approach on occasions but you offered a perspective which is very useful. I was actually attracted to the video by the title so I thought it was about camera bags. I may have missed it in the video but I was curious about what size bag you carry your lightweight kit in. (As an experienced professional you have some goals which I, as an pure amateur, don't have. So I tend to use zooms (mostly one zoom, the Tamron 18 to 300 mm on my Fujifilm X-S10), aiming for good quality but not saleable images, not too concerned about low light situations. My main subject is landscape/seascape with a smattering of other stuff one comes across when travelling. If I think I need better quality I still use zooms to cover the same focal length range (perhaps extended down to 10mm, with my small number of primes reserved for training my eye for different perspectives.)

All pure sense for oldies

"I like photographing everything except people" This sentiment was a big factor in getting me to hit 'subscribe'.

I don’t get this “fragility” thing with the Ricoh. I have a GRIII and IIIx pair, and they travel in the small pouches on my backpack waist belt. In the last few months they’ve travelled in sometimes awful weather in mountainous regions of Madeira, Iceland and Switzerland and just been told to deal with it. Have they got soaked? Yes. Have they been bumped and dropped. ‘Fraid so. Have they taken fabulous photos? Yes! Are then both totally kaput? Er no. They’re as good as new. Well, maybe the odd scratch. Oh and no dust either. So many unsubstantiated myths about these cameras….

Question. Like you. I’m an older photographer. 70 tp be exact. Anyway, having dealt with FILM,for many many years. I’m a retired pro. So my question is can you do a short video,showing the process, beginning to end of your backup system. From camera card,to multi-copy to your RAID system. Since I don’t shoot as much anymore, i use the camera cards,as storage. But i would like to see, the SSD process through. Thanks very much.

Makes a lot of sense, as someone who lost 3 stone (and have kept it off) I was amazed at how much strain all that weight was putting on my body, a heavy camera bag is much the same so no more than two lenses, the laptop compartment contains a scarf, gloves and hand warmers, never a laptop.

love the thought process, love your style of video. Referring to the weight you used to carry around, I'd like to add my personal two cents: shooting mostly Sony with half a dozen lenses I had an absolute epiphany when I bought myself additionally a used Leica M10-R with two (also used) lenses (a 35mm and 50mm for me, but would be same result with e.g. 24 and 75 or so), coming in now under 2 kg in total, including bag, extra batteries, filters and even a small table tripod - and said bag is sooo tiny. Still having full frame, high resolution and superb colors, but the difference in weight and size almost felt like switching to taking images with a phone.

Excellent video Chris. We seem to have mirrored our photographic paths. I am also 68 and have had a complete rethink and refit, selling lots of equipment and started investing in equipment similar to yourself. Just subscribed.

68! God Bless!! how useful is the 11-24 lens? i've thought about buying one, is it worth it? ok, next video should answer my question I'm guessing.

Interesting. I feel much better about my 5 unused camera bags! My FOMO won't let me _not_ take a 14-400mm equivalent almost everywhere I go. It drives me crazy to stumble across something in the field having left just the right lens at home. It is probably a good exercise though!

Very nice. Your comment about moving beyond the shots that almost every photographer would take is an especially great reminder to me. Your idea of focusing on one type of photography at a time is helpful for moving in that direction.

I'm looking forward to your architecture photography video. I particularly struggle with beautiful UK national trust buildings. Big shiny tower blocks are easy in comparison. Looking forward to what you have to show us. 😊

Nice video Chris.

I’ve been a C1 user for the past 6 or so years I guess, but I’ve just installed the Trial version of DXO PL 8 a couple of days ago. I processed an image I recently took with it (Stag in New Forest). I didn’t spend hours on the image just got it quickly to a pleasing image to me. Tonight, I’ve processed the same raw in C1……and compared the two images. I’ve been a bit shocked on the noise reduction & detail retention in the DXO processed image, especially given that I don’t know the package that well & have not spent hours tinkering with the image. I then had C1 on half of my screen and the DXO processed image on the other (I have a large ultra wide monitor) for reference purposes, both zoomed in to equal amounts. I then played around with the noise reduction & sharpening tools in C1 trying to get close to the DXO’s combination of noise reduction AND detail retention/enhancement. After a considerable amount of faffing about in C1, I can’t get anywhere near the result that the DXO’s default settings gave me. The DXO image is both smoother (less noisy) and more detailed at the same time. I can’t even match either one of those in C1. I appreciate that there is more to a photo editing package than just noise reduction & sharpening, but even so, I’m still impressed. I think I prefer the layout in C1 which kind of guides your work flow, or, at least, it has for me, but I think some of this could just be down to familiarity. I did use DXO to cull & rate my images from a mornings shooting, it was fine for me, I just went through and used the keyboard short cut to quickly mark images red for the ones I wanted to remove from my viewer (the ones where the subject was not sharp, be that motion blur or missed focus, & the ones where the subject position was not great, & the ones where I had similar duplicates), this was quick and easy. I then went through what was left and quickly applied a star rating to my favourites and just picked the one I had marked the highest to then process. It was perfectly functional for me for initial culling and then a second pass to rate. There was a slight lag for my old PC to fully render a few images while I was quickly going through culling, not disastrous, but it was present occasionally, but this could be my PC as much as anything, and I don’t feel it was much worse than C1. It’s early days for me, and it could well be my lack of time with DXO, but the masking seemed a little limited in terms of control, or at least, was not that intuitive to me. For example, I wanted to add a slight vignette to the image, but the circular graduated mask appears to have limited control. In C1, I can manipulate this tool to make it an ellipse of any aspect ratio, I can rotate the ellipse,mi can adjust how the gradient falls off hard to soft. In contrast, in DXO I was only able to draw a circular gradient mask with no control of the gradient other than adjusting the masks opacity, which isn’t the same thing. This could just be my lack of time with DXO PL8 however, I didn’t explore the tools that much. I do like some of the other masking options like the hue mask. I did a very small amount of colour adjustment, I think I preferred C1 for this, but again, it could just be familiarity, I suspect DXO can do colour adjustment well enough for my needs. The rest was just exposure/shadow/highlight/contrast/saturation type adjustments which seems pretty similar to C1, no better or worse from what my initial trial could tell. I probably spent less than 2 hours in total in DXO so far, and than included culling & rating 300+ images & feeling my way around DXO PL 8 I’m only an amateur photographer.

Excellent story...thanks very much Chris....you are a gifted communicator and raconteur. Good ideas as well. I've just turned 78 and I know what you mean about having no desire to lug 20 to 30 kilos of gear around the outdoors, which is what I used to do (briefly) when I returned to photography upon retirement. I rarely used more than 2 of the 4 lenses that I had in my pack - I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to stop lugging all that stuff about. If I'm off camping in a car accessible location, I'll take 4 or 5 lenses with me, but leave most of them in a separate pack in the car, taking just 2 with me on the trail. Cheers, Alex

Lately, I've been limiting myself to what will fit into a Peak Design 6L sling bag. That's a body, 2-3 lenses, plus necessities, with a tripod strapped to the bottom. I'm also moving away from super fast lenses. I don't shoot people much, either, and I find that when I do, I don't want the background turned into a featureless blob. I only use one fast prime much, anymore (35mm), and that one mostly when I plan to shoot in low light. Since I started using DxO PhotoLab, I no longer worry much about noise, so if I have to lift shadows, it's not the end of the world. l find myself more willing to trade ISO for lighter glass, now. I recently turned 68, myself, and long hikes with heavy kit are pretty much right out. My typical kit, if I don't expect to need long telephoto, is a full frame body, 20mm f/2.8, a 35mm f/1.4, and an 85mm f/1.8. The 20mm is good for establishing shots, and weighs next to nothing. The 85mm f/1.8 (Sony) is quite light and compact, and the 35mm f/1.4 is my workhorse "normal" lens. If I expect to need more reach, I'll swap the 85mm for a 70-180mm lens, and the 35mm f/1.4 for a 35mm f/1.8. If I need even more reach, I'll swap the full-frame body for an APS-C body.

Very good Chris. Getting away from photography as some sort of competetive process (other than with oneself!) is a very liberating approach. On some days I take myself back to my roots as an archaeological site photographer in the pre-autofocus days. My shots had to be correct and publication ready first time round since the subjects were excavated away almost immediately after I’d captured them, and I had no opportunity to see the results until the films were developed. My method for replicating this is to treat my camera as though it were an old school one without the benefit of instant review and only check what I’ve captured at the end of the day, away from the location. This allows me to become more familiar with the amazing controls I have to hand in my camera and the confidence in my technique so that I can capture good (occasionally better than good) shots without the distraction of checking and reviewing after every exposure.

Good thought- I think many of us think we need to be prepared for every eventuality/opportunity, and that can bog us down.

I find PL is ok for small easy repairs or clones like dust spots but you were certainly a hero for attempting the work you did here. Nobody has mentioned Gimp, I like the ability to select a brush shape, adjust size, shape and angle easily, adjust force and hardness, and if you want to clone out something like the phone line you can move along the line and the selection point moves too, you can add jitter so repair is not so obvious. Hope I'm not preaching to the converted here That said I find your dxo videos very helpful, there is always something new to learn😁

A clear summary but there are many difficulties with this expensive upgrade. For example I can find no luminosity mask icon in the local adjustments, only a hue mask, so luminosity is not controllable in the way you demonstrate. And DxO support is very difficult to access on such details. However your demo video is very useful in getting to know the differences, which are not always otherwise very obvious.

Nicely done! Beautiful image.

Did you ever get dust on the sensor?

Thank you. I will endeavor to make more use of the tone curve. Not sure if I'm going to last out until Black Friday before upgrading 😆

Curves were once a game of darts for me. This one is a bookmark. Thanks, Chris.