I spent the past two months in India, editing images (mostly from my Nikon D750) in PhotoLab 5. My laptop was a 13" MacBook Pro, meaning I no longer had my big-screen monitors where I could so easily see what I was doing with PL5. I wasn’t working the same way as when I’m home either - at home, I work on one or two images, spend a lot of time on them, and when I think I’ve done as much as I know how to do, I publish them. In India, I found myself editing groups of 40-60 photos, trimming them down to the best 20 or so, then doing a reasonably fast edit to each of them so I could mail them off. I probably wasn’t that good a “salesman” for DxO PhotoLab, as the cost in India was more than people wanted to consider. I also found that most of my friends in India have switched to using a mobile phone for their photography.
I flew home a week ago, deciding to make some changes in my photography. One D750 is sold, and the other should be sold in a week or two. I bought a D780 for the hospital in India to use, for capturing 4K videos of eye surgery, and while using the D780 myself I started to fall in love with it. Be that as it may, I eventually decided that when I got home, I would concentrate exclusively on my Leica M10 camera for most everything, and my M8.2 for infrared photography.
Since so many people in this forum convinced me to turn off all the “auto” features of the Nikon, starting up now with the M10 is quite easy, as I’m now used to using manual control for just about everything. I read stories from some experts overseas in how to get the most out of the M10, and I watched quite a few “Q&A” sessions with the folks at “Red Dot Forums” on how they suggest using an M10. I learned quite a few new things, including that using ISO 10,000 on the M10 captures much better images than I imagined. My current thoughts are to set the ISO to something reasonable, set the aperture to get the depth of field I want, then set the shutter speed to get an appropriate exposure. I’m resisting the temptation to use auto-ISO, and also resisting the temptation to use the camera in “Aperture priority mode” where I set the aperture, and the camera selects a shutter speed. I guess I’ll be using the M10 the way I used to use my film cameras.
I need to re-learn how to configure PhotoLab 5 for my new photography ideas and goals. PL5 does understand the M10, but does not seem to recognize most of my Leica lenses, many from decades ago. I don’t see that as a problem, just something to work around.
My new goal is to create ONE good photo every day, that I work at as if it was really important to me. I’ll probably mail them out each day to friends and family, and maybe post some here. Every time I do post something here, it results in a crash course on how to do things better, which is good for me. I’m sure I’ll find problems where I’m stuck, not sure what to do. That happens quite often, in which case I do my best, and look for feedback.
Most everyone here has been so helpful in the past, first with learning the basics of PL5, and then how to use the more exotic tools. I know it’s going to take me a while to catch up with what I knew two months ago.