Although we have weathered the storms of recent times it looks like the Jet stream is about to head south, hopefully bringing clear and crispy light....we hope. So for the moment we have this grey duvet of fug hanging around but that was never a reason not to want to go out and capture images.

So here I am in Helensburgh on a grim grey day supporting various family members at a Christmas designer fair. I've called into Helensburgh many a time but just to see Rennie Macintoshes amazing architecture but this time a quick wander around the streets until folk start to pile in at the event, which they did, well done Helensburgh!.
​So some snaps from a wander, you may have noticed the imagery has been more than sensible with the Sirui anamorphic...it may be about to change.

​500 keepers to work through still from last week up on the Moray Firth with this small batch from the coast from Lossiemouth across to Kingston on Spey. Some of the paths flooded this time thanks to Babet and Ciaran and the coastline has had pebbles hurled all over the place.
So looking into Lightroom to see what i've ignored in the past...Colour Grading being one of them, although I have been spending time in the perspective and lens correction panel. more of that on another post. I found a mix I liked and copied and then pasted the settings into the other files...I think it's called workflow ! Anyhow concrete and pebbles from the far North.

Was it only this time last week when it was clear blue skies and a hint of warmth up on the Moray coast??  Meh, it's Scotland so don't forget your coat. Now Brodie is a National Trust property so these could never find their collective way onto any of my Image Libraries so they'll have to have some sort of life here on the blog. Everything closed, even the Enormous White Rabbit but the light was good and the skies were filled with a huge amount of Wild Geese. 

​Now this format is 'Social Media ' unfriendly but I will post a 'square one' later.

Kingston on Spey, one of my all time favourite beaches, often overlooked as it is on the 'wrong side' of the River Spey, if you are into Dolphin watching that is. The recent storms have really churned up this part of the coast with most of the footpaths that run behind this pebbly beach flooded.

​#kingstononspey #beach #moray #anamorphic #sirui50mm #scotland #seascape

Out for a wander into the edges of the Galloway Forest which is a mile and a bit from where I live. As per norm at the moment it's the Nikon Z6ii and Sirui 50mm T2.9 weightily attached to it. manual mode still, shutter at 1/80th, ISO on auto and a very short twiddle of the T ring.... oh and focus peaking switched on to give these bleary old eyes some assistance. I seem to be in the groove now and have found all manner of weird barreling that can be induced from how the camera is angled against planes and verticals.
​The light was a movable feast, mainly overcast with brief interludes of sun. The leaves on the trees from flame red to deep green.
Processing follows what is becoming a well trodden route, into Lightroom, de-squeezed in Photoshop and back for a whack with the Lightroom bat to round things off. Now there already is a full colour gallery under The Letterbox above, but I've taken it a bit further. The processing is using the Lightroom B+W Infra-Red preset and nipping off to adjust the exposure/contrast/highlight balance...and this is what it looks like. Off to The Highlands so lets see what damage can be done up there.

The Tik-Tok hype around the Fuji X100v has done a couple of things...drive up the price of this little thing and also make it as scarce as an honest Cabinet minister, but it's one thing to have the 'must have' point and shooter, the other is to wring out all the juice inside this compact and complex machine. 
So I've had mine for 3 years now, the initial learning curve was a steep, X-trans files and Adobe not being the best of bedfellows but there was the amorphous mess of Capture One to get to know, maybe I was too much of a newbie to that package of software but it seemed to me to have an intuitive bypass...anyhow Lightroom has now moved forward considerably and, at last, makes a good partnership with the X100v....I know beginning to ramble.
So, I have being using the X100v for stock shooting, Getty seemed to get on well with files but Adobe Stock always threw them back with a 'Technical issues' rider attached...arghhh.
Nikon Z6ii hove into view and all issues solved so for the last 18 months , when I've had the time, it's been out and about with the Nikon with the feint whimpers of the Fuji being heard from a zipped up camera bag so as the question at the top says, 'But what to do with the X100v ???
Because it's internal processing is exemplary I have decided to shoot just Jpegs and there are formidable film simulation apps inbuilt and an array of doohickeys to enable, not forgetting I have ND1000 and CPL filters to chuck into the mix. So a quick wander shooting in 'Social Media friendly' square format and just the Toy Camera function enabled, I also set the aperture at F8, shutter at 1/60th and let the ISO automatically square the triangle, next time will be different but for now this is what I saw.