Since I edit my photos digitally, I had to think about the tools that I was going to use. My teacher at art college, Lex Wegchelaar, told me the following story. "Don't go for technical perfection, think about what happend with the works of Tinguley. By the way I found the Tinguley fountain in Basel hilarious. He did assemble his works coarsely and de axes of his installation cut into the surrounding metal. In the long run this was causing problems for the proper working of the installations. But what happend: People found his work so good that they restaured the assemblies and added bearings for preservation" Technics are only a means, the resulting art work is what matters. I am not into gadgets and I do not go for the most expensive. I look at the functionality of my tools.

Computer programs

For editing photos, I mainly use Corel AfterShot Pro, CorelPaint 2023SE, Luminar Neo, Neatimage and Lightzone. The fact that I ended up with CorelPaint has to do with my former work as a lecturer information science. I was able to get educational licenses for Coreldraw. Many people swear by one or the other, just like there is a tribal war between Windows and Apple. But I do not participate in that; one is not better than the other.

Color space

I have done extensive research into Adobe RGB, but for now I will stick with sRGB because the photos are then immediately ready for the screen. My monitor is well calibrated and the prints look exactly the same as on screen. Switching to Adobe RGB would require an investment of a new monitor and editing photos becomes more complicated. For printing I then have a bit more color space, but converting the images back to sRGB for the screen takes up more time. Mabey in the future I'll go for Adobe RGB.

RAW

I shoot in RAW for the a greater color space and more editing possibilities.

Cameras

I started taking pictures in 1986 with a Praktica and switched to Canon in 1995, and manly took slides. In 2004 I started with digital photography and bought a Nikon E5700 but soon switched to Panasonic FZ30 because of its higher resolution and better zoom range. In 2009 I switched to FourThirds because its zoom lenses are easier to handle. I bought the Panasonic LF1 as an additional camera and replaced it with the tz200 in 2021. From that moment on, that was my most used camera until I bought the RX10 in 2024.

I have some of the analogue photos from before 2004 digitised and I still use some of these images. The 5mb photos that I took with the Nikon are also still usable. After all, scaling up a photo is a piece of cake these days and the results are very good.

I bought the Panasonic tz200 and the Sony because they have a large zoom range. Because of the small sensor, I edit all my photos with Neatimage to filter out the noise. Those camera's are easy to use and they suite me well.