Lightroom 9.5 - Why Render to DNG Changes Everything

Lightroom 9.5 has landed, and alongside the usual list of bug fixes, new camera and lens profiles and a few Windows performance tweaks, there are three additions that actually change how you work day to day.

One thing to get out of the way first. This update is for Lightroom Desktop. Classic had its own round of updates at the same time, but a couple of these features haven't made their way over to Classic yet, so if you're a Classic user, don't go looking for all of them.

Feather and Edge, for masks that don't bleed

The masking panel now has two new sliders, Feather and Edge.

If you use Camera Raw, or you've been running the pre-release builds, these will look familiar. They're just available to everyone now.

Worth being clear about what they do and what they don't. They don't make Lightroom any better at finding your subject. If Select Subject misses completely, these two sliders aren't going to rescue it. What they do is let you clean up the last few pixels along the edge of a selection, which is usually where the trouble is.

Turn on the mask overlay so you can actually see the boundary, then work the two sliders until the mask pulls tight against the edge. That's it. No more adjustments spilling over onto things you didn't want to touch.

On portraits it's the eyes, the lips and the skin masks, where a brightening adjustment has a habit of creeping onto the eyelid or the surrounding skin. On landscapes and architecture it's horizons, tree branches against a bright sky, and the edges of buildings, all the places a halo turns up if you're not careful.

Render to DNG, and why it's the interesting one

Right click any photo now and there's a new option in the menu: Render to DNG.

What it does is create a brand new file with all your current edits baked into the pixels, and it sits right alongside your original in the catalogue.

If you're a Photoshop person, think of it as a stamp visible layer. You get a flattened version to work on top of, and your original raw file is still sitting underneath it completely untouched, with every setting still live.

It says DNG, but it isn't raw

This is the bit worth slowing down for. Despite the .dng on the end, a rendered DNG is not a raw file. It's closer to a TIFF in a DNG wrapper.

Your original raw is the negative. It's holding all the hidden highlight and shadow data you can't see on screen but can pull back when you need to. The rendered DNG is the print. It has baked in whatever the picture looked like at the moment you rendered it, and anything you hadn't already recovered has gone.

So the rule is simple enough. Do your recovery on the raw. Pulling back a blown sky, lifting shadows that have gone dead, any serious white balance shift, all of that happens on the original file before you render anything. Once you've rendered, that detail isn't coming back.

What the rendered file is good for is adjusting rather than recovering. Contrast, fine tuning tone, stacking a heavy look on top. Things that work with what's already there rather than digging for what isn't.

Stacking presets without losing your edit

Here's where it earns its keep.

You know the problem. You spend twenty minutes dialling in exposure, tone curve and split toning, you get it exactly where you want it, and then you try a full look preset and it wipes the lot. Every slider you'd carefully set gets overwritten.

The way round it now is to finish your base edit on the raw file, right click and Render to DNG, then apply the preset to the new rendered file instead.

Because your edits are baked into the pixels of that rendered file, there are no sliders left for the preset to overwrite. It sits on top of your work rather than replacing it.

Just keep half an eye on the highlights when you're stacking, because a rendered file has less headroom than the raw did, and it'll clip sooner than you expect.

Crop and Expand

The Crop panel has been renamed Crop and Expand, and you can now drag the crop boundary outwards past the edge of the original frame. Handy for anything you framed a bit too tight.

When you expand, you get two ways to fill the new space.

Generative Expand uses AI to invent new content, which is what you want for a complicated background. It costs one credit on standard accounts, and it's free if you're on CC Pro.

Content-Aware Expand samples pixels from elsewhere in your own photo. It costs nothing on any plan, because it isn't generative, and for plain or repeating backgrounds it does the job perfectly well. Try that one first and save your credits for when you genuinely need them.

There's a catch with Generative Expand, though, and it's worth knowing about. When you run it, Lightroom flattens your existing AI edits, so any AI masking or Generative Remove you'd done gets locked in and you lose the ability to go back and tweak it.

Same fix as before. Do your AI edits and base adjustments on the raw, render to DNG, then drag the crop out and run the expand on the rendered file. Your master raw stays fully intact with the masks still live, and you've got a separate expanded version to export.

Everything else in 9.5

Beyond those three, there's a decent list of fixes and new support:

• masking sliders that wouldn't reset properly

• launch crashes caused by permission errors

• star rating glitches

• GPS data not pasting in local view

• smoother grid scrolling and faster window resizing on Windows

• new camera support for the GoPro Mission 1, GoPro Mission Pro and preliminary support for the Sony RX10 V

• new lens profiles including the Canon RF 7-14mm Fisheye, DJI Mavic 4 Pro, Sigma 85mm f/1.2 and a handful of macro lenses

So, next time you're editing

If a subject mask is bleeding onto something it shouldn't, reach for Feather and Edge.

If you want to try a preset over an edit you've already spent time on, render to DNG first.

And if you need a bit more room around a tight portrait, render to DNG, open Crop and Expand, and try Content-Aware before you spend a credit.

Render to DNG is the one I'd point at if you only look at one thing here. It's a small menu item that's easy to scroll past, and it quietly solves a problem plenty of us have been working around for years.

The New Westcott FJ100 and How It Compares to the Profoto A2

Westcott have announced the FJ100 today, and there are actually two of them; there's a speedlite and there's an off camera strobe.

It's the strobe I want to talk about here, partly because it's the more interesting of the two, and partly because it lands right on top of a light a lot of people already have strong opinions about.

The headline is simple enough … hundred watt seconds, a colour touchscreen, a removable battery that charges over USB-C, and a body small enough to disappear into a jacket pocket, and Westcott are selling it at £217 plus VAT.

A hundred watt seconds in something that size

The thing worth sitting with for a moment is that number; a hundred watt seconds is proper output. It's not a speedlite pretending, it's a strobe, and it's arriving in a housing that measures about 16 by 13 by 8 centimetres and weighs 700 grams with the battery in.

The whole design brief here was clearly footprint.

The spec sheet has the usual things you'd want and a few you might not expect at this size …

There's a modelling lamp. There's zoom control running from 24mm all the way out to 200mm. There's stroboscopic mode. HSS up to 1/8000th, TTL and manual, front and rear curtain, and a freeze mode that shortens the flash duration when you need it. It works as both a host and a client on the FJ wireless system, so it'll trigger your other lights or be triggered by them.

The battery is the bit that matters

700 full power flashes on one charge.

Of everything on the spec sheet, that's the one that changes how you actually work.

700 at full power means a wedding day, or an event, or a long portrait session, without the moment where you glance at the battery icon and start quietly doing sums about ISO.

It charges over USB-C, which means a power bank in your pocket, or a laptop, or the back of the car. You can run it off mains as well, so it does studio duty without eating charge cycles.

And it's the same battery family as the FJ80, so if you've already got a drawer of those, they carry straight over.

The touchscreen

The screen is crystal clear. The screens on the other FJ units are very clear anyway and easy to read even in bright sunlight, but this one is a noticeable step up.

That matters more than it sounds like it should. You're reading power values at arm's length, often in bright light, and usually in a hurry.

The Octa 15 and what goes on the front

Alongside the light there's a new Octa 15, a 15 inch softbox that clicks open in one motion and comes with the grid in the box. It's the same twist lock mount you already know from the FJ80, so existing Westcott twist lock modifiers go straight on.

For anything larger there's the S2 bracket, which is designed so the weight sits correctly through the stand rather than hanging off the light itself. That's what lets you put a proper sized box on the front of something this small, and it means my favourite 3' x 4' is still on the table.

The Creative Pack gels drop straight on the front. [FILL IN: the one, two and four light backpack kits, if they're public at launch. Check the retail listings rather than the briefing before you mention them.]

How it compares to the Profoto A2

This is the comparison everybody's going to make, so let's make it properly. The A2 is Profoto's 100 watt second light, and it's £699.

Same wattage. Roughly three times the money.

A few of those deserve a sentence rather than a row.

The modelling lamp difference is the one worth pausing on. Profoto's runs at 3500 K, which is warm, and nowhere near their own flash at 5800 K. Westcott's is 5500 K, essentially daylight, and close enough to its own flash to be useful. One is for judging where your shadows fall, the other you could actually shoot with.

The zoom is the clearest gap. The A2 doesn't zoom at all.

The weight is the odd one. The Profoto is genuinely the smaller light being about the size of a drinks can and the Westcott about the size of a regular coffee mug, but with the battery in and the stand adapter on, which is how you'd actually use it, it comes out at 773 grams against the Westcott's 700. The smaller light is the heavier one.

But none of that is three times the money's worth of difference, and the battery gap runs the other way by a long distance.

Where I'll be with it

I'm looking forward to getting out and shooting with this one properly, and there's a video coming very soon showing it in action, so do keep an eye out for that.

I'll have it with me at all of the Wex Roadshows ( LINK ) I'm on as well. If you're coming to one, come and find me and have a play with it yourself. Pick it up, put it on a modifier, fire it at something. That's a far better way to work out whether a light suits you than any spec sheet is going to manage, mine included.

The travelling is the part I'm quietly pleased about. I've got flights over to Belfast and up to Glasgow coming up, and something this size just goes in the bag without a second thought. Anyone who's wrestled a full sized strobe through an airport will know exactly why that matters.

A hundred watt seconds, a touchscreen, USB-C charging and 700 full power flashes at £217 plus VAT.; on paper that's a lot of light for the money

Bristol, Breakfast and a Special Friend

Yesterday, Sunday 2nd August, I finally got to meet the wonderful Jean-François Léger in person, and it's one of those days I know I'll still be thinking about a long time from now.

We've been friends online for a while. It started in the comments on my YouTube channel, then he began joining in with the weekly lives I used to do, and when I set up the communities he came across to those as well.

Over the last year or so we've talked on live calls, back and forth in the community, and on one to one video chats, and somewhere in all of that we stopped being two people who recognised each other's names and became genuinely good friends.

He's also seriously talented. It was Jean-François who wrote and composed and sang “Picture This”, which was made as a gift for me for putting the communities together; it’s still one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me.

A bit of a detour

He's been over from Canada for the past few weeks, in Avignon in France, performing on stage, but rather than head straight home afterwards he decided to take a detour across to the UK for a few days, which is how yesterday came about.

My friend Brian Lee arranged it all; a group of us at Mud Dock in Bristol for breakfast at 10am on the Sunday, everyone meeting up together, though the real reason we were all there was to see Jean-François, who's such a big part of the communities.

Meeting him was strange in the best possible way. It was almost as if we'd met before. All those awkward first time barriers you normally get with somebody just weren't there, and that's the special thing about the community, because by the time you meet in person you've already become good friends. Surreal, but wonderful.

Breakfast was fantastic. Lots of laughter, lots of chatting, and then a photo walk around Bristol afterwards, grabbing coffee, more chatting, just a really good social day with good people.

The kit I took

I did take a bit of kit along, because I wanted to make that extra bit of effort and photograph the fact that Jean-François was over here, properly on my main camera.

- the Westcott FJ800

- 3ft x 4ft softbox, which is my favourite

- Convertible umbrella

- Light stand

One light, one modifier, one stand. That's it.

The group shot, and why I went with the umbrella

After breakfast we did a group shot. There were quite a few of us, it all needed to happen quickly, and what I wanted was for the light to burst out of the FJ800 and cover everybody evenly. A softbox would have been too restrictive for that, so I went with the convertible umbrella instead, took the black cover off and fired the light straight through it. TTL, of course, as I always do. It worked beautifully and it took no time at all.

Portraits of Jean-François

Later on I wanted a few more pictures of Jean Francois on his own, and that's when the 3ft x 4ft softbox came out, and made use of the metal staircase leading up to Mud Dock.

I set the camera to manual first and dialled in the scene I wanted, mainly so I'd hold some detail in the sky rather than blowing it out. Then the flash goes on in TTL, with the Fuji set to face detection.

Because the camera is looking at the face, the TTL exposure gets worked out for the skin rather than for everything else in the frame, so it's exposing for the thing that actually matters in a portrait.

With a great exposure from the start, I then adjust it to taste and lock it in. Whatever power TTL just chose, I use TTL to Manual to copy the exact same power over into the Manual side of things, and every frame after that is consistent. That's it.

A few more by a tree after that, and then another group shot, because I couldn't resist.

What I'd hoped for, and what actually happened

I'd wanted much more time with him than one day.

The plan had been to get him down here to the south west, to meet Anne and to show him around Lyme Regis, and I'd even cancelled two of the Wex roadshow dates so I'd be home while he was over.

Then the work we're having done at the house landed on this exact week 🤷‍♂️

There's talk of him being back over later in the year, which would be brilliant, so hopefully we'll get that time yet.

Jean-François is still here in the UK as I write this. He stayed with a friend (Anthony Crothers) in South Wales on Sunday night, Brian picked him up again today, and he's with him now until Wednesday morning, when he heads off to the train station, over to France, and then home to Canada. A bit of a whirlwind, but so worth it.

Au revoir, mon ami!

WeX Manchester, Portraits and a Long Overdue Catch Up

Last week took me up to Manchester for the next leg of the Wex Summer Roadshow, and what a great couple of days it turned out to be.

I travelled up the day before so I could arrive fresh rather than rolling in as the shutters were going up, which is always the better way to do it when the store is a few hours away.

Good company for the journey too, but more on that shortly.

Manchester is a great store as well. There's a lot going on in there, plenty of space, and a real buzz about the place from the moment the doors opened.

The team at Wex Manchester

I have to give a mention to Guy, the store manager, who was just so incredibly welcoming from the off. The whole team were brilliant, friendly and dynamic and genuinely engaging with everybody who came through the door.

Photo by Ben Kapur

It's one of those things you notice when you visit a lot of different places. You can always see how the person leading a team influences the team itself, and Manchester is a really good example of that. Great atmosphere, great people.

Portraits on the shopfloor

As with the other roadshow dates, I spent the day on the shopfloor doing what I always do, which is classic portraits with minimal kit. Nothing that needs a studio or half a van to transport.

Here's what I took along this time:

• the Westcott X-Drop Pro background system

• my vintage grey backdrop

• the Westcott FJ400 II

• the Westcott X-T1M multi-brand remote trigger

• my Fuji

That vintage grey backdrop gets a lot of attention wherever I take it, and Manchester was no different. Loads of people came over to ask about it, which is always great to see, because it's such a big part of the look and yet it's the least technical thing in the bag.

What struck me at Manchester was how many people came over specifically to ask how I do the portraits. Not just what I use, but how it all fits together and why it looks the way it does. So we shot quite a few portraits across the day, and I'm really grateful to everyone who was kind enough to stand or sit in front of my camera for me.

I even edited a handful of them and emailed them across afterwards, which is always a nice way to round things off. There's something about handing somebody a finished portrait rather than just a snap on the back of a screen.

TTL to manual, and why I keep banging on about it

The thing that got the biggest reaction, as it has done at every stop, is the TTL to manual function on the X-T1M trigger.

It works like this. You take one shot in TTL and let the camera and flash sort the exposure out between them. With the Fuji, if you've got face detection and eye focus switched on, that's largely where it's metering from, so it's exposing for the skin, which is exactly what you want for a portrait. Have a quick look, make any small adjustment you fancy, then hold down the group A button on the trigger. It flips over into manual and remembers the power it was using in TTL.

That's it. One shot to get you there, and from that point on every frame is the same consistent exposure, shot after shot. No light meter, no guessing and chimping your way towards it.

For anyone who's been put off by the idea of manual flash, it's a lovely way in; you get the consistency of manual without having to do the maths first. It was great fun showing people how it worked and watching the penny drop.

Filming it all

I travelled up with Ben Kapur, who lives locally to me and is filming the majority of the roadshow dates and producing the content.

Ben's an incredible videographer. He shoots for some seriously high end clients, and the speed he turns work around at is something else. He's also a photographer, but it's the video work that really makes you sit up.

One evening he sat me down and showed me how he works in DaVinci Resolve, and I think that's now going to be my video editor of choice. The speed of it and the functionality on offer were enough to convince me on the spot.

An overdue catch up

The other highlight was getting to meet up with my great friend Dave Jagger, who I've known for a good number of years now through photography.

We got to spend some proper quality time together during the day and then headed out in the evening as well. It was very much overdue, and it was lovely to just sit and catch up properly rather than the usual quick hello at a trade show. Those days are worth the drive on their own.

Then it was the drive back home the following day, tired but with that good kind of tired you get after a day where everything just worked.

Where I'll be next

The roadshow rolls on, and here's where I'll be for the remaining dates:

• Milton Keynes, 14th August

• Nottingham, 15th August

• Norwich, 21st August

• Belfast, 3rd September

• Glasgow, 11th and 12th September

Photo by Ben Kapur

If you're anywhere near one of those, do come along and say hello. Entry is free, and you'll find me on the shopfloor throughout the day with the backdrop up and the light on, so there's no need to book anything or wait for a set time slot. Just wander over.

And if you fancy being in front of the camera, bring it on!

Here’s the ( LINK )

Hopefully see you there,
Glyn

TTL Flash: What It Is, How It Works, and How I Use It

TTL has a bit of a reputation. People find it unpredictable, they get one shot that looks perfect and the next one that looks nothing like it, and they quietly go back to manual and never touch it again.

I understand why, but it's worth persevering, because TTL is not actually unpredictable. It's very consistent at doing the one thing it was built to do. The trick is understanding what that one thing is, and knowing when it's the wrong thing so you can step in. Once you have that, TTL stops being a mystery and becomes a genuinely useful tool.

So here is the whole thing in plain language.

What TTL is

TTL stands for Through The Lens; it's an automatic mode for your flash.

Instead of you deciding how much power the flash puts out, the camera and flash work it out for you, aiming to give your subject a sensible exposure.

The single most important thing to understand from the start is this … TTL is a flash mode, not a camera mode. It decides flash power; it does not decide your shutter speed, your aperture or your ISO. Those are still yours. Hold onto that, because it answers most of the questions people have about what overrides what.

How it works on a digital camera

On a digital camera, TTL works using a pre-flash.

When you press the shutter, the flash fires a quick, low burst of light a fraction of a second before the picture is actually taken. That burst bounces off your subject, comes back through the lens, and lands on the camera's metering sensor. The camera reads how much light came back, works out how much the real flash needs to put out, then fires the main flash at that power as the shutter opens. All of it happens in a few thousandths of a second, so in normal use you never see the pre-flash as a separate pop.

It works this way for a reason. On film, the camera could read the light reflecting off the film surface during the actual exposure and cut the flash the moment it had enough. A digital sensor is not reflective enough to be read like that, so the pre-flash method replaced it. Every current system does this, whether it's Canon, Nikon, Sony or Fujifilm. They all fire a pre-flash to measure before the shot rather than during it.

What the metering actually is

This is the part that explains nearly every frustration people have with TTL.

TTL metering is reflective metering. It measures light bouncing back off your subject, and it has no idea what it's looking at. It cannot tell a white wedding dress from a black dinner jacket. All it knows is how much light came back, and its goal is always the same. It wants to render whatever it measured as a mid-tone, a medium grey.

That works beautifully when your subject is roughly average in tone; it falls apart when it's not. Point it at something white and bright and it assumes plenty of light is coming back, so it holds the power down and the white comes out grey and underexposed. Point it at something dark and it assumes too little is coming back, so it pushes the power up and the dark comes out washed and overexposed.

So TTL is not unreliable; it's reliably aiming for grey. The skill is knowing when grey is the wrong target and telling it so, which you do with Flash Exposure Compensation. FEC adjusts only the flash output and leaves your ambient exposure alone. White subject looking muddy, dial in some positive FEC; dark subject blowing out, dial in some negative. In real use it tends to live somewhere between minus two and plus two stops depending on the subject and the scene. There is no single setting that works every time, because there are too many variables. It's an educated adjustment, and the back of the screen tells you when you have it right.

Do your other camera settings override TTL?

They do not override it, but they absolutely shape what it does, and this is the mental model worth having.

Your aperture and ISO set the box TTL has to work inside. Open the aperture or raise the ISO and TTL simply needs less power to get there. Stop down or drop the ISO and it needs more. TTL adapts to your settings, it does not fight them. You can back it into a corner though. Shoot at a very narrow aperture and very low ISO and the flash may need more power than it physically has, so you get underexposure even at full output. When that happens the answer is not more compensation, it's changing your aperture or ISO to bring the flash back into range.

Shutter speed is the odd one out, because within your sync speed it does not change the flash exposure at all. It changes how much of the existing room light or daylight you let in around the flash. That is why I think of shutter speed as the ambient dial and flash power as the subject dial. They are largely independent, and that independence is what makes flash so controllable once it clicks.

If your camera is in manual, does that override TTL?

No, and this catches a lot of people out.

Your camera's exposure mode, whether that is Manual, Aperture Priority or Program, and your flash's metering mode, TTL or manual, are two separate systems. You can have the camera in full manual and the flash still in TTL, and the flash will happily keep metering with its pre-flash and adjusting its own power shot to shot.

That combination is actually one of the most useful ways to work. Camera in manual gives you a fixed, deliberate ambient exposure that will not drift between frames. Flash in TTL then tops up the subject automatically as you move around. Change your shutter speed and the background gets brighter or darker while the subject stays put. Change your aperture and TTL quietly compensates to keep the subject exposed. You get consistency in the ambient and convenience in the flash at the same time.

The trap is the opposite setup, camera in Program or Aperture Priority with TTL as your main light. There the camera keeps shifting your shutter speed between frames, your ambient drifts, and nothing feels consistent. If you want predictability, put the camera in manual and let TTL handle only the flash.

How I actually use TTL, and why I don't carry a light meter

Here is the bit that ties all of this together into something practical, because it's exactly how I work.

I shoot the Westcott FJ system, and my trigger is a universal, multi-brand unit, so the same trigger sits on top of whatever camera I am using rather than being locked to one brand. That is handy in itself, but the feature I lean on most is the TTL to Manual carry-over.

In TTL the flash recalculates its power for every single frame. Convenient, but it means the power can wobble slightly from shot to shot as the metering reacts to tiny changes in the scene. For portraits I am going to retouch as a series, I do not want that; I want every frame identical.

So my routine is simple. I set the flash to TTL and take a shot to get a good base exposure in seconds. Then I hit the TTL to manual function, which carries that exact TTL power output straight over into manual. From there the power is locked. If I want it a touch brighter or darker I nudge it from that known starting point, and once I am happy every single frame fires at precisely the same output. Nothing drifts.

That is the reason I do not carry a handheld light meter. TTL gets me to the right ballpark faster than metering ever would, the carry-over locks it in, and my own eyes on the back of the screen do the fine tuning. For the way I shoot, a meter would just be an extra thing to hold.

Worth knowing if you are not on Westcott, this is not a Westcott-only idea. Some other brands have their own equivalent technology, so whatever system you are on, it's worth checking whether you already have this feature sitting there unused. It's one of those things that quietly changes how you work once you start using it.

A word on Fuji face and eye detection

I shoot Fuji, and a question I get asked a lot is whether having face and eye detection switched on matters when you are using flash. It does, and in a good way.

Start with the obvious. Face and eye detection's main job is autofocus, and that alone is reason to leave it on. Eye detection is really just face detection refined to lock onto the eye, which is exactly where you want critical focus on a portrait.

Here is the part people miss. On Fuji, TTL meters the flash essentially the same way the camera meters ambient light. And when face detection is active, the camera biases that metering towards the detected face, to the point where it takes over from whatever metering mode you had selected. Put those two facts together and you get something genuinely useful. With a face detected, your TTL flash exposure is weighted towards exposing that face correctly, rather than being thrown off by a very bright or very dark background behind it.

In practice that means better, more consistent skin exposure straight out of camera when you are working quickly in TTL. It's not a pure spot reading off the face, it's more of a blend under the bonnet, and Fuji do not spell out the exact recipe, but the result is reliable and it works in your favour for portraits.

Two things to keep in mind. First, because face detection takes over your metering, do not rely on the Fuji spot meter for an ambient reading while it's active, because a detected face will quietly override it. If you want a spot reading off a specific tone, take it with detection off, then switch detection back on for the shoot. Second, none of this applies once your flash is in manual power. If you have locked your power in manual, including straight after the TTL to manual carry-over above, the flash fires at the set power regardless, and detection is back to doing nothing but focus. Which, for a controlled portrait, is exactly what you want anyway.

wrapping up

TTL is an automatic flash mode that sets flash power and nothing else. On digital it uses a pre-flash to measure light bounced back through the lens, then fires the main flash to match. It always aims to make what it measured a mid grey, so it gets fooled by very light or very dark subjects, and FEC is how you correct that. Your aperture and ISO define the box it works inside, shutter speed handles your ambient, and TTL adapts rather than getting overridden. Putting your camera in manual does not switch TTL off, and camera manual paired with flash TTL is a strong, consistent way to work. And if your kit has a TTL to manual carry-over, use it, because it gives you the speed of TTL and the consistency of manual in one move.

Get those few ideas straight and TTL stops being the thing you avoid and becomes another tool you can reach for when it suits the shot.

Minimal Kit, Timeless Portraits with WeX in Bristol and Birmingham

The last few days have been brilliant.

Last Thursday, the 23rd July, I was over in Bristol for the next leg of the Wex Summer Road Show, and then on the Friday and Saturday, the 24th and 25th July, I was up at the Wex store in Birmingham.

The idea behind these days is simple. I'm there on the shop floor, all day, showing people how I take classic, timeless portraits using minimal kit in a limited space, and when I say limited space, I really do mean it. Being on the shop floor, that's genuinely all the room I've got, which is exactly what makes it so authentic. There's no hiding behind a studio setup. It's just me, a small bit of kit, and whatever space I can carve out.

The kit I've been using is the same as I've had for a while now:

• X-Drop Pro Background

• My signature vintage grey backdrop

• One light … either the FJ250 or the FJ400 from Westcott

• White / Silver Reflector

• My Fuji X-T5

• Medium RapidBox Switch Octa from Westcott (36”)

That's it.

That's the whole point.

Showing people that you don't need a room full of gear to take a portrait you'll be proud of.

It's been a fantastic few days. I took some great portraits of friends along the way, and on the Thursday over at Bristol I grabbed Andre from Lumix for a slightly different kind of portrait, again using just that one light.

The Friday at Birmingham was really busy, and it turned into a day of constant repeat mini workshops, which I absolutely loved. Taking people through the process from scratch is my favourite part. So many of the attendees had never used flash, so being able to simplify it right down so it just clicks for them is such a good feeling. You can actually see the light bulb go on in their eyes when they get it.

One moment that stuck with me was chatting to a couple of gentlemen and walking them through it all. One of them handed me his camera, a Canon 200D with a kit lens on it.

Because the Westcott X-T1 M is a multi-brand trigger, I could switch it over from Fuji to Canon, pop it straight onto his camera, and take a portrait of his friend using that same single light. I edited the shots afterwards and sent them over, and they were over the moon with them. That's the bit that makes these days worth it.

The team at Wex

I also have to give a special mention to the staff, and in particular the team at Wex in Birmingham. They were so welcoming, so friendly and genuinely caring, and it made the whole couple of days an absolute pleasure.

Adele, the store manager is a sweetheart. She was incredibly attentive, constantly making sure everything was running smoothly. She even went so far as to sort out a salad for me on the second day, having picked up that I'm quite particular about the food I eat. That kind of thoughtfulness is just brilliant, and it doesn't go unnoticed.

Rees too, who I believe looks after sales for Wex across the south of the UK, was super friendly and attentive throughout … a lovely guy! Honestly, I couldn't have wished for more.

The TTL question

One thing that's come up again and again on this road show is how surprised people are that I'm using TTL with the flash.

Here's how it works. My camera stays in manual, so I can set the scene and get rid of any unnecessary ambient light, which really matters in the stores with all the mixed lighting going on, but the flash itself is on TTL.

TTL does all the hard work of calculating how much flash power you need. I take a shot, the TTL tells me what it thinks it needs, and I make an adjustment from there.

Then comes the really clever part.

Using the Westcott trigger, I use the TTL to Manual function and the trigger shows me exactly what the power output is. Once that's locked in, I can carry on shooting and get the exact same flash power shot after shot after shot. It's such a great way to work and removes any need for a flashmeter.

This coming week I'm in Manchester, and I might even dive a little deeper into that TTL to manual setting, because it's genuinely useful.

I'm loving this road show.

Loving meeting the people, and loving seeing folks get excited about something creative in their lives.

Bring it on.

Here’s a ( LINK ) to the remaining road show dates and locations … it would be awesome to see you there!

World War 2 Veteran Philip Truelove receives his Portrait

Just had to share this …

The reaction from World War 2 Veteran Philip Truelove, along with his son and daughter, when I returned and delivered his portrait, captured for the 39-45 Portraits Project.

THIS is why I do what I do! ❤️

Philip Truelove

215 Platoon
No. 10 Bomb Disposal Company
Royal Engineers

I Am Lyme: Nicola of Kathrens Rare Knitwear, Lyme Regis

Last week I was out shooting another portrait for my I Am Lyme project, this time with the wonderful Nicola Kathren, who owns Kathrens Rare Knitwear on Coombe Street in Lyme Regis.

I'd known of Nicola for ages but we'd never actually met, until Sarah from the Town Mill Bakery introduced us a week or so ago while I was there grabbing some breakfast. We hit it off straight away, got a shoot organised, and on the day my mate Anthony Crothers drove over from South Wales to lend a hand.

The idea

Nicola has this big desk where she sits with her sewing machine and all her day-to-day bits around her, so it made sense to photograph her right there seeing as I Am Lyme is about the people who make this town what it is; an environmental portrait of her in her own space, doing what she does, felt exactly right.

The setup

Nicola’s desk sits right by the shop's big front window, which looks straight out onto the narrow road outside. When the light comes through that window it's fantastic, but at the time we were shooting there just wasn't enough of it. It's a narrow street with tall buildings opposite, so they block a fair bit of the natural light, and at midday the position of the sun meant the shop front was sitting in shadow for much of the time.

The first challenge was actually the window display; we had to carefully reposition the mannequins so as not to disturb it, while still leaving enough of a gap for the light to come through.

Keeping things simple, I went with one light, but this time I put it outside, pressed against the window, essentially to create my own window light. The direction of that natural window light and what it did was absolutely stunning; I just needed more of it.

So I set up the Westcott Rapid Box 4x3 softbox and the Westcott FJ800 on the pavement, firing in, to enhance the direction that was already there rather than fight it, so it still read as natural, even though it was being lit.

Nicola's camera-right side needed a little lift, so Anthony stood just out of frame holding up a white reflector to bounce a touch more of that softbox light back onto her. I tried the silver side first, but it was too much … it flattened everything out and almost removed the shadows completely. The white gave just the gentle lift I was after.

The shoot

It only took a few minutes to get everything up and running, so Nicola sat at her sewing machine and we just chatted. It felt like a conversation with the odd frame grabbed along the way, rather than a "shoot."

Then, in a lull, she rested her head against her hand and looked completely relaxed. That was the moment, and it came about naturally rather than being posed.

I was aiming the camera at Nicola through a gap in the big overhanging fern because I really wanted to add some layers to the image and show exactly the creative environment she works in.

Shot on the 33mm on my Fuji X-T5 (50mm equivalent), on a tripod, tethered into Capture One Mobile so I could see everything coming through as we went. Start to finish, about 45 minutes.

A brilliant shoot with a wonderful person.

What's next?

Keep ‘em peeld because very soon the I Am Lyme website will GO LIVE with the dates organised for the exhibiton in Summer 2027, to be held in the Town Mill Gallery.

Onwards and upwards 😃

🚨 Check out Kathrens Rare Knitwear, Lyme Regis ( LINK )

No Studio, No Problem: Teaching Portraiture at the Wex Summer Roadshow

Over the last few days, I've had the absolute pleasure of being out on the road with Wex for their summer roadshow, and what a brilliant experience its been. Thursday saw me arrive in Leeds, and Friday was the day it all came together at the Wex store, and I have to say, it was a fantastic from start to finish.

The team at the Leeds store, led by manager Levy, made me feel incredibly welcome, as did every member of staff, and what struck me most was the constant flow of people coming through - getting hands on with new kit, attending free seminars, and crucially, wanting to see how I work in practice. That's where the "no studio, no problem" practical demonstrations came in.

The concept is simple but powerful: I wanted to show people how I create portraits using minimal kit in tight, compact spaces. Rather than being locked away in a studio, I was demonstrating this right there on the shop floor, so people could watch the process unfold, step in front of the camera themselves, and see the results happen in real time.

The Setup

I kept my kit intentionally lean. I brought my X-drop pro background support and Vintage Gray backdrop, and for lighting, I was using the Westcott FJ250.

My camera was the Fuji X-T5 paired with the Westcott XT-1M remote trigger, and I was shooting in manual mode to set my scene, then letting the flash work in TTL - and honestly, it's a dream combination for portraiture like this.

The Moments That Mattered

One thing that really stood out was a fella who couldn't quite believe how quickly the whole thing came together. I showed him how I position the lighting to achieve the kind of Rembrandt lighting I'm after, and from start to finish, we were ready to shoot in about sixty seconds. He was genuinely shocked at how simple and efficient it could be.

People were really impressed too seeing my Fuji X-T5 tethered to my iPad Pro via Capture One Mobile. Nearly everyone who watched the workflow commented on how instantaneously the Raw files appeared on screen after I'd taken the shot. That instant feedback - being able to review a Raw file moments after capture, really drove home how modern tools can streamline the entire process.

I also had the privilege of getting Joe Cornish, a renowned landscape photographer here in the UK and one of the other speakers at the event, in front of the camera for a portrait. He's got such a distinctive face for portraiture … I couldn’t resist convincing him 😃

What the Community Showed Me

What genuinely touched me was how many people came along specifically to meet me. That means more than I can express. The local photography community turned out in force too, and there was this palpable sense of genuine excitement about photography and a real hunger to learn. Questions kept coming back to TTL and how to use flash effectively, and I was delighted to show people just how powerful and reliable that technique can be when you understand it.

In Closing

It’s so good seeing people's faces light up when they understood something new, watching them realise that you don't need a fancy studio to create beautiful portraits, and knowing that I'd been able to share something that genuinely mattered to them.

That, for me, is what it's all about.

Photographing World War 2 Veteran Philip Truelove - Bomb Disposal

Last week I drove to Bath, Somerset to meet and photograph Philip Truelove, a Second World War veteran who served in 215 Platoon, No. 10 Bomb Disposal Company, Royal Engineers.

I'd been contacted by his son Jez, a keen photographer himself, after he received the Fotospeed newsletter announcing my new partnership as one of their Ambassadors. He clicked through to my website, saw mention of the 39-45 Portraits Project, and got in touch. We exchanged a few emails and agreed a date for me to visit Philip at his home and take his portrait.

I'd been looking forward to this for weeks. I'm no longer actively touring the UK photographing WW2 veterans, but if I'm contacted about doing so, I'll always make the effort to get it done. Meeting Philip today was such a treat.

A warm welcome

As planned, I arrived at midday and left my kit in the car for now. Jez met me at the door.

"My dad is very excited about this," he said, and then led me into the living room, where I was greeted with a beaming smile and Philip making the effort to get up from his chair to greet me.

"Well, hello Sir" was all that was needed, and away we went. The conversation flowed easily as Philip recounted stories of joining up and memories of friends, and at times he became a little teary.

I asked him what made him want to join Bomb Disposal.

"I didn't want to have to kill anyone," he told me.

At one point he spoke about a time he was guiding a group of German soldiers who had surrendered, moving them to a new location. Philip was clearing the way ahead, making sure it was safe, when one of the soldiers stepped over the white safety line he'd put in place to go to the toilet in a bush. Moments later there was an explosion. The soldier had stepped on a mine.

"That was my saddest day of the whole war," Philip said.

Taking the portrait

We chatted over a cup of tea, and then, with Jez's help, I brought my kit in from the car and set up. Philip was a natural in front of the camera and clearly enjoyed the experience.

Space in the room was very tight, so tight that I couldn't use a tripod as I normally would. Instead I had to lean back against the patio doors and hold the camera about six inches from my chin, just to maintain eye contact with him through the lens.

By 1.02pm I was packed up and heading out the door. It wasn't a long visit, but it was more than enough quality time together. It was also a very hot day, and I was mindful that Philip was wearing his suit jacket and medals for the occasion. Despite my concerns, he was determined we should do this today, and I'm so glad we did.

KIT USED

• Fuji X-T5

• Fuji 33mm f/1.4 WR

• Westcott FJ400 Strobe

• Westcott 4’ x 3’ Rapid Box Switch Softbox

• Westcott X-Drop Pro Background Support

• Westcott Vintage Grey by Glyn Dewis (Background Material)

• Westcott Silver / White Collapsible Reflector

🚨 Check out my full Kit List ( CLICK HERE )

What comes next

I'll be heading back in just under two weeks to hand deliver Philip's portrait, mounted and presented thanks to my friend Trevor at West Street Picture Framing in Axminster. First, though, I'll be editing the portrait later today.

Philip turns 100 years old on the 21st December this year, and in a couple of weeks the street he lives on will be holding a party to celebrate his birthday early. That alone tells you the kind of man he is, when an entire street wants to celebrate his birthday.

I can't wait to head back and see him again. In the meantime, I'll be reading his self-published book, The Chronicles of a Sapper, which recounts his memories from when he joined up in January 1945.