Fuji Using Aperture 3.0 and shooting RAW - not for grandmothers

[jonoslack]

HI there
I don't want to be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, so, for whom this is really obvious - apologies! I just thought that it might be helpful to someone!

Having re-evaluated the situation too many times, I do know that Aperture is the photographic program for me, there's no question about it.

However, as usual, Aperture have been slow to provide support for the X100, and I thought it might just be worth sharing the way I deal with this issue.

I'm always a little worried about using proprietary RAW formats anyway, so I don't have a problem about converting to DNG - fortunately the Adobe DNG converter is free, and you can get it from here:

Adobe DNG converter 6.4 for mac

Okay - this is what I do
First of all - I shoot RAW - then I insert the SD card into the computer and load DNG converter:

You can see that having set it up once, it defaults to using the folder in the SD card with the images:
/Volumes/Untitled/DCIM/100_FUJI/

The target location I've set up is a transit folder called

/Volumes/....../fujidng/

Again - having set this up once it will default to this folder each time you load DNG converter

Here's how it looks:

Having clicked the Convert button and put the kettle on, I remove the SD card, load Aperture and click on Import - I'll then choose the local drive and go to the

/Volumes/....../fujidng/ folder, which will then have all the DNG files ready to import.

I set Aperture to MOVE the files to the correct end location (I have a default project for each month, with a matching folder).

Like this:

After doing the import, the temporary fujidng folder is empty (the files having been moved), So there is no duplication of files and everything is neat and tidy.

. . . . . . . of course, I also have a backup routine which runs each night to backup the new files.

I hope this is helpful to someone!

all the best

 

[soundimageplus]

So does this version of aperture now import DNG versions of files that the Mac OS doesn't support?

 

[jonoslack]

Hi - yes indeed.
There was a problem with files which had lens correction information (eg micro 4/3 cameras) - I think that's been sorted out (bit I don't have a camera to test with).
However the Fuji files are fine - added to which, when Apple do add support, the camera is properly recognised, so you'll be given the option of re-processing using the new parameters. My feeling is that the current conversion is excellent.

Hope this helps
all the best

 

[soundimageplus]

I downloaded a trial version and was indeed able to import my fuji x100 files converted into DNG files into Aperture. About time it did this. I haven't used it for a while and have always been very disappointed with it. However version 3 certainly seems a lot quicker and I'll have a look at it again, and see what I think at the end of 30 days.

Hi - yes indeed.
There was a problem with files which had lens correction information (eg micro 4/3 cameras) - I think that's been sorted out (bit I don't have a camera to test with).
However the Fuji files are fine - added to which, when Apple do add support, the camera is properly recognised, so you'll be given the option of re-processing using the new parameters. My feeling is that the current conversion is excellent.

Hope this helps
all the best

 

[Ray Sachs]

I'd never had much luck with DNG files from a couple of other cameras I had before raw support was available, so I hadn't even thought of it with the Fuji. And I've been so happy with the jpegs I figured this might be the first camera I'd actually stick with jpegs (particularly given the amazing capacity on the card and the speed they write at). But I just tried the DNG conversion again and it works perfectly, so I suppose I'll shoot raw for a while now and maybe mix in the occasiona raw+jpeg and see what I think. Certainly doesn't add much time to the import process.

-Ray