Yes, as it says above, this is CallMeAlan.uk, the personal website of a guy called, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, Alan.

alansworld {at} [gmail.com] will find me, should you care to discuss anything I've written about. I welcome any feedback.

In the latest news, March to May 2021: it seems I have developed diabetes!
Read all about it right here

I am a taphophile
Let's talk about my incurable chronic mental aberration, taphophilia, and have a look at some pictures which explain the condition. Hint: a taphophile is a grave hunter and photographer. If you don't need to read about my taphophilia you can hop straight over to
My catalog of grave photography albums

Greenham Common: former US nuclear airbase, now a public common again
This is a series of my photograph albums about Greenham Common, near Newbury, Berkshire, in central south England. I live in Newbury, and the Common is where I'm often to be found, invariably with one or more of my cameras slung around my neck. It's a wonderful and often quite surprising place, and my intention here is to give you a flavour of what it was, by looking at how it looks today.

Greenham Common used to be an American nuclear airbase, until that closed, roughly at the same time as the Cold War was called off, and they ripped it up with big yellow tractors and things. But they left behind many many enticing clues and photogenic reminders of its past. So this is my acknowledgment and thanks to those who, when ripping up the former airbase, left us those reminders of what it was.

General Photography
This is the index to my general photograph albums. Elsewhere on the site are my graves and graveyards albums, and also my special Greenham Common site and the story of Sterling cables.

But I take lots of pictures and it's only fair to you to allow you the opportunity to have a look at them. So here goes.

Sterling Cables, a piece of Newbury history
This is my look at a piece of Newbury history - an illustrated look at the old Sterling Cables site, which featured the derelict cable building, once the tallest building/eyesore in the town, now demolished

RAW photographs, their many application software packages filtered down to two one, and the use of control surfaces

I talk about how I've reduced the vast number of RAW processing software packages down to just two that work well and work quickly enough that you don't need to go get a coffee every time you click Process. It also happens that these only two worthwhile applications are the only two which can work completely and efficiently with control surfaces.

Read about *proper* RAW software and control surfaces

Some December 2019 news. Anybody visiting my site, and who may understand, use, or read about RAW processing, will be aware of the product called Capture One. It happens to be one of the only two *proper* and worthwhile packages out there, and I talk about it in this section via the above link.

Keen RAW photographers who are familiar with C One may be aware that Phase One has now (4 Dec 2019) released the much-teased version 20 of Capture One. I had previously mentioned here that I had seen a beta pre-release of 20, but was unable to talk about what it featured. Well, as of now, it is in general release. I'm not going into what's new as there's plenty of Youtube material out there. However, as a very early initial personal comment, I must say that, wow, it's become sloooow! In version 10 I could twist a knob or push a button on my control surface and see instant results. No longer. Increase the exposure and watch as the program slowly brightens the picture in little hops and skips. Yawn. Trouble is, you think, oh, it needs a bit more, twist the knob further and bam! You've grossly overshot the mark into an utter washout because your previous twist was still grinding away.

Hence - and I've been patient, tried everything, rebooted the computer, all of that - due it having become as slow as various other RAW products I've trialled and rejected I must change my views on Capture One : There is now only one contender in the RAW processing arena: Adobe Lightroom. I can no longer call Capture One one of my two worthwhile RAW products. Lightroom reigns supreme.


But in the latest news, December 2020: I was musing about the gradual demise of Capture One into the slow thing that is version 20. Its awful slothfulness made it effectively unuseable. Then I recalled how good version 10 - long deleted from my Apps folder - was. I searched forlornly and without much hope for the installer and Bingo! There it is, deep in the dark depths of one of my external drives. After ensuring that there was no remaining trace of version 20 on my Mac I installed version 10. This is unbelievable! All the old well-remembered speed is back. The overshoot is a thing of the past.

So I am promoting Capture One back to being one of my day-to-day RAW working products

Foveon? Quattro? The Sigma domain
I want to talk about the Sigma Quattro and Foveon sensors - what they are, how they differ from the more usual and normal Bayer sensors, and about the difficulties and differences about processing their RAW files, which have the X3F extension. Let's learn about why you won't be processing an X3F in Lightroom, ON1, Affinity or DxO, to name but a few. No, you're going to have take a different approach. Read my article about Quattro / Foveon / X3F.

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