I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps.
It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VHS filters on social media, etc. I think it's more about signaling some cultural identity than any objective benefits of the "retro" process. It's not like digital cameras make you give up creative control. If you want to limit yourself to 36 unreviewed shots, you can do that with digital too.
That said, I agree with one thing: you shouldn't be paying for an Adobe subscription. Use Darktable, Capture One, or some other equivalent that you're not just renting for life.
There are plenty of people who sincerely enjoy the aspects that make older tech less convenient or practical. Maybe it's an appreciation for the engineering or "comprehensibility," often it's because older tech produces unique outputs that can't be adequately captured by newer technology.
Reducing people's interest to "social signalling" comes off as dismissive.
Come on. This article isn't about the joys of doing things the hard way. To quote: "Then, at the start of 2022 I got my first analogue film camera: a Leica M6. (I know... I dived straight in the deep end.) This was my first introduction to how editing could be easier."
It isn't easier. Film is pain. Pain can be good, but this is selling a mirage.
Just to be clear, your comment had a general statement about how you perceived the motivations of "people buying vinyl". That's what I was responding to. (People using VHS filters on social media is by definition social signalling so no comment there lol).
And I completely agree with your point about touting film as "easier" than digital. That's a stretch.
I’m a believer that the hard work brings more joy, digging crates of vinyl and finding that rare album even if it has pops and noise feels 100x more enjoyable that streaming it.
Hello, original author here. What I meant by “easier”:
Consumer film is designed to be developed and scanned/printed by your lab. You then get a finished image.
Most modern interchangeable-lens digital cameras are designed for you to shoot RAW and edit in software like Lightroom.
Because I first started photography around 2010, I was taught at school to take pictures, then edit them on a computer.
Shooting film for the first time was originally about trying something new in a hobby I enjoy. As stated, it removed the need to sit in front of a computer. “Easier”.
I wish I’d stopped shooting RAW sooner. Trying film led to that realisation.
(And I agree film can be a pain. I’ve ruined several rolls through both stupidity and cameras breaking. I still enjoy it.)
> Most modern interchangeable-lens digital cameras are designed for you to shoot RAW
I don't think I agree. The photos straight off my GH4 are perfectly fine as-is, it's quite a bit of work to get the same thing out of Darktable, let alone something better. I do still shoot in RAW, for those 1% where I do want to go in manually. (The GH4 isn't great in low light.)
> I wish I’d stopped shooting RAW sooner. Trying film led to that realisation.
I mean... yeah. But don't blame the camera for your personal habits ;)
Vinyl (IMO) isn't about it being retro or having "better" sound quality (whatever that means, it's mostly subjective), but about having a collectable, physical item. I think CDs were a step backwards, not because the sound quality was off but because the boxes were smaller and fragile; I've never owned any music CDs.
Digital music is neat for listening to music, but it also feels like it lowers the value of it.
The jewel cases absolutely were more fragile than the cardboard that was typical of vinyl, but vinyl itself is more fragile than CDs, though the failure modes are completely different.
The jewel case does have the advantage of being easily replaceable too though - you can transfer album art/booklets and in most cases the result looks the same as the original.
With vinyl, album artwork and the case are the same thing and damaging or destroying the case also damages or destroys the album art - you can’t really replace the case without repurchasing the record if the art matters to you.
This probably isn't the point either, but I get an almost perverse level of calm knowing that for my most favourite albums, I own a physical representation of the waveform trapped in a medium.
I very rarely listen to them in that form, but I honestly like the idea that in a post-Carrington event, zombie apocalypse or mad-max style future where electricity or electronics become scarce, I can (if desperate enough) listen to them with a nail and a cone.
I use Lightroom 6 that I paid for, it still works and is still useful for my needs.
But as said needs are mostly general curve + highlights down + shadows up, it's possible they could simply be a jpeg preset in camera.
This line made me chuckle as well:
> Since I was a teenager I’ve used digital cameras
Digital cameras didn't exist when I was a teenager; and they cost about as much as a car when I was in my twenties. Overall I don't miss film cameras, although the scarcity was interesting. Taking a picture was an actual decision, unlike today.
It reminds me of people buying vinyl... signaling...
It's absolutely partly this.
But, for me today, as a sometimes hobbyist, it's also about the process...
Digital is too good. The cameras are too good. The results are too good. There's no anticipation.
The analog experience is, to be trite, so much more analog. A good vintage film camera (and probably new Leica too) feels so good in the hand. Like a nice watch, it's a piece of mechanical art. It takes time to focus and set exposure. Sometimes is goes horribly wrong, but sometimes whatever went wrong produces an unexpectedly delightful result. There's also something to be said about receiving the negatives and scans weeks or months after shooting the film - the delayed gratification is something that's lacking in today's instant-everything world. Plus, the cost of film and processing makes me slow down a beat and think about what I'm doing - no spray and pray when a roll of Portra 400 + processing is $25 or more.
It's this, and also simple nostalgia. Getting out my vinyl records reminds me of my teenage and early adult years. Responsibilites were few, life was pretty simple, I could spend hours with them and the only consequence was delayed homework. I was into film photography during that same time, and the occasional urges to take it up again are filled with memories of those days. The reality of what film photography costs now kills that pretty quickly.
I am not a professional. But I had done some film photography in its last days.
The photos that I took during the time, just casually, tops any photo that I take now a days with by DSLR.
It is not in raw "quality". But what are we trying to capture when we take a picture? Is it raw pixels? or is it some emotion that we originally got when we were looking at something.
For some reason, I think film captures and regenerate that emotion when you look at the photograph in a way that a digital capture cannot.
I cannot explain it, but the the closest thing that I have found that could explain it is..It is in the context of b/w but I think the same applies to color as well..
That emotion is nostalgia, whether real or perceived. It's not a bad thing, some of my favorite photos are on b&w film. Film has a texture and (inaccurate) colors/tones that aren't really reproduced in digital cameras but are all over the place in media we consume and personal/family photos, usually from an older time.
> That emotion is nostalgia, whether real or perceived.
Absolutely. One of my prized possessions is a book I had made from digital pictures I took on a family trip when my kids were 3 & 4 years old. The pictures are of single-digit megapixel quality, but are perfect for what they needed to be: a reminder of that trip, and the memories contained within.
It seems to me that the slightly fuzzy aspect of old pictures better matches our fuzzy memories of that time.
It is not nostalgia. It was the photo of a stray dog on a beach, and a bunch of fishermen drawing in a big fishing net..so nothing personal or long lost to be nostalgic about...
You don't have to have an emotional connection to the subject to feel nostalgia, it can be more abstract than that, such as the way highlights are rendered or the grainy texture. Good art evokes emotions anyways, it doesn't need to be something you're personally tied to.
I think so, but the results does not appear same. Did you get a chance to read the post I shared in my comment. It explains why this could not give the same results.
This is like looking at old b/w photos of people for example. This feels like art. Brings memories and has zero relation to a physical quality of material.
> someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom
This is a very important part of your message. You did have the opportunity of "being thought by the slow medium" simply by those being the default. Taking the "teachings" of more limiting, analog (in these cases) technologies became part of your process, your underastanding of the core principles, your motivation, your subjects and something deeper about photography.
In a time where basicaly limitless technologies are the default, for generations that were born into a world where decision fatigue is a bigger issue than scarcity artificial limitations are still a great path to learning something meaningful and having fun.
There is zero intrinsic value to taking pictures, listening to or making music or any of the activities that see a revival of their "retro" versions - analog or otherwise.
I was born when digital photography was the default and my first cameras were digital. I have had way more fun taking my <1000 analog photos, have way more connection to them (partly because I physically had to touch those photos developing and retouching them) than my 100k+ digital photos sitting on some zfs pool.
Sure, digital photography is more efficient in every way but -eapecially as commercial photography is dying out to AI - if we strip the commercial element of things that humans are doing for shits and giggles - the analog/retro/slow/whatever version of these activities might prove to be better at serving the basic human needs (the shits and the giggles).
I started out with film and took my camera all over everywhere with me for years. I switched to digital as soon as I could, before it was really even practical, fully embraced it, and ran with it for a long time. But I eventually got bored, and stopped carrying a camera at all for while.
Last year, though, I got back into film, and I'm having a ball! The point of the retro process is not that it's better, it's that I'm enjoying the time I spend with it. The constraints are interesting. The technique is challenging. It's not so much about the photos as it is the photography: I enjoy the practice of making images, and dealing with the challenges of vintage equipment is part of the skill I'm practicing.
It doesn't actually matter whether I take any of these photos or not, you know? I'm not a professional; I'm not making unique art, or documenting historic events. I'm doing this because I enjoy watching the light, looking for interesting frames, and trying to capture them. Right now, the most enjoyable equipment for that purpose happens to be an all-mechanical, medium-format film camera.
Yeah, I agree it's a form of signaling. Once the tech gets old enough to not be considered "everyday use", signalers will find it appealing. I dated a girl, who insisted on taking pictures with her 2000 style digital camera rather than the phone - you know the kind which puts the date and time in the bottom right in an orange font. A few years ago these early digital cameras were untouchable - not retro enough to beat polaroids, significantly worse than phone cameras. Now the time window has moved enough...
> I think it's more about signaling some cultural identity than any objective benefits of the "retro" process.
I think it could be that, or simply that people want to try a different experience. Digital photography started out as the easier, faster, and cheaper option, but the experience of using it and even the culture around photography itself has changed over time. Going back to the roots once in a while can feel refreshing. And paying for a monthly subscription is probably overkill for most casual photographers.
> And paying for a monthly subscription is probably overkill for most casual photographers.
But film (the actual roll + development + scan) is very expensive, at least in my parts. Sure, you may mean "casual" as in "maybe shoots a roll a film a year", in which case I guess it's quite cheaper than an Adobe LR subscription. But if you shoot a roll a month or more? Then Adobe wins hands down (I'm talking the photography plan here, not the whole thing).
The cheapest stock I could find is a C-41 negative, b&w Agfa APX 400 iso, 36 pictures for 7.90 €. Color C-41 starts at 11 € with a 24 picture Kodak Ultra Max, bought as a set of 3 rolls. Developing and scanning costs 12 € for 2000x3000 px or 20 € for 4500x6700 px. That's 19.90 €, or the price of the base Adobe Photography plan.
Yes, financially doesn't make much sense to go from digital to film. Film costs, absolutely. But you end up shooting less, thinking more, waiting for the right shot and so on. You also move sliders/tweak less and mistakes teach you lessons that you quickly learn from. Sometimes there are happy accidents as well. Taking a shot becomes a deliberate action since you don't have unlimited frames. It's a different experience. Yes, the Adobe light room seems cheap in comparison to film but, that's the wrong comparison IMO. There are other tools out there that are much cheaper than Adobe's offerings if not completely free. Digital has made photography available to the masses, everybody's got a camera nowadays. However, it did kill something and what it killed is what these folk are looking for (that something that got lost in the process).
I'm not into photography anymore and will stick to cheap digital photography for convenience (smart phone) but I could see how this works out for these folks and I believe it's not just a fad or signaling. Similarly, for music, analog instruments could be replicated and enhanced digitally/electronically and yet they're what you're after sometimes.
> Taking a shot becomes a deliberate action since you don't have unlimited frames. It's a different experience.
It’s a very different experience. Whether you enjoy that depends a lot on why you are engaging in photography. Do you prize the ritual, the act of taking photographs in the moment? Then you might love film. Might also love working in a dark room and doing your own development and prints.
Personally I don’t care about any of that. I care about the resulting photo. I’ll take upwards of 800 photos when I’m shooting one of my kids’ soccer games. I’ll get 100 photos max that are worth keeping, and a much smaller number I’m really happy with. Some will miss focus. Some will miss the moment. But I’ll have a few great photos for the trouble.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the ritual. Also nothing wrong with just enjoying the product.
I used to do that when I was a teenager and it was truly wonderful. I had my own darkroom and was even developing my own film (BW only). As tech evolved I moved on to digital but took so many photos that somehow I stopped caring about photographs at all. It even became a bit overwhelming to look at photos and to some extent it still is to this day. I took on many other hobbies so it's not a huge loss for me. But I can totally get why some folks would get back to film from digital, they're going for the experience and not the end result as photos, which I agree would be more efficient to process digitally. But same goes with other arts. Why are people still painting? All can be done digitally in Krita or some other software and a lot more efficiently and faster and so on. And yet people pay money for canvases, oil paints, brushes, and spend hours and hours painting.
For sure. I’m not dismissing others who want that experience. It’s just not my focus when I’m taking pictures.
I do agree that going through hundreds of photos is not a process I enjoy. I’ve been trying to train myself to weed out more efficiently. The newer AI tools help some, though I still go through the AI rejects to make sure it didn’t cull something I would keep.
On the point of film, I agree, although I won't say it's necessarily a bad thing overall. Just a bit silly when people try to claim film is somehow "superior" or whatever.
Film is absolutely a cultural experience for many people shooting it today. The main argument I have to confirm this is to consider that most people's photos are not good, to start with. (Talking about the average joe, not pro photographers.) So any comment about film's technical capabilities is moot. You can take bad photos on film or digital. Also you can take good photos on film or digital! Unless you're really doing some good experimental photography, you gotta admit that the film motivation is vibes.
Also on editing applications, Lightroom does have pretty good all round features , which is hard to find elsewhere. For example Darktable technically works, but the UI is poor, the performance is poor, and it's generally slower to achieve the same results.
If someone wants to make an open source Lightroom clone, I'll be all for it!
Ah true. In niche cases one technology can be better than the other, sure. I was more talking about people who buy a disposable film camera and think they're Ansel Adams... (For the record, I think the same about people who buy old point and shoot digitals. Totally a fad now)
>> > If you want to limit yourself to 36 unreviewed shots, you can do that with digital too.
> I’m not sure that’s true. At least, not nearly as hard-constrained as with film.
Just grab your camera of choice, look at the average file size, multiply it by 36, and format a partition on your memory card of that size. Bonus points if your camera uses adaptive compression, so maybe you'll get a bit fewer or a bit more photos per card depending on what you shot! Isn't that even more interesting than film? You know exactly how many exposures you get up front with a roll, now you'll have to wait and find out!
> Digital is not a free lunch. You do lose something somewhere.
Right. But I bet that, just like the OP, most people will outsource development and scanning of their film rolls, meaning they don't control the process. That's just digital with extra steps.
>I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps.
The OP didn't go "the old way". They made it even more about "hassle-free simplicity", with a digital Fuji that shoots great out-of-the-box colors that they don't correct.
That said, the problem with the "hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography" is that it cheapens everything and takes the fun and skill out of it.
> That said, the problem with the "hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography" is that it cheapens everything and takes the fun and skill out of it.
Takes the skill out? Kind of. Accessible cameras make it easy for people to take acceptable photographs. Most people cannot take a great photograph with any camera.
I do think accessible cameras have made it harder for mediocre photographers to pass as good. The days when simply carrying an SLR gave an aura of competence are gone. Democratization of quality cameras closed the hardware gap for a lot of photography.
For me, trying film after growing up in the post-digital world was more about exploring the experience of the medium and why we ended up where we are. It's given me an appreciation for why slowing down with your subject can increase "keepers".
Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time on both film and digital and currently I’m a lot happier with the results of my film work. Is it a combination of the camera, lens, medium, and process? I’m sure it is. Could I get similar artifacts out of digital? Probably but the key difference is that I don’t and the medium for me doesn’t make me want to. In the end creative work like photography has as many manifestations as people and your comment reads as rather dismissive than curious.
Myself - I do not use vinyl but being close to start using it again. Not like every day but when in a mood. The whole process is like coming back to a better and forgotten times. Definitely touches some strings.
I got tired of in depth fiddly editing and wrote Filmulator to minimize the decision-making and streamline editing. I rarely spend more than 20-30 seconds per image.
You get a clean, basic look, no weird colors or overly creative "looks", but with adjustability and great highlight handling that JPEG doesn't get you.
Thank you for this. I downloaded the program, but am I right in that it does some processing on the RAW files as it imports them so that they're effectively in a mostly "finished" state?
At the moment I'm using SilkyPix for my Lumix photos and NX Studio for my Nikon photos, and then occasionally using RawTherapee and Darktable and also occasionally ART. I then sometimes attempt to use gmic on the finished JPEG or Snapseed on my Android phone for more ambience and sharpness.
I'm finding I'm spending absolutely hours on editing all the photos I take. And they don't even look that great when I finish with them, mainly through my lack of skill. I find the sharpening in silkypix to be very good.
This looks right up my alley. Does it properly support true monochrome raw DNG files? I.E., cameras that don't have a bayer filter and don't require a debayering pass. I'm shooting a Pentax K3 Mark III Monochrome, although Leica has a couple true monochrome cameras and there are services that will de-bayer cameras and modify the firmware to achieve similar ends.
Yes, it properly supports monochrome DNG and disables (and hides) tools that are not applicable such as demosaicing, CA correction, highlight recovery, white balance, etc.
I didn't know such firmware hacking was available. I'd been waiting for the GR Monochrome for years but it's a bit expensive for me.
I don't know if the firmware mods are public but I saw one conversion service offer it when I was researching. If I can find the link I'll post it here this evening.
I need to fix Phase One support in Filmulator. LibRaw has some additional processing steps required that I didn't manage to figure out last time I worked on it.
Lightroom doesn't even process IQ4 150 (RGB) files correctly either, there's in back calibration that is missing, resulting in a bunch of lower right corner amp glow(?).
Capture One with the same back is fine/the back went to Japan to get repaired only a few months ago and has a brand new main controller board/calibration...
Oh, great to see this on HN! I found Filmulator a few years ago and used it for most of my raw photography (which, admittedly, isn't a lot) and found it amazing. Exactly what I wanted. Streamlined, easy to get into, fun. And I really like the way my pictures come out at the end. Thank you for your work :)
It's not GPU-native… that's a goal but it'll certainly take some time. Back when I was last working heavily on it there commonly wasn't enough vram but now there should be on most machines.
33 megapixels is not a lot. I'd consider that fast on my 9800X3D gaming machine but moderate on my older 2700X dev machine. But of course, what you consider fast depends on your computer and your expectations.
Zooming and panning is much faster on Filmulator than most other software because it caches full-res images throughout much of the pipeline. On my gaming monitor I can rapidly zoom in and out at a buttery-smooth 240Hz refresh rate.
But actually changing settings is a bit slower.
The earliest settings are the slowest to respond since they only operate on full resolution raw data, but they're non-creative, technical decisions on highlight recovery and demosaicing and such that do not need tweaking. Additionally, you get early feedback from these in the form of early-pipeline histograms interspersed among the tools, helping you tune these settings quickly.
Noise reduction adds a lot of processing time but once you figure that out the full-res image gets cached and doesn't interfere with later steps.
It has fast (~100ms) screen-resolution response to sliders in the filmulation tools mid-pipeline but it'll take a second or two for the full resolution image to process.
Late pipeline editing (post-filmulation) is near instant even for the full resolution.
So is it fast? Yes and no. But it tries to always be responsive and provide useful information as quickly as possible.
Even back to film/analog era, taking a photo is just the 1st step. Then apply some darkroom work (dodge/burn/use some filters to adjust the highlight/shadow etc etc). Image editing softwares like Photoshop simplify the process.
I mostly shoot in black & white (both film and digital). Since once of my biggest inspirations is Ansel Adams, then no I don't adhere to "SOOC" (straight out of camera) philosophy. Fine tuning in Photoshop is a must.
Printmaking is a huge part of the art form. I think a lot of people miss this fact in the "shoot and scan" age of film photography. Not everyone cares, or even needs to care, but those who do really should read the Ansel Adams trilogy.
I've spent a lot of time in the past 15 years turning photos into various kinds of prints. From Cyanotypes using printed contact negatives, via multi-layer stencil art to my current obsession: vectorizing images, separating the layers, machining linoleum blocks and then doing multi-layer prints. Once I have a stable workflow for lino prints the next think I'm going to try is to use mokuhanga instead of linoleum.
(I also plan to try platinum/palladium prints. They look gorgeous. But first I need to get better at shooting for B/W)
Yeah, its kinda telling those who treat everything after shooting film as some sort of binary process.
I feel a lot of them would benefit more from just processing all their photos through some basic profile that ends with running it through a film simulator.
Yep a physical print is a totally different experience too, compared to an image on the screen.
With good printing software like imageprint RED/Black (NB very expensive and overkill for most) you can actually see the effect different papers, settings, and lighting will have before the print. Very fun!
"Shoot and scan" is convenient. Hard to argue with it. But hey, if you want convenience, why are still using film?
:D
But anyway, yes print making is both art and science on its own. Finding local labs to develop and scan films is pretty easy. But darkroom to print your photos the old school way? Happy to find a new one (I'm on Jakarta, btw).
You probably know this, but shooting in color and then converting to b/w afterwards gives you more artistic options than letting the camera do the b/w conversion.
Perfect is the enemy of good: Don't obsessively edit. Cull obviously bad photos. Find a few pretty good ones. Pick one at random. Edit lightly.
Photography can focus on captures or edits: analog photography necessitates a focus on the capture. Be in that moment, frame the shot you want, and your only edit might be some color correction.
While the above might not make you a 99th percentile photographer, that probably isn't a goal you need concern yourself with. I always find photos online that blow me away. Artists with the patience to plan and wait for the perfect shot, possibly for hours. Artists that meticulously cull until they find an exceptional photo. Artists that spend a half hour editing a single photo adjusting sliders.
If that's not you, you still don't have to give up editing photos if you like the result better than the camera's JPG. You just have to focus on the parts you enjoy, and find balance in the quality of the end results.
(And personally I love DxO PhotoLab. Purchased once on sale, no subscription. Fun to use, and I love the results!)
I used to take a lot of photos and then cull them afterwards before editing. It worked, although I was often loving shooting and dreading editing, because before doing any actual editing, I'd have 200 photos to sift through.
After a lot of practice, I became better at culling in my head, before even taking the photos. This has shifted my relationship with photography to more of a cognitive exercise, with a different set of enjoyments. I take far fewer photos overall - often I go out with a camera and don't even take a single shot. Editing is more enjoyable because there's less to do and I already know what edits I want. It's less naively fun but more contently fulfilling.
I found myself noticing the 10% keep rate a few months back and now keep that as as shooting target. I want 30 photos from today, better capture 300 times.
I've come to the same realization after shooting digital, film, and back to digital again.
I've found that if I apply "recipes" or "presets" to my camera and shoot jpg I get roughly what I want straight out of camera. In fact, I find that shooting jpg exclusively with a preset _almost_ scratches that film itch: there is a kind of permanency to the rendered output, and that forces me to slow down and think about what I want to render with this subject like one does with film.
Once I'm done shooting I simply import to Apple photos and make very light edits from there if any before sharing.
It's liberating to embrace constraints and reduce tooling. You might even have fun.
The question I why did you edit photos?
What was goal?
Why were you doing it in the first place?
I guess the thing you have discovered shooting
analog is that each click is a finite resource
so you spend more time composing and being
aware of the scene before you take the photo.
Saving £20 is nice.
Having your 36 snapshots developed at a decent lab
will cost you more.
In you are paying them additionally for edits
as well you are on longer saving money.
You just pay someone else.
Or are you giving it to a company that runs it
through an automated usually digital these days
sometimes analog machine that develops them
automatically? Those machines usually do edits
as well. But highly automated ones.
(I am not sure they make them anymore)
Having my medium format film developed is
far from cheap.
Lightroom is far from the only editor out there
and it is not a great editor to start with.
Lightroom is a Frankenstein combination of
of a DAM and an editor.
You probably will want some form of DAM
to organize your photos regardless.
The problem isn't that keepers necessarily need editing, the problem is that it is tempting (to some) to spend more time than they need simply because they can. Or because they feel they should. (Don't watch people ruining photos and making up for their lack of talent on youtube)
I shoot with post-processing in mind because I have years of experience with the cameras I use, so I know how they work. I rarely do that much more than just "normalizing" the pictures to what I wanted to capture (fix one, apply to whole batch) and apply some look that I've saved as a preset. Perhaps 1-5 seconds of tweaks per photo. If you need more, you probably didn't get the shot in the first place and you'll do better next time.
For me the time spent "editing" photos is marginal compared to the time I spend looking at the photos to decide which ones are keepers.
I can't understand what the youtubers who edit photos are doing. Most of them take mediocre to bad shots and then somehow manage to make them worse. And then people believe that this is what they're supposed to be doing
Then again, most photo-influencers don't actually understand even something as basic as focal length (no, a 105mm is a 105mm regardless of whether you put it in front of a tiny sensor or a big honking medium format)
It would be unkind to single anyone out so I am not going to. The thing is, I can for the life of me not think of a single photo influencer/youtuber who is also a popular _photographer_. They're popular influencers/youtubers.
As for what I mean by mediocre: let's say you are looking at a portrait of someone you don't know. If you can't remember it 10-30 minutes later, it was probably mediocre or worse. Would you recognize the subject if you met them on the a street one day later?
Most portraits tend to be bad because they completely fail to capture the subject. People fuss over lighting and editing and color grading and whatnot, but they don't actually pay attention to the person they are shooting. I see quite a few of these people with huge social media followings who can't, for the life of them, take pictures of humans. And yet, they teach their inability to make portraits to others.
I also know professional photographers who are genuinely bad at taking portraits. And then there are those rare people who just nail it most of the time. Notice this when looking at a portrait of someone you know. Is it "them"?
Another category where you see a lot of bad photos is wildlife photography. You will see endless pictures of birds that possibly could go in a bird-spotting book purely for identification purposes. But, to steal a line from my wife after looking at a certain facebook group "it's just a bunch of tack sharp ducks set against blurred out sky". And my wife spends an inordinate amount of time looking at birds.
All you need to make bad nature photography is a big lens, a location and some time. It takes no talent. All you need to make technically good, but completely pointless nature photos is a big lens, a location, time and a decent modern camera. Then turn on 3D tracking and spray whenever something moves. Animals live in nature -- they belong in context -- they do things. Good nature photographers manage to communicate this.
(I was actually tempted to name the "it's just a bunch of tack sharp ducks..."-group, but I'm not going to. Though it isn't that hard to guess).
We drown in technically excellent images that are dull as crap.
(To be clear: I'm a mediocre photographer. I'm very aware of it. I occasionally shoot something that may be worth looking at -- but still rarely something you'd remember)
I take thousands of photos a year with my phone and less than 1% of them get edited.
I take thousands of photos with my Nikon in RAW / NEF format. I have over 50 large photos printed in my house and editing absolutely helps when you print 20x30" or higher.
I went one step farther and quit taking photos. And this is after many years of hobbiest photography in the film era, had a darkroom at home, SLR with several lenses. Early digital cameras were underwhelming, basically the equivalent of a 110 film snapshot camera. By the time they got good I had started to reflect on the fact that I almost never went back and looked at any of the photos I'd taken, so I just stopped. Now although with my mobile phone I have a quite decent camera in my pocket all the time, I rarely use it. The "ohh I should take a picture of this" impulse just never enters my mind anymore. I enjoy the moment, and have the memories.
I don't disagree with your "enjoy the moment" thesis, but I also envy your memory recall capability. For me, photos can resurrect memories I don't have access to normally.
Yes, me too. I have a photographic memory that is getting worse with age. I remember things vividly but have no emotional attachment to the memory, and memories of myself doing things are in the third person so I can't seem to "enjoy" the memory of an event, but visually "see myself" in the memory (which doesn't make sense). Photos and videos help me "relive" the moment.
That being said, I have far too many photos (and camera bodies!).
I'm in the same boat. My phone is used to record 'memories', but I rarely ever look at the shots I capture with it. I'd probably be better off dropping this habit.
My camera is for art, and in my mind this an entirely different thing than recording stuff with my phone. These are as different as using writing utensils to briefly write notes vs. using them to make a complex drawing.
Same! For me this has had the unfortunate side effect of ruining non-art photo-taking. Someone shows me a regular phone photo and the photographer part of my brain is thinking "why did you even take this...?" Yes I'm a terrible friend
My phone camera is often just a very utilitarian thing, like taking a picture of a receipt and stuff like that. When I do take pictures for fun, it's almost always just a selfie to send people when I'm on vacation.
I don't really see the point of taking vacation photos that don't have me (or whomever I'm traveling with) in them; you can find higher quality photos of virtually anything I'd take a picture of on the internet for free; the only thing I can realistically add to the photo is me!
I set my camera to save both JPEG and RAW. 95% of the time the camera's JPEG is fine so I just use that (maybe with some final adjustments in GIMP), but it's nice to have the RAW around in case more significant edits are needed.
I do the same. Then group them in Digikam. Cull aggressively and put the best photos in an "external library" in Immich. Easy way to make them avaliable to my phone, without cluttering up my iCloud photos with duplicate JPEGs.
The last issue with my workflow now is figure out a better way to cull my iCloud photos, as they are a mess, and it's a bit annoying doing it on my phone.
I took a similar path, but with an additional final step of moving to film and doing the development, scanning, and editing myself. Definitely more work per photo, but each photo taken is a lot more considered.
I admire what this person is doing, but some reasons I prefer raw + lightroom over eg camera jpeg are:
* Lightroom’s noise reduction is WAY better than what my camera (a D500) can do. I shoot sports, usually indoors, with highish iso, so NR’s gonna have to happen at some point.
* If I’m going to lug around a dedicated camera, I’m gonna have it do its best. I have my iPhone for everything else.
* I can apply today’s lightroom NR to raws I shot years ago. Similarly, I expect to be able to apply future lightroom’s NR to today’s raws.
* Lightroom Classic is a superb program - it has many warts and clunks and oddities but it achieved product market fit and it stayed there, doing what its users want. Adobe keep making small improvements, and yet they don’t fuck it up!! This is vanishingly rare in big tech!!! (Promos gonna promo!) I grudgingly pay for this.
(My theory as to how they have managed to resist the institutional imperative to destroy Lightroom classic is that they created a fork, named just “Lightroom”, on which the promo can wreak its destruction, it’s kind of a second golgafrinchan ark, leaving Lightroom classic alone. I pay for Lightroom classic as a way of saying: keep leaving it alone!)
I'm also a LR classic user. I think it's pretty terrible by certain aspects, but I haven't found anything better. No idea why the UI lags on a pretty high-end machine, even with test catalogs. And I'm talking about scrolling, or showing and hiding panels. Plus, the worst offender is making me use Windows (on this point, only Darktable is better – no, I won't buy a mac, it's way too expensive for my needs).
Price-wise, it's kinda expensive, but the buy-it-for-life alternatives aren't exactly cheap, either. You should hold off updating for multiple years to save money compared to the LR subscription.
Now, I haven't used the alternatives for more than just a short test-drive, but the recent improvements in LRc would have made me upgrade anyway. I'm thinking specifically about the noise reduction you mentioned, but there's also all the object detection in masking which saves a ton of time, and the ai object removal which is pretty great when I need it – saves time compared to fiddling with the old healing brush.
I think the alternatives have also gained similar features recently, which would have likely required a new (expensive!) purchase. But, I guess if you figure we've reached some kind of plateau and don't expect to have a new camera in the next 3-4 years, going for Capture One or similar may be a better bang for your buck.
Adobe's AI noise reduction is absolutely first class. The AI adaptive color feature has also saved me on a ton of old photos taken on older DSLRs and smartphones.
Never been a fan of editing photos, especially as I have difficulties dealing with the infinite possibilities. I just stick with default output from the camera and just fix backlight or some minor adjustments required. I'm a big fan of Foveon sensor (sigma dp, sigma sd) and lately fp and BF, it helped a lot as they really know color and I love how they deal with it. I also shot and process black and white film, and appreciate the "deal with film/developper characteristics" approach too.
I started photography last year, i shoot raw because i dont like sony colors. But I have very quick process: "auto", little fidgeting with sliders, one in 10 photos gets a mask for sky and then i apply some preset that i like most for the photo.
I just cant spend 30minutes on one photo.
But the editing process is very subjective.
even in era of film there was a lot of processing, colors with chemicals, fixing defects. Just manual photoshop.
I understand the simplicity and joy of purists, but to each his own i guess.
My version of this workflow is, i take digital photos, and don't edit them.
Turns out, it's fine! The photos aren't perfect, but no amount of editing could make them perfect anyway. They look like the thing they're a picture of. That does the job. And with the time i save by not doing any editing, i have time to take more photos! Or read a book! Or sleep!
The dark truth no one wants to say out loud is that 'real' cameras are dying to cell phones not just because phones are more convenient to carry, but because phones take 'better' photos for 99% of people than they can manage with any other camera - and that's without any editing. It's all software.
Yes, enthusiasts here are spending hours editing RAW files and most think cell phone pics are over-HDRed messes. But phone software is so advanced now that it takes real talent and skill to replicate the perceived quality of what users get with their cell phone's software automatically. Most people are at a disadvantage with a DLSR/mirror less, not an advantage. That leads to ever-declining sales.
Why can't someone make a traditional camera with modern software instead of something that looks like it is out of 1994? The software on a Sony DLSR, for example, looks like the on-screen menu of a VHS player, but is somehow slower and dumber to use. The number of overlapping, incompatible picture adjustments on a Fuji is just as ridiculous.
I don't even think you're necessarily wrong overall, but damn does the photographer in me want to strongly disagree with this:
> But phone software is so advanced now that it takes real talent and skill to replicate the perceived quality of what users get with their cell phone's software automatically
I don't know man, what you get out of a DSLR/mirrorless is just on another planet compared to a phone camera... The raw quality, detail, and richness of a photo captured with a big sensor and big lens is something special.
Phone photos can look superficially good. And for some photo styles this is enough. But when I look at a phone photo, I'm often left lacking a "draw you in" factor, because so much of the detail and lighting is more or less faked through software. There is no ambience, no mood.
Not sure what you mean by real cameras. If you're talking about DSLR, then I would agree that they're in decline, but if you're talking about any non-phone camera, I would disagree. The mirrorless market is still quite healthy. Smartphones fill 80-90% of demand, the majority of the dedicated camera market is mirrorless. Commodity cameras are less popular, but demand for higher end dedicated cameras remains strong with new cameras (and innovations) coming out all the time.
The software on Sony Cameras is known for being very bad, but that's not the only brand. All the other brands are definitely better in that regard (but I prefer my Sony because of other aspects). And Blackmagic is in my opinion the best and most modern.
lol, not at all. It's a new category, people can take loads more shitpics and store them indefinitely which is a fantastic capability. People who had no photos of their family now have hundreds.
At the end of the day, light is a physical property and the more of it you get into your lens, the more of that light can fill your sensor. Phones are still doing a lot of guesswork, post-processing that create photos that aren't underexposed, but are quite unnatural.
Plus gen-z is running around with all the point and shoot cameras we threw away 15 years ago
I wrote a lil memento to my Fuji x pro awhile back along similar lines as this. Minimal post-processing and much more convenient than the film I was shooting, especially after moving to a town that didn’t have a local lab.
I'm mostly the same now, but leaning more towards a hybrid flow.
My Fuji is set to JPEG + RAW. I will apply the sim most suited to the occasion, and only edit the RAWs when I've got a shot that I think is worthy of editing - i.e. something that will end up as a wallpaper/printed out/a feature shot.
I got tired of editing photos, and I ended up editing them sometimes years after the photos were shot.
As for my phone, I just use an app called Analogue on my iPhone for everyday shots (the built in LUTs are beautiful), and then for shots I think may warrant some editing later, I'll use the new Moment cam app.
I mostly try Apple Photos’ “magic” editing. It’s hit and miss, but when it hits, the photo gets way better. When not, I adjust a couple sliders (contrast, brightness, saturation). In both cases, only when I’ll use the photo. Otherwise, editing tools will be there for when (and if) I need them.
I had the same experience, I mostly import b/w photos after editing in Capture One, the magic stick raises brightness, sometimes adds sepia. Most of the time these edits improve the photo. I always check proposed edits for newly imported photos that I think look dull in Photos.app grid
Me too, I figured I spent more time on the computer than taking pics. Now I shoot jpg and if I have some spare time I go out and shoot. If I take a good pic I share it with basic editing if any instead of waiting to get it "perfect".
I went through a similar transition. Used to spend hours in dark table each shoot, but for a hobby it got tedious. Eventually I got my in-camera configuration right enough and haven't touched a raw in months. I'll still sort and crop; but no need to fiddle with things the camera is good enough at already.
Original author here! Thank you speckx for sharing.
I’m not a professional photographer, I just wanted to write about where I’m at with a hobby I’ve had for ~15 years.
I love using a camera, I don’t love editing at a computer. So now I’m choosing digital cameras that have decent editing options in-camera. It’s comparable to choosing the roll in your film camera.
If there are any questions, I may get around to answering them. (No promises.)
Hey James! I made the same choice 5 years back. Fujifilm XPro3 and now X-H2. I've been enjoying photography so much more knowing I don't need to stare at Lightroom for hours after a day out. I also use my iPad (photos app, USB-C UHS-II reader, albums strategy) to do all my culling now, and couldn't be happier.
I'll be sticking with Lightroom 6 (non-subscription) and the old cameras it supports, until the sad but inevitable day I can no longer run it.
I don't find editing takes much time, because I now have so many custom presets I can apply on import or in bulk that do 90% of the work.
What does take ages is picking out the best shots, but really the only way to make that quicker is to take fewer photos. Which I suppose shooting film actually does force you to do. (But so would a 2GB SD card.)
I tried rt, but it was really slow. I typically am taking pub league sports photos. So I try to get through them fast. Dark table really scratched the itch there.
There are some bugs, like batched styles seem to be... order dependent. But its been suiting my needs for a few years.
It works well provided your needs are simple. I rely on a lot of features in LR that simply don't exist in any open source tool. Even a lot of closed source ones lack them. As much as I would like to move to something else I'm kind of stuck.
I also went this route once I concluded that I enjoy the process of taking photos (getting the 'composition right') rather than editing. I've never heard of Camp Snap until now, looks interesting!
Thanks for your feedback on your post. I reach your thought for these 2 items:
- Paying an unlimited annual subscription to an online service that does the same job as the one-time paid version you really own is madness.
- With years going on an family growing, spending too much time on editing is not ideal. I have a Fuji as well and it's true that out of the box JPEG are quite great, but there is always this little thing I want to edit (unless it's black and white): light is too bright, or a part of the photo is a bit dark.
Curious to see your camera setting in your next post =]
I believe if you put photos out on the WEB, at the very least use exiv2 to add a some kind of copyright and strip out telemetry if any exists. Who knows any company pays attention to this, but at least I know it is "protected" :)
This is the file I used for exiv2:
#
# To apply to a Pic do:
# $ exiv2 -m copyright.txt <file>
#
# This should blank personal id info
#
set Exif.Image.Model " "
set Exif.Image.Make " "
add Exif.Image.Copyright Ascii "Copyright (c) 2026 MYNAME MYEMAIL"
set Exif.Photo.UserComment "Can be shared using Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
The development I'm most excited about these days is AI restoration; I can denoise and upscale my pictures to my satisfaction. The next developments I'd like to see are refocusing (with depth maps) and retiming (with video) in post.
I don't want to dunk on people who are discovering the charms of retro tech, but as someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom, I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps.
It reminds me of people buying vinyl, using VHS filters on social media, etc. I think it's more about signaling some cultural identity than any objective benefits of the "retro" process. It's not like digital cameras make you give up creative control. If you want to limit yourself to 36 unreviewed shots, you can do that with digital too.
That said, I agree with one thing: you shouldn't be paying for an Adobe subscription. Use Darktable, Capture One, or some other equivalent that you're not just renting for life.
There are plenty of people who sincerely enjoy the aspects that make older tech less convenient or practical. Maybe it's an appreciation for the engineering or "comprehensibility," often it's because older tech produces unique outputs that can't be adequately captured by newer technology.
Reducing people's interest to "social signalling" comes off as dismissive.
Come on. This article isn't about the joys of doing things the hard way. To quote: "Then, at the start of 2022 I got my first analogue film camera: a Leica M6. (I know... I dived straight in the deep end.) This was my first introduction to how editing could be easier."
It isn't easier. Film is pain. Pain can be good, but this is selling a mirage.
Just to be clear, your comment had a general statement about how you perceived the motivations of "people buying vinyl". That's what I was responding to. (People using VHS filters on social media is by definition social signalling so no comment there lol).
And I completely agree with your point about touting film as "easier" than digital. That's a stretch.
I’m a believer that the hard work brings more joy, digging crates of vinyl and finding that rare album even if it has pops and noise feels 100x more enjoyable that streaming it.
Hello, original author here. What I meant by “easier”:
Consumer film is designed to be developed and scanned/printed by your lab. You then get a finished image.
Most modern interchangeable-lens digital cameras are designed for you to shoot RAW and edit in software like Lightroom.
Because I first started photography around 2010, I was taught at school to take pictures, then edit them on a computer.
Shooting film for the first time was originally about trying something new in a hobby I enjoy. As stated, it removed the need to sit in front of a computer. “Easier”.
I wish I’d stopped shooting RAW sooner. Trying film led to that realisation.
(And I agree film can be a pain. I’ve ruined several rolls through both stupidity and cameras breaking. I still enjoy it.)
> Most modern interchangeable-lens digital cameras are designed for you to shoot RAW
I don't think I agree. The photos straight off my GH4 are perfectly fine as-is, it's quite a bit of work to get the same thing out of Darktable, let alone something better. I do still shoot in RAW, for those 1% where I do want to go in manually. (The GH4 isn't great in low light.)
> I wish I’d stopped shooting RAW sooner. Trying film led to that realisation.
I mean... yeah. But don't blame the camera for your personal habits ;)
Vinyl (IMO) isn't about it being retro or having "better" sound quality (whatever that means, it's mostly subjective), but about having a collectable, physical item. I think CDs were a step backwards, not because the sound quality was off but because the boxes were smaller and fragile; I've never owned any music CDs.
Digital music is neat for listening to music, but it also feels like it lowers the value of it.
Like retro PC game collectors, they realpy just want that giant box! Most of their games are probably just ISOs on an SSD.
Jewel cases may be fragile but LPs are far more vulnerable to damage than CDs are. There are much better ways to hold a CD collection.
> I think CDs were a step backwards, not because the sound quality was off but because the boxes were smaller and fragile
Smaller, yes, but fragile? Certainly not more fragile than Vinyl.
The jewel cases absolutely were more fragile than the cardboard that was typical of vinyl, but vinyl itself is more fragile than CDs, though the failure modes are completely different.
The jewel case does have the advantage of being easily replaceable too though - you can transfer album art/booklets and in most cases the result looks the same as the original.
With vinyl, album artwork and the case are the same thing and damaging or destroying the case also damages or destroys the album art - you can’t really replace the case without repurchasing the record if the art matters to you.
> The jewel cases absolutely were more fragile than the cardboard
CD cases more easily break catastrophically but I think that, for most kinds of impacts, CD cases are less easily damaged than vinyl sleeves.
Water damages them less easily, they’re less susceptible to smudges, corners don’t get creased, etc.
Most people buying vinyl in 2026 don't own a record player. Because that's not the point.
This probably isn't the point either, but I get an almost perverse level of calm knowing that for my most favourite albums, I own a physical representation of the waveform trapped in a medium.
I very rarely listen to them in that form, but I honestly like the idea that in a post-Carrington event, zombie apocalypse or mad-max style future where electricity or electronics become scarce, I can (if desperate enough) listen to them with a nail and a cone.
I think there's something to be said for _any_ physical media when it comes to audio.
I hate opening my phone/laptop to put music on, inadvertently opening HN/lichess, and watching the next few hours vanish in silence.
Also deeper engagement, and a big second hand and artist-driven markets keeping my money out of the hands of NastyCorp.
Vinyl is just the nicest.
I use Lightroom 6 that I paid for, it still works and is still useful for my needs.
But as said needs are mostly general curve + highlights down + shadows up, it's possible they could simply be a jpeg preset in camera.
This line made me chuckle as well:
> Since I was a teenager I’ve used digital cameras
Digital cameras didn't exist when I was a teenager; and they cost about as much as a car when I was in my twenties. Overall I don't miss film cameras, although the scarcity was interesting. Taking a picture was an actual decision, unlike today.
It reminds me of people buying vinyl... signaling...
It's absolutely partly this.
But, for me today, as a sometimes hobbyist, it's also about the process...
Digital is too good. The cameras are too good. The results are too good. There's no anticipation.
The analog experience is, to be trite, so much more analog. A good vintage film camera (and probably new Leica too) feels so good in the hand. Like a nice watch, it's a piece of mechanical art. It takes time to focus and set exposure. Sometimes is goes horribly wrong, but sometimes whatever went wrong produces an unexpectedly delightful result. There's also something to be said about receiving the negatives and scans weeks or months after shooting the film - the delayed gratification is something that's lacking in today's instant-everything world. Plus, the cost of film and processing makes me slow down a beat and think about what I'm doing - no spray and pray when a roll of Portra 400 + processing is $25 or more.
It's this, and also simple nostalgia. Getting out my vinyl records reminds me of my teenage and early adult years. Responsibilites were few, life was pretty simple, I could spend hours with them and the only consequence was delayed homework. I was into film photography during that same time, and the occasional urges to take it up again are filled with memories of those days. The reality of what film photography costs now kills that pretty quickly.
I am not a professional. But I had done some film photography in its last days. The photos that I took during the time, just casually, tops any photo that I take now a days with by DSLR.
It is not in raw "quality". But what are we trying to capture when we take a picture? Is it raw pixels? or is it some emotion that we originally got when we were looking at something.
For some reason, I think film captures and regenerate that emotion when you look at the photograph in a way that a digital capture cannot.
I cannot explain it, but the the closest thing that I have found that could explain it is..It is in the context of b/w but I think the same applies to color as well..
https://leicaphilia.com/the-difference-between-black-and-whi...
That emotion is nostalgia, whether real or perceived. It's not a bad thing, some of my favorite photos are on b&w film. Film has a texture and (inaccurate) colors/tones that aren't really reproduced in digital cameras but are all over the place in media we consume and personal/family photos, usually from an older time.
> That emotion is nostalgia, whether real or perceived.
Absolutely. One of my prized possessions is a book I had made from digital pictures I took on a family trip when my kids were 3 & 4 years old. The pictures are of single-digit megapixel quality, but are perfect for what they needed to be: a reminder of that trip, and the memories contained within.
It seems to me that the slightly fuzzy aspect of old pictures better matches our fuzzy memories of that time.
It is not nostalgia. It was the photo of a stray dog on a beach, and a bunch of fishermen drawing in a big fishing net..so nothing personal or long lost to be nostalgic about...
You don't have to have an emotional connection to the subject to feel nostalgia, it can be more abstract than that, such as the way highlights are rendered or the grainy texture. Good art evokes emotions anyways, it doesn't need to be something you're personally tied to.
But why are you telling me what I am feeling? I have felt nostalgia and this is not it.
>Good art evokes emotions anyways
Yes, that is what I am trying to say. Film results in something "artistic" by default.
Have you tried putting your digital photos through a film simulation software such as Dehancer?
I think so, but the results does not appear same. Did you get a chance to read the post I shared in my comment. It explains why this could not give the same results.
This is like looking at old b/w photos of people for example. This feels like art. Brings memories and has zero relation to a physical quality of material.
> someone who started with film and spent a fair amount of time in the darkroom
This is a very important part of your message. You did have the opportunity of "being thought by the slow medium" simply by those being the default. Taking the "teachings" of more limiting, analog (in these cases) technologies became part of your process, your underastanding of the core principles, your motivation, your subjects and something deeper about photography.
In a time where basicaly limitless technologies are the default, for generations that were born into a world where decision fatigue is a bigger issue than scarcity artificial limitations are still a great path to learning something meaningful and having fun.
There is zero intrinsic value to taking pictures, listening to or making music or any of the activities that see a revival of their "retro" versions - analog or otherwise.
I was born when digital photography was the default and my first cameras were digital. I have had way more fun taking my <1000 analog photos, have way more connection to them (partly because I physically had to touch those photos developing and retouching them) than my 100k+ digital photos sitting on some zfs pool. Sure, digital photography is more efficient in every way but -eapecially as commercial photography is dying out to AI - if we strip the commercial element of things that humans are doing for shits and giggles - the analog/retro/slow/whatever version of these activities might prove to be better at serving the basic human needs (the shits and the giggles).
I started out with film and took my camera all over everywhere with me for years. I switched to digital as soon as I could, before it was really even practical, fully embraced it, and ran with it for a long time. But I eventually got bored, and stopped carrying a camera at all for while.
Last year, though, I got back into film, and I'm having a ball! The point of the retro process is not that it's better, it's that I'm enjoying the time I spend with it. The constraints are interesting. The technique is challenging. It's not so much about the photos as it is the photography: I enjoy the practice of making images, and dealing with the challenges of vintage equipment is part of the skill I'm practicing.
It doesn't actually matter whether I take any of these photos or not, you know? I'm not a professional; I'm not making unique art, or documenting historic events. I'm doing this because I enjoy watching the light, looking for interesting frames, and trying to capture them. Right now, the most enjoyable equipment for that purpose happens to be an all-mechanical, medium-format film camera.
Yeah, I agree it's a form of signaling. Once the tech gets old enough to not be considered "everyday use", signalers will find it appealing. I dated a girl, who insisted on taking pictures with her 2000 style digital camera rather than the phone - you know the kind which puts the date and time in the bottom right in an orange font. A few years ago these early digital cameras were untouchable - not retro enough to beat polaroids, significantly worse than phone cameras. Now the time window has moved enough...
> I think it's more about signaling some cultural identity than any objective benefits of the "retro" process.
I think it could be that, or simply that people want to try a different experience. Digital photography started out as the easier, faster, and cheaper option, but the experience of using it and even the culture around photography itself has changed over time. Going back to the roots once in a while can feel refreshing. And paying for a monthly subscription is probably overkill for most casual photographers.
> And paying for a monthly subscription is probably overkill for most casual photographers.
But film (the actual roll + development + scan) is very expensive, at least in my parts. Sure, you may mean "casual" as in "maybe shoots a roll a film a year", in which case I guess it's quite cheaper than an Adobe LR subscription. But if you shoot a roll a month or more? Then Adobe wins hands down (I'm talking the photography plan here, not the whole thing).
The cheapest stock I could find is a C-41 negative, b&w Agfa APX 400 iso, 36 pictures for 7.90 €. Color C-41 starts at 11 € with a 24 picture Kodak Ultra Max, bought as a set of 3 rolls. Developing and scanning costs 12 € for 2000x3000 px or 20 € for 4500x6700 px. That's 19.90 €, or the price of the base Adobe Photography plan.
Yes, financially doesn't make much sense to go from digital to film. Film costs, absolutely. But you end up shooting less, thinking more, waiting for the right shot and so on. You also move sliders/tweak less and mistakes teach you lessons that you quickly learn from. Sometimes there are happy accidents as well. Taking a shot becomes a deliberate action since you don't have unlimited frames. It's a different experience. Yes, the Adobe light room seems cheap in comparison to film but, that's the wrong comparison IMO. There are other tools out there that are much cheaper than Adobe's offerings if not completely free. Digital has made photography available to the masses, everybody's got a camera nowadays. However, it did kill something and what it killed is what these folk are looking for (that something that got lost in the process).
I'm not into photography anymore and will stick to cheap digital photography for convenience (smart phone) but I could see how this works out for these folks and I believe it's not just a fad or signaling. Similarly, for music, analog instruments could be replicated and enhanced digitally/electronically and yet they're what you're after sometimes.
> Taking a shot becomes a deliberate action since you don't have unlimited frames. It's a different experience.
It’s a very different experience. Whether you enjoy that depends a lot on why you are engaging in photography. Do you prize the ritual, the act of taking photographs in the moment? Then you might love film. Might also love working in a dark room and doing your own development and prints.
Personally I don’t care about any of that. I care about the resulting photo. I’ll take upwards of 800 photos when I’m shooting one of my kids’ soccer games. I’ll get 100 photos max that are worth keeping, and a much smaller number I’m really happy with. Some will miss focus. Some will miss the moment. But I’ll have a few great photos for the trouble.
There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the ritual. Also nothing wrong with just enjoying the product.
I used to do that when I was a teenager and it was truly wonderful. I had my own darkroom and was even developing my own film (BW only). As tech evolved I moved on to digital but took so many photos that somehow I stopped caring about photographs at all. It even became a bit overwhelming to look at photos and to some extent it still is to this day. I took on many other hobbies so it's not a huge loss for me. But I can totally get why some folks would get back to film from digital, they're going for the experience and not the end result as photos, which I agree would be more efficient to process digitally. But same goes with other arts. Why are people still painting? All can be done digitally in Krita or some other software and a lot more efficiently and faster and so on. And yet people pay money for canvases, oil paints, brushes, and spend hours and hours painting.
For sure. I’m not dismissing others who want that experience. It’s just not my focus when I’m taking pictures.
I do agree that going through hundreds of photos is not a process I enjoy. I’ve been trying to train myself to weed out more efficiently. The newer AI tools help some, though I still go through the AI rejects to make sure it didn’t cull something I would keep.
On the point of film, I agree, although I won't say it's necessarily a bad thing overall. Just a bit silly when people try to claim film is somehow "superior" or whatever.
Film is absolutely a cultural experience for many people shooting it today. The main argument I have to confirm this is to consider that most people's photos are not good, to start with. (Talking about the average joe, not pro photographers.) So any comment about film's technical capabilities is moot. You can take bad photos on film or digital. Also you can take good photos on film or digital! Unless you're really doing some good experimental photography, you gotta admit that the film motivation is vibes.
Also on editing applications, Lightroom does have pretty good all round features , which is hard to find elsewhere. For example Darktable technically works, but the UI is poor, the performance is poor, and it's generally slower to achieve the same results. If someone wants to make an open source Lightroom clone, I'll be all for it!
there are films that are more resolving than even the best digital cameras, unfortunately limited to black and white.
Ah true. In niche cases one technology can be better than the other, sure. I was more talking about people who buy a disposable film camera and think they're Ansel Adams... (For the record, I think the same about people who buy old point and shoot digitals. Totally a fad now)
> If you want to limit yourself to 36 unreviewed shots, you can do that with digital too.
I’m not sure that’s true. At least, not nearly as hard-constrained as with film.
I agree with your broader point, but let’s be completely honest. Digital is not a free lunch. You do lose something somewhere.
The medium you use “leaks” deeply into the whole experience of life (be it a vacation trip or something else). So all of this is a big deal.
>> > If you want to limit yourself to 36 unreviewed shots, you can do that with digital too.
> I’m not sure that’s true. At least, not nearly as hard-constrained as with film.
Just grab your camera of choice, look at the average file size, multiply it by 36, and format a partition on your memory card of that size. Bonus points if your camera uses adaptive compression, so maybe you'll get a bit fewer or a bit more photos per card depending on what you shot! Isn't that even more interesting than film? You know exactly how many exposures you get up front with a roll, now you'll have to wait and find out!
> Digital is not a free lunch. You do lose something somewhere.
Right. But I bet that, just like the OP, most people will outsource development and scanning of their film rolls, meaning they don't control the process. That's just digital with extra steps.
Analog technology is infinitely complex, as is the real world. Digital is not. AS within as without. If you want to lack soul and wonder, why.
A human genome fits on a single hard drive -- think of all the ways you could fill it?
>I was delighted to discover the hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography, so it is a bit mind-boggling that people want to go back to the old way of doing things for their everyday snaps.
The OP didn't go "the old way". They made it even more about "hassle-free simplicity", with a digital Fuji that shoots great out-of-the-box colors that they don't correct.
That said, the problem with the "hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography" is that it cheapens everything and takes the fun and skill out of it.
> That said, the problem with the "hassle-free simplicity and dependability of digital photography" is that it cheapens everything and takes the fun and skill out of it.
Takes the skill out? Kind of. Accessible cameras make it easy for people to take acceptable photographs. Most people cannot take a great photograph with any camera.
I do think accessible cameras have made it harder for mediocre photographers to pass as good. The days when simply carrying an SLR gave an aura of competence are gone. Democratization of quality cameras closed the hardware gap for a lot of photography.
For me, trying film after growing up in the post-digital world was more about exploring the experience of the medium and why we ended up where we are. It's given me an appreciation for why slowing down with your subject can increase "keepers".
Personally, I’ve spent a lot of time on both film and digital and currently I’m a lot happier with the results of my film work. Is it a combination of the camera, lens, medium, and process? I’m sure it is. Could I get similar artifacts out of digital? Probably but the key difference is that I don’t and the medium for me doesn’t make me want to. In the end creative work like photography has as many manifestations as people and your comment reads as rather dismissive than curious.
I'm just waiting for daguerreotypes to come back into fashion.
I started on 35mm and dark rooms then went to digital. 35mm is more fun and more rewarding.
Can’t forget the cost of all that film. That’ll easily outpace the Lightroom sub.
vinyls have secret songs on them ;)
Film gets better results with less effort - but more money.
>"It reminds me of people buying vinyl"
Myself - I do not use vinyl but being close to start using it again. Not like every day but when in a mood. The whole process is like coming back to a better and forgotten times. Definitely touches some strings.
I got tired of in depth fiddly editing and wrote Filmulator to minimize the decision-making and streamline editing. I rarely spend more than 20-30 seconds per image.
You get a clean, basic look, no weird colors or overly creative "looks", but with adjustability and great highlight handling that JPEG doesn't get you.
https://filmulator.org
The current builds there are quite old but we've got new ones coming.
Thank you for this. I downloaded the program, but am I right in that it does some processing on the RAW files as it imports them so that they're effectively in a mostly "finished" state?
At the moment I'm using SilkyPix for my Lumix photos and NX Studio for my Nikon photos, and then occasionally using RawTherapee and Darktable and also occasionally ART. I then sometimes attempt to use gmic on the finished JPEG or Snapseed on my Android phone for more ambience and sharpness.
I'm finding I'm spending absolutely hours on editing all the photos I take. And they don't even look that great when I finish with them, mainly through my lack of skill. I find the sharpening in silkypix to be very good.
Yeah, the default is alright with perhaps a little exposure adjustment.
Bump the drama and lower the white clipping point a little if you want a bit more local contrast.
This looks right up my alley. Does it properly support true monochrome raw DNG files? I.E., cameras that don't have a bayer filter and don't require a debayering pass. I'm shooting a Pentax K3 Mark III Monochrome, although Leica has a couple true monochrome cameras and there are services that will de-bayer cameras and modify the firmware to achieve similar ends.
Yes, it properly supports monochrome DNG and disables (and hides) tools that are not applicable such as demosaicing, CA correction, highlight recovery, white balance, etc.
I didn't know such firmware hacking was available. I'd been waiting for the GR Monochrome for years but it's a bit expensive for me.
Thanks for the quick reply! I'm sold. It's punching way above its weight class with those features. Have to try this out tonight.
I don't know if the firmware mods are public but I saw one conversion service offer it when I was researching. If I can find the link I'll post it here this evening.
Also there are the Phase One Achromatic backs. Which Lightroom does not even support :(
I need to fix Phase One support in Filmulator. LibRaw has some additional processing steps required that I didn't manage to figure out last time I worked on it.
Lightroom doesn't even process IQ4 150 (RGB) files correctly either, there's in back calibration that is missing, resulting in a bunch of lower right corner amp glow(?).
Capture One with the same back is fine/the back went to Japan to get repaired only a few months ago and has a brand new main controller board/calibration...
I've got iq180 and iq4 150mp working… it doesn't like iq3 100mp though.
Oh, great to see this on HN! I found Filmulator a few years ago and used it for most of my raw photography (which, admittedly, isn't a lot) and found it amazing. Exactly what I wanted. Streamlined, easy to get into, fun. And I really like the way my pictures come out at the end. Thank you for your work :)
I'm always glad to hear that people are enjoying Filmulator. I don't track downloads or anything so I have no idea how many people out there use it.
This is great, I discovered it a year or two ago - nice work! Excited to hear there might be more development happening.
I'm interested if you're GPU-native and actually fast with my a7 IV raw images.
Edit: oh wow, this is much older than I thought. Never mind. :)
It's not GPU-native… that's a goal but it'll certainly take some time. Back when I was last working heavily on it there commonly wasn't enough vram but now there should be on most machines.
33 megapixels is not a lot. I'd consider that fast on my 9800X3D gaming machine but moderate on my older 2700X dev machine. But of course, what you consider fast depends on your computer and your expectations.
Zooming and panning is much faster on Filmulator than most other software because it caches full-res images throughout much of the pipeline. On my gaming monitor I can rapidly zoom in and out at a buttery-smooth 240Hz refresh rate.
But actually changing settings is a bit slower.
The earliest settings are the slowest to respond since they only operate on full resolution raw data, but they're non-creative, technical decisions on highlight recovery and demosaicing and such that do not need tweaking. Additionally, you get early feedback from these in the form of early-pipeline histograms interspersed among the tools, helping you tune these settings quickly.
Noise reduction adds a lot of processing time but once you figure that out the full-res image gets cached and doesn't interfere with later steps.
It has fast (~100ms) screen-resolution response to sliders in the filmulation tools mid-pipeline but it'll take a second or two for the full resolution image to process.
Late pipeline editing (post-filmulation) is near instant even for the full resolution.
So is it fast? Yes and no. But it tries to always be responsive and provide useful information as quickly as possible.
Whatever floats the boat.
Even back to film/analog era, taking a photo is just the 1st step. Then apply some darkroom work (dodge/burn/use some filters to adjust the highlight/shadow etc etc). Image editing softwares like Photoshop simplify the process.
I mostly shoot in black & white (both film and digital). Since once of my biggest inspirations is Ansel Adams, then no I don't adhere to "SOOC" (straight out of camera) philosophy. Fine tuning in Photoshop is a must.
Printmaking is a huge part of the art form. I think a lot of people miss this fact in the "shoot and scan" age of film photography. Not everyone cares, or even needs to care, but those who do really should read the Ansel Adams trilogy.
I've spent a lot of time in the past 15 years turning photos into various kinds of prints. From Cyanotypes using printed contact negatives, via multi-layer stencil art to my current obsession: vectorizing images, separating the layers, machining linoleum blocks and then doing multi-layer prints. Once I have a stable workflow for lino prints the next think I'm going to try is to use mokuhanga instead of linoleum.
(I also plan to try platinum/palladium prints. They look gorgeous. But first I need to get better at shooting for B/W)
Yeah, its kinda telling those who treat everything after shooting film as some sort of binary process.
I feel a lot of them would benefit more from just processing all their photos through some basic profile that ends with running it through a film simulator.
Yep a physical print is a totally different experience too, compared to an image on the screen.
With good printing software like imageprint RED/Black (NB very expensive and overkill for most) you can actually see the effect different papers, settings, and lighting will have before the print. Very fun!
"Shoot and scan" is convenient. Hard to argue with it. But hey, if you want convenience, why are still using film?
:D
But anyway, yes print making is both art and science on its own. Finding local labs to develop and scan films is pretty easy. But darkroom to print your photos the old school way? Happy to find a new one (I'm on Jakarta, btw).
You probably know this, but shooting in color and then converting to b/w afterwards gives you more artistic options than letting the camera do the b/w conversion.
Yes this is my workflow when shooting digitally. Always in RAW & color for greater flexibility during B/W conversion.
I think b/w film has a different grain than color. It isn't identical to grayscale color
Couldn't have a more cliché reply. Now I know why the greatest artists hide from most others.
A few lessons hidden in here:
Perfect is the enemy of good: Don't obsessively edit. Cull obviously bad photos. Find a few pretty good ones. Pick one at random. Edit lightly.
Photography can focus on captures or edits: analog photography necessitates a focus on the capture. Be in that moment, frame the shot you want, and your only edit might be some color correction.
While the above might not make you a 99th percentile photographer, that probably isn't a goal you need concern yourself with. I always find photos online that blow me away. Artists with the patience to plan and wait for the perfect shot, possibly for hours. Artists that meticulously cull until they find an exceptional photo. Artists that spend a half hour editing a single photo adjusting sliders.
If that's not you, you still don't have to give up editing photos if you like the result better than the camera's JPG. You just have to focus on the parts you enjoy, and find balance in the quality of the end results.
(And personally I love DxO PhotoLab. Purchased once on sale, no subscription. Fun to use, and I love the results!)
My process is to take a lot of photos, then ruthlessly cull them before I do any editing.
I usually keep around 10% of the total photos for editing. After that, I do another round of culling and keep only the best.
I also follow a philosophy of "good enough". If left to my own devices, I would probably endlessly edit photos.
I edit a single photo for around 3 minutes. That way, I will not feel stuck.
I used to take a lot of photos and then cull them afterwards before editing. It worked, although I was often loving shooting and dreading editing, because before doing any actual editing, I'd have 200 photos to sift through.
After a lot of practice, I became better at culling in my head, before even taking the photos. This has shifted my relationship with photography to more of a cognitive exercise, with a different set of enjoyments. I take far fewer photos overall - often I go out with a camera and don't even take a single shot. Editing is more enjoyable because there's less to do and I already know what edits I want. It's less naively fun but more contently fulfilling.
I find it much easier to cull photos quickly now by thinking that a bad photo will unlikely become a great photo just because you edited it.
If it doesn't catch my attention on my first culling pass, I just delete without regrets.
This is how I use my Canon t3i. Once in awhile everything will align perfectly, require very little editing and I feel a huge sense of accomplishment.
With practice and patience, the aligning perfectly will come into your control :) Just get out there and shoot more!
I found myself noticing the 10% keep rate a few months back and now keep that as as shooting target. I want 30 photos from today, better capture 300 times.
Here is my take, as a person who attended multiple photo editing courses from professional award-winning photographers:
* Shooting intentionally for further processing is not the same as shooting for the best out-of-camera look.
* One needs to critique a photo before editing it. This YouTube video comes with a good-enough checklist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0tQB6BVpc4
* ART (https://artraweditor.github.io/) at this point, if the AI masking and denoising one-time setup has been done (see https://artraweditor.github.io/AItools), is so good that many Lightroom courses apply almost 1:1 to it.
I've come to the same realization after shooting digital, film, and back to digital again.
I've found that if I apply "recipes" or "presets" to my camera and shoot jpg I get roughly what I want straight out of camera. In fact, I find that shooting jpg exclusively with a preset _almost_ scratches that film itch: there is a kind of permanency to the rendered output, and that forces me to slow down and think about what I want to render with this subject like one does with film.
Once I'm done shooting I simply import to Apple photos and make very light edits from there if any before sharing.
It's liberating to embrace constraints and reduce tooling. You might even have fun.
The question I why did you edit photos? What was goal? Why were you doing it in the first place?
I guess the thing you have discovered shooting analog is that each click is a finite resource so you spend more time composing and being aware of the scene before you take the photo.
Saving £20 is nice.
Having your 36 snapshots developed at a decent lab will cost you more.
In you are paying them additionally for edits as well you are on longer saving money. You just pay someone else.
Or are you giving it to a company that runs it through an automated usually digital these days sometimes analog machine that develops them automatically? Those machines usually do edits as well. But highly automated ones. (I am not sure they make them anymore)
Having my medium format film developed is far from cheap.
Lightroom is far from the only editor out there and it is not a great editor to start with. Lightroom is a Frankenstein combination of of a DAM and an editor.
You probably will want some form of DAM to organize your photos regardless.
The problem isn't that keepers necessarily need editing, the problem is that it is tempting (to some) to spend more time than they need simply because they can. Or because they feel they should. (Don't watch people ruining photos and making up for their lack of talent on youtube)
I shoot with post-processing in mind because I have years of experience with the cameras I use, so I know how they work. I rarely do that much more than just "normalizing" the pictures to what I wanted to capture (fix one, apply to whole batch) and apply some look that I've saved as a preset. Perhaps 1-5 seconds of tweaks per photo. If you need more, you probably didn't get the shot in the first place and you'll do better next time.
For me the time spent "editing" photos is marginal compared to the time I spend looking at the photos to decide which ones are keepers.
I can't understand what the youtubers who edit photos are doing. Most of them take mediocre to bad shots and then somehow manage to make them worse. And then people believe that this is what they're supposed to be doing
Then again, most photo-influencers don't actually understand even something as basic as focal length (no, a 105mm is a 105mm regardless of whether you put it in front of a tiny sensor or a big honking medium format)
> Most of them take mediocre to bad shots and then somehow manage to make them worse.
Examples of this? What do you consider mediocre, but is still hugely popular?
It would be unkind to single anyone out so I am not going to. The thing is, I can for the life of me not think of a single photo influencer/youtuber who is also a popular _photographer_. They're popular influencers/youtubers.
As for what I mean by mediocre: let's say you are looking at a portrait of someone you don't know. If you can't remember it 10-30 minutes later, it was probably mediocre or worse. Would you recognize the subject if you met them on the a street one day later?
Most portraits tend to be bad because they completely fail to capture the subject. People fuss over lighting and editing and color grading and whatnot, but they don't actually pay attention to the person they are shooting. I see quite a few of these people with huge social media followings who can't, for the life of them, take pictures of humans. And yet, they teach their inability to make portraits to others.
I also know professional photographers who are genuinely bad at taking portraits. And then there are those rare people who just nail it most of the time. Notice this when looking at a portrait of someone you know. Is it "them"?
Another category where you see a lot of bad photos is wildlife photography. You will see endless pictures of birds that possibly could go in a bird-spotting book purely for identification purposes. But, to steal a line from my wife after looking at a certain facebook group "it's just a bunch of tack sharp ducks set against blurred out sky". And my wife spends an inordinate amount of time looking at birds.
All you need to make bad nature photography is a big lens, a location and some time. It takes no talent. All you need to make technically good, but completely pointless nature photos is a big lens, a location, time and a decent modern camera. Then turn on 3D tracking and spray whenever something moves. Animals live in nature -- they belong in context -- they do things. Good nature photographers manage to communicate this.
(I was actually tempted to name the "it's just a bunch of tack sharp ducks..."-group, but I'm not going to. Though it isn't that hard to guess).
We drown in technically excellent images that are dull as crap.
(To be clear: I'm a mediocre photographer. I'm very aware of it. I occasionally shoot something that may be worth looking at -- but still rarely something you'd remember)
Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.
Do whatever you want that makes you happy.
I take thousands of photos a year with my phone and less than 1% of them get edited.
I take thousands of photos with my Nikon in RAW / NEF format. I have over 50 large photos printed in my house and editing absolutely helps when you print 20x30" or higher.
I went one step farther and quit taking photos. And this is after many years of hobbiest photography in the film era, had a darkroom at home, SLR with several lenses. Early digital cameras were underwhelming, basically the equivalent of a 110 film snapshot camera. By the time they got good I had started to reflect on the fact that I almost never went back and looked at any of the photos I'd taken, so I just stopped. Now although with my mobile phone I have a quite decent camera in my pocket all the time, I rarely use it. The "ohh I should take a picture of this" impulse just never enters my mind anymore. I enjoy the moment, and have the memories.
> I enjoy the moment, and have the memories.
I don't disagree with your "enjoy the moment" thesis, but I also envy your memory recall capability. For me, photos can resurrect memories I don't have access to normally.
Yes, me too. I have a photographic memory that is getting worse with age. I remember things vividly but have no emotional attachment to the memory, and memories of myself doing things are in the third person so I can't seem to "enjoy" the memory of an event, but visually "see myself" in the memory (which doesn't make sense). Photos and videos help me "relive" the moment.
That being said, I have far too many photos (and camera bodies!).
It really depends on the person.
I do not take photos for the memories, I take photos for art and I do go back and look at them.
I'm in the same boat. My phone is used to record 'memories', but I rarely ever look at the shots I capture with it. I'd probably be better off dropping this habit.
My camera is for art, and in my mind this an entirely different thing than recording stuff with my phone. These are as different as using writing utensils to briefly write notes vs. using them to make a complex drawing.
Same! For me this has had the unfortunate side effect of ruining non-art photo-taking. Someone shows me a regular phone photo and the photographer part of my brain is thinking "why did you even take this...?" Yes I'm a terrible friend
My phone camera is often just a very utilitarian thing, like taking a picture of a receipt and stuff like that. When I do take pictures for fun, it's almost always just a selfie to send people when I'm on vacation.
I don't really see the point of taking vacation photos that don't have me (or whomever I'm traveling with) in them; you can find higher quality photos of virtually anything I'd take a picture of on the internet for free; the only thing I can realistically add to the photo is me!
> Early digital cameras were underwhelming, basically the equivalent of a 110 film snapshot camera.
One of the first digital Ixus (IV maybe? from 2000?) made images of just one megapixels, but they were amazing. I miss that thing.
I set my camera to save both JPEG and RAW. 95% of the time the camera's JPEG is fine so I just use that (maybe with some final adjustments in GIMP), but it's nice to have the RAW around in case more significant edits are needed.
I do the same. Then group them in Digikam. Cull aggressively and put the best photos in an "external library" in Immich. Easy way to make them avaliable to my phone, without cluttering up my iCloud photos with duplicate JPEGs.
The last issue with my workflow now is figure out a better way to cull my iCloud photos, as they are a mess, and it's a bit annoying doing it on my phone.
Myself and some friends all went through the cycle:
- Jpeg is fine, nice in-camera processing
- Oh but I really want to edit this one to fix things only raw can do, raw is better anyway
- (Starts shooting in raw) - man annoying to have to process all my photos jpeg is good a lot of the time
- (shoots jpeg + raw)
- ugh, so many files and it eats my card, I don't need both files all the time, also I'm editing more anyway
- (Starts shooting only in raw)
That's where I am now, though the final steps may definitely be -Eh, jpeg is good enough, I don't edit anymore anyway.
I took a similar path, but with an additional final step of moving to film and doing the development, scanning, and editing myself. Definitely more work per photo, but each photo taken is a lot more considered.
I just buy lots of SD cards
I admire what this person is doing, but some reasons I prefer raw + lightroom over eg camera jpeg are:
* Lightroom’s noise reduction is WAY better than what my camera (a D500) can do. I shoot sports, usually indoors, with highish iso, so NR’s gonna have to happen at some point.
* If I’m going to lug around a dedicated camera, I’m gonna have it do its best. I have my iPhone for everything else.
* I can apply today’s lightroom NR to raws I shot years ago. Similarly, I expect to be able to apply future lightroom’s NR to today’s raws.
* Lightroom Classic is a superb program - it has many warts and clunks and oddities but it achieved product market fit and it stayed there, doing what its users want. Adobe keep making small improvements, and yet they don’t fuck it up!! This is vanishingly rare in big tech!!! (Promos gonna promo!) I grudgingly pay for this.
(My theory as to how they have managed to resist the institutional imperative to destroy Lightroom classic is that they created a fork, named just “Lightroom”, on which the promo can wreak its destruction, it’s kind of a second golgafrinchan ark, leaving Lightroom classic alone. I pay for Lightroom classic as a way of saying: keep leaving it alone!)
I'm also a LR classic user. I think it's pretty terrible by certain aspects, but I haven't found anything better. No idea why the UI lags on a pretty high-end machine, even with test catalogs. And I'm talking about scrolling, or showing and hiding panels. Plus, the worst offender is making me use Windows (on this point, only Darktable is better – no, I won't buy a mac, it's way too expensive for my needs).
Price-wise, it's kinda expensive, but the buy-it-for-life alternatives aren't exactly cheap, either. You should hold off updating for multiple years to save money compared to the LR subscription.
Now, I haven't used the alternatives for more than just a short test-drive, but the recent improvements in LRc would have made me upgrade anyway. I'm thinking specifically about the noise reduction you mentioned, but there's also all the object detection in masking which saves a ton of time, and the ai object removal which is pretty great when I need it – saves time compared to fiddling with the old healing brush.
I think the alternatives have also gained similar features recently, which would have likely required a new (expensive!) purchase. But, I guess if you figure we've reached some kind of plateau and don't expect to have a new camera in the next 3-4 years, going for Capture One or similar may be a better bang for your buck.
Adobe's AI noise reduction is absolutely first class. The AI adaptive color feature has also saved me on a ton of old photos taken on older DSLRs and smartphones.
Never been a fan of editing photos, especially as I have difficulties dealing with the infinite possibilities. I just stick with default output from the camera and just fix backlight or some minor adjustments required. I'm a big fan of Foveon sensor (sigma dp, sigma sd) and lately fp and BF, it helped a lot as they really know color and I love how they deal with it. I also shot and process black and white film, and appreciate the "deal with film/developper characteristics" approach too.
I started photography last year, i shoot raw because i dont like sony colors. But I have very quick process: "auto", little fidgeting with sliders, one in 10 photos gets a mask for sky and then i apply some preset that i like most for the photo. I just cant spend 30minutes on one photo.
But the editing process is very subjective. even in era of film there was a lot of processing, colors with chemicals, fixing defects. Just manual photoshop.
I understand the simplicity and joy of purists, but to each his own i guess.
My version of this workflow is, i take digital photos, and don't edit them.
Turns out, it's fine! The photos aren't perfect, but no amount of editing could make them perfect anyway. They look like the thing they're a picture of. That does the job. And with the time i save by not doing any editing, i have time to take more photos! Or read a book! Or sleep!
The dark truth no one wants to say out loud is that 'real' cameras are dying to cell phones not just because phones are more convenient to carry, but because phones take 'better' photos for 99% of people than they can manage with any other camera - and that's without any editing. It's all software.
Yes, enthusiasts here are spending hours editing RAW files and most think cell phone pics are over-HDRed messes. But phone software is so advanced now that it takes real talent and skill to replicate the perceived quality of what users get with their cell phone's software automatically. Most people are at a disadvantage with a DLSR/mirror less, not an advantage. That leads to ever-declining sales.
Why can't someone make a traditional camera with modern software instead of something that looks like it is out of 1994? The software on a Sony DLSR, for example, looks like the on-screen menu of a VHS player, but is somehow slower and dumber to use. The number of overlapping, incompatible picture adjustments on a Fuji is just as ridiculous.
I don't even think you're necessarily wrong overall, but damn does the photographer in me want to strongly disagree with this:
> But phone software is so advanced now that it takes real talent and skill to replicate the perceived quality of what users get with their cell phone's software automatically
I don't know man, what you get out of a DSLR/mirrorless is just on another planet compared to a phone camera... The raw quality, detail, and richness of a photo captured with a big sensor and big lens is something special.
Phone photos can look superficially good. And for some photo styles this is enough. But when I look at a phone photo, I'm often left lacking a "draw you in" factor, because so much of the detail and lighting is more or less faked through software. There is no ambience, no mood.
Not sure what you mean by real cameras. If you're talking about DSLR, then I would agree that they're in decline, but if you're talking about any non-phone camera, I would disagree. The mirrorless market is still quite healthy. Smartphones fill 80-90% of demand, the majority of the dedicated camera market is mirrorless. Commodity cameras are less popular, but demand for higher end dedicated cameras remains strong with new cameras (and innovations) coming out all the time.
The software on Sony Cameras is known for being very bad, but that's not the only brand. All the other brands are definitely better in that regard (but I prefer my Sony because of other aspects). And Blackmagic is in my opinion the best and most modern.
lol, not at all. It's a new category, people can take loads more shitpics and store them indefinitely which is a fantastic capability. People who had no photos of their family now have hundreds.
At the end of the day, light is a physical property and the more of it you get into your lens, the more of that light can fill your sensor. Phones are still doing a lot of guesswork, post-processing that create photos that aren't underexposed, but are quite unnatural.
Plus gen-z is running around with all the point and shoot cameras we threw away 15 years ago
I wrote a lil memento to my Fuji x pro awhile back along similar lines as this. Minimal post-processing and much more convenient than the film I was shooting, especially after moving to a town that didn’t have a local lab.
https://staydecent.ca/blog/my-digital-film-camera/
I'm mostly the same now, but leaning more towards a hybrid flow.
My Fuji is set to JPEG + RAW. I will apply the sim most suited to the occasion, and only edit the RAWs when I've got a shot that I think is worthy of editing - i.e. something that will end up as a wallpaper/printed out/a feature shot.
I got tired of editing photos, and I ended up editing them sometimes years after the photos were shot.
As for my phone, I just use an app called Analogue on my iPhone for everyday shots (the built in LUTs are beautiful), and then for shots I think may warrant some editing later, I'll use the new Moment cam app.
I mostly try Apple Photos’ “magic” editing. It’s hit and miss, but when it hits, the photo gets way better. When not, I adjust a couple sliders (contrast, brightness, saturation). In both cases, only when I’ll use the photo. Otherwise, editing tools will be there for when (and if) I need them.
I had the same experience, I mostly import b/w photos after editing in Capture One, the magic stick raises brightness, sometimes adds sepia. Most of the time these edits improve the photo. I always check proposed edits for newly imported photos that I think look dull in Photos.app grid
Me too, I figured I spent more time on the computer than taking pics. Now I shoot jpg and if I have some spare time I go out and shoot. If I take a good pic I share it with basic editing if any instead of waiting to get it "perfect".
I went through a similar transition. Used to spend hours in dark table each shoot, but for a hobby it got tedious. Eventually I got my in-camera configuration right enough and haven't touched a raw in months. I'll still sort and crop; but no need to fiddle with things the camera is good enough at already.
Original author here! Thank you speckx for sharing.
I’m not a professional photographer, I just wanted to write about where I’m at with a hobby I’ve had for ~15 years.
I love using a camera, I don’t love editing at a computer. So now I’m choosing digital cameras that have decent editing options in-camera. It’s comparable to choosing the roll in your film camera.
If there are any questions, I may get around to answering them. (No promises.)
Hey James! I made the same choice 5 years back. Fujifilm XPro3 and now X-H2. I've been enjoying photography so much more knowing I don't need to stare at Lightroom for hours after a day out. I also use my iPad (photos app, USB-C UHS-II reader, albums strategy) to do all my culling now, and couldn't be happier.
I'll be sticking with Lightroom 6 (non-subscription) and the old cameras it supports, until the sad but inevitable day I can no longer run it.
I don't find editing takes much time, because I now have so many custom presets I can apply on import or in bulk that do 90% of the work.
What does take ages is picking out the best shots, but really the only way to make that quicker is to take fewer photos. Which I suppose shooting film actually does force you to do. (But so would a 2GB SD card.)
This FLOSS RAW editor works really well, btw: http://www.rawtherapee.com/
That URL and product name have a real expertsexchange thing going on that's a bit unfortunate.
I agree, but giving up editing photos rather than using a different editor seems bizarre though.
I tried rt, but it was really slow. I typically am taking pub league sports photos. So I try to get through them fast. Dark table really scratched the itch there.
There are some bugs, like batched styles seem to be... order dependent. But its been suiting my needs for a few years.
There's also RapidRAW https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW
Thanks for the link, this is exactly what I'm looking for as i've never been able to work with cataloguers like Lightroom or iTunes.
It works well provided your needs are simple. I rely on a lot of features in LR that simply don't exist in any open source tool. Even a lot of closed source ones lack them. As much as I would like to move to something else I'm kind of stuck.
I just use Pixelmator Pro for a quick workflow. There's a nice feedback loop between taking the shot and editing it later.
Pixelmator Pro is great and affordable.
Film is cool up until you waste 60$ on film and development to get blank rolls.
I have a very cheap mirrorless camera that I've taken around the world.
I accidentally dropped it, it bounced and was fine.
As for editing, I generally use mobile Lightroom to tweak lighting and that's it.
Their is a camera conundrum. What good is a camera so expensive you're afraid to use it ?
"edited in Lightroom."
All I need to know.
I also went this route once I concluded that I enjoy the process of taking photos (getting the 'composition right') rather than editing. I've never heard of Camp Snap until now, looks interesting!
I’m almost done moving from Lightroom to Darktable. Lightroom is amazing but I don’t edit enough these days to justify $20/mo.
If the straw that broke the camel's back is the nagging Adobe subscription, why not just learn Darktable or Raw Therappee?
I just use Rawtherapee. No need to pay Adobe and no need to ditch editing completely.
Thanks for your feedback on your post. I reach your thought for these 2 items: - Paying an unlimited annual subscription to an online service that does the same job as the one-time paid version you really own is madness. - With years going on an family growing, spending too much time on editing is not ideal. I have a Fuji as well and it's true that out of the box JPEG are quite great, but there is always this little thing I want to edit (unless it's black and white): light is too bright, or a part of the photo is a bit dark.
Curious to see your camera setting in your next post =]
I believe if you put photos out on the WEB, at the very least use exiv2 to add a some kind of copyright and strip out telemetry if any exists. Who knows any company pays attention to this, but at least I know it is "protected" :)
This is the file I used for exiv2:
The development I'm most excited about these days is AI restoration; I can denoise and upscale my pictures to my satisfaction. The next developments I'd like to see are refocusing (with depth maps) and retiming (with video) in post.
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