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.
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.
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.
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..
> 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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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
#
# 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 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)
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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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'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'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.)
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.)
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.
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 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 =]
152 comments
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.
Reducing people's interest to "social signalling" comes off as dismissive.
Digital music is neat for listening to music, but it also feels like it lowers the value of it.
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'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 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...
> 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).
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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 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'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.
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.
* 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.
This is the file I used for exiv2:
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)
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.
* 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!)
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.
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.
https://staydecent.ca/blog/my-digital-film-camera/
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!
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 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’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.)
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 ?
Curious to see your camera setting in your next post =]
All I need to know.