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.
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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".
I'm sure there is "signaling some cultural identity" around the retro stuff like actual film etc but if you think that's all there is to it, and to everyone doing it, I think you're missing the mark for a lot of what's going on out there.
I can only speak for myself but when I have only 36 unreviewed shots, I feel oddly liberated. Once I'm out of the house, I don't have to renegotiate in my mind over and over to take 36 unreviewed shots or to "cheat" and look and/or delete.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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!
Fuji made love photography again. Cant believe it's been ten years now since I got my first modern Fuji camera (X100F) and I've only bought Fuji cameras since then. The worst part of digital photography (for me) used to be shooting JPEG + RAW, knowing I'd never actually edit the RAW files and yet feeling too anxious to delete them.
Fuji's in-camera processing is such a delight. They produce beautiful pictures.
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 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.
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.
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'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 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
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 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 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.
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 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/"
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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".
> 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.
I'm sure there is "signaling some cultural identity" around the retro stuff like actual film etc but if you think that's all there is to it, and to everyone doing it, I think you're missing the mark for a lot of what's going on out there.
I can only speak for myself but when I have only 36 unreviewed shots, I feel oddly liberated. Once I'm out of the house, I don't have to renegotiate in my mind over and over to take 36 unreviewed shots or to "cheat" and look and/or delete.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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!)
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.
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!
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.
I think b/w film has a different grain than color. It isn't identical to grayscale color
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/
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.
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.
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 ?
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
Fuji made love photography again. Cant believe it's been ten years now since I got my first modern Fuji camera (X100F) and I've only bought Fuji cameras since then. The worst part of digital photography (for me) used to be shooting JPEG + RAW, knowing I'd never actually edit the RAW files and yet feeling too anxious to delete them.
Fuji's in-camera processing is such a delight. They produce beautiful pictures.
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 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.
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.
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'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 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
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 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.
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.
If the straw that broke the camel's back is the nagging Adobe subscription, why not just learn Darktable or Raw Therappee?
I’m almost done moving from Lightroom to Darktable. Lightroom is amazing but I don’t edit enough these days to justify $20/mo.
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 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: