>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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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..

https://leicaphilia.com/the-difference-between-black-and-whi...

> 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.

> 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.

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 started on 35mm and dark rooms then went to digital. 35mm is more fun and more rewarding.

vinyls have secret songs on them ;)

Can’t forget the cost of all that film. That’ll easily outpace the Lightroom sub.

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.

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.

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 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. :)

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

> 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?

> 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.

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.

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 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'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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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

That URL and product name have a real expertsexchange thing going on that's a bit unfortunate.

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.

Pixelmator Pro is great and affordable.