Catalog, Print or Delete? What to do with your pictures after you’ve shared them on social media?

I’m afraid most people rush to share the pictures they take, attaching them to emails, text messages, or publishing them on various forms of social media. Images – or more precisely the interest of their family, friends and followers for those images – tend to be ephemeral. Shot, shared, forgotten.

If you visit these blog pages, I’ll assume that you’re interested in photography. And I will bet that when you shoot pictures, they’re important to you, and you take time to reference and archive them. If you still shoot film, you probably store the negatives and slides in binders with their contact sheet, and if you shoot digital, you certainly rely – at a minimum, on Apple or Google’s photo management services – or, more likely, use more specialized software to catalog, process and archive your images.

Of course, beyond the few Gigabytes of free storage you get with your smartphone (5 GB with Apple, 15 GB with Google), you need to pay a monthly suscription fee – $3.00 /month for 200 GB with Apple, $2.00 for 100 GB with Google. It’s not much to store 10,000 to 20,000 images (assuming 10 Mbytes /image) – but I’m surprised by the number of people I know who go regularly through their Photo apps and delete images they like (and might be happy to look at again five years from now) just for the sake of saving two or three dollars a month.

*Sunset at the beach. Near St Anne, Guadeloupe*

And when, for an happy event (wedding, graduation, big life milestone …) they’re being asked to send a few of their images to contribute to a family slide show or to a shared photo-album, they can’t find any – or so few.

At the risk of being provocative, I’ll say that in photography, Archival and Retrieval are at least as important as taking the pictures in the first place. So, what are the options?

The Photo Management Service provided by the OS vendor of your phone, tablet or personal computer.

We’re talking of Apple Photos, Google Photos, and Microsoft… Photos, of course. The “App” is the front end of a set of cloud based services, that provide photo storage, editing, cataloging and sharing capabilities, increasingly with the help of AI.

*Apple Photos on iPad – search for “sunrise”* *– “sunset” returns almost identical results*

Even without being passionate about photography, it’s easy to accumulate a few tens of thousands of pictures in a few years. The challenge is to organize them, and to retrieve the one you need without having to spend hours browsing galleries.

The photo management apps try and organize your photo library by date (easy), by theme, by trip, but what’s particularly impressive are the search capabilities – the app is using information it reads in the images (like the name tag of a dog), combining that with what it knows for sure (like the date and the GPS coordinates stored in the picture file) and what it has learned about you and your entourage to help you retrieve images. Without requiring you have entered captions or keywords to identify your subject. If Jules is a dog, it will answer questions such as “Jules in Chattanooga in 2014”. It even works with objects: “My Jeep in Destin” returns pictures of my Jeep in Destin, FL, “pictures of a ball pen” returns… ball pens, and searching for the word “dawn” will return all the pictures taken at sunrise (and sunset – the search algorithm is not perfect).

*Searching for “Jules in Smyrna” – Apple Photos has read the name tag of the dog.*

If the picture has been taken with a smartphone, it will be managed “natively” by the app. If it has been taken with a dedicated camera, the image will first need to be imported – most cameras vendors provide their own app that will transfer selected images from the camera to the Photo app of the device over a WiFi connection.

For Apple and Google, what matters the most is their ability to retain their client in their eco-system in the long run, from phone to phone to phone (they call that the stickiness). Once you’ve stored 10,000 photos in their Photo app, you’ve put yourself in a very sticky situation, and you will think twice before switching to the other side. Of course, transferring your images from Apple to Google or Google to Apple is always possible, but it won’t be immediate or straightforward and you may lose some information in the process (some metadata, and proprietary features like Apple’s Live Photos and RAW files, for instance).

Photo cataloging / photo editing tools from specialized software vendors

If Apple or Google’s photo apps don’t give you enough, or if you don’t want your images to be stored in a cloud, or you don’t want to pay a monthly subscription fee and would rather buy conventional perpetual licenses, there is certainly a specialized photo management software that meets your needs.

Generally speaking, dedicated photo management software will offer more options for tagging the pictures, and more powerful photo editing tools, but, if the example of Adobe is representative of the industry, will not be as good as Apple and Google at automatically organizing and easily retrieving your images: they still rely predominantly on captions and keywords to identify an image.

*Specialized photo management tools offer more image editing options*…

If you opt for local storage, you will have to invest in physical storage (directly attached drives or NAS) and you will need to protect your images with a good backup system (preferably off site, if you want it to protect your images from disasters). And off site backup plans have a cost.

*… but the search is still heavily based on keywords and captions that have to be entered when the image is uploaded.*

Cloud storage options are very broad – going from general purpose storage services like iDrive or Dropbox to more specialized offerings like Adobe’s Lightroom “Photography Plan” – but once you’ve exhausted the limited time promotional offers, the prices are relatively similar – around $10.00 /month for 2TB for most of them. iDrive seems to be the cheapest, Dropbox is in the same ballpark as Apple and Google ($9.99 /mo for up to 2TB). As of this morning, Adobe’s “Photography Plan” includes 1TB of storage for $11.99 /month, but in all fairness the cost also includes the Lightroom Mobile, Web and Classic subscription fees, so it’s not that bad of a deal.

What are the alternatives? Placing prints in a photo album?

A physical photo album is not a substitute for an electronic catalog, but it’s a mostly forgotten way to keep the images you love together, and return to them when you feel like it. You can even scan the prints if you can’t find the negatives or the original digital files (I’ve done it, shame on me), so it’s also a form of backup.

*I lost the negatives a long time ago – but I had a photo album and scanned the print*

The ability to create photo books used to be integrated in the photo cataloging apps: the option existed in Apple’s iPhoto – you picked the images, worked the layout and (of course) paid a hefty fee, and Apple would send you a printed photo album with a little Apple logo on the back. I’ve not used a recent version of Adobe Lightroom Classic but I believe the option to create photo books still exists (in conjunction with the Blurb photo book printing service). It does not exist on the “non-classic” versions of Lightroom.

*Photo albums of all types and sizes (printed by Mixbook, ifolor, Apple, and self printed Fujifilm Instax)*

Maybe the combination of Lightroom Classic and Blurb is still the reference to beat – but I’ve not been impressed with the alternatives – I tested Mixbook – and while the quality of the printed books was satisfactory, I found the solution difficult to use and also very expensive.

If you need multiple copies of a photo album, creating a photo book with one of those services makes sense, although it will cost you, but if you only need one copy, it may be simpler, faster and cheaper to print the pictures at home, and place them in a good old (physical) photo album.

Fujifilm’s Instax film is available in three sizes, so are the Instax Printers.

Last by not least, Canon, Fujifilm, HP, Kodak and Polaroid (in alphabetical order) all propose easy to use ultra-portable printers, that will let you print images from a smartphone or a tablet – and place them in small photo albums that they can also provide. Fujifilm and Polaroid printers use instant film packs, Canon, HP and Kodak use a technology named “zero ink” (a sophisticated thermal paper). In my personal experience, assembling a mini photo album of 20 pictures is quick, easy, and ultimately cheaper than configuring a photo book from Blurb, Mixbook and dozens of their competitors.

More about Lightroom Mobile and Instant Film printers:

More sunsets…

Nikon EM or Pentax ME – Are ultra light SLRs a good choice for beginners?

What camera to pick when you’re new to film photography and want to shoot with something a bit better than a point and shoot camera? The question is still bugging would-be film photographers in 2025. In the late nineteen seventies, Japanese camera manufacturers were trying to attract new categories of users to their single lens reflex systems, and started launching small, light and cute SLRs, easier to use and less intimidating than the big, heavy, complex and expensive best sellers of the time.

In order to make those cameras easy to use, they embraced the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and deprived those entry level cameras from features and controls that seasoned photographers were taking for granted – they only operated in automatic mode, and generally did not even have a shutter speed dial.

*Nikon EM and Pentax ME – very similar specs*

Pentax opened the way with the ME in 1976, followed (in no specific order) by Olympus (with the OM-10), Canon (with the AV-1), Fujica with the AX-1, and least but not least, Nikon. Until that point, Nikon had always tried to convey the image of a manufacturer of high quality products, sold at a premium over the models of its competitors. The Nikon EM from 1979 was a big shift – the privilege of shooting with a Nikon SLR was being made available in a simple camera, at a price point in line with the competition.

Almost 50 years later, cameras like the Nikon EM or the Pentax ME are among the cheapest SLRs manufactured by a first tier brand. Good copies typically sell between $50 and $100, when cameras generally recommended for beginners, like the Pentax K1000 or the Canon AE-1, can command prices above $100, and really nice cameras of the same vintage like the Nikon FE2 routinely reach prices in excess of $300.

The Nikon EM

Like the Pentax ME, the EM is an ultra-compact camera, operating only in aperture priority mode, and deprived from a shutter speed dial and from a depth of field preview lever. Besides the logo on the front of the prism and the bayonet mount, the biggest difference betwen the two is that the shutter speed selected automatically by the camera is indicated by a needle moving on a scale at the left of the viewfinder on the EM, while the ME relies on red LEDs.

Following the example of Pentax with their M series lenses, Nikon developed a line of more compact and lighter lenses for this model (the E series lenses). The 50mm is almost a pancake lens – with an excellent image quality in spite of its really small size (the E series 35mm f/2.5 is also one of my favorites).

Pentax had launched the ME Super and the Super-Program for the photographers who expected more controls on a SLR. Similarly Nikon derived the FG from the EM, with a shutter speed dial and a program auto exposure mode.

The lineage of the ME stopped with the Super-Program and Program-A , the EM’s with the FG20.

*The Nikon FG offers a semi-automatic exposure control mode, and a switch to disable the “beep”*

Comparing the EM with the ME

The ME and the EM have 4 things going for them today:

they’re incredibly small, in particular with an “almost” pancake lens like the Nikon Series E 50mm or the Pentax M 28mm lens.
they’re nicely finished, – the EM was only available with a black finish, and although the external shell is made of polycarbonate, it still looks cool today, while the ME – still built entirely in metal, has a few clever details (such as the film advance indicator) and a nice detailing.
Almost any lens made by Nikon or Pentax between (roughly) 1975 and the first years of this century can be mounted, including autofocus lenses.

Above all, they’re simple – you set the aperture, place the subject in the frame, adjust the focus, and shoot. Even simplified, they’re still real cameras – with a good viewfinder with precise focusing aids, a direct control of the aperture and an indirect control of the shutter speed.

Nikon EM with 50mm E series lens, Pentax ME with a 50mm f/2 A series lens.

They have a few things going against them as well:

Because they’re somehow over simplified, they are more difficult to bring to do exactly what you want than a semi-auto camera or a camera with multi-mode automatism. An experienced photographer will be able to work around it, but beginners will be limited in their progression:

the control of shutter speed is indirect only (you have to adjust the aperture so that the automatism reacts by adjusting the shutter speed – there is no shutter speed dial and therefore no semi auto mode).
there is no exposure memorization either, only primitive exposure compensation systems. The exposure compensation for backlit subjects is either too simple (-2 EV at the push of a button is the only option on the EM) or too complex for beginners (expo compensation dial on the film sensitivity dial for the ME).
there are some irritating quirks – the EM beeps all the time (every time it believes the exposure is going to be under 1/30sec or reach 1/1000 sec). On the ME (and all the ME derivatives up to the Super Program), the control knob around the shutter release button is difficult to use unless you have the fingers of a garden fairy.

The real issue with those two cameras is that in the same price range you can buy the follow up models (Nikon FG, Pentax Program-A and Super Program) that keep most of the good points (small size, beautiful finish, choice of lenses) but are even simpler to use (there is a program mode) and simpler to over-ride (there is also a semi-auto mode).

*Pentax Super Program – in some exposure control modes, the shutter speed is selected with the two push buttons and shown in the viewfinder and in the small LCD at the right of the prism*

In summary

The EM does not cut it for me. It may be marginally more capable than the Pentax ME (the exposure compensation button is convenient), but the beeps are too irritating. On the FG there is a switch to silence the beeper, but not on the EM. The EM and the FG also seem more fragile than their bigger brothers in the Nikon range. The real problem with the EM (and the FG to a lesser extent) is that they were stepping stones in a range of cameras which included real gems. In the Nikon line-up of the late seventies/early eighties, the FM and the FE offer more flexibility, and a more robust built. Admittedly these two are a tad more expensive and a bit heavier than the EM, but not much larger and nicer to use. As for the FM2 and the FE2, they’re in another league altogether.

On the other hand, the Pentax ME and its descendants were not a low cost point of entry in the Pentax family, they were all that Pentax had to propose if you wanted to use Pentax SMC lenses. I like the Pentax ME – it’s nicely built and refreshingly simple – I even prefer it to the Super-Program, which is more capable but also more complicated to use, and requires even smaller fingers to change the settings. In the Pentax family, I still have to put my hands on the Program-A – it’s a slightly decontented Super-Program (no shutter speed priority mode) and it may be marginally simpler and easier to operate than its “Super” brother.

Nikon EM and Pentax ME – Both deprived of a shutter speed selector

As a conclusion – which one is the best for a beginner?

For a beginner, what makes the difference between two cameras should be the availability of good lenses, and any Nikon and Pentax SLR of that vintage will accept an extremely broad selection of very good prime and zoom lenses, manual focus as well as autofocus.

As cute, easy to use and cheap as they are, the EM and the ME will not be as flexible as a Nikon FG or a Super Program, and the cost difference between those cameras and a Nikon FE amounts to the cost a few lattes at Starbucks.

If you choose Camp Nikon, my recommendation will be to brew your coffee at home for a few days and use the cash you save for the FE. And if you still want your coffee at the drive-thru window, buy a FG rather than an EM. It will let you grow higher as a photographer than the EM.

For Pentaxists, it’s not as clear cut. There is no visible difference in build quality between a ME and a Super Program, and some features present in a Nikon FE and important for an enthusiast photographer (exposure memorization) are still absent from the Super Program. Simply avoid the models with a bad reliability record (ME Super?) and only buy cameras thoroughly tested by their seller.

As a final note, if you’re looking for the absolute bargain in the Nikon world, I suggest you also look at successor of the FG, the Nikon N2000 (F301 in the rest of the world). It’s the twin brother of the better known autofocus N2020 (aka F501), but without the autofocus mechanism, and with a ground glass designed for manual focus operations. With the N2020, it shares the motorized film advance, the semi-auto, program and aperture priority modes, an AE lock button and a great viewfinder. It’s a bit larger than cameras like the EM or the ME (and not as cute for sure), but it runs on AAA batteries that you can find anywhere, and it’s so cheap….one of my preferred $20.00 cameras.

*Pentax Super Program and ME – the former benefits from an electronic self timer, a depth of field preview, and a removable grip.*

More about cameras I recommend for beginners to film in CamerAgX:

In addition to some of the cameras mentioned above, there are a two other cameras I would recommend for beginners, and if you need more information, the full list of cameras reviewed in this blog since the beginning.

Olympus OM-2n - Close-up (Front) — Olympus OM-2n

In the meantime….

I’ve not had time to finish (and process) the rolls of films I loaded in the ME and the EM. So far, I tend to prefer the ME, because it does not beep like crazy, and also probably because it’s in a better shape than the EM, which is a bit scruffy. I find the LEDs indicating the shutter speed in the viewfinder of the ME easier to read than the needle of the EM, whose movements tend to be erratic – but again it may be a reflection of the better state of conservation of the ME.

Two pictures shot with cameras of the same family – the Super Program and the FG.

San Antonio – the Japanese Tea Garden. Shot with a Pentax Super Program and the Pentax SMC A 35-70 f/3.5-4.5. The zoom did not age well, or a previous owner had covered the front lens with vaseline, but it gives an eerie look to the picture.

The Nikon FG - a light SLR for mountain hikes — *from my archives – a photo taken with a Nikon FG on the trails of Kennesaw Mtn.*

An update on Adobe Lightroom licensing

There are benefits to software subscriptions – obviously the initial cash outlay is minimal, and, if the software vendor reinvests the money it receives every month into useful product improvements, the subscriber (I mean “You”) will always work with a state of art software solution.

Of course, the problem with software subscriptions is that once you’ve started using the product you’re at the mercy of the software editor, who can elect to change their terms and conditions and raise their prices as often and as much as they like. There is a price point not to exceed obviously, but the subscriber is captive, and the cost to switch to another product (in hours of training and hours of labor to transfer the images and convert the workflows) far exceeds the few extra dollars that the software editor will be tempted to extract from its subscribers every now and then. So the captive audience elects to remain… captive.

Lightroom for Mobile on CamerAgx.com

https://cameragx.com/2024/12/09/lightroom-for-mobile-premium-is-a-laptop-free-workflow-really-a-possibility/

https://cameragx.com/2024/12/16/lightroom-for-mobile-premium-migrating-images-from-lightroom-6/

https://cameragx.com/2024/12/30/adobe-lightroom-s-trying-to-make-sense-of-it-all/

At the end of last year, after I had published three posts about the Lightroom Mobile Premium, Adobe tested the tolerance to pain of its clients again, and announced a price increase of its Lightroom subscriptions.

Along this post, I will stress multiple times that the information I’m providing has been verified and is believed to be accurate as of the end of March 2025. Some Adobe Lightroom plans or upgrade options have been removed from Adobe’s store front and from the apps themselves during the last three months, and more changes could take place in the future.

The recent changes (and a simplification of the catalog) make very clear that Adobe’s preference is for the photographer to subscribe to the Adobe Lightroom Plan with 1 TB Cloud Storage. Under this plan, the ubiquity of the Lightroom platform is maximized: a photographer can, with the same license, enjoy Lightroom as a light weight application available on smartphones, tablets, PC/Mac and in a Web browser app (all with Cloud storage), or as a heavier PC/Mac conventional application with as much local storage as necessary.

The mobile-only versions of Lightroom increasingly look like minor products packaged to push the photographers to step up to the “real” Lightroom, the one they buy directly from Adobe.

*Lightroom Mobile on the iPhone – “please start deleting unneeded items” – not much of an upgrade path*. *The reality is not that dire – there is an upgrade path – but not through Apple’s App Store.*

High level – the product hierarchy and the upgrade path

Lightroom is available as a mobile app for smartphone or tablet in the two main app stores (Apple and Google’s).

The gateway drug is a free version, which does not process RAW images and does not offer cloud storage. It’s a simple photo editor, and it’s easy to argue that Apple and Google’s native photo apps are at least as good and should be preferred.

Once you enable the Premium features, Lightroom Mobile for smartphone or tablet “with Premium features enabled” makes sense for a relatively light use – with its 100 GB of included cloud storage, you will store something between 10,000 and 15,000 images in Adobe’s library. Mobile Premium supports RAW files, and offers most of the benefits of the Adobe ecosystem, including credits to use Adobe’s AI. A sporadic use from a PC or a Mac is also possible (the cloud hosted library is accessible from a Web version of Lightroom).

If you need more than 100 GB of cloud storage, the only option (in March 2025) is to switch to an Adobe Lightroom Plan purchased through Adobe.com. The Adobe Lightroom Plan (with 1 TB of cloud storage) offers all the benefits of “Mobile with Premium features”, and adds Lightroom for PC/Mac (a lightweight client with Cloud storage) and Lightroom Classic (the fat client with local storage), plus 450 extra Creative Cloud monthly credits for less than $10.00/month (assuming you pay for one year of subscription upfront).

*Lightroom for Web – available to Mobile Premium users – the “upgrade” option brings you to Adobe’s store where you can only subscribe to Adobe’s Lightroom and Photography Plans.*

There is a catch, though. The Lightroom Mobile plan (sold on the app stores of Google and Apple) and Adobe’s Lightroom Plans (available on Adobe’s store front) are two distinct commercial offers made by two totally different organizations.

Lightroom Mobile and Adobe Lightroom are two products of the same family (and the library of images will follow you to Adobe Lightroom), but an upgrade from Lightroom Mobile to an Adobe managed Lightroom subscription is not commercially possible – you have to subscribe to Adobe’s Lightroom Plan as if you were new to Lightroom, and will receive no credit from Adobe if you had prepaid for one year of Mobile Premium on Apple’s or Google’s App Store.

*Las Vegas – Sony WX350 – in full daylight the camera does a nice job*

Will I receive credit for the remaining months of Apple subscription?

No, Adobe typically does not offer a direct credit for the remaining months of your Apple App Store subscription if you switch to an Adobe Lightroom plan. When you switch to a different plan through Adobe, you will likely need to cancel your Apple subscription, and the billing on Apple’s platform will continue until the next renewal date.

Apple doesn’t usually allow third-party services like Adobe to manage credits or refunds for their App Store subscriptions. You might want to check with Apple Support to see if they can offer any credit for the unused months of your subscription, but that would be separate from Adobe’s policies.

To avoid being double-charged, it’s essential to cancel your Apple subscription before subscribing to an Adobe plan. [from a ChatGPT dialog on March 26, 2025]

*Las Vegas – night shot with a Sony WX350. This is the last evolution of the Exmor 18Mpix sensor.*

The two tables below summarize the different ways to subscribe to Lightroom, as of March 2025.

Lightroom for Mobile – purchased through an App Store:

Using the Apple App Store as a reference – Lightroom’s offerings on the Google Play App Store are roughly similar.

	Adobe Lightroom for iPhone	Adobe Lightroom for iPad	Adobe Lightroom for iPhone with Premium Features enabled	Adobe Lightroom for iPad with Premium Features enabled
	iOS	iPadOS	iOS	iPadOS
	Available through Apple Store	Available through Apple Store	Licensed through Apple Store	Licensed trough Apple Store
Annual Cost (US$)	free in Apple Store	free in Apple Store	49.99	49.99
Included Adobe Creative Cloud storage	No	No	100 GB	100 GB
Storage upgrade tiers			No direct upgrade option	No direct upgrade option
RAW Files Supported	No	No	Yes	Yes
AI enchancer	No	No	Yes	Yes
AI Generative Credits included			50 /month	50 /month
Lightroom Web	No	No	Included	Included
Lightroom for PC/Mac	No	No	No	No
Lightroom Classic	No	No	No	No
Photoshop	No	No	No	No

*Las Vegas – Sony WX350 – the limits of the 2/3in sensor are very visible in night shots.*

Subscribing to Adobe Lightroom through the Adobe.com storefront

	Adobe Lightroom Plan	Adobe Photography Plan
Annual Cost (if paid upfront)	$ 119.88	$ 239.88
Included Adobe Creative Cloud storage	1 TB	1 TB
Storage update tiers	1 TB	1 TB
Annual cost of storage tier	$119.99	$119.99
How to procure	Adobe.com	Adobe.com
RAW Files Supported	Yes	Yes
AI enchancer	Yes	Yes
AI Generative Credits included	500/month	500/month
Lightroom Mobile Premium for iOS	Included	Included
Lightroom Mobile Premium for iPadOS	Included	Included
Lightroom Web	Included	Included
Lightroom for PC/Mac	Included	Included
Lightroom Classic	Included	Included
Adobe Porfolio	Included	Included
Photoshop for iPad	No	Included
Photoshop for Web	No	Included
Photoshop for PC/Mac	No	Included

Alternatives?

For those who don’t want to pay the “Adobe Tax”, and prefer products distributed under an Open Source license or following a conventional perpetual licensing model, there are quite a few options, some free, some cheap. Some of those products even offer a mobile version and integrated cloud storage. A selection, listed in alphabetical order: Capture One, Darktable, On1 Photo Raw, Raw Therapy, Skylum Luminar. I’ve not tested them but there are interesting reviews in Youtube. One of them below.

More about alternatives to Lightroom:

Why Las Vegas? Because in Las Vegas, the Casino always wins.

Las Vegas in 2015 – Sony Cybershot WX350 – I returned the camera after one week – even if it was equipped with the best 2/3in sensor on the market at the time, I did not like the image quality and the ergonomics.

The world through a plastic lens? A few pictures in Rome with the Holga 120 CFN

Holga 120 CFN and photographer - digital pictures can also be flawed...

[The Web standards are constantly evolving, and backwards compatibility does not seem to sit very high in the list of priorities. One day, you find out that your good old laptop can’t render Adobe.com or Apple.com pages anymore, or that modern browsers are making a mess of your old blog entries. Because it had become unreadable I moved the content of this old blog post to my current “Isola” theme in WordPress and I’m republishing it. I did not alter the text – just added comments between brackets when necessary.]

When your good friends learn that you still shoot film, and write about it, they understand they have a unique opportunity to get rid of all the – let’s be polite – worthless photo equipment they don’t use anymore and you end up with Kodak Brownies or Instamatics by the bucketload. And if your brother in law is really facetious, he brings you a brand new Holga from one of his trips in China, and since it’s a Christmas present and everybody in the family is intrigued, you buy film and start using it.

That particular camera comes in a big orange box with the rest of the “Starter Kit”. Reading the user manual, you get confirmation that the camera is “extremely low tech, and will eventually wear out”. Major design flaws are presented as unique features – the dreaded manual mentions “leaks of light, unvoluntary multiple exposures, loose connection between the film and the take up spool” among the desirable characteristics of the product. Looking for some comfort, you check a little square format book at the bottom of the box. It’s a nice paperback of 192 pages, showing 300 images taken with Holga cameras. Not something Leica or Nikon would be proud of, but interesting pictures nonetheless.

The camera’s design is very basic. It accepts 120 format roll film, has a plastic wide angle lens (60mm, F:8 or F:11) with 4 possible focus settings, and a shutter which offers a unique and unspecified speed. The camera comes with 2 user interchangeable back plates, one will give you 6×6 cm negatives with some vignetting, the other one 6×4.5cm negatives, probably with less vignetting (I don’t know, I only shot with the 6×6 plate). The “CFN” Holgas also come with an electronic flash, equipped with a turret of 4 filters (Red, Blue, Yellow and transparent) for special effects.

Shooting with Holga

The Holga 120 CFN needs 120 film – of course – and since Holgas are supposed to be enjoyed for their shortcomings, color film should be preferred (the plastic lens is prone to chromatic aberrations which would not be visible with black and white film).

Finding color film in 120 rolls proved very difficult. If 35mm film is still easy to find (even in supermarkets or in the little stores attached to many hotels), the same can not be said for 120 roll film. Only stores dedicated to professional photographers still have a few references. I bought a few rolls of Kodak’s Portra 400 NC film. Loading the camera is a difficult task, but in all honesty I’m not used to roll film and I would also have suffered with a more high end camera. [this blog entry was originally written in 2010 – 35mm film is not that easy to find anymore]

Holga 120 CNF - a view from the shutter (120 film adapter removed) — *Holga 120 CNF – a view from the shutter (120 film adapter removed) – According to the brochure, you should not expect to transmit it to your grand children.*

In the street, the camera attracts lost of attention. People notice the bright red color (Holgas are also available in black, kaki and in a unique blue and yellow combination), and are intrigued by the cheap aspect of the camera. It looks like a toy, and people are surprised to see an adult using it.

Rome - View of the Curia from the Campidoglio - Holga 120 CFN — *Rome – View of the Curia from the Campidoglio – Holga 120 CFN*

The camera has very few controls and is easy to use, with a decent viewfinder and relatively smooth commands, and provides a user experience very similar the “boxes” that Kodak used to sell before the launch of the Instamatic cameras.

The result?

Having the rolls processed proved as difficult as buying the film in the first place. Costco and the proximity drugstores don’t process anything larger than 35mm film, and the rolls had be sent to a professional lab (some of them charge up to $20.00 per roll). When you receive the pictures, you discover the “Holga paradox”: you’re not attracted to the almost “normal” images, but by the most severely flawed. The pictures with the fewer technical faults are just bad (with vignetting and all sorts of aberrations), while some of the images plagued with the worst of the problems (involuntary multiple exposures, light leaks) have a surrealist quality that the most creative of the photographers would struggle to get from a digital picture processed in Photoshop.

*Rome-Coliseum-Holga 120 CFN – This is one of the pictures with the fewest defects.*

Holga, what for?

“Normal” photographers are supposed to spend thousands of dollars in the equipment which will help them produce pictures as perfect as possible from a technical point of view – in focus, sharp, with the right exposure, no vignetting, no distortion, and no chromatic aberration.

Straight from the Holga - at least the bright red camera attracts smiles — *Straight from the Holga – at least the bright red camera attracts smiles*

Deviations from the norm of the technically perfect picture are supposed to be voluntary, in order to convey an emotion or a message. They’re not supposed to have been brought randomly by a poorly designed camera.

Holgas don’t follow the rule. They’re not “normal”, and they’re not what “normal” photographers would be looking for. Their results are totally unpredictable. When nothing went really wrong, the results are dull. It’s only when they are massively flawed that the pictures start being surprising and interesting.

Using a Holga reminded me of the “Exquisite Corpse” creativity method used by the Surrealist movement at the beginning of the XXth century. With a Holga you will rely on chance to create something new and different. Using the bright red Holga, I started believing that chance could be an artist on its own right. And you end up loving that little camera for that very reason.

More about Holgas

A few decades ago, photographers in Austria discovered the “Lomos” (copies of Cosina point and shoot cameras made in the USSR), and liked the – flawed – pictures made by those very imperfect little cameras so much that they launched the “lomography” movement. They started distributing the “Lomos” in Austria and Germany, and progressively added other cameras from Eastern Europe and China to their catalog. Lomos and Holgas are now widely distributed, and can also be purchased directly from the Lomography web site, where a red Holga 120 CFN can be found for $75. That’s a lot of money for such a low tech object. Bargain hunters can also find Holgas on eBay, for far less.

[The production of the Holga ceased in November 2015, but Freestyle Photo still have a few of them available – only in black, unfortunatelly. Lomography are proposing a camera, the Diana F, that seems to follow the same recipe as the original Holga, and is available in multiple colors.]

Holga CNF 120 - view of the back — Holga CNF 120 – view of the back

Holga 120 CNF - the commands — Holga CNF 120 – view of the back

Rome - Campidoglio - Michelangelo betrayed by Holga — *Rome – Campidoglio – Michelangelo betrayed by Holga*

Holga links
The Holga group on Flickr

[I had also tested an instant film back with the same Holga camera – https://cameragx.com/2016/10/02/fujifilm-and-the-instant-film-bonanza/]

Developing and digitizing B&W film without a darkroom

A few weeks ago I tested the JJC Negative Scanning Kit – my goal was primarily to digitize my stash of negatives, so that I could upload and reference them in Lightroom.

B&W and negative color film – the differences

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the scans – but I came to the conclusion that until I spent money in Lightroom Classic (or Photoshop) and a good plug-in, converting the color negative into a usable image was going to be labor intensive and yield inconsistent results. Since I had the equipment in place, I also tried my luck at converting B&W negatives instead.

*Kodak Plus X Negative – July 2010. As* “*scanned*” *last week with the JJC Digitizer. Kodak Plus X was a conventional B&W film.*

Black and White film can be of two types – conventional B&W film (also defined as “Crystal Gelatine” or “Silver Halide”) is made of silver crystal salts (the silver halide) suspended in gelatine. To cut a long story short, during the development process, the silver halides are reduced into silver metal – and the developed film still contains silver.

Negative Color film works a bit differently. In this type of film, it’s a mix of silver halide and dye couplers that is suspended in gelatine; during the development process, the developer reacts with the dye couplers and the silver halide to produce visible dyes, while the silver is totally eliminated from the developed film (the labs catch that silver in the exhausted fixer and reclaim it).

*The digitized negative after some work in Lightroom. For an amateur, conventional B&W film is easier to work with than chromogenic film.*

Because minilabs were ubiquitous and only equipped to process negative color film, it made sense for Kodak and Ilford to propose B&W film engineered to be processed like negative color film – the chromogenic B&W film. Kodak had the BWCN400, Ilford the XP2. Besides the convenience of relying on local minilabs for processing, I also liked the exposure latitude of the BWCN400 and the smooth look of its images, and it was my B&W go-to film for years. Until Kodak stopped manufacturing it 10 years ago (Ilford still have the XP2 in their catalog).

Digitizing B&W film with the JJC Film Digitizing Adapter

The JJC Film Digitizing Adapter is a sort of clone of Nikon’s ES2 kit – both are designed to be placed in front of a macro lens attached to a digital interchangeable lens camera (m43, APS and Full Frame cameras are supported by the JJC system).

Chromogenic film is not as difficult to digitize as color negative film (you don’t have to take care of the color channels), but it still presents challenges, and some work on the S-Curve is needed because all the information contained in the film is concentrated in a relatively narrow band in the middle of the histogram. I will not be posting any self-made scan of my chromogenic pictures yet, because I’m not happy with the results – too crappy to be shared.

On the other hand, conventional Silver Halide film is much more analog in its behavior, and once the negative is inverted – I was using the same free online service as before (https://invert.imageonline.co), almost no adjustment is needed in a photo editor and the image is ready to be published.

Since conventional B&W film is easy to develop, even at home and without a dark room (we’ll come to it in the next paragraph), a darkroom-free process becomes a distinct possibility – develop the film in daylight, digitize with a JJC or ES-2 kit, adjust to taste in Lightroom and share to the destination of your choice.

Developing film in full daylight

Amateurs typically develop 35mm film in Developing Tanks – it starts in a darkroom, where the film is removed from its cassette and placed on the reel and the reel in the tank, then the tank’s lid is closed and the rest of the film processing (develop, stop, fix, rinse) can take place in full daylight.

*What a stainless steel tank and the reel look like – nicer than more modern plastic tanks.*

Companies like Paterson will also sell you “changing bags”, where you will first place your empty developing tank, its reel, a pair of scissors and your 35mm film cassette. When everything is in place in the bag, you insert your hands in the bag through the sleeves, and attempt to load your exposed film on the reel, separate it from the cassette, place the spiral in the tank, and close the tank, without seeing what your hands are doing. Not easy at the beginning, but with some practice, it becomes a second nature.

Our good friends of Lomography have just released a “daylight developing tank” that should make the process easier. In full daylight, place the film cassette in the tank, close the tank, and simply turn the crank to load the film on the reel. When the film is totally loaded on the reel, press a button to cut the film and separate it from the cassette, open the tank, remove the cassette, close the tank again, and start the normal development process.

I just ordered one. I’ll let you know how it goes.

More on the subject:

Digitizing negatives with the JJC adapter/

Film Processing (wikipedia)

Film Developers (wikipedia)

Paterson Developing Tanks over the years

*Charleston, SC- July 2009. Developed and scanned by a pro-lab (at Costco, most probably).*

*Magnolia Plantation and Gardens – Charleston, SC*

Panasonic G1, G2 and G3 – how good were the early mirrorless digital cameras ….

I’ve always been intrigued by the first G series micro four third (m43) cameras of Panasonic – and I’ve always found the red ones particularly cute and desirable. But never enough to buy one, until today. Another eBay find.

Launched between 2008 and 2011, the G1, G2 and G3 now qualify as “old gear” and deserve a place in those pages. Whether one of those cameras, which were once revolutionary, will find a new life in my camera bag – is another story, and that’s what we’re going to determine.

Those early G models look like a dSLR shrunk to 1/2 scale, and were available in three body colors (black of course, but also red and blue) in the Western markets (*). Because they were the first representants of a totally new category of cameras, Panasonic did not seem to have a clear positioning for the G Series – were they targeting novice photographers or enthusiasts, and at what price point?

*Panasonic G2 and Nikon D700 – two interchangeable lens cameras with 12 Megapixels sensors with a trans-standard zoom. The size difference is striking.*

By 2010, they had made up their mind, and started launching smaller and simpler GF models to encourage smartphone and compact digicam users to step up to Interchangeable Lens Cameras (ILCs), while the subsequent G Series models became larger and more serious looking. The current models look no different (and are not really smaller) than conventional APS-C dSLRs.

Why mirrorless?

It all started when the image sensors used in dSLRs became capable of capturing video in addition to still images.

With the D90, Nikon were the first to propose a dSLR that could also shoot HD videos, but the architecture of single lens reflex cameras (with their flipping mirror located between the lens and the image sensor) is not video-friendly; when it was capturing videos, the D90 was reconfigured to operate like a compact digital camera, forcing the videographer to forget about the optical viewfinder, and compose from the LCD at the back of the camera. To make the matters worse, the very efficient phase detect autofocus system of the photo section of the camera could not be used when shooting videos (the flipping mirror again), and after some trial and error, the manufacturers had to implement a second autofocus system in the video section of their new dSLRs, contrast based this time. Two cameras in one.

With no legacy in the SLR and dSLR space, and access to state of the art electronic components, Panasonic was in an ideal position to propose a simpler and more elegant solution to the photo/video hybrid challenge. Their new “mirrorless” photo/video hybrids would not be based on a “reflex” camera anymore (no flipping mirror, no optical viewfinder) – their electronic viewfinder and their LCD display would both be fed directly by the image sensor – and a single autofocus system (contrast based) would be implemented. For the operator of the camera, there would be no difference between shooting still images and videos.

*Panasonic G2 – the fully articulated display is great for selfies and for videos.* *The touch screen is not very reactive*, *there’s only one control wheel but the presence of the AF/AE lock is a nice touch.*

The mirrorless architecture had another significant advantage – because they were not built around the constraints imposed by the mirror box of a dSLR, the cameras and their lenses could be made significantly smaller.

It was a small revolution (and it was perceived as such by the press when the G1 was launched). Sony and Olympus followed rapidly, then Fujifilm, then finally Canon and Nikon.

For the anecdote, the G1 – in spite of being architected as the perfect photo-video hybrid, could only shoot still images. All the models that followed, starting with the GH1 of 2009, shoot stills and videos, the GH models being more video-oriented than the G models, but we’re talking nuances here – nothing fundamental.

Shooting in 2025 with the Panasonic DMC-G2

In the early G series line-up, the G2 looks like a good pick. It addresses most of the limitations of the G1, and its user interface is more enthusiast oriented than the G3’s (more physical controls). The sensor is still a 12 Mpixels unit (the GH2 and the G3 made the jump to 16 Mpixels a few months later) but on a 15 year old camera the performance of the jpeg processing engine, the way it manages noise and the dynamic range are more of a concern than the resolution of the sensor.

*Panasonic G2 and Yuneec 14-42 pancake zoom – more physical controls than on an entry level ILC.*

Using the G2 today, you understand why the press was so impressed with Panasonic’s new mirrorless cameras. They had nailed the essentials – offering a very compact, well rounded, pleasant to use camera, seamlessly integrating an excellent electronic viewfinder and a fully articulated rear display to shoot stills and movies without the acrobatics needed to do the same with conventional DSLRs. Even the autofocus is (relatively) fast and accurate. The fast movers among the competitors (Olympus, Sony, Fujifilm) would need three good years to catch up.

On a spec sheet, the G2 has everything an amateur will need – multiple exposure modes, including “intelligent” modes that recognize the scene for the photographer and adjust the parameters accordingly, multiple autofocus modes, and a very informative viewfinder.

*Atlanta, Piedmont Park – Jpeg Straight out of the camera – note the 4×3 proportions of the picture.*

Once you get used to its menus, the camera is easy to configure to one’s desires, and does not get in the way. It’s so light you don’t feel its weight, and wakes up quickly if it had entered a sleep mode. Only the operation of the touch screen leaves to be desired – it’s unresponsive and requires a significant pressure from the finger – and can’t be compared to the responsiveness of a modern smartphone in that regard.

What about the pictures?

There are cameras from the same vintage that immediately impress you with the quality of their JPEGs – you shoot with them for the first time and are like “wow!” – I’ve had that sort of moment with my first Fujifilm camera, the original X100. No such thing with the G2. You look at the pictures and you simply think – “not bad, but it needs some post-processing to show the scene like I really saw it”.

*Sweetwater Creek Park – GA – jpeg image boosted by Lightroom AI*

The JPEGs are generally pleasant to look at but lack punch, and will benefit from some limited post processing (with the G2, I tend to systematically add vibrance and clarity in Lightroom). In some of the landscapes I shot (facing the sun, admittedly), the images seemed to be rendered in a scale of grey, with almost no color – which points to dynamic range limitations.

*Fishing – Shot in RAW. Processed in Lightroom Mobile*

Photographers willing to spend more time on their images will shoot in RAW, and spend a few minutes adjusting each picture in Lightroom. The files respond well to post-processing, which tends to indicate that the potential of the sensor is hindered by the JPEG rendering engine of the camera.

As a conclusion

Shooting with a great film camera from the nineteen seventies or eighties is an experience to be relished. It’s so different from shooting with a modern digital camera. Cameras like the Canon AT-1/AE-1, the Nikon FM/FE or the Olympus OM-1/OM-2 series reconnect you with the basics of photography. Even if you own a state of the art digital camera, you will still feel the need to shoot with a FE2 or an OM-2 from time to time, because they’re such great instruments and using them is so rewarding.

*Wildlife on the Chattahoochee River. Shot in RAW. Processed in Lightroom Mobile*

You can’t say the same of the Panasonic G2 – it’s a modern digital camera, but not as advanced as the most recent models from Panasonic and all other major camera makers. In 2010, it was an impressive tour de force, already very mature for a 1.1 release. Today, it’s still remarkably compact, but the Jpeg processing engine, the sensor, the viewfinder – although usable – are 15 years behind the current best of the bunch.

The G2 is a cute and easy to use oldie, but if you also own a more modern, more enthusiast oriented ILC, you will not be tempted to shoot with the G2 when you could be shooting with a more recent, more flexible camera that will deliver better pictures in more situations, straight out of the camera.

Or you will be looking for a camera as compact and pleasant to use as the G2, but more modern.

Panasonic G2 with Pentax 35mm f/2 lens and Fotasy adapter – Mirrorless cameras (in general) can easily work with vintage lenses. There is an adapter for almost every lens mount ever made (here, 42mm to m43).

On the other hand, if you’ve only shot photos and videos with a smartphone so far, a Panasonic G2 is a good stepping stone into the world of dedicated cameras. With a Yuneec 14-42mm power zoom (**), it forms one of the cheapest ways to get a taste for what shooting with a good interchangeable lens camera really is about.

You will have to shoot RAW to get the best results, and will have to learn about the S curve and the histograms. But it’s a knowledge worth acquiring.

The m43 system is still alive with Panasonic and Olympus keeping on developing new cameras and new lenses, and when you will feel the desire for a more recent camera, all the experience you will have accumulated shooting with the G2 – and the money you’ll have eventually spent on extra m43 lenses – will not be lost.

*Tree – shot in RAW in the Chattahoochee River National Park. Processed in Lightroom Mobile*

(*) Panasonic also shipped the early G models in other color combinations, but primarily on the Japanese Domestic Market (JDM). Cameras sold on the Japanese domestic market very often have a Japanese language-only firmware, and can’t be reflashed to show menus in other languages than Japanese. This situation is not specific to Panasonic – all Japanese cameras manufacturers have had (and some still have) references in their line-up which are strictly reserved for their home market and only support Japanese. Generally the ones with the fancy colors. Too bad.

(**) Yuneec is a Chinese manufacturer of drones and electrically propelled aircraft. At some point they used to integrate Panasonic m43 cameras and lenses in their drones – simply relabeling them. The Yuneec 14-42 power zoom is assumed to be identical to its Panasonic branded equivalent. The drones have probably reached the end of their life a long time ago, but enough lenses seem to have survived them, and there is a significant supply of Yuneec branded zooms on the second hand market. The Yuneec-labeled 14-42 mm zoom is identical and – in my experience – fully compatible with its Panasonic branded sibling.

A refurbished Yuneec zoom typically sells for a bit less than $100.00, a nice second hand G2 can be had for less than $150, making the G2+Yuneec 14-42mm combo one of the cheapest way to shoot with a good mirrorless interchangeable lens camera today. Not a penalty camera by any mean…

*Sweetwater Creek State Park – straight out of the camera* – *I was facing the sun when I shot this picture.*

*Sweetwater Creek State Park – GA – image settings optimized by Lightroom AI.* *This image is closer to what I had in mind when I pressed the shutter.*

*Sweetwater Creek State Park – Straight out of camera.*

*Sweetwater Creek State Park – vibrance and clarity boosted in Lightroom*

Digitizing negatives with the JJC Adapter

If you ask a lab to develop your film (I’m using https://oldschoolphotolab.com/), they will scan it for a modest extra fee ($6.00 per film). And if you send them already developed film strips, they will charge you anything between $1.00 and $4.50 per frame, depending on the quantity and on the desired output quality. The scans are made on Fuji or Noritsu machines, and the result is top notch – you just have to be prepared to wait – typically for two weeks – before you can access the files on Dropbox.

But there may be situations when you can’t wait, or you don’t want or are not permitted to send the negatives through the postal service at the other end of the country. There are also cases when the sheer volume of images to scan (and the expected low keep rate of the scanned images) makes using a specialized lab financially impractical.

*JJC Kit in its box, Nikon D700 ready for action*

You can invest in your own scanner – or – taking advantage of the high resolution sensors of modern digital interchangeable lens cameras (dSLRs or mirrorless), shoot the negative frames (or the positive slides) with your camera, and simply upload the resulting files to Lightroom for a final edit.

Nikon were the first to package the necessary hardware in a single product (the Nikon ES-2 adapter, tested in The Casual Photophile: solving scanning with the nikon ES-2 film digitizing kit ). The Nikon kit is dedicated to Nikon cameras and lenses (and only a very limited list of Nikon Macro lenses are supported).

JJC have developed a clone of the ES-2, and have opened it to more lenses (they have added support for Canon, Sony, Laowa and Olympus lenses). Regular visitors of CamerAgX may know that when I’m shooting digital, it’s primarily with Fujifilm X cameras (X-T4 and X-A5) but I also have an old Nikon D700 and a much older 55mm Micro-Nikkor AI lens on a shelf, and that’s the gear I used to test the JJC “Film Digitizing Adapter Set”, Ref: FDA-S1.

The kit is composed of 8 adapter rings, a slide mount holder, a negative film strip holder and (the unique selling proposition as far as I’m concerned), a USB powered light box. The whole set is well packaged, seems to be made of good quality materials (metal and plastic), and everything works as expected.

First attempt: Scanning with the Nikon D700 and the Nikon Micro Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 AI

The Micro Nikkor 55mm AI is only offering a 1/2 repro ratio when shooting macro. As a result, the image of the negative is only using the central area of the frame of the D700. Not good. It’s made worse by the small resolution of the D700’s sensor – 12 Mpix – over here, we’re only using 3 Million pixels. The scans look blurred and lack detail.

*As shot with the D700 – the Micro Nikkor 55mm lens is not a good fit for the JJC adapter*

Second attempt: Scanning with an APS-C camera (the Fujifilm X-T4) and Nikon Micro Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 AI

One of the benefits of “mirrorless” cameras is that they can accept all sort of lens adapters. I happen to have a Fotasy adapter which will attach the Nikon AI lens to my Fujifilm X-T4. And the articulated display fo the mirrorless camera is much more comfortable to use than the optical viewfinder of the Nikon D700 for this type of work.

*In action – Fujifilm X-T4, Fotasy Adapter, Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm, JJC kit*

The “scan” fills the frame and is much more detailed.

*Much better with the Fujifilm X-T4 – the “cropped sensor” is a good fit for the 1/2 repro ratio of the 55mm Micro-Nikkor AI.*

Inverting the scanned image

If you were starting from a negative, you have to convert it to a positive image. I tried this free online service (invert.imageonline.co). Better equipped pros will use Photoshop or Lightroom Plug-Ins.

*Inverting the image with imageonline.co*

Final touch in Lightroom Mobile

Depending on the pictures, it’s more or less labor intensive. It involves playing with the white balance, the different exposure sliders, and the color channels.

*As imported in Lightroom from imageonline.co*

*Playing with the sliders in Lightroom* – *with this picture I could not approach the colors of the lab’s scan.*

Let’s compare a JJC scan with a pro medium resolution scan

The default resolution of scans performed by the Old School Photo Lab is 2048×3072, delivered as JPEG files. Higher resolution scans can be ordered at an extra cost (resolution: 4492×6774) and they can be delivered as TIFF files.

I’m generally happy with their standard resolution scans (I’ll call them medium res as some labs offer lower res scans as an option) and would only request High Resolution for exceptional pictures I’d like to print in a large format.

*Shot with Kodak Ultramax on a Canon Photura, processed and scanned by the Old School Photo Lab*

I just received the negatives of a film roll I shot with the Canon Photura a few weeks ago (the scans are made available online as soon as the film is processed, and the negatives returned to you one week later). Let’s compare a scan from a professional lab with an image captured on an APS-C camera with the JJC kit.

*Scanned on a Fujifilm X-T4, inverted by imageonline.co and adjusted in Lightroom Mobile.*

With the JJC kit and my amateur workflow, getting “good enough” results is easy and fairly quick. The DIY scans are very detailed but the colors still a bit off. Getting something as good as a scan on a Noritsu machine requires precision – the focus on the camera has to be perfect, the color balance has to be exact – but with practice and dedication I’m sure it’s possible to get “pretty close”. At the moment, I’m “pretty close” on some pictures, and totally off on others. Practice makes the master, and I lack practice, for sure.

Conclusion

I did not invest a lot in this test (the FDA-S1 kit cost me less than $100.00), I used an undocumented and unsupported setup, I relied on a free online service to invert the scanned negatives, and I edited the pictures with Lightroom Mobile. Enough to give me a feel for the practicality of the solution, but not enough to get the best possible results. I don’t think using an APS-C camera is an issue (the 26 Mpix of the X-T4’s sensor are more than enough to render a 35mm negative), but photographers who digitize their negatives “seriously” use the personal computer version of Lightroom (Lightroom Classic), with a plug in provided by Negative Lab Pro.

*Scans from the lab (top row) vs DIY scans* *(lower row – the image on the bottom left has not been processed yet).*

As a conclusion

The great thing about the JJC Digitizing kit is that it’s an all inclusive hardware solution, which is flexible enough to be used on cameras and lenses not explicitly supported. The USB powered lightbox is a significant plus, which is missing from the Nikon ES-2 kit.

The two main benefits of a scanning workflow starting with the JJC kit are speed – you can scan hundreds of pictures in an hour – and resolution. The biggest limitation is what comes after – inverting the negative and playing with the contrast slider, the color channels and the S curve to make the image usable. In order to get the best possible results at scale, using Lightroom Classic on a PC or a Mac, with a dedicated plug-in is probably the way to go, but it’s a spend I can’t justify – I’m just an amateur photographer, not a pro.

I’ll use the JJC Digitizing adapter as a quick way to reference hundreds or thousands of negatives, and, to share the ones that matter to them with family and friends, on the messaging apps of their smartphones. If I need a high quality scan of one of those pictures, I will still rely on a pro lab.

(*) More about the different versions of Lightroom (Classic, Mobile, Mobile with Premium Features)

Sony HX series – the Cybershot DSC-HX60

Until this year, the big Japanese camera makers seemed to have abandoned the “digital compact camera” market almost entirely, retreating to a few niche products such as the Sony RX100 or the OM System Tough TG, and leaving all the space of “casual photography” to smartphones.

The commercial success of a few of the remaining compact cameras (the current versions of Fujifilm X-100 and of the Canon G7x are almost always out of stock), and the prices reached on the second hand market by some high end compact cameras from the past decade are pushing the camera companies to reconsider their product strategy. Canon is widely rumored to be preparing a new range of compacts.

In the meantime, a few lines of cameras of the past decade – the Canon SX700, the Nikon S9000 and the Sony HX series in particular, are getting all the attention and are more expensive than ILCs of the same vintage on eBay.

Sony’s HX line of products

The H in HX stands for HyperZoom – the cameras of the series all have zooms that can reach at least an equivalent of 250mm on a full frame camera. Some of the HX models (the ones with three digits in their name) are shaped like a bridge camera and would not fit in a pocket, while the HX models with one or two digits (HX5 to HX99) are pocketable little bricks that could fit in the pocket of a coat.

The HX pocketable models were developed across 4 generations.

HX5, HX7 and HX9 belong to the first one, with 10 and 16 megapixel image sensors and a reach limited to 384mm. The HX10, HX20 and HX30 form the second generation. They share a 18 mpixel sensor and are pretty close to one another – primarily differentiated by the reach of their zoom and the support of Wifi.

*Sony Cybershot HX60 – size comparison with a Fujifilm Z1000 EXR and a Fujifilm XQ2. The Sony is two to three times thicker than the two Fujifim digicams*

The HX50 and HX60 mark a significant evolution towards the high end, with a 20 Megapixel sensor, an accessory shoe, a bulkier body and longer zoom reach. They share a G series, 25-720 zoom. The main difference between the two models is that the HX60 has NFC in addition to Wifi, and is controlled through the new unified Sony menus.

The last four models (HX90, HX80, HX95 and HX99) all share a 18 mpix sensor and a smaller body with a telescopic viewfinder and a flip up screen. Their lens is a new, more compact, Zeiss labeled, 24-720 zoom. But they lose the accessory shoe of the previous generations and a few physical controls (like the exposure compensation control wheel). The differences between last four models are relatively minor. The HX80 is the simplest, while the HX99 has everything (a touch enabled rear display and a GPS, and it can save RAW files).

The 30x zoom *belongs to the G series (one step above the “normal” Sony lenses, one step below the “Zeiss T*”)*

Lastly, all models whose name ends with a “V” have a GPS chip. The HX60, for instance, was available as a GPS-less HX60, while the HX60V had the GPS chip. Not all combinations were available in all geographies. The HX60, for instance, was not available in the UK or in the US, but the HX60V was.

The different models: a summary.

You will notice that after the HX60 Sony reverted to a 18 Mpixel sensor.

The main differences between the last six models

On paper, the most recent generation with its very compact body, its telescopic viewfinder, its Zeiss labeled lens and its flip up rear screen seems the most interesting. Recent models also benefit, generally, from image sensors and processing engines that produce better pictures (less prone to noise, and therefore more immune to the smearing caused by aggressive noise reduction algorithms). But models of that series are also the most sought after, and cost twice as much as a HX60 on the second hand market, at approx $500.

Shooting with the HX60

The HX60 is not exactly a pocketable camera, unless you wear a coat or an anorak with large pockets. And you will feel its weight – at 272g (9 1/2 ounces) it’s not light either, twice as heavy as a typical compact camera like the Sony W series or the Canon Powershot 170 IS. It does not give the impression of being fragile, but it’s not a rugged camera and its owner will feel compelled to carry it in a soft pouch.

It offers more physical controls than a typical point and shoot and elaborate menus (inherited from Sony’s big mirrorless cameras) which, coupled with the rather succinct documentation, could make it intimidating for beginners.

I left it in Program (“P”) mode most of the time; there are also a “Superior Auto Mode” and an “Intelligent Auto Mode” that detect the scene for you and adjust the settings accordingly – simply adjusting the exposure with the correction dial when needed. I’m not sure there is any benefit in leaving the full automatic modes for Aperture or Shutter Speed priority modes – the largest aperture varies between f/3.5 and f/6.3, and the smallest aperture is always f/8 – your options are limited. And even if a shutter speed of 1/1600 sec is proposed, selecting it it will force the camera into very high ISO territory – to the detriment of image quality.

*The menus belong to Sony’s current generation.*

Compared to the screen of a modern smartphone, the display of the HX60 is not very bright – you have to set it to +2 to be able to compose somehow comfortably when shooting outside. It takes a toll on the battery life, which is limited to one or two hundred pictures in the real life.

The HX60 supports WiFi connections to a smartphone or a tablet using Sony’s current “Imaging Edge Mobile” application. Transferring photos to the mobile device from the camera is not 100% intuitive, but with a bit of trial and error, it can be achieved.

*the exposure compensation dial is useful.*

Image quality

Image quality is surprisingly good for a camera with such a small sensor – as long as the sensitivity remains under 800 ISO. Fortunatelly, if you leave it in auto mode, the camera is programmed to operate when possible at very slow shutter speeds (and in the 80 to 250 ISO range) and thanks to its very efficient optical image stabilization system, it still delivers images free of motion blur at 1/20sec.

Images shot at 1600 ISO or above are best viewed on the small screen of a smartphone, as the noise and the image smearing resulting from the noise reduction algorithm take their toll. The 18 Mpixel sensor of the cameras of the following generation (HX80 and above) is supposed to perform better in those situations, but I had used a Sony WX350 (equipped with the same 18 Mpixel sensor) for night shots in Las Vegas a long time ago and even if the neons looked fantastic, noise severely impacted the poorly lit areas. If there is an improvement, it’s marginal.

*A small portion of the Cirque du Soleil image posted below. At 1600 ISO noise and image smearing become very visible*

As a conclusion

What distinguishes this camera is the very long reach of its zoom. Shooting with wide angle lenses is more natural for me, and with my “normal” cameras most of my pictures are taken at a focal length located somewhere between 28 and 40mm (full frame equivalent). Shooting with a small camera that can reach a focal length of 720mm is a new experience for me, and a sort of eye opener. You look at the world differently when you know you can isolate details far, far away.

The Sony HX60 is a very efficient little camera, using its elaborate technology (a really impressive image stabilization system in particular) to overcome the limitations of its small sensor and deliver very nice pictures. It’s not exactly pocketable and without being fragile, it has to be treated like a small “serious” camera rather than an always available note taker that you will throw in a handbag with your car keys.

Because the camera manufacturers have more or less abandoned the “elaborate, small sensor” compact market, this Cybershot from 2014 is very close to representing the “state of the art” when it comes to “travel zoom” compacts. The HX60 is not for everybody, but if you like long, long zooms in a 270g camera, this one is for you.

This camera belonged to my late father in law, Eric, who passed away recently. In his late years, he was more interested in painting, but he still knew how to use a camera. He shot most of the pictures posted below. They show what a person with a good eye but no particular interest for photography can get out of a HX60.

*Rural landscape in the Grenoble area (France).*

*Ostrich, in a zoo. Shot at a focal lengh of 90mm (approx 550mm full frame equiv.) at 1/250 sec. 125 ISO.*

*The Cirque du soleil. Shot at 1/25sec and 1600 ISO. Not bad for a small sensor camera – as long as the picture is viewed on a smartphone or a tablet.*

*A fellow painter at the workshop – shot at 125 ISO*

More pictures taken with the HX60 in my Flickr album

Canon Photura (Epoca) – a strange looking point and shoot camera of the film era.

This is the other cheap camera I bought on Xmas eve on shopgoodwill.com. I paid less than $14.00 for it. The 2Cr5 battery it needed cost me more.

Launched in 1990, it was known to the North American public as the Photura, in Europe as the Epoca and in Japan as the Autoboy Jet. That’s the first generation model, and the one I bought.

A second model (the Photura 135) was released 2 years later, with a zoom offering longer reach (38-135) instead of 35-105 for the original model and a darker body color. That’s the one presented in Canon’s virtual museum.

Because my copy of this camera was bought in the US, it’s a Photura, and that’s what we’ll call it it for the rest of this blog entry.

Screenshot from Canon’s virtual museum pages

To this day, Canon’s official litterature still presents it as a top of the line camera.

Top of the line, for a point and shoot camera of its day: motorized 35-105 zoom, infra-red based autofocus, motorized film advance, drop in film loading, DX coding, dioptric correction, and all sorts of override modes for the autofocus – nothing’s missing.

The bridge cameras

In the late nineteen eighties (because they had missed the boat of the autofocus SLRs) , Ricoh, Olympus and Chinon started pushing cameras of a new type, that “bridged” the gap between conventional Point and Shoot cameras and Single Lens Reflex (SLR) . Like a Point and Shoot, they had a non removable zoom, and like SLRs, image framing was done through the lens. A flash was also built-in. It made for a large and heavy combo, but in the mind of the people who designed them, those all-in-one bridge cameras were supposed to be cheaper, less intimidating and easier to carry around than an autofocus SLR with an equivalent 35-135 zoom and a big cobra flash.

Because they tried to combine all the features of an autofocus SLR and its accessories (zoom and flash) in one compact design, the bridge cameras looked strange – and their form factor would not be widely accepted by the buying public before the beginning of the digital camera era – when the smaller size of the image sensor made much smaller lenses (and therefore much smaller cameras) easier to design.

The Photura was Canon’s late entry in the bridge camera category – except it was not really a bridge camera. Like a bridge camera it was designed around a 35-105 zoom, with an electronic flash (hidden in the front lens cover in this case) and a hand strap, but it was not a single lens reflex camera – the viewfinder was a simple Galilean design with variable magnification, similar to what you would have found on a point and shoot camera of that era. And the photo cell used for metering did not operate through the zoom lens, but through a separate tiny lens next to it. So did the infra-red autofocus system. Like on a point and shoot camera.

The Photura as it’s generally represented, from the lens side.

First impressions

The biggest surprise is how heavy (600g without its disposable 2CR5 battery), and how big the Photura is. Even considering that the zoom has a relatively broad range and that it’s rather luminous at the wide end (f/2.8 at 35mm), it’s shocking. It’s not as if Canon had integrated a constant aperture zoom in the camera – the aperture at the long end is only f/6.6, and and the reason why Canon recommended using 200 or 400 ISO film. To Canon’s defense, the (real) bridge cameras proposed by Ricoh, Olympus and Chinon were even bulkier and heavier, the Ricoh Mirai tipping the scale at more than one kilogram (2.2 lbs), with a lens less luminous than the Canon’s.

The second biggest surprise is that you don’t hold the Photura like you would hold any other camera. At least when you’re keeping the frame horizontal (shooting a landscape, for instance) and at the wide end of the zoom range, you simply insert your right hand between the body of the camera and the hand strap, and access the zoom rocker switch and the shutter release button with the tip of your fingers. Like you would do with a video camera. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just strange and a bit disconcerting.

The first experience is positive: the camera is reactive, the viewfinder is rather large, and it’s fun to use – for a point and shoot camera. Even if it’s bulky and heavy compared to most compact cameras, it’s still light enough that you can walk for one hour with your hand wrapped around the camera, which makes it a surprisingly discreet and convenient tool for street photography.

Unfortunately, the unconventional design doesn’t work as well if you’re a leftie, or if you shoot at the tele end of the zoom, or if you’re shooting a portrait and keep the frame vertical – you’ll need to hold the camera with two hands.

Another thing that does not work at all is what Canon calls the low angle viewfinder – it’s a second and very small viewfinder located at the top of the camera’s body – it’s so small you have to have your eye just above it (less than a centimeter) or you don’t see anything. In their user manual, Canon write that it’s to take pictures of children. Look at the posture of the photographer shown in Canon’s own user manual – the kids will laugh at the poor guy and will be gone before he can take the first picture. But it works if you’re kneeling, and trying to shoot something very close to the ground, like a very calm dog sitting in his bed.

Photura user manual – courtesy of thecanoncollector.com – note the very unnatural posture of the photographer trying to use the “low angle viewfinder”

Lastly, and maybe it was unavoidable with the technology of the day (and the price point being targeted), the autofocus system still seems to require a lot of work from the photographer: it can not focus to the infinite on its own – you have to force it by pressing a tiny button; it can not focus on tiny objects, and, because its detection zone is a rather small area at the center of the frame, you have to use an early form of AF lock if your subject is off center. Which is often the case if you shoot a portrait and want the focus on the eyes of your subject – not very amateur friendly.

The Photura is very large for a “compact” camera. A zoom of similar range is mounted on the AT-1.

That’s my biggest gripe with this camera – when it was launched in 1990, very good motorized autofocus SLRs were already available from Canon, Minolta, Nikon, Pentax and a few others, and their phase detect autofocus was already more efficient and reliable than what we have here. Their reflex viewfinder was incomparably better than what the Photura could offer – and you could see directly whether your subject was in focus or not (on the Photura you have to rely on a green/red LED that will simply confirm that it did focus on… something). And they also provided more control over the exposure. A Canon Rebel of the same vintage (with its 35-80 kit zoom) was not that much more expensive (only 10% more), was not that much heavier (if it even was), and would have been my choice without any hesitation if I had been looking for my first “serious” camera.

As can be expected, the Photura line stopped at the 135 model. Canon’s next big hit in the compact camera sector would have to wait for a few years, with the very small Elph/Ixus – one of few good APS cameras of the late nineties, which later morphed into the digital Elph, one of the first really good digital compact cameras in the early years of this century.

Even next to an autofocus SLR it’s not really smaller.

What about the pictures?

I loaded the Photura with a roll of UltraMax 400 and spent a few hours walking in an area of Atlanta named Cabbagetown. Its population has almost fully completed the transition from “working class” to “young urban professional” – Teslas, Porsches and Volvos are more common in the streets than old American iron.

I already mentioned that the Photura is a pleasant camera to carry around, and the images it captures are generally very good – sharp enough and correctly exposed – very few are technically deficient. I simply boosted vibrance and clarity to add punch to the pictures shown below. On the other hand, close-ups and interior scenes can’t be shot without the flash, which tends to over-expose massively subjects located at less than 4 ft.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by the Photura. I bought it as a curiosity, but the quality of the images it delivered impressed me. It’s an almost entirely automatic camera, with comparatively simple auto exposure and autofocus systems, and it works very well. Modern cameras will yield much better results indoors, but as a street and travel photography camera, it’s very efficient and a pleasure to shoot with. A keeper. Who would have guessed it?