Back in the day, I used to shoot a lot of photos. And by back in the day, I mean the day when film was the only medium. I had a couple of Olympus OM-1 cameras, and several lenses. I used to carry a camera with me when I walked around New York City, where I lived at the time, and mostly shot black and white photos, with Tri-X Pan, with a 50mm lens.
I’ve been wanting to get back into shooting photos for a while. In the early digital days, good cameras were too expensive. I’ve been using my iPhone to take pictures for years, but I wanted something better. I bought an Olympus OM-D E-M10 (Amazon.com, Amazon UK).
I chose this camera in part because of nostalgia; it looks pretty much like the OM-1, though it’s a bit smaller. I also wanted a camera with a viewfinder; I hate looking at a screen – which is hard to do in sunlight – and prefer the more visceral feel of looking through the camera. And it shoots RAW, has an easy-to-use manual mode, and the “pancake” lens is very compact.
So, now, I need to decide on which software to use. I’ve started with Apple’s Photos, which is, for the most part, a tool for organizing pictures. There are some interesting editing features, but it’s not enough, especially because I want to shoot RAW. I could use some advice. So far, I see the following options:
- Adobe Lightroom. It has lots of features, and seems to be the Microsoft Office of photography (both in its feature-richness, and the fact that it’s the de facto standard). I’ve downloaded the demo version, and have started fiddling with it, but I hate Adobe interfaces.
- Adobe Photoshop Elements. I’ve tried the demo, but it seems to be too limited for what I want.
- Affinity Photo. This new app is getting good reviews, but there’s no demo to try it out. (The developer told me on Twitter that there will be a demo available in a few weeks, but I think any app at this price should have one at launch.)
- Pixelmator. This isn’t robust enough, and I can’t use it with RAW images.
The main advantage of using Lightroom is the fact that there are so many tutorials and books explaining how to work with it. As the de facto standard, it’s relatively easy to find information about it. But I hate subscription-based apps. Given my use of it – I don’t plan to shoot thousands of photos – it seems pretty expensive. (You can buy Lightroom, but it costs the same as a one-year subscription. Presumably, Adobe is moving to a subscription-only model.)
Am I missing anything? Am I condemned to paying Adobe a subscription fee and using Lightroom? Any comments would be welcome. (Also, your comments will help others who chance upon this article when pondering the same question.)
If you want to see some of what I’ve done so far, I’ve posted a few of my photos here, and I also set up a Flickr account to share the best pictures I take.
Update: Thanks for all the comments. I’ve been fiddling with Lightroom, and it does seem like a good solution. I’ve got 30 days to try it out; if I get to the end of that period, and can’t live without it, I’ll start a subscription.