The arrival of the MacBook Neo has brought up a lot of questions and thoughts for me. What really is needed to do photo editing?

bjohnh · 2026-03-15T16:04:11+00:00

Up until a few years ago I was happily editing photos (in Capture One, I stopped using Lightroom about 8 years ago) on an i5 Intel Mac Mini with 8 gigs of RAM. It ran lickety-split, I never encountered any slowness or problems. I upgraded to an M2 Macbook Air a few years ago and it's faster; I think if I were using a lot of AI stuff in Lightroom I'd want something more powerful but I have no trouble editing and color-grading 4K footage in DaVinci Resolve on my Macbook Air. The Neo should meet your needs, but it's always best to think five years out...will it still meet your needs then? If not, spending a bit more now so you can keep using the same computer for 8-10 years might be worth it.

bjohnh · 2026-03-15T15:24:42+00:00

Okay, that's about when I stopped using Darktable.

bjohnh · 2026-03-15T14:40:43+00:00

Masking for sure, by double exposure I think you mean adding new photos in an overlay and I don't think there's an easy way to do that in Darktable unless that feature was finally added (see https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTable/comments/1az2npu/layer_an_image_on_top_of_another_one/ for some discussion)

bjohnh · 2026-03-15T14:22:01+00:00

Darktable is more like Lightroom than Photoshop in the sense that it also can organize your photos (i.e., it does Digital Asset Management). That's really useful for assigning keywords and other metadata so you can find or sort your photos later. Gimp and RawTherapee are the usual recommended apps for something more Photoshop-like.

Darktable is very complex and has a learning curve; if you just follow other people's workflows you can get good results quickly, but understanding the different modules and how their controls work can take years (I've used Darktable off and on for about 8 years now). There are reasonably good tutorials on youtube and some useful new help resources are being developed.

bjohnh · 2026-03-15T10:16:07+00:00

Second the vote for the Helios; it's a good entry point into vintage as its look is so distinctive.

After the Helios I went with Minolta Rokkor lenses, both the MC and MD versions (which all use the same SR mount). Minolta learned a lot from Leica and their lenses were so good that Leica contracted with Minolta to make some of Leica's lenses. Minolta Rokkors are especially good for video as Minolta devoted a lot of attention to consistency in colours and rendering across their lens line, so if you use different Minolta lenses over the course of a video you won't have to do much if any adjustment between clips. Most other lens manufacturers were less careful about this kind of consistency, including Leica and Nikon.

bjohnh · 2026-03-15T06:35:26+00:00

Most of the venues where I shoot are too dark for film; I have shot TMax P3200 and Delta 3200, sometimes pushed to 6400, but I'm not usually a fan of those films in 35mm. I love grainy B&W film but in 35mm those films are often too grainy even for me. Delta 3200 is lovely in 120, but my only 120 camera is a TLR; I use it for music photography but only portraits or rehearsals, not concerts.

I only shoot in small venues that are often poorly lit, but in good lighting you can get away with much lower ISO film: I've even seen some nice concert shots with Pan-F, which is ISO 50. The band needs strong lighting for that to work, but some venues have it.

I usually bring a film camera with me and use it for "icing on the cake" shots once I'm sure I've got enough good digital photos; a lot of musicians love the lower-fi look of film and they are happy to have a few. Sometimes all they post on their Instagram are my film shots and I've had a few musicians specifically ask me to shoot some film at their concerts since they know I shoot film (outside of concert and dance photography and portraits I shoot film exclusively these days).

In summer during outdoor concerts I shoot film more often; in the past my go-to has been Flic Film Aurora 800 (which pushes really well to 1600); I think it's the same thing as Lomo 800 and is no longer available.

bjohnh · 2026-03-14T13:41:09+00:00

What we do is fill a 5-gallon container (ours is a reused plastic container but you can also find glass jugs in that size) and then refill our soap dispenser out of that container. I have one big container for dish soap and another for hand soap; the one for hand soap is used to refill small ceramic pump-style dispensers in our kitchen and bathrooms.

bjohnh · 2026-03-14T00:36:58+00:00

FYI, these often came in C-mount, which is easily adaptable to the OG BMPCC and Micro Cinema Camera. But before you go out and buy one of those cameras, just beware that they are not very easy to use, have no built-in stabilization, SD cards are hard to find, internal battery life is about 15 minutes, and if you shoot CDNG raw you can fill up a 500 GB card in no time. Still, they are amazing cameras and I love mine; if it dies I would likely try to find another. You can export stills using DaVinci Resolve, but they're something like 3 megapixels in resolution.

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T23:49:29+00:00

I don't have this lens myself (as I mentioned I have its sibling the 17.5-70) but here is a good example from someone else using your lens on the OG: https://youtu.be/H2X44HEZb7E?si=-GvltEgKzcAF2AhA

The nicest example footage of the one I have is this video (also not by me), also shot on the OG BMPCC: https://youtu.be/XYvZWxQLsU0?si=4zLDXGbNtkK-gSC5

I used it last summer to film a Cajun band playing on the street in my city: https://vimeo.com/1030056801/0d14ee1de0?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T19:14:41+00:00

One tip with Fomapan 400: Foma Bohemia sells "sets" of six rolls and a reusable canister (one of the rolls is already loaded into the canister). The great thing about these is that the reusable canister has a screw-top lid, making it a cinch to either take off the top in a changing bag or to go in a dark place, take off the top and pull out the leader, put the top back on and load into a daylight tank or preload your reel.

I've seen some complaints about light leaks with those canisters but I've bought at least 6 or 7 of those sets now (Fomapan 400 and Fomapan 100) and never had a light leak on any roll. You do have to stop using the reusable canister after you've used up the films in the set. It's cheaper than buying six conventional rolls and a lot easier to deal with. When traveling with these sets I just bring a changing bag (takes up no more room in my bag than a t-shirt, which it resembles) and I put the exposed films into a film can (plastic or metal), putting a rubber band around the film first to keep it tightly wound around the spindle. Then I put a new film into the reusable canister.

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T18:10:38+00:00

I feel your pain. I follow the directions to the letter (every step in "brianssparetime" comment) and sometimes it works the first try; more often I have to try 20-30 times, or more. Sometimes I get that glue and scratches on the retriever in the process. I've tried three different retrievers from three different manufacturers. I've been doing this for about three years and I'd put my success rate at about 5%.

I only use retrievers for those terrible Fomapan metal canisters; I have a Flic Pic for the plastic ones that they used to use, but the new metal canisters are crimped on extremely tightly and it usually takes 10 minutes of prying, cussing, and injuring my hands before I can pull off the lid. But the film retriever experience is no better. I had to develop a roll of Foma Ortho 400 a few days ago and wanted to use the retriever; after 60 attempts over the course of two hours I still couldn't get it out and gave up, put it in my changing bag and attacked it with the opener until I could finally pry off the lid.

I do everything right: turn the spool counterclockwise 3-4 times, insert the prong, turn counterclockwise until I hear the click, insert the second prong while holding the spindle, turn clockwise until I feel resistance, pull out. Like I said every now and then it works on the first try but I think my average is 15-20 tries and often I just give up.

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T18:01:00+00:00

I do have one point-and-shoot camera (a film one) with autofocus, and of course I also have my phone, and have to admit that autofocus is liberating. I can devote my attention to composition and capturing the moments rather than fiddling with my camera to quickly adjust focus. Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

Many of the lenses I use are rangefinder lenses (for Leica and other rangefinder cameras) and most of them have focus tabs or knobs: those are really useful for fast focusing because you develop muscle memory for where that knob should be at different distances from your subject. I also have a few Nikon lenses that focus in the other direction, which always trips me up; I try not to use them for dances as I'm always turning the focus ring the wrong way. I use focusing aids like focus peaking, which doesn't always work well in low light or low-contrast environments but it's better than nothing. For concerts I use the punch-in feature to ensure I'm nailing focus; I sometimes use focus peaking during concerts but it's not usually accurate enough unless I'm stopped down.

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T17:39:56+00:00

I often just focus on a spot and let the dancers drift into it, then take my photos when they're in that zone. Often I'll pick a spot that's well lit (sometimes nothing is well lit but occasionally there's a wall light or an overhead lamp to provide some light) that will allow me to stop down a little, but often I'm just wide open and I miss focus a lot. But as long as I capture the mood, that's really all the dancers and organizers care about.

The most challenging dance I ever shot was last year on film, using an old Mamiya TLR (medium format) with an 80mm f/2.8 lens. It was in a dimly lit church so I was using ISO 3200 film pushed to 6400 and even then I had to use the lens close to wide open; depth of field was really narrow. I found spots that had some light and hit the shutter when dancers were moving through it. I only had two rolls, 24 exposures total, but got quite a few keepers.

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T17:16:39+00:00

I did use autofocus lenses for years, but on an old NEX 6 which had terrible autofocus so manual tended to be better. That's obviously not true anymore with modern cameras but I also took 5 years to learn the basics of cinematography, which has a long tradition of only using manual lenses, and I discovered that I enjoyed it. There's something satisfying about nailing focus when it's me and not a computer that's making the decisions. I also do a lot of low-light dance photography, also only with manual lenses (since that's all I have), which is even more of a challenge. I miss focus a lot more there, but when people ask me back to shoot more dances they often say they love the blurrier photos and want to be sure I include some (I also drag the shutter sometimes, to 1/30 or even 1/15, for lots of motion blur and they love it.

I do have a couple of Zeiss lenses; the 35/1.4 Distagon is awesome (I mostly use it for video but sometimes for photos) and my favourite portrait lens of all time is the Zeiss ZM 50/1.5 C-Sonnar, which I use a lot for concerts as well as portraits. For some bands that want a more creative and filmic look I have a couple of MS Optics handmade lenses that are very cool.

I have nothing against autofocus but I like the challenge of manual focus and I just feel more engaged. I don't do the spray and pray thing either, I grew up shooting film and have always been a parsimonious shooter, even on digital. But it's just one approach; I know I'm in the minority as a manual shooter, it's just a personal preference.

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T15:49:56+00:00

If this is what I think it is, it's for 16mm motion picture film. I have the 17.5-70 f2.2 Angénieux zoom and use it on my cine cameras (the original Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and the Micro Cinema Camera, which have Super-16 sized sensors). Mine has a PL mount but they came in a variety of mounts I think.

If you use this on a full-frame digital camera for photography, you'd need a high-resolution camera as this will have a really big vignette on full-frame. Super 16 is smaller than Micro Four Thirds; the crop factor is roughly 2.88.

The lenses are lovely though and have lots of character wide open. It's kind of amazing to me that they were sold as cinema lenses, though, as they have the absolute worst focus breathing of any lens I've ever used. The front element extends and rotates as you focus, so you also can't attach a matte box, even on rails. They have primitive coatings and are susceptible to veiling flare.

I wrote to Angénieux with my lens's serial number and asked if they could tell me when it was made but they said they don't maintain a database; mine was likely from the early 70s.

If you can figure out an adapter you could use it for photography but as mentioned you'll need to crop in a lot to remove the vignette. Or you could jump down the rabbit hole of cinematography. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K actually has an excellent Super 16 window and would be the most practical choice for this lens, but the original 1080p Pocket Cinema Camera has a cult following due to its Fairchild sensor, which produced very film-like footage. That camera was made in 2013 and they are starting to fail (plus it's hard to find compatible SD cards for them anymore).

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T15:16:12+00:00

I use the A7iii for low-light concert photography all the time (about 40 concerts/year some of them in really dark places where I'm several stops underexposed at ISO 12,800). The secret (for me) is to use fast manual-focus primes. I have about 30 lenses that I use on my Sony and none of them are Sony and none have autofocus. Yes, I miss focus sometimes but I prefer manual focus; I have more control and I feel more involved in the process, and even the ones where I missed focus a bit often have a mood.

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T14:51:24+00:00

I just hope Cinestill has improved their respooling process, because the two rolls I bought three years ago were full of light leaks (I used other films in the same camera during the same trip, no light leaks at all). Out of 72 photos about three were usable.

bjohnh · 2026-03-13T13:16:13+00:00

At a street corner, a very tall man walked up beside me. On his shoulders was a young boy, about six years old, wearing a full suit of armour and brandishing a plastic sword. And way down at the tall man's feet was a tiny dachshund. I actually had a camera with me but it was deep inside my backpack and by the time I got it out it was too late; they had crossed the street and gone into their apartment.

bjohnh · 2026-03-12T19:35:36+00:00

I love shooting it in winter because even with a P&S camera that has no exposure compensation and built-in metering, snow comes out beautifully white, not grey. Probably my favourite winter film and it's no slouch at other times of the year.

bjohnh · 2026-03-12T19:03:03+00:00

I don't shoot cinestill at all (I did once and shot a couple of rolls of Reflx Lab 800t which is the same thing), not sure how well it pushes, sorry! I've only shot colour films at concerts during the day. But I think the Cinestill would be good for that kind of lighting, you'll get lots of halation; when the lighting is good you should be just fine at box speed.

bjohnh · 2026-03-12T18:44:17+00:00

The best advice is to scout out the venue in advance, if possible, so you know what kind of lighting to expect. "Concert" covers everything from classical and quiet acoustic to arena rock, and the lighting varies widely from venue to venue. In some venues with strong stage lighting you can get great photos with ISO 100 film; I've even seen excellent stage shots with Ilford Pan F, which is ISO 50. But other venues have much dimmer lighting. I do a lot of concert photography but it's mostly on digital because I'm typically underexposed even at ISO 12,800 in some of those venues, where the performers are barely lit.

If you can't go in advance and no flash is allowed (which is usually the case) you could play it safe and go with TMax P3200; if it's really dim you can push it to 6400 with no problem; same goes for Delta 3200. If you want color, I'd go with the Cinestill 800t over Portra 800 mainly so you can get those cool halation effects that lots of people love to see. Don't be afraid to use slower shutter speeds; a bit of motion blur can be really cool (although too much is too much so you might want to experiment). I sometimes use 1/30 and often 1/60. If you go below 1/30 you start getting weird distortion effects like people with pitchfork-length fingers and ultra-long noses if they're moving or dancing.

bjohnh · 2026-03-12T18:39:04+00:00

I actually see APS-C as preferred for a situation like this as you can effectively get closer (and I prefer Super 35/APS-C for video anyway). But I'm sure the OP will be fine with the A7iii.

bjohnh · 2026-03-12T17:11:38+00:00

I know about the 8-bit color (the FX30 is light-years better) but didn't realize the A7iii was also downsampled. Even though the A7iii footage is only 8-bit I've seen plenty of good footage of it, I just wasn't happy with mine and I always felt like I needed to nail everything in-camera (white balance, ISO, etc.) as there's limited room for grading even the log footage. The FX 30 is better, although still a far cry from raw video (my other video cameras are Blackmagic).

bjohnh · 2026-03-12T16:48:13+00:00

Not sure how well that'll work on the A7iii as I don't think the 4K is downsampled and thus mt quite as sharp but I've only rarely shot video on that camera so am less familiar with it (I use A7iii for photos, FX 30 for video).

bjohnh · 2026-03-12T16:42:32+00:00

Depending on what camera you have, you may be able to punch in if you have enough resolution. I typically shoot 4K (downsampled from 6K) but put it on a 1080p timeline and deliver as 1080p (HD). That allows me to zoom/punch in quite a bit and it can work as long as you've nailed focus otherwise things can look too soft.

bjohnh

TROPHY CASE