Here is another vote for Julieann Kost. Her videos are logical, well done, etc.

Here's one man's opinion (mine...the most important opinion, in my opinion!): LR and PS are avail via a monthly subscription. That is a two-edged sword. On one hand you get cutting edge updates (which I find very useful) but on the other hand, Adobe could, at any moment, raise the subscription price and then you'd have to make a decision to continue with that model or not. I chose the subscription model for the consistent updates and leading edge tech in the programs. The masking capabilities alone have, quite literally, changed my photo game.

With regard to elitists (I think that was the term used), an ad hominem attack is not informative. I am not a pro, don't much care about status (who even knows what I use or do? If I were concerned about status I sure would not be using the gear I do.) or anything else. Results matter and I am sure one can get to the mountain top using a variety of software programs. The question is, "which one do you want to learn and why?" What I do find helpful is to look to accomplished photographers and learn from their accomplishments and methods. It also might be helpful to you to take a look at some folk's photos avail here on on their website before taking their advice.

In my camera club, comprised of some very accomplished photogs, most of them us LR and PS. Some do not, but most do. This becomes somewhat important in that some of our seminars focus on LR or PS.

If you follow an organized learning structure on LR, it will greatly enhance your enjoyment of this hobby. If you followed Julieann Kost, for instance, and internalized her lessons, in the order presented, you will find LR is an extraordinarily powerful tool once you learn the basics. Again, for me, to be able to organize my photos, search my photos, edit my photos beyond what I ever imagined, has been a source of enjoyment. Once I had the, "ah ha" moment with LR of its full breadth of features, then I transitioned to a LR fully.

I remain bewildered at people who want the "easy" way of doing things. If easy is good, then fine, but it is not often the case. Elegant is not often easy. In fact, it is often achieved through hard work and study. As (I think) Arnold Palmer said, the more he practiced the luckier he got.

As photographers we pay thousands of dollars in gear trying to achieve some level of artistic competence, but so often people balk and a few more dollars for software or simply want to have something "simple" to edit their photos. Well, LR, to me, is easier now (I am still learning...in fact last night during a session, I learned something and the most recent LR update changed the color management thing a bit..so I have to study a bit). In fact, I often use the "auto" feature in LR to get a very good starting point on edits. One click and I am nearly there. If it is a simple shot for a family album, I leave it at that. How is that difficult? Of course, I often get into multiple steps of editing using the power of LR and I think my pics are better for it.

Go through some lessons slowly and you will find that you too, will understand LR and have a degree of satisfaction for doing so.

And, regarding last night, my camera club session was facilitated by a retired news photographer. He was a professional user of Photoshop for years. As in editing 40 photos a day in PS. He did a demo in LR that almost exactly mirrored my little workflow. He said that he can accomplish editing in LR in a few minutes what he used to do for hours in PS when he was a pro. And, he also said he had to up his photography game once he started submitting photos for critique to our club and other competitions! He does very little in PS anymore, even though he is an absolute expert in it. He lives in LR.

My opinion, start out with LR. Ignore PS for now (if not forever) and learn. In half a year's time, you will be glad you did.

Enjoy

For my part the question is or was mostly just because I wanted to better understand a concept. Spicificly as it relates to a new camera body. Which by the way I do not think I will ever own.

For those who may not know I shoot birds and dolphins, both needing high shutter speeds in challenging light conditions. ISO 100 is a foreign land to me. For that matter iso 400 is a whimsical dream.

The attached image was shot at iso 1600, not because I like iso 1600 but because it's the lowest I think I could capture this image, given the very low light at a shutter speed appature that could freeze the jittery little bird in the fraction of a second I could get him in focus.

So, realalisticly, the new camera base ISOs only matter to me because I am curious and want to understand how and why.

It's funny how those of us who had to work in "available darkness" 50 years ago — especially where flash was forbidden — learned to live with heavy grain and loss of shadow detail from pushing film a stop or two. Yet many of the same people get all uptight about using high ISO settings on their digital cameras. Anyone who used Kodak P3200 back in the 1990s knows how wonderful today's digital gear really is!

At some point, each of us learns what our cameras CAN do, and we set personal limits on what we WILL do. Then, if we need better equipment, we check your budgets, make a "Pass/Rent/Buy" decision, and proceed accordingly.

Today's full frame bodies are generally usable up to ISO 12,800 for many purposes. The latest APS-C bodies are generally usable up to ISO 6400, while the latest Micro 4/3 bodies are generally usable up to ISO 4000. Those may be conservative estimates for what some people expect or accept. Individual preferences vary, and individual camera models vary, but many cameras perform surprisingly well, a lot farther above base ISO than their owners might think. Experience is a great teacher. So is post-processing one's own work.

Recient conversations and articles about the new Sony A9iii have me wondering if I understand the meaning of ISO and spicificly "base ISO" as it relates to modern digital cameras.
First off
Iso, from film days, must have been an standardized across all film manufacturers. (?) As I understand it, ISO had to do with a films sensitivity to light which was based, I think, on the "grain size ?" of the silver halide crystals. Larger crystals captured more light and also led to the Grainess of higher iso films.

In digital photography the ISO is an amplification of the light signal captured by the sensor.
The sensor captures whatever photons it captures but the electronics in the camera amplify (gain) the signal as we turn up the ISO.
I'm sure I'm going to be seriously corrected on all of this, which is why I'm asking.
Here is where the confusion for me starts
If ISO is a carry over term from film, what exactly is a "Base ISO" of a particular camera. Spicificly,
Why does Nikon use a base ISO of 64, Canon 100, Olympus 200 and Now Sony a9ii 240? And I may be wrong about some of these Base ISOs but I hope you get my question.
To the photographer, what difference do these numbers really make?
Am I to understand that Nikon's ISO 64 is its cleanest, least distorted but also less light sensitive then say Canons ISO 100? That Olympus and now Sony are using sensors that are more sensitive (their base sensitivity), collecting more light comparatively at their respective base ISO and producing their cleanest "recording" of that collection?
Please explaine.

In two words: BUGS and COMPATIBILITY of third party software and peripheral drivers.

> NO operating system's major release is without problems that could not be found during in-house beta testing and early field beta testing.

While that means problems are usually obscure, they just might affect your situation — your *particular* model and configuration of Mac, its firmware, and the software you choose to use with it. If there's a gaping hole in Internet security, that potentially affects ANY user, so hopefully, they find those holes before malevolent actors do.

> Third party application developers often don't react to a major operating system upgrade the way they should, whether by design or ignorance or incompetence. Ideally, they went to the Apple Developer's Conference (WWDC) back in June, asked their questions, went to work and made their changes, and released an update or upgrade if needed. But sometimes, it takes longer than anticipated to bring the code up to modern standards. Perhaps the coders no longer work for that company, and the new ones want to start fresh because the former ones left a mess.

Perhaps the company wants an ALL NEW version, but it isn't going to be ready for several months. In some cases, despite Apple's best efforts at communicating exactly what the new system will and won't do, and what developers can and cannot do that they once did, developers either don't pay attention, or don't react. Adobe got caught in that position once, with Photoshop 4. They dragged their feet with the transition to Apple Silicon in 2020, as well. It was months before some of their applications were optimized to run natively on Apple Silicon.

The point is, cautious users want to wait for these sorts of issues to be resolved, or at least we want to know the path forward.

Many corporations stay a full revision behind the current Windows release, just to avoid having to buy new computers, new peripherals, and new software, and having to deal with the inevitable fallout from that major sort of upgrade. My former employer ran Win XP SP3 until Win 7 was stable! They had the foresight to recognize that Windows Vista, the OS between XP and 7, was "a dumpster fire with a porta-potty in it," as our IT director described it. (I still have an HP laptop that has Vista on it, just for giggles. I need to pull the hard drive out of it, recycle the rest, and have my neighbor shoot the drive with his .45.)

One corollary of Murphy's Law says, "Any computer software that is ever perfected is immediately abandoned by its maker." THAT's why people use *nearly* abandoned systems until security updates are no longer available.

That reminds me, my wife needs a replacement for our ten year old iMac...