Rather than litter my website with tons of ads and promotions, I have chosen to just pick a single page to promote any product that I feel is worth spending time and money on. I will only promote products that I use AND enjoy using.
Clicking on any of the promotional links on this page will take you to where you can buy or view the product. In some cases you will get a discount for using the link provided. In some cases I will also receive something from the product manufacturer or publisher, if you happen to buy what they are selling after clicking the link. This is my only source of income from this website, but if you feel that this is in some way unfair or if you are too suspicious to click, feel free to just go directly to the product website. I am more interested in telling you about a good product than making a few dollars here and there. In all cases I have found that the links are safe to click, but if you find any that give you trouble or just don’t work, please let me know.
I will also add a brief description for each product to let you know how I use it and why I feel it has some value. Here goes;
Cameras
For many years I used Canon digital cameras and felt that they offered the best options for digital photography. But they started disappointing me when other manufacturers kept getting further and further ahead in this realm. So in January of 2019, after much research and deliberation, I decided to jump into the somewhat new mirrorless world, and I went with a Nikon Z7. With a 45 megapixel full frame sensor and the largest aperture lens mount on a 35mm format camera, and with hundreds of renowned Nikon lenses available, it promised to be a great choice for a new camera. My daughter, also a photographer, thought I was nuts, of course, and she bought herself one of the new Sony A7’s. I found that to be a great camera as well, and it was on my short list, but the Nikon won out in the end, after having playing with both in my local camera store. I have never regretted it.
Nikon has since released several more models, and now that the mod II’s are out for the Z6 and Z7, the pricing for the originals will be coming down a bit. Here is a link to see the Nikon mirrorless series at Nikon USA. No discounts here and I get nothing either, but keep watching since Nikon has regular promotions. They also offer many refurbished items, which are great deals.
Nikon Z Series | Full Frame Mirrorless Camera System (nikonusa.com)
Software
Photography is a whole different world than when I started out, back in the film days. With digital technology you can click away all day and night and it won’t cost you a Penney to process those photos. It will cost you, of course, if you want to invest in some more sophisticated photo processing tools than what may come with your camera. All camera manufacturers provide some way to get the photos off of the camera and into your computer, and usually also provide some basic tools for cropping, resizing and making the photos look better. But after a while, if you work with your photos long enough, you will likely feel the need to buy something to make your life easier and your photos even better.
If you do feel that you want to reach a new level in your photo processing abilities, you have quite a few options available. What you choose depends a lot on what your end goal is. If all you want to do is take snapshots and post them on Facebook, Instagram or Amazon Photos, you really don’t need to buy anything. The tools that came with your camera will work just fine. If, however, you want to produce some really great photos, perhaps printing them for display or posting them online for others to admire or maybe even purchase, or if you have so many photos that you can’t keep up with them anymore, then you probably need to get the credit card out and make a purchase.
But what to buy? Well, it depends on what you want the software to do, what your current skill level is and what you want to work towards your skill level becoming. There is no sense spending days, weeks, months learning a new tool, and then have to start all over on yet another tool because the first one didn’t get you where you wanted to be.
ON1 Photo Raw 2021 is a great photo processing solution that I use regularly. It will do just about anything you would ever need it to do for processing your photos, plus it has a couple of things about it that I especially like. First, you can try it out absolutely free for 14 days to make sure you like it. Second, you have two options if you want to keep using it. Your first option is to sign up for a subscription to make sure you are always up to date. Or you can buy a perpetual license, which means it will keep working forever without having to pay the annual fee, with free upgrades for the first year. Then after that first year you only need to pay for an upgrade it if there are new features that you want to have. I like not being locked in, so that has been my choice. They have excellent support and many great tutorials to take you step by step through everything. Since they just released the 2021.1 update, now is the perfect time to check it out and purchase if you like it. Click the banner below if you want to give it a try.
And if you decide to purchase, just use my special discount code ROBYOUNG at checkout to get an additional 15% off whatever other special price they may be offering right now.
Adobe is also a good option. They make some great products that have been the gold standard for many photographers, and for many years. If you don’t mind paying for monthly or annual subscriptions, I highly recommend trying them out. I think that the best deal for photographers, and the one I used for several years, is the Photography Plan for about $10 monthly. This includes Lightroom, Photoshop and 20GB of online storage. That’s not much storage, but I use other online storage, which I will cover later. They also have other plans available which may better suite your needs. Click the banner below if you are interested in looking into one of the Adobe plans.