RAW getting you down? - Page 2

Rnovo · 11-05-2009, 07:18 AM

Are you more interested in image manipulation, or just too anxious in turning out your best picture?
I'm like Lowel Goudge, a little old fashionned.
I too came from film (Spotmatic) - after a long time away - and I force myself to think that way since most principles are the same: trying to get that shot right the first time. Digital only adds more flexibility and PP software allows me to correct my mistakes and go beyond what I used to do but I never go too far beyond dodging/burning, cropping, sharpening and very little use of layers,
I recommend you keep it simple, look at your work the next day and so forth. It seems to me that you are close to the top of your first learning curve, take easy until the next one shows up shortly...

*Ron Boggs* · 11-05-2009, 09:04 AM

You may want to experiment with the "old school" meaning film. Note that guys like Lowell and Wheatfield and Rnovo who shot lots of film before the digi days (I'm in that group too) tend to try to "nail it" in-camera thus reducing the PP needs.

To play the film game at it's peak, shoot transparency/slide film which has almost no margin for error on exposure. You can get a film camera dirt cheap in the marketplace. Just a few rolls and you'll be better at nailing it in-camera. If need be, you can scan and PP but as a personal growth experiment, you may want to try to avoid this as you are then back in the computer room rather than afield. One of the things you will learn with slide film is to accept what you got rather than planning on how to reconfigure or modify it.

You need to make a personal decision about where you derive pleasure. Like many of the pro PP posts, I actually enjoy getting to sit at the computer every now and then and revisit my photo excursions while playing with PP. The key is that the computer time is not intended to be the main time spent (for me anyway).

Another thing that has helped me is I only do PP on images I plan to submit to magazines for publication. Stuff I'm posting on the web...who cares about perfection? Especially if it's just forum stuff...why bother with PP if there is no payout? Family snapshots don't "need" the assistance as even grandpa's faded old images are great not due to technical reasons but due to the subject matter. Really, do you "need" to spend PP time on pet and family and vacation shots that are more appropriate as family album fodder than for any other purpose? Aunt Mabel could care less about white balance nor will you by the time the image has "cooled" for a couple years. To reduce the feeling of PP urgency, I recommend that you start identifying which shots are really just snapshots and just shoot 'em as JPEGs or perhaps just accept some sort of presets for the raw conversions. I fellow I shoot with a few times a year shoots RAW PEF's and he insists that Lightroom must somehow apply the Pentax JPEG-type presets as he likes the raw conversions even without PP. I'm not an expert on this, but if he's accurate that could save tons of time. In the end, unless an image is going to be printed large--16x20 or bigger and mounted on the wall or is going to be submitted for publication somewhere why bother spending PP time? Basically, wall art and publication quality images warrant PP time...does anything else really warrant PP time? That's your call, but I say no way.

Also, editing can save lots of time. If you have 50 "similars" just tinker with the top one or two and ditch the rest. Sure, you can batch process in lightroom, but then you start wanting to tinker with each as if it's worth the effort. Keep the one or two that may be publication quality or wall art quality and delete the rest. If it's family album type stuff, do you really need six different angles of your neice opening a present? Keep the best one and dump the rest. That will reduce your urge to waste time on irrelevant images.

I once watched an AP photographer pick up 6 rolls of slide film from a quicky one hour slide processor. He put the images on the light table, snatched 2 yes just 2 from the table, smiled and threw all the rest away. He was thrilled that he got the shot and kept the 2 examples of it for publication. The rest were irrelevant. With the huge volumes of images many of us shoot in the digital era, a judicious and vicious editing eye could potentially be the biggest time saver of all!

*dadipentak* · 11-05-2009, 09:58 AM

Helpful perspective, Ron!

*FHPhotographer* · 11-05-2009, 11:30 AM

Thanks one and all, this was great insight into how different photographers "see" their world and the process. I'm taken with the idea of Lowel, Ronovo, and others, about trying to nail the shot in the camera and various approaches to doing that. It may be that spending some more time learning how to get the most out of the camera would mean having to spend a lot less time in post processing? I'm less clear on the related issue of of jpeg/RAW; it makes sense to shoot RAW + and have both as some have pointed out, but looking at them side by side it seems there is a level of quality (to me that means detail) in the RAW images, once run through capture and output sharpening, that I can't get out of the jpeg. That may explain some of the popularity of the Olympus/Panasonic systems where, once you get the damn things set up, the jpeg is close to the RAW and doesn't really need/want much post processing. This is fun, ain't it,
Brian

*FHPhotographer* · 11-05-2009, 11:36 AM

Ron, points well taken. You've jogged my memory and I now recall an old time newspaper photo editor I worked with on the long-gone SF Progress "reading negs" so well he could look at them on the strips, grease pencil the crop he wanted right onto the frame, and print. He never looked back, never second guessed himself on what he chose and why, and I'm pretty sure he nailed it most of the time,
Brian

*FHPhotographer* · 11-05-2009, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by Rnovo

Are you more interested in image manipulation, or just too anxious in turning out your best picture?
I'm like Lowel Goudge, a little old fashionned.
I too came from film (Spotmatic) - after a long time away - and I force myself to think that way since most principles are the same: trying to get that shot right the first time. Digital only adds more flexibility and PP software allows me to correct my mistakes and go beyond what I used to do but I never go too far beyond dodging/burning, cropping, sharpening and very little use of layers,
I recommend you keep it simple, look at your work the next day and so forth. It seems to me that you are close to the top of your first learning curve, take easy until the next one shows up shortly...

Rnovo, since you asked a question you deserve an answer, and I wish I knew. I suspect I am overdoing the post work not because I enjoy it as much as I am anxious to put out the "best" image. But while the reach is important, I suspect the grasp is where the most fun is. Thanks for asking,
Brian

*pingflood* · 11-05-2009, 12:32 PM

This whole "getting the shot right the first time" implies that there's some magical exposure that'll make the picture right from the get go.

Often, there isn't, unless you are shooting slide film -- but then you are forced to work within the limitations that comes with it.

When shooting negatives--assuming you are doing "serious photography" the goal is to capture the best negative (raw material) to use for a print, be it done via traditional wet printing, or a hybrid workflow where you scan and print.

When shooting digital--assuming you are doing "serious photography" the goal is to capture the best raw file to use for the print.

Your camera won't know how you want the scene to look, how you plan to expand or compress the recorded range for the final output.

No magic bullets.

That said, I often shoot JPEG when I am not worried about doing a lot of PP work and consider the in-camera processing "good enough".

Keep in mind that a lot of people who shoot/shot film didn't do their own printing, so somebody else was always handling the PP work for them. Those who developed and printed their own know that though getting a good negative is very important, it's pretty damn difficult to get something you can repeatably print at the same exposure, same grade paper etc, without having to tweak each shot.

**Damn Brit** · 11-05-2009, 12:34 PM

There's a lot of wisdom in knowing what you want before you press the shutter a la Ansell Adams. From your last post it does sound a bit like you don't know it until you see it which would explain the excess time spent PPing. Maybe you should be focusing your attention more on the camera work. As well as knowing what you want before you press the shutter, it's also worth thinking about why you want it as well, that gives the image a meaning which hopefully will be conveyed to anyone who sees the finished product.

*pingflood* · 11-05-2009, 12:37 PM

Originally Posted by Damn Brit

There's a lot of wisdom in knowing what you want before you press the shutter a la Ansell Adams. From your last post it does sound a bit like you don't know it until you see it which would explain the excess time spent PPing. Maybe you should be focusing your attention more on the camera work. As well as knowing what you want before you press the shutter, it's also worth thinking about why you want it as well, that gives the image a meaning which hopefully will be conveyed to anyone who sees the finished product.

Very well said.

If you have a bland, boring image that you just took without knowing why or having any ideas for, no amount of PP work is going to make it shine. Yes, you can roll the proverbial turd in glitter (in the photo world this is usually done via excessive HDR/tonemapping), but it remains what it was.

arbib · 11-05-2009, 12:48 PM

Originally Posted by lithos

I do tend to spend more time editing than shooting, especially when the shooting only takes 1/10 to 1/4000 of a second to do...

LOL

PLUS the time to drive and then walk to the place you take that 1/1000s photo!
So you may, in reality spend a few hours for a photo shoot out in the wilds' of your area'
So, for me, if I take 100 images of 4 or 5 ideas, (I typically will take close to 15-20 captures per idea around 1 subject), and spend a hour or two developing them (I use ACDSee Pro 3, and use JPG 90% and DNG if I think it is a tricky capture), it about washes out to about the same time I took to take them from "Out the door" to Back In the door".

Oh Yeah, I will use the JPG capture, unless it is too whacked out, then I will use the DNG for that image, if it is a great image, just exposed badly. But, when that happens, it is usually NOT a great image because of the exposure error, and another capture that better exposed has a better chance to get developed.

philbaum · 11-05-2009, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by Damn Brit

There's a lot of wisdom in knowing what you want before you press the shutter a la Ansell Adams. From your last post it does sound a bit like you don't know it until you see it which would explain the excess time spent PPing. Maybe you should be focusing your attention more on the camera work. As well as knowing what you want before you press the shutter, it's also worth thinking about why you want it as well, that gives the image a meaning which hopefully will be conveyed to anyone who sees the finished product.

Agree wtih the above and Ron's discussion further up, well said.

My next stage of development is to make specific judgements of scenes prior to snapping them; put more effort into fewer images.

Our photo club had a great speaker this month. Some of his points:
a. The pro judge spends an average of 7 seconds on any one image, 10 seconds maximum. If your photo doesn't pass 1 or 2. below, you are out of the running.
b. His criteria for a photo is the following:
1. Impact
2. Interest
3. Composition
4. Technique

c. Why? He did us the extreme favor of quickly going through all the images submitted at our last contest and quickly assessing them in front of the audience. There were a few photos where it wasn't apparent why the photo had been taken. One was of several cows in a pasture, with no particular focal point. One could look at this technically fine photo, but there was no particular pattern or item of interest to it. Luckily, both my submitted photos passed the Why test, but he caught a mistake where i had shorted one side of the image (to avoid a traffic cone) in a line of bollards in front of a maritime building. I could have easily walked down to the end of my image and moved that traffic cone or included it in the image and photoshopped it out. But i rushed the picture to move on to other, less worthy images.

Although not a part of his talk, i found that some software suits me a lot more than others. I enjoy my time using Lightroom, where the previous software i used, i hated it because it seemed very difficult to remember all the comands and operations. Go with what you enjoy, otherwise, its work :-)

Lightroom enables one to compare images side by side to see which are the sharpest. But when i'm locked into one image, I'll take several, bracket them for apertue and shutter, and examine them on the LCD to make sure the sharpness and exposure is right where i want them (for night exposures). But i no longer take the time to do side by side on the monitor - too time consuming. I keep the first best one i find and a backup or two, delete the rest.

Thanks to the OP for the thread!

**Marc Sabatella** · 11-05-2009, 01:26 PM

Originally Posted by pingflood

This whole "getting the shot right the first time" implies that there's some magical exposure that'll make the picture right from the get go.

Yeah, that's just crazy talk. If one were limited to just the particular exposures, tonal response curves, and colors that can be set up in camera, a lot of photography would hardly be worth the effort. I mean, sure, *some* pictures can be made that way, but an awful lot are improved significantly by being able to control things at a level beyond what can possibly be done in camera.

*graphicgr8s* · 11-05-2009, 02:52 PM

Marc, sure there is no "one exposure fits all" back in film we bracketed exposures and trashed the bad ones. We didn't take the shot just to have it. We thought about each shot a lot more than we do with digital. Now it doesn't cost us anything. (You know what I mean) And if it's not perfect why we can make it so in PP. I try to keep a lot of my film techniques in my digital shooting. And then I chose the shot closest to "perfect" and spend a minute or two and that's it. Same as I would have done in the darkroom. Or had a tech do for me. Now some shots I may have had in mind could never have been done in one shot alone. Sitting there cutting masks by hand. Multiple exposures on paper. Multiple negatives and masks. Hours upon hours just exposing, cutting, thinking, cutting some more only to find it just wasn't really what my vision was. Start over. More hours. Less time for girls. (Hey I WAS single once)

With computers no more of the hours and hours. Well not really I still spend way to many hours but I have found many, many ways not to do some things.

dosdan · 11-05-2009, 04:37 PM

I 've got a question for you film guys. I photographed a lot of U7 Soccer matches this year. Even with a tripod, I find I spend a fair amount of time levelling shots in PP. I like to have less than 0.5 degree of tilt in the final shot, otherwise I find it distracting. How did you get on in the days of film with levelling when you where trying to follow action?

*dadipentak* · 11-05-2009, 05:04 PM

I certainly understand the "get the shot right" approach and I'm slowly getting better at it. At the same time, what's "right" isn't exactly clear for many of us. It's partly because we're amateurs &/or relative newbies of course, but it's also because exploration and experimentation is part of the fun.

A major lesson I draw from this thread is the need to distinguish more clearly between the "production" shots (my daughter's sports and most of the travel & family photos) from the those which require or deserve special attention--as well as the "I wonder what I'd I get if I used these settings" shots.