[BruceBanner]

Intro

I had a decent search to see if such a club/page exists here for people wanting to share their SOOCs from whatever camera they like really (Canikony's are welcome!). I've been playing with Jpg a lot more recently, by doing so we can get navigate some of the pitfalls that many of the Pentax cameras suffer, such as vastly improved buffers. More than that however, if you get things looking great on the back of the camera then if you do take the image off for some proper post processing then typically I spend far less time tweaking the image. Getting it right in camera is always preferable whichever way you look at it.

My own personal journey with photography has seemingly been the opposite to many. I never started off shooting Jpg, not once, not ever. From the first dlsr I ever owned (K-50) I was shooting RAW, and I was very inexperienced. I shot this way however because everything I had ever read about RAW vs Jpg was that you have more room to breathe with a RAW edit and mistakes easier salvageable. It's only 2-3yrs in shooting more professionally have I actually started to have the guts to shoot some shots in Jpg (because I believe I have gotten to know my camera really well and tend to make less rookie mistakes at the time of the shot). I find it quite bizarre that the opposite seems to be very common place, newbies are scared to shoot RAW (don't know what it is) and use Jpgs instead, perhaps not realising they are actually hampering themselves somewhat. I personally believe that editing RAWs teaches you a lot, I think perhaps more than editing Jpgs...

But anyway...


The Rules (what is going to be accepted as a SOOC?)

I've had a think about this, and I am open to having my mind changed, but I think we may restrict a lot of the entries in this thread if we don't allow one specific post processing (computer based) clean up, Spot Removal. I have taken a few recently and have literally had to scrap the better f8 versions due to dusty sensor or lens at the time of the shoot, and instead be a purist and only submit the f2.8 version (which shows no spots but is not as nice as the f8 version). There was one other shot I took whereby I used a single spot removal to remove a strong blemish that otherwise ruined the shot, so it wasn't to treat a lens/sensor spot but just something very distracting. I think if we allow the use of this external tool then we will see more submissions whereby the shot is 99.999% derived from what the camera can do on it's own, and I think that is really the point. My fear is if we don't allow some Spot Removal in PP we will limit the amount of entries and I think that would be a shame.

I will give you examples;

This shot below is 99% SOOC;



The only distraction was a very bright and out of place white spot on the window that really ruined the tone. It wasn't a reflective droplet, just a stain I think so I took it out as it was really distracting. Everything else was done in camera (KP).


This next shot below is a 100% SOOC, it is however the f2.8 version rather than the superior f8 version (which I have not yet edited in camera or properly tackled in PP software). The f8 version has quite a few distracting lens/dust spots in the sky that really ruin the shot. It's my opinion that we should allow that part in PP so that we can still enjoy the best version of the shot taken and the results where 99% came from the camera. Spot Removal is a 10-20sec fix, something I think hardly sabotages the idea or spirit of SOOC shots;



Like I said, it's just a bit soft because it is the f2.8 version, I'd like to extend others to submitting their SOOCs, their best versions even if it meant for some spot removal.

Having said that I think that's the only exception (unless someone has any other valid ones?). Lens correction, effects and all that stuff can be set up at the time of the shot or after, that's perfectly fine. It could start off as a RAW file and then the Jpg preview of the RAW extracted if you like in camera, and tweaked further in the camera tools, that also is totally fine.

All bordering, vignette, crops etc, all has to be done in camera.

People may find this resource useful; http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/english/products/custom_image/

Shall We Begin?

I'll get the ball rolling...

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Last edited by BruceBanner; 09-27-2019 at 07:31 PM.

[ggascay]

Found this from a FB group link - Good idea! I have been wanting to have a thread or group of SOOC images only for a long time. Been a jpeg only shooter in all the images I have posted and virtually all of them are SOOC or edited from within the camera.

[BruceBanner]

Found this from a FB group link - Good idea! I have been wanting to have a thread or group of SOOC images only for a long time. Been a jpeg only shooter in all the images I have posted and virtually all of them are SOOC or edited from within the camera.

Good stuff Geoff, if you want to share any of your SOOC shots then here is most definitely the place. You're welcome to list the camera, lens and any specifics setup in camera that helped produce the shot, or not, up to you.

[Cerebum]

I like this idea. My K3 saves in raw and jpeg. I tend to ignore the jpegs, time to start taking an interest

[barondla]

Interesting idea. Thought this was going to be more of a special effects thread. Looks to be about processing images that are more based in reality. Haven't done any in camera processing with K-1. Have done some with my other Pentax K mount cameras. Also a fair amount with the Q and it's front mounted "art" knob.

The only computer processing I regularly use with sooc is sharpening and resizing for the web.
Thanks,
barondla

[Martin KP]

JPEG strait out of camera. No bracket, no filter, no post other than file size reduction. The lens is my new LensBaby Sol45. It's sooo much fun. OH btw what's sooc?

[ggascay]

Testing an upload, that is actually downloaded from my Facebook profile... So already compressed and reduced in size.
K3 with vintage Vivitar close focusing 135mm lens using bright mode profile tweaked with base, shadow and highlight contrast adjustments along with resized sharpness circles to extra fine. This was the jpeg out of the camera, copied to iPhone with the Flucard and uploaded to FB years ago, and just downloaded from FB and posted here with no adjustments from an iPad mini.

Attached Images

 

[jspi]

OH btw what's sooc?

I'm still learning some of the terms used here but this one I know.

SOOC = Straight Out Of Camera.

[Cerebum]

Interesting idea. Thought this was going to be more of a special effects thread. Looks to be about processing images that are more based in reality. Haven't done any in camera processing with K-1. Have done some with my other Pentax K mount cameras. Also a fair amount with the Q and it's front mounted "art" knob.

The only computer processing I regularly use with sooc is sharpening and resizing for the web.
Thanks,
barondla

I took it to mean an unprocessed raw or jpeg as opposed to one which you process in camera, the idea being that we work on getting it perfect at the point of capture then show the world how clever we are lol

[Cerebum]

A couple of completely untouched jpegs from my K3

[BruceBanner]

I like this idea. My K3 saves in raw and jpeg. I tend to ignore the jpegs, time to start taking an interest

You can also have a Jpg from the actual RAW file as well anytime (ie you don't need to do RAW+). The RAW MUST have a Jpg preview attached, just so that you can see the image on the back of the camera screen, it is this Jpg Preview we see when taking the RAW DNG file to a computer RAW Image Viewer like FastStone Image Viewer (otherwise to show the RAW takes too long).
With the camera and a RAW file you can access the RAW Development tool, do additional tweaking and extract a Jpg from the RAW, this also counts as a SOOC.

Interesting idea. Thought this was going to be more of a special effects thread. Looks to be about processing images that are more based in reality. Haven't done any in camera processing with K-1. Have done some with my other Pentax K mount cameras. Also a fair amount with the Q and it's front mounted "art" knob.

The only computer processing I regularly use with sooc is sharpening and resizing for the web.
Thanks,
barondla

There are a lot of SOOC groups out there, it's definitely not something I came up with or anything. I think the intention is to show that still really nice high image quality images can be had with just the camera, you don't always need to have access to a computer and expensive software to be a shooter.

Having said this, I think SOOC was more popular in the past, these days with affordable smartphones and tablets there are a lot of cheap (but very capable) editing apps available. Even built in editors in applications like Instagram can help the image a lot. The need for SOOC is far less now and so I would imagine it's popularity fading.

Still I think it's really nice to see what can be done all from within the camera. I have seen some impressive features on other brands where even multi exposures can be merged with images taken on different days etc, I don't think Pentax can do that, our Multi Exposure option is restricted to being done in real time and not in post.

JPEG strait out of camera. No bracket, no filter, no post other than file size reduction. The lens is my new LensBaby Sol45. It's sooo much fun. OH btw what's sooc?

You said it! 'strait out of camera' aahhaa

And yes I think lensbaby lenses can be great for SOOCs

Testing an upload, that is actually downloaded from my Facebook profile... So already compressed and reduced in size.
K3 with vintage Vivitar close focusing 135mm lens using bright mode profile tweaked with base, shadow and highlight contrast adjustments along with resized sharpness circles to extra fine. This was the jpeg out of the camera, copied to iPhone with the Flucard and uploaded to FB years ago, and just downloaded from FB and posted here with no adjustments from an iPad mini.

Fantastic Geoff!

I'm still learning some of the terms used here but this one I know.

SOOC = Straight Out Of Camera.

^

I took it to mean an unprocessed raw or jpeg as opposed to one which you process in camera, the idea being that we work on getting it perfect at the point of capture then show the world how clever we are lol

I think it's to showcase how an image can hold up on it's own without the necessity of seeing additional time and money spent in post processing it. It's my opinion that an image can typically (99% of the time) be improved somewhat with a real program after the shot is taken, but when we factor in the time spent and money for those applications, is the pay off worth it?
I guarantee some of us are shooting RAW, and in post production pushing the flat dull RAW file towards something that more or less represents the Jpg Preview of the file at the time of the shot taken, I know I have been guilty of that!

For now though I like seeing a SOOC that makes me go "Wow... you mean that shot saw no editing outside of the camera!? Amazing!" etc.

A couple of completely untouched jpegs from my K3

Nice!

[MKohoutek]

Love this idea...thanks for starting this

[MKohoutek]

K1/A*135mm

I got no problem with any of that. I'd never used JPEG's either - though my transition was from 35mm film to TIFF's. And that had nothing to do with cameras, since digital cameras hadn't been invented yet. In fact, I represented the inventor of the concept of attaching a camera to a computer in a patent dispute some time in the previous century.

So my own experience leads me to much the same conclusion. Almost everything I've ever posted on this website has been straight-out-of-the-camera as JPEG's; and given that, I'd observe that I have always had almost everything that would affect the JPEG (by way of in-camera post-processing) turned off. I'm a big believer in good composition above all else, and try to take good pictures using the camera as-is. I am a big fan of "multi-auto white balance" and "shake reduction", and I sometimes use the anti-aliasing simulator and correction of diffraction and chromatic aberration, but nothing else. I crop and resized on the computer, but almost never even change the saturation or contrast. I almost always use manual settings mode, the only exception being when I'm using "bulb" mode (though no one's seen a pneumatic shutter release bulb since the '90's, I guess). To me, post-processing in the camera is still post-processing, and a picture that's been subjected to such manipulation isn't "straight-out", it's out by a circuitous path.

All that pontification is intended to lead up to this conclusion: I see your point, and agree in principle. But I sort of thing the approach is redundant - I'm more likely to post a photo in a thread about bugs than in a thread about SOOC pictures, 'cause to me, there's nothing unusual in that. I am, of course, interested to see what other folks think about that. And I'll be the first to admit that other folks' pictures are better than mine because they use Adobe software (or some analogue) and I don't.

[BruceBanner]

I got no problem with any of that. I'd never used JPEG's either - though my transition was from 35mm film to TIFF's. And that had nothing to do with cameras, since digital cameras hadn't been invented yet. In fact, I represented the inventor of the concept of attaching a camera to a computer in a patent dispute some time in the previous century.

So my own experience leads me to much the same conclusion. Almost everything I've ever posted on this website has been straight-out-of-the-camera as JPEG's; and given that, I'd observe that I have always had almost everything that would affect the JPEG (by way of in-camera post-processing) turned off. I'm a big believer in good composition above all else, and try to take good pictures using the camera as-is. I am a big fan of "multi-auto white balance" and "shake reduction", and I sometimes use the anti-aliasing simulator and correction of diffraction and chromatic aberration, but nothing else. I crop and resized on the computer, but almost never even change the saturation or contrast. I almost always use manual settings mode, the only exception being when I'm using "bulb" mode (though no one's seen a pneumatic shutter release bulb since the '90's, I guess). To me, post-processing in the camera is still post-processing, and a picture that's been subjected to such manipulation isn't "straight-out", it's out by a circuitous path.

All that pontification is intended to lead up to this conclusion: I see your point, and agree in principle. But I sort of thing the approach is redundant - I'm more likely to post a photo in a thread about bugs than in a thread about SOOC pictures, 'cause to me, there's nothing unusual in that. I am, of course, interested to see what other folks think about that. And I'll be the first to admit that other folks' pictures are better than mine because they use Adobe software (or some analogue) and I don't.

I can't really add anything that i haven't already said before. I find the argument of post processing vs not a silly one, and not something I really want to get into. Each have their pros and cons and that's that. I find the 'processing' curious in itself, because in my mind it feels difficult to avoid. For example, many SOOC shooters who loathe processing or feel they want to stick to taking the shot 'as is' and not deviate from realism runs into problems because the Jpg Engine in the camera is already post processing the shot, even if everything is turned off. And lenses make things quite different too in terms of colour, saturation, even stuff like vignetting (like shooting a FA ltd wide open, the native shot will provide strong (but pleasing) vignette that is not accurate at all to what the eye saw in real life. So it just feels like a rabbit hole and pointless debate.

What I find interesting is that in other groups people might be sharing their SOOCs without telling us, and they are holding their own against the edited version of their peers. This threads purpose is to provide a place from which it is a given that the image has seen minimal to none PP outside of what the camera can offer (either pre taking the shot or after). I for one am keen to see some images that appear to have visited some external software but in fact have not, just a case of clever settings used at the time and leaning on what the cameras in built effects can offer.

I found this page really enlightening and inspiring; Give further expression with PENTAX "Custom Image" | RICOH IMAGING

The examples given I think are really wonderful examples of how changing a few in camera settings can derive quite a different image altogether and feel very professional.

As someone who shoots RAW and also runs into buffer issues on professional jobs (such as the wedding party coming down the aisle), I appreciate that if you can manage a great Jpg SOOC then you also effectively turn your camera into quite a different beast as well, virtually resolving buffer issues completely! And of course, it's not as if Jpgs can not still be edited...