[Photodan]

Nobody here ever cloned out an intrusive power line or a piece of trash in a scenic? I see nothing in the world wrong with that. There have been many times when I looked at a scene and found something getting in the way (those power lines for instance). Nothing I could do to eliminate it back when I was shooting my trusty Nikkormat EL's so I just passed on it. I sure can do something about it now, simply with PP. Now, when I look at an otherwise beautiful scene and find a distraction I think, "Can I remove that?" Now it's just part of the process and I find nothing wrong with it.

Dan

[trog100]

i dont make "art" and i dont do factual reportage..

"art" says anything pretty much goes there can be no cheating.. reportage pretty much says anything is cheating..

hmm.. my world is somewhere between these two extremes.. i just like to take nice photographs that come out of the camera vaguely as i want them to..

i also like to feel that its my skill with the camera that produces the finished results.. not my skill as a graphics artist..

trog

ps.. "Can I remove that?".. hows about can i add that..

[Lance B]

i dont make "art" and i dont do factual reportage..

"art" says anything pretty much goes there can be no cheating.. reportage pretty much says anything is cheating..

hmm.. my world is somewhere between these two extremes.. i just like to take nice photographs that come out of the camera vaguely as i want them to..

i also like to feel that its my skill with the camera that produces the finished results.. not my skill as a graphics artist..

trog

ps.. "Can I remove that?".. hows about can i add that..

At the end of the day, does it really matter? If you like what ever it is that the photo portrays or is supposed to be a photo then surely that is enough?. It's the same as paintings, do you like "real" looking landscapes or do you also like "surrealism' and "cubism" or do you like the "old masters" way of depicting images which also had artisitc license?
I like "real" looking painitngs, but many of these also omit power lines and the garbage on the ground etc. There is also alot of artisitc licenses here as well.
I also like surrealism, cubism etc.

[Dana G]

One hundred years ago Charles Dodgson "proved" the existence of faeries with photographs. Of course, it was double-exposure.

The camera lies through it's teeth. Even your choice of angle and composition is a form of editing.

As an old darkroom hound, with Dektol stains on my fingers, I even used Cibachrome to print slides. You think I didn't do some post processing (as it's called today)?.

If you need quick and dirty, jpeg gets you a usable image with little fuss. But RAW is like shooting film, you have to process it. Even slides got pushed or pulled, printed with contrast masks, and so on.

[SpecialK]

I started a similar thread on another forum. I post it here:

In this digital age, it is very easy to use the "burst mode" to get a stream of consecutive shots. You can also have automatic bracketing, in-camera post-shot filters, as well as additional PP on your computer to fix, improve, or change an image.

Once you have purchased a card, you can use it over and over, taking perhaps 300 to 1200 shots depending on your setup. The cost per shot goes way, way down over time which is an added benifit to overcome the initial cost of the digital equipment in the first place.

As an example, say your card was $72 and you get 360 shots. That is 20 cents a piece. Use you card 4 times and the cost is a nickel per shot.

Now, if you shoot film, you are looking at (hmm, I don't even know anymore) say $5 per 36 roll, plus $5 for processing - so $10 per roll. That is 27 cents per shot. Since you can't reuse film, the per shot cost stays the same.

That is all good from a digital stand-point.

However, my thread-question is...does the fact we can do automatic bracketing, PP and all the digital technology make us lazy or more proficient at taking photos. Do we "try to take 20 shots and pick the best one" (a paraphrase of a recent post, and not a bad idea), or do we agonize and make calculations and adjustments to get the "perfect shot" on the first try (also not a bad idea)?

For example, I recently tested different features of my camera such as sharpness, saturation, contrast, natural/bright, stabilization etc and have taken perhaps 200-300 test shots. I doubt I would do that if it cost me $100. I would have done it on one test roll, or maybe only during actual use at that.

I've been into photography for 30-odd years, developed and printed B/W and color in college, and taken various photo classes. I've only "gone digital" in the past 2 years, and have scanned all my slides, negs and widowed prints - got rid of fading proof prints and albums, etc.

I like historical photographs but I'm not looking back. Anybody else?

[trog100]

i have had my k100 just over a couple of months.. i have fired off over 4000 pixel peeping tests shots comparing over twenty lenses or so.. i have not shot one raw image..

its pretty hard to compare one lens againt another or even one camera against another when u dont use something the camera produces as a finished product.. a jpeg..

raw and the inevitable tweakings that go with it from a purely photographic point of view is cheating..

sticking to jpeg is my method of limiting the amount i cheat with all but the most special of my pics..

i know there is a point where photography stops and graphics artistry takes over.. i am not sure where that point is so i play on the safe side.. mostly.. he he

trog

[Photo Tramp]

I really think you missed the point of photography. Photography is not only taking the perfect picture (there is no such animal) but it is the creativity and the use of all known related matter. composition, lighting, and also post processing. when we did film there were just so many things we needed to do to process the shot. If we did experiment with f stops, light, and double exposure, even putting a cardboard tube over the lens to create a shadow effect before the picture even went to development. Was this cheating? (no way it was our creativity) that is what RAW allows you to do. to get a shot you want and allow you to experiment with different filters and change layers and allows you to change the mid tones and highlights and shadows, to adjust the temp. and the hue and saturation.

Back in our film days you could never tell what you had before you processed it. How many shots out of a roll were real keepers? In school I shot 100+ rolls per week (mandatory for class) out of those rolls I might have gotten 30 keepers and out of the 30 keepers only about 10 that would be accepted by the instructor and only 1 of those I had to choose for a grade. All had to be shot per theme and if they didn't meet the theme you failed the exercise. We made our own film and developed that same film. And god help you if you made a mistake at this point because you would never know it until you spent the time to shoot the roll and develop it to find out there was nothing there.

If you limit your self to nothing but JPEG you limit your self to the advances of the camera and you will never get the full use out of the camera or photography. In other words (and this might start a war) If you only want to shoot Jpeg then You don't need a DSLR You need a P&S. I'm not saying that jpeg doesn't have a great place in photography I'm saying don't limit your artistic creativity to just camera lens and light because that is what photography is all about, YOUR expression and rendition of a person place or thing captured in time.

Good Shooting.
Cheers: David

[*isteve]

i have had my k100 just over a couple of months.. i have fired off over 4000 pixel peeping tests shots comparing over twenty lenses or so.. i have not shot one raw image..

its pretty hard to compare one lens againt another or even one camera against another when u dont use something the camera produces as a finished product.. a jpeg..

raw and the inevitable tweakings that go with it from a purely photographic point of view is cheating..

sticking to jpeg is my method of limiting the amount i cheat with all but the most special of my pics..

i know there is a point where photography stops and graphics artistry takes over.. i am not sure where that point is so i play on the safe side.. mostly.. he he

trog

Sorry I find use of the word "cheating" silly. Photography is about images. How you create them is up to you. Whats the difference between changing settings in the camera and changing the same settings in RAW? None? Ok, then if you could change all the settings in the camera that you could change in Photoshop would that still be cheating?
The point where the camera ends and the computer begins is very blurred and largely a matter of choice, just like choosing a type of film for that special "look" or adding a filter or pushing the film in the darkroom or adding masks etc.
OK for reportage, you should not change the composition or content but for any other type of photography its up to the individual.
I shoot some commercial portrait work and believe me there is no way I would risk shooting JPEG, and if I didnt manipulate some of the images I would not have many customers. I dont know a single pro photographer who does not process their images extensively. The camera after all cannot replicate what you see, nor can it adapt to every possible scene, so why limit yourself to the compromises decided on by some camera engineer?

[regken]

The things I know how to do with a raw file in Bibble and the things I know how to do with a tif file in cs are not cheating. The things I don't know how to do in Bibble and CS are cheating until I know how to do them.
That doesn't mean I am not trying to learn as much as I can about getting the best out of the camera. The better my original image, the more I can do in PP.

Regards,

[Dana G]

In this digital age, it is very easy to use the "burst mode" to get a stream of consecutive shots.-

And, unless you know something about lighting and composition, you get a huge burst of lousy shots.

Photography is still about lighting and composition.

[trog100]

"In other words (and this might start a war) If you only want to shoot Jpeg then You don't need a DSLR You need a P&S"

no offense my friend.. no war.. he he.. but i use a dslr with all its weight and other impracticalities (compared to a P/S) to shoot "better" jpegs..

i dont have photoshop simply paint shop pro.. its power to alter the images my camera produces kinda frightens me.. i sometimes play with it.. and sometimes make minor adjustment to my dslr produced "better" jpegs but thats about all..

i see moons being added to fill up empty skies.. i see small letterbox crops being presented websized as panoramic photographs for critique i see lots of things going on i think of as cheating..

i just play safe and do minimal alterations to my correctly framed jpegs that my camera produces.. if they need more than minimal alterations i consider them a failure from a photographic point of view.

its just me being old fashioned.. major post proccessing is here to stay and so are mickey mouse sized crops taken from larger much different photographs..

trog

[wtlwdwgn]

As photographers, we see a finished photograph and use the photographic tools we have to accomplish our vision. Using a darkroom to 'manipulate' a photograph is as old as photography itself. In an old style darkroom we would choose developers and developing times to match the exposure and the film and papers. In the new darkroom we do the same. And if the print matches our vision of the photograph we have succeeded.

[Amund]

"In other words (and this might start a war) If you only want to shoot Jpeg then You don't need a DSLR You need a P&S"

no offense my friend.. no war.. he he.. but i use a dslr with all its weight and other impracticalities (compared to a P/S) to shoot "better" jpegs..

i dont have photoshop simply paint shop pro.. its power to alter the images my camera produces kinda frightens me.. i sometimes play with it.. and sometimes make minor adjustment to my dslr produced "better" jpegs but thats about all..

i see moons being added to fill up empty skies.. i see small letterbox crops being presented websized as panoramic photographs for critique i see lots of things going on i think of as cheating..

i just play safe and do minimal alterations to my correctly framed jpegs that my camera produces.. if they need more than minimal alterations i consider them a failure from a photographic point of view.

its just me being old fashioned.. major post proccessing is here to stay and so are mickey mouse sized crops taken from larger much different photographs..

trog

So in your opinion 99% of all photographers are cheaters?
I find your kind of attitude towards this very weird(not in any hostile way, just curious), and I can`t think of a single wellknown photographer who operates with these "limitations"...

Wich photographers do you admire?

[Rolly]

Trog,
You are as entitled to work in whichever way you wish. It's your work after all.
But may I refer you to the process of 'pre-visualisation' of which Ansel Adams and several others of the acknowledged past masters talked at length.
Basically, one decides on the desired final image before deciding on the means of creating it.
Even Cartier-Bresson was said to have pre-planned how he might best capture his "decisive moments" to the extent that he would carefully choose the time of day, his intended location and subjects, shooting position, film stock and processing materials before setting out to record a scene.
I've had my bleat on 'photographic phundamentalism' (a.k.a. pictorial puritanism) in another thread, so I won't add to it here.
Loosen up, live life, and 'do what you do do well'. Or even better if you can. Good advice for all of us.

[WMBP]

And, unless you know something about lighting and composition, you get a huge burst of lousy shots.

Photography is still about lighting and composition.

I shoot continuous fairly often when I'm shooting sports and sometimes when I'm shooting birds. If the camera is out of focus, or the other settings are wrong, you're right, I'll get a bunch of lousy shots. But that is a fact of life that goes without saying and doesn't say anything at all about the value of continuous mode shooting. Even when the settings are spot-on, I often end up throwing away most of the images - but if I come up with one or two out of ten that I'm happy with, it was worth it.

Will

P.S. When I shoot continuous, I have to shoot JPEG rather than Raw, because continuous shooting is my K100D's biggest weakness.