[aaacb]

I think there little substitute for good light and composition, and in fact I tend to like editing as little as possible just to enhance what's already there. Every time I've tried to save an image it didn't work. I've been perfectly happy with many sooc images as well. So yes, if what you feel you need to improve is composition then of course work on that.

It also depends on how you interpret scenes. Especially for landscape or more abstract images, I started to think about editing part of taking the photo -- what I'll crop, edit locally, or clone, if anything -- not as an after thought. It's forced me to analyze things in more detail, including exposure and composition.

[Just1MoreDave]

I think SOOC skills would really help with videos, if you wanted to do that. Just theoretical for me, my videos are unwatchable.

[photoptimist]

Great points Photoptimist, your analogy runs parallel to thoughts I often have. I've photos I wonder if, once learning what the parameters do, could be enhanced of I post processed.

Considering film, it's absolutely spot on about the darkroom being the same as digital post, and I had admittedly forgotten to consider this.

However, would you say the difference in options to manipulate and adjust the modern digital photo is vastly increased over the film era, which moves further away from the images we originally see and try to capture?

Actually, most of the options in digital post-processing have their darkroom equivalents: adjusting exposure/contrast (overall, in shadows, midtones or highlights), changing the sharpness ("unsharp mask" is literally how you do it in a darkroom), retouching to remove unwanted objects, dodging-and-burning, rebalancing color (one can even dodge-and-burn with color-rebalancing filters), compositing multiple images, etc.

Digital does have huge advantages in terms of how easy it is to both learn the options and apply them. For example, sharpening is just a click of a button rather than an hour of darkroom labor of creating and using a mask. Of course, the automagical tools for color, de-noising, sharpening represent ways that the post-processing prowess of an expert can be encoded into software to good effect.


Thus, I'd tend to argue that digital offers the same set of options as a darkroom, but it makes them so easy and fast that photographers are much more likely to use (or overuse) all the possible options.

[Wheatfield]

If the image fits within the confines of the jpeg package, and you have set the custom jpeg parameters to get you where you want, jpegs are fine.
Years ago we were doing Santa photos at a few local shopping malls. The time constraints simply didn't give us time to shoot raw and convert the number of images we were bombarded with, so we tweaked camera settings and light placement until jpegs gave us the desired results.

[stevejo]

Brilliant, don't you just love architects?
My darkroom story. Has anyone been thrown in jail whilst using a darkroom. I had the use of an attic room in my barracks in Germany. a couple of friends were using my room for a bit of band practice, but unfortunately this was disturbing the Sunday morning church service. Banging on the door! Furious commanding officer, need I say more. Spent the rest of the day in the guardroom cooling off.

[Lowell Goudge]

If the image fits within the confines of the jpeg package, and you have set the custom jpeg parameters to get you where you want, jpegs are fine.
Years ago we were doing Santa photos at a few local shopping malls. The time constraints simply didn't give us time to shoot raw and convert the number of images we were bombarded with, so we tweaked camera settings and light placement until jpegs gave us the desired results.

i think that is the key, if you take the time to set it right, you dont need raw, but if you screw things up raw gives more choices.

years ago, in a similar discussion, i jokingly referred to shooting JPEG as "Pre-Post Processing" but that is pretty c;lose to the truth

[noelpolar]

I must admit.... turning off a lot of the camera settings relevant to finely tuned jpegs is one of the first things I do with all my pentax cameras..... mostly to get the fastest frame rate/buffer clearing possible. Maybe this won't be such a thing with the K3iii.

[pinholecam]

I'm interested in your views on this Pinholecam. I own a Fuji X10, my KS-1 and a Sigma DP1s (which is really my partners, but I sneak goes with it). Of them all, I actually find the Sigma the most alluring with the images it produces (specifically SOOC). They are all captivating for different types of images (black and white for instance on street I love the Fuji).

Vintage lenses have recently made me more appreciative of the KS-1's qualities, especially with it's ability to render night shots.

Is it just personal experience with pre 2010 cameras that give you this view? I know from the clubs, many here love the 10mp CCD sensors, and I'm certainly aware now there is less to MP chasing to produce great images.

I also own a DP1m, and I am on the same page that it produces the nicest SOOC images most of the time (when light is good, which is the main limitation of this camera/sensor).
This again is a sensor that has very limited DR, blacks and whites are already often pulled over the histogram, resulting in deep contrasts, richer/deep colors.
I tend to find this in my earlier cameras as well, K100D, K7 and seems coincidental (or necessary) that when I moved to K5 and on, I shot more in raw, and had a pre-set to pull down the blacks and up for the whites.


For me, I enjoy that some images can be achieved SOOC (often the ones where the contrast or exposure allows it).
There are also images that benefit greatly from the DR of modern cameras (tricky lighting, focus, colors ).
Even more so the latter that I can pre-visualize what the camera DR can do and shoot the image w/ the intent of processing it to give me the output that I want.


There is no right or wrong in either approach and I think its always good to know/appreciate both.

[CedrusMacro]

Thanks for all the food for thought everyone! I've enjoyed the discussion that's come up over this topic (apologies for dredging it up as it sounds like many have heard this debatable point before!).

Pinholecam; I'd love a little guidance on how best to interpret DR on cameras? I'm still very much a beginner with photography, so a simple redirect to a good source on here (I'll do my own search as well, however you seem to have a good grasp of this).

I have to say, following this threads comments I'm still happy to limit my post processing time, however I'm certainly considering trying it with a couple of my images I'm particularly fond of to see what I can create (or likely destroy to begin with!).

[The Squirrel Mafia]

Some like OOC. Some like RAW. Some just want to shoot OOC & don't care about post processing. Some want to shoot RAW to post process after. Different strokes for different folks. Hahaha!

I have my camera set up to work specifically with RawTherapee so that I can just shoot RAW, move the DNG files to a folder, open up RawTherapee, right click select all, reset to default, & then send to queue. In a matter of minutes I batch a single, tens, hundreds, or thousands of RAW files with no effort at all & each ISO range is getting its own appropriate amount of noise reduction as required & I don't have to worry about exposures being all over the place.

I get images that are much better than what the camera's jpeg engine can do & they're smaller in file size as well, compared to OOC jpegs without spending hours in front of the computer. Full RAW automation that yields awesome results with very minimal effort here.

[CedrusMacro]

. Full RAW automation that yields awesome results with very minimal effort here.

I'll check out the link in your sig