Are You an In-Camera or Post-Camera Photographer?

Hi All,

My latest post on the HP professional photography blog is up on this topic:
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/grap...5/25/3484.html

Cheers,

Wayne

--
Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
Publisher, Experimental Digital Photography
http://www.experimentaldigitalphotography.com
Personal art site http://www.cosshall.com/

In article ,
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

My latest post on the HP professional photography blog is up on this topic:
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/grap...5/25/3484.html

It's not clear if all of the effects mentioned for the 'in-camera photographer'
(the is nothing 'in' in putting a filter in front of a lens) can be
duplicated in post processing.

I am a 'post-camera photographer' at heart. But I may go the analog route for
an effect if it would prove difficult to get right digitally.


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

HI Philip,

There are certainly some in-camera filter effects, for example, that are
at least difficult to accurately simulate later. I suspect, though I
have not tried, that all the optical effects of a Lensbaby, etc are not
completely duplicatable.

Personally, I do both, and pretty much always have, from my darkroom
days to today.

Cheers,

Wayne

Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
Publisher, Experimental Digital Photography
http://www.experimentaldigitalphotography.com
Personal art site http://www.cosshall.com/



Philip Homburg wrote:
In article ,
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

My latest post on the HP professional photography blog is up on this topic:
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/grap...5/25/3484.html

It's not clear if all of the effects mentioned for the 'in-camera photographer'
(the is nothing 'in' in putting a filter in front of a lens) can be
duplicated in post processing.

I am a 'post-camera photographer' at heart. But I may go the analog route for
an effect if it would prove difficult to get right digitally.

On Jun 1, 11:36 am, Rita Ä Berkowitz ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

My latest post on the HP professional photography blog is up on this
topic:
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/grap...5/25/3484.html

I rather do it in-camera as that's where the challenge is. Too many people
forgot what photography is all about and have become mindless Photoshop
drones.

Rita
Well since I shoot only in raw there are only a few things that I can
do in camera, and not many of them could be done in Photoshop. If I
was shooting jpegs I could adjust the contrast, but if I go for high
contrast then I will often lose information in the photos. Whereas it
is easy to go from a low contrast image to high going the other way
does not work well. The same thing is true of saturation, I can
always turn up the saturation but if I shoot with high saturation I
will often have colors go out of gamut and I can never get them back.

And even if I really knew at the time I took the photos exactly what I
wanted there is still the problem that what works in an image on my
monitor might not be the best choice for making a print.

Scott

"Rita Ä Berkowitz" ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote in message
...
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:

Hi All,

My latest post on the HP professional photography blog is up on this
topic:
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/grap...5/25/3484.html

I rather do it in-camera as that's where the challenge is. Too many
people
forgot what photography is all about and have become mindless Photoshop
drones.

I'm in agreement on approach here. Much like with sound engineering - best
to capture the "best" (not necessarily cleanest) "image" (be it audio or
visual) at, or of the source. At least then you have much more latitude in
post-hoc processing. The term polishing a t*rd springs to mind. If you
don't have a good, or at least indicative, base to start with, unless you
are very talented, there's not much you can do with a crap image. Ansell is
quoted as the bee's knees on how to best learn the basics, but when you get
into what he did, there was a HUGE amount of post processing he did with his
images. First though, he captured the basic image as best he could given
the conditions and equipment at hand...

--
Eric Hocking
"A closed mouth gathers no feet"
"Ignorance is a renewable resource" P.J.O'Rourke
Attempting spam blocking - remove upper case to reply.

On Jun 1, 12:45 pm, "Eric Hocking"
wrote:
"Rita Ä Berkowitz" ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote in ...

Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:

Hi All,

My latest post on the HP professional photography blog is up on this
topic:
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/grap...5/25/3484.html

I rather do it in-camera as that's where the challenge is. Too many
people
forgot what photography is all about and have become mindless Photoshop
drones.

I'm in agreement on approach here. Much like with sound engineering - best
to capture the "best" (not necessarily cleanest) "image" (be it audio or
visual) at, or of the source. At least then you have much more latitude in
post-hoc processing. The term polishing a t*rd springs to mind. If you
don't have a good, or at least indicative, base to start with, unless you
are very talented, there's not much you can do with a crap image. Ansell is
quoted as the bee's knees on how to best learn the basics, but when you get
into what he did, there was a HUGE amount of post processing he did with his
images. First though, he captured the basic image as best he could given
the conditions and equipment at hand...
But consider that the best looking image might be one where the black
point is set fairly high, giving a high contrast image but one where
some of the shadow detail is loss. In this case I find it far better
to capture the scene with the greatest dynamic range I can and then
reduce the range later, for either prints or screen viewing.
Different outputs, prints monitors etc. have different dynamic ranges,
so it very possible that what might look the best on one might not
look the best on another. A very simple case of this is when viewing
your images on a computer monitor in a bright room vs. viewing them in
a dim room. In a dim room I much prefer to have the image fairly dark
giving me a lot of range for highlights, in a bright room that image
would appear too dark and I would lose some of the highlights.

In twenty years who knows how I might want to view them, but I will
have my raw images to work with which gives me the most range to work
with.

Scott

Scott W wrote:


In twenty years who knows how I might want to view them, but I will
have my raw images to work with which gives me the most range to work
with.

And in far shorter a time frame, some images may beg to be redone just
because RAW converters have been improved. In fact, ACR 4.1 has some
nice new stuff just yesterday.

--
John McWilliams

"Wayne J. Cosshall" wrote:

Pointless question... not an either/or issue. Like catsup and mustard:
sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both at once.

"Rita Ä Berkowitz" ritaberk2O04 @aol.com wrote in message
...
I rather do it in-camera as that's where the challenge is. Too many
people
forgot what photography is all about and have become mindless Photoshop
drones.

Obviously you never used a darkroom then. I suggest those who let the
photolab make all their decisions are probably the real drones.
But if criticising others choices makes you feel better about yourself, go
for it, just don't expect anyone else to care.

MrT.

Hi Rita,

I think it is unfair to call people mindless drones. When I am in
Photoshop I am neither being mindless, nor do I drone (though I do talk
to myself sometimes

Photoshop is as valid a place to create as the darkroom once was for me.
I also do much in camera. Perhaps you should have read my post on
right/wrong thinking

Cheers,

Wayne

Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
Publisher, Experimental Digital Photography
http://www.experimentaldigitalphotography.com
Personal art site http://www.cosshall.com/



Rita Ä Berkowitz wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:

Hi All,

My latest post on the HP professional photography blog is up on this
topic:
http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/grap...5/25/3484.html

I rather do it in-camera as that's where the challenge is. Too many people
forgot what photography is all about and have become mindless Photoshop
drones.






Rita