It’s a phrase that I often find people smuggly stating about their photographs and I often wonder,
Does that make the photograph any better?
After all, it’s not as if image files coming out of a camera are untouched by any form of processing as each digital camera will carry out its own manipulation of the image before it’s spat out.
As far as I can recall, I don’t think I’ve taken an image that couldn’t be improved with some post processing. What does that say about me? What does that say about my camera?
The whole point of me shooting in RAW is the latitude I get for post processing. I’m not yet quite arrogant enough to think I won’t need it.
Perhaps, my photographic karma will suffer the consequences of post processing, but I don’t think straight-out-of-the-camera shots are big nor clever.
Am I wrong?
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Colin says:
22/10/2008 at 08:16
Not wrong at all. Anyone that thinks a camera is going to get all the decision right is is misguided soul. A photograph should be something that is as pleasing to the eye as possible (not counting photojournalism here as that should represent reality too!). So when you leave many the decisions to a machine (the camera), what are the chances that it will get it spot on.
Image sensors are also so limited in their dynamic range, that you need some post processing even if you only want to represent what your eyes saw at the time.
And don’t get me started on comments like “when I shot with film, there was no processing on the image”. Of course there was … most places that do processing have the minilab set to adjust each image by default.
So I agree 100% with you.
Colin