kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I am totally puzzled by the many people here who are proud of never doing any post processing of their images. They hold up "straight out of camera" as a badge of honor, as though this somehow indicates their excellence as photographers.

I see it quite differently. For me, excellent photographers, or at least good photographic technicians, are those who can turn out an image that most clearly achieves the vision of the person who made it, and which uses the technology available to maximize its presentation.

SOOC is like a stock car. if you keep your stock car tuned and serviced, you can certainly win a race against a similar car that has been neglected and is not firing on all cylinders, but you will never stand a chance against a similar car in which engine, transmission, drive train, suspension, wheels and tires have been modified or replaced with the most technologically advanced custom components, carefully considered and installed.

Today at work we had a little informal basketball game, and I took some pix. It's a pretty high contrast situation, and I was careful to find the best possible exposure. I shot in raw, of course, because I knew that I wanted the maximum potential to play with afterward.

Image #1 is a jpg created automatically from the raw (by Adobe Camera Raw). It's pretty similar to what I would get with a neutral setting in the camera (Nikon D800E). That's about the best you could hope for SOOC.

Image #2 is my personal choice of how I wanted the image to look. I wanted more saturation in the sky and some detail in the darker parts of the image. You may think it overcooked, and maybe you personally would have kept a bit more of the contrast between dark and light. Well, of course it would have been easy to back off a little. That's the beauty of post: YOU get to choose how you want the image to look--you are not at the mercy of the camera's algorithms.

Image #3 is pushed even further than #2. I include it to show just how much latitude one has working with a raw. In fact I could have pushed it even further, but this situation is not particularly high contrast and so it is not needed--but a couple more stops of dynamic range are waiting in the wings to be called upon if necessary.

I'm not saying here that one should not try to achieve the best exposure possible when taking the image--the better the exposure, the more latitude one has later for correction and fine tuning, but within a stop (or even two) either way, a very presentable image can be made, even in a fairly high contrast situation like this one.

Any by the way, such corrections take at most a couple of minutes. Open the image in an editor, make adjustments to three or four parameters, and save. Typically takes me about 30 seconds.

Discussion?

#1 SOOC

(Download)

#2 slight adjustment

(Download)

#3 heavier adjustment

(Download)

Violameister Loc: michigan

The only advantage of SOOC in my book is that it is less time consuming work. I submit that virtually every successful photographer from the earliest glass plate guys to the present fully digital photographers does some kind of image processing out of camera, even if it is just a bit of cropping or sharpening. BTW, setting the camera to do a certain amount of sharpening or exposure modification is in reality a form of post processing as well; just not as controllable or reversable.

AZ Dog Loc: Peoria, AZ

I believe your SOOC image is lacking to begin with.

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

This has been discussed on this forum at length previously. However, as an amateur, I have never met anyone who thinks it is a badge of honor. These people are generally in the minority, and have little or no influence on those who practice otherwise. And those who do SOOC are most likely shooting JPEG. SOOC means "Straight Out Of The Camera."

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

"I am totally puzzled by the many people here who are proud of never doing any post processing of their images. They hold up "straight out of camera" as a badge of honor, as though this somehow indicates their excellence as photographers. "

It is not at all a mystery. It is a hold over from the Kodachrome days. People shot slides. On a sorting table, they threw away the bad ones. The good ones made it into a Kodak Carousel.

Many of us old people stopped liking change a couple decades back. We style our remaining hair the same and pick our clothes as if styles were static. The SOOC advocates are practicing their photography as if Kodachrome were still the primary medium. They even think cameras need something in them to flap around and make noise!

snfapm1983

Different strokes for different folks. Some people consider their SOOC shots to be composed satisfactorily and don't see the necessity to make changes. I respect that and wouldn't be puzzled at all. It's their art, not yours.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Well, since all images are processed (either I process my images or I set my camera up so it processes the images) I'm in the PP camp. Moreover, I believe that the composition of most images is strongly dependent on the aspect ratio of the end result, and since cameras vary significantly in the aspect ratio of their images your image will depend on your camera, so cropping will be necessary at a minimum in some cases.

And I cropped my slides in cases where it was appropriate.

But I don't brag about my postprocessing.

Bushpilot Loc: Minnesota

The dynamic range of the camera does not come close to the dynamic range of the human eye. When I look at a subject in the bright sun I can see detail in the
shadows and the highlights. Even if the exposure is "right" you still have to lighten the shadows and reduce the highlights to achieve what your eyes saw.
In the past technicians could do that to some degree in the darkroom, now you can do it with a couple of mouse clicks in Lightroom. Whatever pleases the photographer
and the paying client is OK.

rbfanman

What you don't understand is that photography is about PERSONAL EXPRESSION....so do what pleases you, and let others do what pleases them. It is nothing to have a cow over. Freud would call you "Anal." Get a life already.

rjaywallace Loc: Wisconsin

Quoting Kymarto "For me, excellent photographers, or at least good photographic technicians, are those who can turn out an image that most clearly achieves the vision of the person who made it, and which uses the technology available to maximize its presentation.
I agree completely. SOOC should no more be a "red badge of courage" than good postprocess editing should be a "scarlet letter". I like the opportunity to fashion an image and then come back to it, as I often do, after time passes and use edit software to create another vision of the same image. With SOOC, one chance is all you get. By comparison, Ansel Adams was widely known to edit, print and re-edit and re-print dozens of times and sometimes, never entirely satisfied, he continued to tweek and create often to our benefit. /Ralph

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

In what way? Should I have exposed for the people and had the sky blown out into white?

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I'm hardly having a cow here, just hoping to educate some people who might wish to reach new levels of personal expression without feeling like it is somehow a sign of incompetence to work on an image after it comes out of the camera.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I hope you're not implying that I'm "bragging" about my post processing. In fact it sucks on these images; I would never imply that these are finished. I do have some others I might be tempted to brag about, but here I am simply trying to demonstrate the potentials in an image that are not realizable SOOC. Certainly if one is happy with the original image then there is no need to go further.

Genessi Loc: SoCal

I like your photo very much Kymarto. Love the angle! I usually show pic's here SOOC because I don't have any PP programs besides photos. I shot my first photos Raw yesterday of these Owls and look forward to purchasing a PP app. When I started doing photography I thought that A good photo was suppose to be SOOC, and that PP was cheating or fudging..I was wrong! Eager to try making my photos pop.

JPL

There is not much to discuss here. I totally agree with you. But I do not bother to argue with people about this. If the SOOC's are happy with their pics I have no reason to spoil their happiness. But I have tried to shoot in Jpeg instead of Raw and can not understand how anybody can be generally happy with results from that kind of shooting. Of course, you have some luck some times and get good shots that way but that means that counting on luck becomes a main factor for most of my shooting. So I do all my shooting in Raw and like you say it only takes about a minute or less to adjust the sliders until I am happy with the results. The great thing about Raw is that it is often possible to turn flat and dull lousy looking pics into nice or beautiful pictures that I and others can enjoy. This is not possible with Jpeg pics. I am shooting Nikon and Sony. Maybe Canon users get better results with Jpeg shooting.