Hammer Loc: London UK

I am a very old fart but only started photography a few years ago. I have been taught to try to get it correct as possible in camera simply because of the reliance on the histogram . If the camera is not set up correctly then the histogram will not be correct. I know that a lot of the in camera stuff does not affect the RAW file but it does seem to make sense. Mind you a lot of the stuff out there seems to make sense but turns out to be nonsense .

leftj Loc: Texas

Most younger folks are taking photos on their phone and don't have an interest in photography as a hobby or serious pursuit. That's not a criticism, just my perception.

Hbuk66 Loc: Oswego, NY

I'm also an old fart, relatively new to serious photography, and I absolutely refuse to do "post processing". I do not have a God complex so i have no reason to improve what He and Mother Nature provide for me to record. And I believe that if you do feel the need to improve, you leave the photography field and become an artist. And I have no problem with that , either. You are what you do... and I take pictures.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

I am sure that Bob and I understand the difference much better than you do.

The product of a digital camera is a raw file containing digital information but that's only after the analog value is read from the sensor and converted from analog to digital. That information needs further processing to convert it from an arithmetic rendition of tonality into a logarithmic rendition.

The result of a film capture is digital because each exposed crystal of silver halide is either black or white. The only reason we perceive it as analog is that the clouds of black developed crystals are more dense where there are more developed crystals.

However, both products are analog to our eyes whether we are looking at a screen, a digital print or a wet print. Our eyes can only see the analog rendition.

Jack Mac Loc: Suwanee, GA

I’m OLD and I FART, so does everyone else!
End of story!

RolandDieter

Not all of us on this forum are older people. At 85, you're old. I'm not ... I'm only 80.

berchman Loc: South Central PA

I sometimes refer to myself as an "old f..k". Is that better? Of course I'm being ironic when I do that because the next words out of my mouth are meant to show that I keep up with the latest technology and am usually better informed than the younger person with whom I'm talking.

I don't believe in minimizing the deficits of old age such as short term memory loss, frequent need to pee, ED, and all the rest. I'm still getting used to being called "Sir" and people getting up from their seat in public transport (only in Europe) plus offering to help me unload the trash trees I've cut and brought to the municipal compost site, help I don't need.

My license plate reads "PC NOT ME". I really don't like euphamizing adjectives like calling someone "physically challenged" instead of "cripple".

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

As a B&W printer for 35 years I can relate.
However, I think I disagree with your use of the word 'enhance'.
I shoot RAW and think of it as the 'negative',
I then use post processing to make the 'print'.
I try to get a finished image the is as close as possible to what I saw when I pressed the shutter.
I do what would be considered enhancements when doing something like removing a distracting element from an image
but the vast majority of my post processing is doing the digital equivalent of making a print in the darkroom.

blackest Loc: Ireland

To be fair they are pretty good guiding principles, digital or analog. Although perhaps some of what that means in practice has changed and perhaps expanded.

White balance is something that in film you had limited control over, is pretty much baked in with jpeg and readily adjustable with raw. Unless you are using a lens filter then the values recorded in raw are the same for both raw and jpeg but unlike with jpeg you can still adjust the channel mix with raw. You're working with what was recorded rather than what was tweaked.

Depth of field is pretty much fixed, you can soften and blur in post but it's very hard to blur what was at 50 feet away and what was 100 feet away differently in post processing, so you want to get that right in camera.

Shutter speed has to be right in camera to capture motion blur (or not) and avoid camera shake.

Iso is a tricky one it really is a digital multiplier for the light that is recorded the closer to base iso the better usually we want to raise it because of not enough light but sometimes we want to lower it when there is too much light, you could use an nd filter to control the light, tends to be either a flash photographers problem or wanting slow shutter speeds. Raising ISO does limit the dynamic range that can be recorded.

Filters will alter the light recorded, color ones quite obviously, polarising filters can reduce glare and there are other filters that will alter the capture if you want to use them.

Getting it level, rotating an image loses resolution and detail.

This is all getting it right in the camera, with one more big one cropping, most camera's have a 3:2 or 4:3 image ratio i am not aware of a 1:1 digital sensor so for images in other formats you have to crop at least one side. However if the image you are capturing is way bigger than the final image e.g the final image is just say a 1/4 of the captured frame is it a bad capture?

There are 2 other things to consider focal length and where you are taking the photo from relative to the subject. Really this should be the first thing to consider in getting it right in camera along with composition. I tend to think it's the biggest problem with most photo's not being in the right position with the right lens.

Now if you get all that right, post processing has a solid foundation to build on, rather than a bandaid to try and fix what you didn't get right in the first place.

Knowing all this should make me a great photographer, but i'm not. I make bad choices or even no choice on a regular basis but I think the choices made in capture are what makes a difference in quality for a photo.

Of course this relies on a subject being cooperative and waiting while you set up for your shot or does it? If you know what you want to capture all this can be preset and then you can use the setup and get the right moment too.

So no not an old fart at all, maybe a little updating as to what getting it right in camera means but the essential principles are the same get the best possible capture you can. Than process to get the best possible print.

For a good example https://elenashumilova.smugmug.com/ You might not like her style but i don't think she uses much more than one set of settings throughout her portfolio. I like the balance of her subjects the balance of light and depth of field, the camera's perspective. She photographs love really.

Incidentally smugmug has to be one of the most secure websites for displaying photographs, it's more of an application than a set of webpages.
each image is sized to your screen no bigger or smaller than it has to be. It's pretty much impossible to get a copy of an image that is bigger than the screen you are using. For a site that looks simple the code behind it is incredibly complicated. If you want a site to display your photographs and not get them ripped off in printable sizes smugmug is a very good choice.

balticvid Loc: Queens now NJ

Me 4

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Last year I had a severe sinus infection that took several rounds of different antibiotics to cure. It also took out my sense of smell.

The up shot is, not only do I not know if I am an old fart, I am not sure if I just farted.

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

You should know that there is a significant difference between digital and film. With film we could not do in the darkroom what we can do with digital using the "digital darkroom."
Cropping is editing a photograph to fit into a better visual design. With film and with digital it is the same. With good visual design more often than not it is not necessary to crop.
Optical darkroom and photographic paper have their limitations. We can use photo paper with different contrasts in b&w images but not such a thing with color printing. With digital it is not a big deal to add contrast.
Try correcting distortions with the optical darkroom. A nightmare, right? Pretty easy with digital.
You can change a digital file to your taste or leave it as natural as you want to. I prefer normal colors (pastel) and when editing I strive for a natural look. I will not discuss exposure but be aware than even exposure is different between both medias.
To a certain extent you can forget what you learned in the past about film.

jmvaugh Loc: Albuquerque

I started my first photography attempts in 1981 with a Yashica aperture priority camera and a couple of photography books. I did not learn how to use a darkroom and sure didn't have the time or money to learn. I used contact sheets for print film or slides because it was cheaper to develop. Wow, at the time for me it was an expensive way to learn composition and exposure.
With digital I can try different things and bracket to my hearts desire. Shoot hundreds of shots and only keep one or two for post processing. All I can say is what a great time to be an old fart learning photography. I use Paint Shop Pro (used it years ago for web pages) and am trying to up my PP game. When I use to get Popular Photography years ago I was amazed when they published the contest winners for putting together a completely different composition in PhotoShop from a series of 7 unrelated photographs.

Whether we do our artistry in the camera or in PP, we're only limited by our "eye", our patience, and our experience. Again, what a great time to be an old fart and have so much technology at our fingertips.

I'm 62 and retired and it took 40 years of hard work to be an old fart reading a photography forum instead of sitting through boring Monday morning meetings.

boberic Loc: Quiet Corner, Connecticut. Ex long Islander

All that "get it right in camera" had a lot to do with economics and the limitations of manual film cameras. You couldn't rack off 10shots/sec. So if you didn't get it right the first time, you didn't get it. You had ASA limitations (no sensor) it was what it was. Asa of 1 or 2,000 or more was unheard of. At an event, 50 or 100 thousand exposures was not possible, now it's routine at a world series. I can't even imagine the cost or time required to prosecess 100,000 images on contact sheets. It used to take me a 1/2 hour to do a 36 shot contact. I don't favor spray and pray, but I'll do 50 or 100 at the dog park, for maybe 2 really good ones. I switched to digital only 4 years ago. I was amazed at how liberating it was.Now I can do in 1 hour with PP what it took me all day to do in the dark room.

fuminous Loc: Luling, LA... for now...

All you whippersnappers need to calm down. And, yes, shooting transparency film certainly did compel one to get in camera as much right as possible. Same for film... but, as I recall, there was an entire industry built around negative and print manipulation; stains, ink, paint- one lab, on more than one occasion even used ear wax. I'm not kidding. AND, I've seen 40 X 60 prints that were half air-brush work instead of photographic image - and they looked great. The point being, the finished product, regardless of pre-visualization, intent or happy accident is culmination of the photographer's effort. If he/she is proud of the effort, then the means and methods used to achieve that end are OK by me.