I'm another old fart. I DO focus on getting the best possible shot at any particular point. BUT I can't always frame the way I want with the lenses I have so I crop. And digital cameras just don't have the dynamic range of the human eye, so to accurately capture a scene the way it was, I may use "shadows" and "highlights" to recover what my eye saw. "Lens correction" makes straight lines straight again after the optics makes them curved. So far, it seems to me that I've recovered the original scene, not gone beyond it.

Then there are other options. I may use the correction brush (Lightroom) to put enough light on a person's face to recognize them. Something that wasn't an option when I took the picture. Is this no longer a photograph or is it just using the tools available? We've all seen the prints of Ansel Adam's pictures straight out of the camera and then after hours and hours of work in the dark room. So was he not a photographer taking photographs? Doing post is a personal choice, but to assume a moral superiority because you don't, doesn't make sense to me. You choose not to, good! I choose to use post, also good! What's to debate?

I was taught to attempt to have all of my photos complete in the camera and to use my darkroom skills in to make good prints, but to depend on those skills to fix things I couldn't control in the camera. My classes all stressed that, and even limited my ability to use cropping. With digital, it appears that very often the dependence is the opposite. The trend seems to be to enhance the photographic image in post shooting. Often that changes what the actual vision of a scene was. This does make photography more like painting, but makes me wonder about all of the courses I took in the past.

I was taught to attempt to have all of my photos complete in the camera and to use my darkroom skills in to make good prints, but to depend on those skills to fix things I couldn't control in the camera. My classes all stressed that, and even limited my ability to use cropping. With digital, it appears that very often the dependence is the opposite. The trend seems to be to enhance the photographic image in post shooting. Often that changes what the actual vision of a scene was. This does make photography more like painting, but makes me wonder about all of the courses I took in the past.

Please don't refer to yourself as an "old fart." This is such a degrading disrespect for old age -- a time of self respect. Unfortunately I've been seeing this trend of self degradation too much lately and it certainly gives me the willies. The word "fart" is much stronger than the word "poot." Please just STOP this nonsense!! Any substitute such as "missing shigles," or "hole in the roof" would be in better taste. Forgive me if I have offended thee, and if I have, Kiss my royal ass!

I was taught to attempt to have all of my photos complete in the camera and to use my darkroom skills in to make good prints, but to depend on those skills to fix things I couldn't control in the camera. My classes all stressed that, and even limited my ability to use cropping. With digital, it appears that very often the dependence is the opposite. The trend seems to be to enhance the photographic image in post shooting. Often that changes what the actual vision of a scene was. This does make photography more like painting, but makes me wonder about all of the courses I took in the past.

Please don't refer to yourself as an "old fart." This is such a degrading disrespect for old age -- a time of self respect. Unfortunately I've been seeing this trend of self degradation too much lately and it certainly gives me the willies. The word "fart" is much stronger than the word "poot." Please just STOP this nonsense!! Any substitute such as "missing shigles," or "hole in the roof" would be in better taste. Forgive me if I have offended thee, and if I have, Kiss my royal ass!

I'm self taught, so I never got that brainwashing. However, I did learn to use slide/transparency film, after learning black-and-white. I learned VERY quickly that when using 'chrome films, I had to do EVERYTHING at the camera except, perhaps, push the film a stop. That meant getting the light right — ratio, color filters, flash, other kinds of
fill, reflectors, flags, color temperature meter... Whatever you wanted to do, you did it at the camera. Composition for slides must be done in the viewfinder! Yes, I had a great slide duplicator for multi-image work, but film duplicates of slides always gained contrast...

So getting it right at the camera for slides was good discipline — for recording great JPEGs!

Working with raw files is much like working with color negative film. You can get most anything you want from it, after the fact, including great B&W. OR, you can choose to record raw images with the menu settings most appropriate for the scene, and save yourself time in post production by getting close to what you want, at the camera.

Either way, there's no sin in finishing your visualization in post. Never was, except in the classroom, where the dogmatic instructors knew you would gain efficiency and quality if you paid the upfront price of attempting perfection at the start. Discipline and understanding and process are all worth something, as I learned the hard way.

These days, lots of folks figure there's so much latitude with raw capture, they'll just fire away in some auto mode and fix it later. Are they wrong? No. Just taking risks that may bite them on the butt every now and then.

All those rules they teach you in class? They're useful, but also crap. They give you perspective on the craft, but they can be barriers to creativity as well. Don't let them trap you. There are no rules, just math and the laws of physics. Go make great images.