kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

As an artist aren't you interested in anything that might take your art to the next level? Do you always play an A chord three fingers on the second fret? Ezra Pound said, "Technique is the gauge of an artist's sincerity" and I think that is true. Refusing to post process means that you let your camera with its very limited processing algorithms make all the decisions for you. You waste a huge amount of the information available to you to optimize an image. To me it's exactly like sending your film to the local drugstore to be printed, as compared to sending it to a custom lab or doing your own darkroom work. Do you think Ansel Adams ever sent his film to the drugstore?

This is a photography forum, and I expected that people here are interested in photography. If you are, I think it is my right to tell you that by not learning to post process you are missing half the craft.

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

I have read entire books on correcting color casts. To think that you can achieve anything similar with filters is ludicrous.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

It seems like another kind of arrogance to not try something new which could work better. Take color filters for B&W photography. Sky darkening filters in order of strength are yellow, orange, and red. With film you are stuck with the one you chose. With digital you can get the same effect and make the choice after shooting in the B&W conversion. And all the color correction filters are unnecessary because you have so much more control over color with digital than with film.

cmc4214 Loc: S.W. Pennsylvania

It's not like playing a piano without the black keys...It's like playing the piano without electronically altering the music afterwards

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

We used to alter our images afterwards in the darkroom. Now we do it on the computer.

Bipod

The first sentnece in this statement is correct.
After that it is all wrong.

Bipod

Very true. But we did it based on experience with the final print.
We didn't examine negatives with our naked eye--or assume
that the final print would look like the negative.

Today photography is WYSIWYG---only it's isn't. It can never be,
as long as display device and print media have different characteristics.
There are more display options today than ever for the final image.

What's what does PhotoShop ask you about your intended final media
before it displays an image file and lets you alter it? Nothing.

If it looks good on a OLED screen, obviously it's going to look good
on an LCD/LED screen or on paper. Only....that's not true.

Please: think about it.

Bipod

Isn't it true that :

1. The final image--the one other people see--is what matters.

2. There are many different types of display devices -- LCD, LCD/LED,
OLED, plasma, CRT--with different characteristic.

3. There are many different papers and inks with different characteristics.

4.Characteristics such as dynamic range, color balance, color triangle,
resolution, aspect ratio, effect how an image file looks.

Therefore, it follows by logic that manipulating an image based solely on how it looks on
your computer monitor is foolish unless the intended final image will be displayed
on a the same type monitor is the same resolution mode---or a very similar one?

In the darkroom, we knew from hard experience that there were more stops of contrast
in the negative than one could see, and far more than one could print.

And we didn't examine negatives with our naked eye. We used a loupe--always with
magnification.

I know of no processing package that does not display misleading images.. It can't
avoid doing so if it doesn't know how you intend to display the final image.

Please respond with logical arguments, not put-down and wise-cracks.

Bipod

There is truth on both sides here.

Artists (be they musicians or photograpers) need not do everything--only what they do.

On the other hand, technology does matter, especially on the guitar--an instrument with
both acoustic and electric versions -- with many variations of each.

The guitar is used in many different types of musis, with many different types of
guitars, strings and even tunings. (Different types of guitarists -- classical, folk, rock --
don't even agree on how to hold an acoustic guitar. Do you need a foot rest, a strap or
neither?)

No technology is good or bad in itelf, only with regard to aparticular genre, style and
intended effect. If you want to sound like Andre Segovia, you use one type of guitar,
tuning and playing techniques. If you want to sound like Glenn Branca or Thurston Moore,
you use another. If you want to Tom Verlaine, you'll probably select a Fender Jazzmaster
with heavy stirngs plugged straight into an amp.

Therfore its foolish to give guitar advice without first asking, what style or genre the
guitarist plays: rock, country blues, Chicago blues, R&B, soul, funk, traditional jazz, bebop,
gypsy jazz, folk, flamenco, etc.

So how come so many Hoggers give camera advice without asking what kind of phtography
the posters does? How come so much of the advice amounts to: use the "latest and greatest"
technology?

There's no question that steel strings are louder and capable of higher tension than nylon strings.
But greater pressure is required to fret the strings, and steel string guitars are much heavier build.
Few if any guitarists would use them for classical guitar, flamenco or Brazilian bossa nova.

Most muscians are aware that they are practing an art; most camera enthusiats are not
(juding by posts to UHH).

And guitarists--perhaps more than any other instrumentalist--are aware that the house
of their art has many mansions. And I haven't met one yet who thinks the guitar is
easy to master.

Very few musiicans think that guitars should be automated so they are easy to play. But most
on UHH seem to assume that photography is supposed to be quick, easy, small and convenient.
And they think that learning photography is the same thing as learning to operate a digital
camera!

But musicians realize that learning music includes learning harmony, rhythm, melody, and perhaps
even counterpoint. Nobody laughs at a classical guitarist who is studying counterpoint, or bossa
nova guitarist who is studying samba rhythm. Musicians respect other traditions and cultures,
and they respect learning. Sting started out as a punk rocker and Sex Pistols fan---now he can
play the lute. Elivs Costtello recorded with an album with the Brodsky string quartet and has
a trained voice. Keith Richards spent years studying the styles of black American blues guitarists
from Robert Johnson to Jimmy Reed. He tried to learn from players who had played with Jimmy
Reed, and later---after achieving great fame and success--he tracked down Muddy Waters and took
him on tour with the Rolling Stones.

It takes only one generation for a genre or style of music to become a dead language, that nobody
alive can play it authentically. Who alive today can play authentic hot jazz? Know of any bands that
sound like Duke Ellington's on the early recordings on the Brunswick label?

As soon as we take an art for granted, it goes away. "There will always be great jazz." "There
will always be great rock music." "There will always be great landscape photography." Will there?

Phtography is much more diverse and much greater than most of the posts on UHH would
suggest. It is also much more threatened.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Maybe that's why they call it a craft!

Bipod

If I might interject: there's no question that global color correction in processing
allows a finer degree of control than color correction filters. But you can only take
advantage of that control if you calibrate your monitor.

Relatively few of the millions of people using processing sofrware bother to
buy and use the hardware necessary to calibrate their monitor. And that creates
a problem not just for them, but for everyone who puts image files on-line.

No matter how carefully you calibrate your monitor and color correct your image
files, most people are going to see a cast---because their monitors are out of
adjustment.

Moreover, many photographers don't realie that neither color correction filters
no color correction in post-processing can fix color rendering problems caused
by bad artificial lighting (fluorescent, LED, etc). If you take photos under low-
pressure sodium vapor lighting, do't expect to be able to fix it in PP:

Sodium vapor is favored today
For lighting that's efficient and mellow.
That's why roses are black, violets are gray
And sugar is yellow.

The light bulb that Edison invented was continuous spectrum.

To the extent that non-industrial photography matters at all in the world of
technology, it matters as a way to make money--mainly by selling gadgets t
o consumers. Like art, photography has no value except when it's bought
and sold.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

You just underlined my point! Maybe that's why they call it a craft!