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

You could also take up painting.

The camera is important but the lens is importanter.

The lens produces the image. The camera just stores the image. The devil is in the details.

clickety

Then by further expanding, can a camera ultimately be replaced by a box of crayons??

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I’ve done that. I’ve purloined a miserable image from websites and run it through the wringer until I had a whole new work of art. No shame. No guilt.

It isn’t any different than sculptors using scavenged materials. Art does not hafta begin with a blank canvas.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

I see so many poor images these days that I wish more people would figure out how to use their processing software a little bit better as it might help the original image. A great camera goes to waste with a user who has no skill, as does good software. This is the digital age and no image goes unprocessed, it's a necessity with digital photography, whether the user does it or the camera does it. The closest thing we have today to "straight out of camera, as in film processing days, is a RAW file, not the JPEG from a camera. I like to do the processing myself as I don't completely trust that my cameras know what I want from an image.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

dwmoar Loc: Oregon, Willamette Valley

There is a saying GIGO

anotherview Loc: California

A computer algorithm lacks vision (in the human sense). Only a human may bring this outlook to a photograph.

anotherview Loc: California

Ditto: "There's no substitute for a photo that is both composed and technically executed well. All too often software just puts 'lipstick on a pig.'"

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

Sure if all you want is "acceptable" - what ever that visually implies. Some of the AI tools are good but only make guesses when pixels are missing.

Buy a $200 camera and $300 worth of tools to get an acceptable picture?

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Considering a used camera, that $500 will produce waaaaaaaay above “acceptable”.

Acoarst if you had meant a new camera, I can hardly imagine that any exist. So I’m tending to think you meant used.

A D200 (or similar) and some software will produce excellent results. A better camera works in a wider range of difficult conditions, but an oldie does a great job for routine conditions and also to some degree will handle action and dim light ... but you can’t expect miracles from 19th century tech with a crude digital system stuffed into it.

frankraney Loc: Clovis, Ca.

Can you talk a photo with camera only?
Can you talk a photo with lens ONLY?
Can you possibly improve the photo with software?

No
No
Yes.

Can you make a photo acceptable? That all depends on why it's poor. Can you make it better, maybe. Can you make it acceptable, maybe, depending on what you call acceptable.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

Importance is an opinion, everyone will have one.

A good camera can take shots a cheap one can't even get. That is a fact!

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

It's a combination of both camera work and processing work. One needs to know how to combine both to produce a photograph.

Yes, some will go to the length of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear or put lipstick on a pig. But the reality of the situation is that without knowing the equipment one will flounder in the dark blindness of ignorance. But then, even a blind squirrel... well you know the rest.

Photography is an art that relies on science. It's pretty much always been that way. Without knowing how an exposed negative will react with a specific developer, for a specified time and concentration, one is going to be playing the same guessing game as those who simply push buttons on their modern cameras and hope for the best. Knowing both the extents and limits of both equipment and software enables one to control the entire photographic process from viewing the subject to be photographed to producing the final vision of that subject.

Thus, I test each and every camera I use prior to actually using that camera to take any serious photographs. That testing is not as folks produce here, a few random snapshots from around the neighborhood. It involves a more laboratory-centric method. Thus, I can determine the capabilities of the camera and use those to meet my vision of the final "print" of that photograph.

I don't use Ps to "fix" anything. I use it as a conjoined tool to achieve my vision of the scene I photograph. Yes, I use The Zone System, as it relates to both film and digital (there is a difference). Yes, I previsualize the final print and use exposure and Ps to meet that vision. The examples were photographed using different cameras but the visualized result is what is important.

I would add an emphatic word of caution in that these were not fixed in Ps, they were processed in Ps. It's the same as altering the time of development of a negative based on the dynamic range of the subject. Each exposure is controlled to yield the best initial information from which to work. Ps is nothing more than an electric enlarger to me. It's where I project a negative to make a final print.
--Bob

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yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Spectacular images Bob!!