SteveR Loc: Michigan

I have a great shot that came SOOC since I went digital. One great one.

drklrd Loc: Cincinnati Ohio

i did a lot of slide shows back then and you really needed a dependable external light meter so that you could get he exposure right without bracketing your shots. Especially when being paid to shoot them. No film waste was taught to everyone. We made the shots count the first time. if doing work on 4x5 camera you always shot a "roid" ( polaroid film we called it a roid ) first and the same went with 2 1/4 square. There were backs made for at least the Hasselblad and other cameras had a roid back. So before you took that shot on roll film like 120 and 220. You shot a roid to see what you were going to get or you shot a short roll and took it to the lab and had it rushed through the lab in a few hours. Otherwise you were on your own and experience told you what you were going to get. I can still shot a game in 36 shots and have all proper exposure. The studio wants 150 shots so I stay at the game a bit longer. The most I waste in digital is maybe 30 shots and that is due to the auto focus not being fast enough to keep up with me. Even my D7200 while in zoom does not focus as fast as I like it to. With the new digital you do not have the focus assist like you had back then. The little white dot in the view finder is not in film plane area so hard to watch it and concentrate on subject while back when you had a split screen in center of view that you aligned. fast focus was easier that way.

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

Kodachrome made me a SOOC shooter and I have been trying to unlearn it since I went digital! Rarely can I manage to create an image wide enough in view that I can create some sub-view images to print from it! Something about not being able for an old dog to learn new tricks!

TBerwick Loc: Houston, Texas

Just read some of Ansel Adams comments. He has many photos most people would recognize & as he tells it they just wouldn't have their look & feel without darkroom magic of pushing the development, dodging & burning, etc. While I like many of the photographs as taken by my various cameras, I really like to be able to apply what I consider to be improvements. For me, SOOC is usually just a starting point.

PhotogHobbyist Loc: Bradford, PA

If my memory serves me correctly, unless one processed their own films, the film processors used some additional actions to color correct prints made from negatives. There were some color filters used to insure the final prints were made with more natural and accurate appearance. If that is true then SOOC only occurred when a person developed and printed their own photos. Even then many would opt for a certain paper type, slightly longer or shorter exposure time of a negative and even the burning and dodging action. So was there truly SOOC photos? Maybe a few, But I'm thinking most were not.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but I do love to play Devil's Advocate at times.

JFCoupe Loc: Kent, Washington

I think SOOC is fine for those that want to go that route. It can be noted that RAW images SOOC are probably not what the photographer wants. JPEGs receive some in camera editing, so it could be questioned, "are they really SOOC, meaning no Processing?"

Reading about Ansel Adams, probably the 'gold standard' of American photographers, there is documentation that he manipulated or post processed his images to a significant degree. I have read that his "Moonrise over Hernandez" image was printed with many different edits over the years. So if editing was okay for Ansel, I see no problem with using LR, PS and other editing tools today. I am sure that Ansel would have taken full advantage to today's technology.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Yes, color enlargers had heads that had a full set of color correction filters. If you didn't have one of those, then you had stacks of filters to achieve the right balance.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

As someone who cut my teeth on analog photography, you could still manipulate the film in camera by using filters (both for color and b&w). Filters could accentuate clouds in the sky (where they would other wise be washed out). I threw away a bunch of old filters a few years ago. I did my own b&w processing, so I learned a few tricks along the way there too.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Yes indeed. I remember those days well and compared to digital images done well...the SOOC images sucked. Prove me wrong and post some.

Spirit Vision Photography Loc: Behind a Camera.

Kodak 400UC and a polarizing filter. 👍

tenny52 Loc: San Francisco

It give those nice bright colors and the greens of summer.
Makes you think all the world is a sunny day.

It is on Utube and also this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ltLp30KVs

srt101fan

I really enjoyed that video; thanks for posting.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

As an ex-lab guy, I'll shed some light on that.

Yes, most amateur labs used automated printing equipment. Some of those systems were quite sophisticated. The later ones would read the film emulsion number from the edge print, sample the base orange mask, and factor those things into an evaluation of exposure and color made by an intelligent densitometer. Kodak called their system Scene Balance Algorithm, when it migrated into their DP2 software and Bremson HR500 film scanners in the early 2000s.

Professional labs, on the other hand, used machines called Professional Video Analysis Computers. They made a positive video image of the negative. An operator could then turn dials on a console for Density, Red, Green, and Blue, that would generate exposure and color values to dial into the lamp heads of printers and enlargers. Poorer labs had color densitometers they could use to get starting points for print exposures.

Most big professional color labs had a team of color technicians whose sole job was to monitor all the processors, printers, and color analyzers. The school portrait lab I worked in had four at one point. One person monitored the film and paper processors. Another monitored automatic printers. Another monitored manual printers and enlargers. The fourth person could float and do it all. For some products, final color balance was handled by eye.

We had five C-41 color negative processors (two long role "cine" processors, two short roll processors, a dip-and-dunk processor for sheet film, and a short roll B&W film processor. We had a long roll B&W paper processor and a sheet-fed B&W paper processor. We had three long roll paper RA-4 color processors and a couple of sheet-fed RA-4 color processors. Then we had around 50 automatic and semi-automatic package printers, plus at least a dozen specialty printers and enlargers. So "QC" was a Big Deal. All of those machines had to be kept "in control."

NOTHING that came out of that lab (back in the film days) could have been considered straight out of the camera!

BebuLamar

You can never do a SOOC if you use negative films B&W or color. To really shooting SOOC is to shoot slide film then project them on a projector. No printing no scanning. Since I got rid of my color darkroom a few years ago I am done with negative films. I will now picking up on shooting slide film after so many years shooting negative film since I started doing my own darkroom.

waegwan Loc: Mae Won Li

Understood, but what programming was done in the camera by the manufacturer and what personal settings such as white balance do you have in your camera (besides time aperture and ISO) and what color renderings (either selected by you or by the computer) is the computer using? This is why so many digital camera comparisons are done and show different color and saturation renderings between cameras. Two or three different cameras with the same user settings will likely give different results.

Wien I shoot film the PP starts when choose which film to use and what effect I want from the photo. I'm already thinking of what developer I'm going to use and temperature and times for developing both film and paper. If you use a commercial facility those decisions are made for you.