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Camera vs Post ???

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sevencrossing

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We are always taught "Get it right in the camera" and as far as exposure is concerned, I could not agree more. In the days of film, post production was slow and difficult but in the digital world, with big improvement in Lightroom and CS6, things are changing fast

I have never used a physical graduated filter, but I frequently add one in Lightroom, sometimes four of them

I have never used a tilt shift lens, but I often correct verticals in LR ( In the days of film, I used a proper technical/ mono rail camera)

I do have a polarizing filter but these days, I tend to just increase the vibrancy in the sky with LR

I always set White Balance to Auto and correct in LR

I have to confess, When lighting an interior, I never spend ages getting it exactly balanced, again I use a graduated filter(s) and the brush in LR

One thing I do not use LR for is DOF or Bokeh but, in theory, that should be possible as well. I suspect I would need to understand layers in Photoshop to do this properly

So how much do you do in post

Do any of you use the in camera jpeg adjustments

Posted 8 months ago #
cgilyeat

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seven, I'm with you on using auto WB, it's so much easier than changing it on the fly. I have used the adjustment brush as well. But since I'm really a LR novice, those are about the only adjustments I make beyond basic exposure and sharpening.

I've never used any of the in camera jpeg adjustments as I tend to do the great majority of my shooting in raw

Posted 8 months ago #
tcole1983

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I really focus on my composition and my DOF when taking a picture, but I know I can fix most everything else in post. I do pay attention for over exposure. I have my WB set to auto on my camera, but I don't think it really does that great of a job...I pretty much always adjust it in post manually in LR.

Lots of times I can't change the lighting so there is really no control over that in camera. I have had to adjust exposure up and down to get more of what I want, but usually if the lighting is that bad or far off then I have no hope anyway.

As for straight out of the camera...maybe the body makes a difference, but I rarely use pics straight out of my camera without any post. Especially when it is one I feel is worthy of putting on my flickr account. I sometimes will put a quick snap on my facebook page that is untouched, but those are usually for subject matter and not for photographic appeal :)

Posted 8 months ago #
Wataru

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sevencrossing said:
We are always taught "Get it right in the camera" and as far as exposure is concerned, I could not agree more. In the days of film, post production was slow and difficult but in the digital world, with big improvement in Lightroom and CS6,...

Hi, Sevencrossing:

I was also taught the same way as you were: most of my industrial and scientific photography at work was in Kodachrome. We'd take some bracketed shots, send it to be developed, get the slides, load them into the carousel, and go do our presentations. So exposure was critical.

Slides have been replaced with Powerpoint. Now with CS6 and the huge dynamic range of my camera at ISO 100, I find myself less concerned about coming up with compromise exposures for the whole scene: I expose for the critical portion of my photograph (say a bright computer monitor or a dark area with a key feature in it, and I used masks and exposure compensation to fix the rest in post. It takes almost no time and gives great results.

I do the same as you with white balance. I usually stick a small gray card in a place I know I will be cropping out.

I had an interesting case this weekend. Because of restricted access, I couldn't get a lot of shots from a lot of angles, so I took one shot with a wide angle lens.

Afterwards I found I needed to make some text in the foreground of a photo I had taken pop out more, even though I had focused for the main part of the subject. There was some important safety warnings that I wanted to be in focus that I hadn't originally planned to use, but with a little bit of sharpening and I could crop right down to the text. Similarly, I wanted to draw attention to a black knurled nut on a black anodized aluminum housing. I masked the housing, brought up the exposure, and cropped in to the feature. The high resolution and high dynamic range of the camera really worked for me.

I am getting lots of mileage out of one photograph instead of many by crops, exposure compensation, and sharpening. I know my work is not art: it is purely functional photography, but I am getting paid and the amount of time I am spending on the photographic part of my job has gone down enough that I can goof off on NRF.

I don't use jpeg in camera any more. I convert to adobe raw and go from there. I save the files in jpeg for the client, though.

Posted 8 months ago #
msmoto

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Nice thread....and my thoughts are.... the camera is a tool. And I use the same camera with the different attachments to accomplish different goals.

Architectural:
Tilt/shift lens is so much better IMO for the final result as it gives a full image where as in corrections in PP one crops the image so much it reduces the angle of view of the lens significantly. And I grew up on a view camera. There is no way to change the focus plane in post processing. Lighting...a total decision based upon the final product desired. If I want a nice commercial "product" shot, i want to see the details and avoid harsh shadows and too much drama. Usually, architectural is done with planning and the time of day is critical. Again, no post processing can change the position of the sun.

Studio product shots or model shots. This is a controlled venue and the lighting should be set up so as to eliminate all but the very least amount of post work.

On location product or models... products, static objects, do everything so the in camera image is as close to final as possible. Live work, again, as much as possible, but this sometimes does not always work for the models as things can change and sometimes a spontaneous shoot is the goal.

Landscape, think Ansel Adams

Live action, wild animals, sports, all involve the preparation of the equipment, anticipating the conditions, and attempting to be prepared for what actually occurs.

One of the nice things about the newer digital sensors is their ability to save our little tails when we have not been diligent in doing our job. The D4 has so much detail in the shadows, it makes the end result easier to obtain. I was taught to make prints by an artist who I would swear had six hands. George, in Minneapolis, could operate so many light modifiers in the darkroom while printing, he was like a magician. And, I think I try to day to do this in LR 4.1 but it is so much easier. Also, our ability to obtain subtle effects in final product is something I think could not be done in the old days. A subtle desaturation of background in the photograph, tends to make the object pop off the page much more. This was not possible in the old days.

Posted 8 months ago #
Wataru

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msmoto said:
One of the nice things about the newer digital sensors is their ability to save our little tails when we have not been diligent in doing our job.....

Amen to that!

Posted 8 months ago #
rensuchan

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When I first started shooting which was only a few years ago, everything I read basically told me the same thing: get it right in camera. I never really even messed with anything in post for the first two years I shot since I was shooting in jpg. I didn't really start working with any post until I felt I got to a point where I knew enough about what to do to take a decent picture.

Now I've moved to RAW and I tend to play around with white balance more often than anything. A lot of times I am lazy about setting it admittedly :) I own a CPL and a few ND filters but I generally only use them to block light when I want a shallow depth of field in blindingly bright sunlight or to slow the shutter for water in daylight. I also use them because it allows fill flash in daylight a little better than Auto FP.

That being said, I'm still practically a newbie into the world of post. I just picked up Lightroom a few months ago and I'm still learning my way completely around it. Between Lightroom, Snapseed, GIMP, and Picturenaut I think I have everything I need for now but eventually I'd like to get a copy of actual Photoshop since I've worked with it before and find it easier than GIMP is.

I tend to see post as more of a method of enhancing an image rather than "fixing" it. If I take a picture for personal reasons and I'm not happy with it out of the camera it tends to not go to my queue for processing. If it's for a client it's a bit different because they may like a picture that I don't so I never remove it unless it's severely out of focus or blurry.

Posted 8 months ago #
Mike Gunter

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Hi,

In Adobe Camera Raw you can do a lot with the image in post, to include gradients, blemish spotting, color shifting, exposure control, and much, much more.

I do both RAW images and JPEG images and try to adjust the JPGEs in camera, but usually make the final images in RAW, and use the JPEGs as placeholders in my albums.

ACR has, IMHO, a bigger tool set than what I _see_ when I open Lightroom - as I understand it, the converter is the same, the tools are different. The overall user tools are somewhat easier in Lightroom (and I'm all about easy), but the product in ACR, to me anyway, seems a tad better.

My best,

Mike

Posted 8 months ago #
Eric

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I agree with msmoto. Particularly with regard to a tilt shift lens. I have never been able to bring back focus in post, so I don't really feel there is a PP substitute for Tilt. I also think that shift is better done with a lens because you don't lose anything as compared to the cropping that occurs when correcting perspective in PS.

I also tend to feel that golden hour lighting (dusk or dawn) provides shadows, textures, contrasts etc. that cannot be effectively replicated in post.

I can add blur in post, but I can't recapture blurred motion.

I will shoot with NDs (full &/or partial) either to lengthen exposures or to drop the brightness of a sky. NDs give me more latitude in post to work with the shadows, so I still think they offer a valuable contribution.

I don't use colored filters anymore, but I do use CPs.

I too am really impressed with the way that portions of an image that look "underexposed" can be brought back and I make a major effort to avoid blown out hi lights.

I tend to agree that so much can be accomplished in post, that "getting it right in the camera" is not as critical as it was with film. On the other hand, I also feel that a lot of that 'old' discipline and equipment is still useful as it opens up the range of options available in post.

@tommie - How do you desaturate just the background in LR, or is the a PS trick?

Posted 8 months ago #
PB PM

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Maybe we need to rethink the idea of getting it right in camera? In the digital age, getting it right in the camera could mean making sure that you balance the exposure in such a manner that you can get the most out of the file in post. That's been my point of view on the matter anyway.

Posted 8 months ago #
SkintBrit

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I try to do as little as possible in post for two main reasons,
1) I hate spending time in front of my computer with a vengeance. Today is a public holiday in the UK, I got up at 07:00h this morning, and just switched my PC off about an hour ago, after a 12hr PP session! I didn't even stop to eat! ARHHHH, I hate PP!
2) My hatred of editing lends it self quite nicely to becoming a better photographer, because as I try and eliminate the PP time while shooting, I find myself being far more thoughtful and thorough. The end result for me is the ratio of "keepers" is improving. I subconsciously think I'm shooting with film, and therefore am far more careful before releasing that shutter.

Posted 8 months ago #
Eric

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@PB PM - +1

Posted 8 months ago #
adamz

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@skintbrit - are You doing batch processing? when I had to process a lot of snaps I try to group them and automate as much of the stuff as possible, takes pretty much the same time, but don't have to seat in front of the box for the whole time.

Posted 8 months ago #
sevencrossing

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SkintBrit said:
, I got up at 07:00h this morning, and just switched my PC off about an hour ago, after a 12hr PP session! I didn't even stop to eat! ARHHHH, I hate PP!

You really do need to treat your self to new computer
i5 or i7
8-12 gig RAM
Solid State Hard Drive for LR catalogue
1 -2Gb video card
put your RAW files on an external

yes that's £1,700 including vat or something less powerful for just under £900

but you think of the time you will save over the next 3 years*

Sorry, In 3 years time, I am afraid you will have to start all over again

Posted 8 months ago #
DutchNikon

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>>have never used a physical graduated filter, but I frequently add one in Lightroom, sometimes four of them <<

Lightroom cannot compensate for the limited contrast range a camera sensor has and no mater what, if your sky is realy washed out, or the shadows are realy "muddy", then detail is lost which you cannot bring back with LR or any other program, because simply its not there anymore..

So your LR "upgraded pics" with added "Graduated" may look nice, but will never gain the same look that they could have when taken with the right graduated when taking the shot , especially when printed larger then postcard format.

Posted 8 months ago #
sevencrossing

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DutchNikon said:
>>have never used a physical graduated filter, but I frequently add one in Lightroom, sometimes four of them <<

Lightroom cannot compensate for the limited contrast range a camera sensor

In the past this was true

but the dynamic range of the D800 has improved things dramatically

I rarely print anything smaller than A3

Posted 8 months ago #
NSXType-R

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PB PM said:
Maybe we need to rethink the idea of getting it right in camera? In the digital age, getting it right in the camera could mean making sure that you balance the exposure in such a manner that you can get the most out of the file in post. That's been my point of view on the matter anyway.

Personally, I enjoy the shooting more than the editing. I don't shoot for anyone else other than myself, so as long as I'm happy with just taking photos, I'll just continue to do so.

As a result, I process a very small, small portion of my shots. I don't use crazy Photoshop layers, but I do move the sliders until I like the way my shot looks.

SkintBrit said:
I try to do as little as possible in post for two main reasons,
1) I hate spending time in front of my computer with a vengeance. Today is a public holiday in the UK, I got up at 07:00h this morning, and just switched my PC off about an hour ago, after a 12hr PP session! I didn't even stop to eat! ARHHHH, I hate PP!
2) My hatred of editing lends it self quite nicely to becoming a better photographer, because as I try and eliminate the PP time while shooting, I find myself being far more thoughtful and thorough. The end result for me is the ratio of "keepers" is improving. I subconsciously think I'm shooting with film, and therefore am far more careful before releasing that shutter.

I totally agree! As long as I'm happy with my shots, I'm staying as far away from Photoshop as I can.

Posted 8 months ago #
spraynpray

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I think capturing the image 'right' in camera is very important as if I don't get it right, I limit my possibilities if post is required which is why I don't shoot jpegs. That said however, I find that you can do so much more in post than even a few years ago that I tend to see most images with some post already in mind.

Posted 8 months ago #
SkintBrit

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adamz said:
@skintbrit - are You doing batch processing? when I had to process a lot of snaps I try to group them and automate as much of the stuff as possible, takes pretty much the same time, but don't have to seat in front of the box for the whole time.

No I'm not adamz. I understand the logic of batch processing, but fail to understand its usefulness to me. Let me explain, as I've never tried it I presume that batch processing is a software feature where universal adjustments are made to a set of pictures at one time? If that's the case, how does it help if you need to edit each photo differently? Just thinking back to yesterday's mommoth editing extravaganza, I can't think of 2 photos that I applied even similar PP to. Yes sure there were several shots that needed some exposure compensation or white balance adjustment, but they weren't next to each other in file sequence, and I had to view each one separately to apply the correct level of adjustment. How could I have used batch processing in that situation, maybe I'm missing something?

sevencrossing said:
You really do need to treat your self to new computer
i5 or i7
8-12 gig RAM
Solid State Hard Drive for LR catalogue
1 -2Gb video card
put your RAW files on an external

yes that's £1,700 including vat or something less powerful for just under £900

but you think of the time you will save over the next 3 years*

Sorry, In 3 years time, I am afraid you will have to start all over again

The new gizmo loving part of me would go out tomorrow and buy a new machine, remember I'm currently using a Vista laptop with a 3/4 full HD and it's maximum quota of 3 GB of ram, but I have to say that other than times like when clicking on a shot to enlarge part of the scene, I didn't realy notice any lag with the editting. (when clicking to 100%, it takes a few moments, maybe 5-10 seconds, to render a sharp image), I presume this would be improved with a faster machine? If anyone would like to private message me with a specific link to a new PC specked the way I would want it, please do. I have been softening up the missus to the prospect of a new machine (strictly for work purposes of course), so now might be the time to pounce. I'd appreciate any suggestions for specific deals you might have come across. (remember I'm in the UK). What about something like this? http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/hpe-h8-1375ea-desktop-pc-14134693-pdt.html

Posted 8 months ago #
msmoto

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RE: Batch processing....I will copy the settings in LR and paste these to other shots in the same shoot. Then if it does not work, start from scratch. Often the paste of the settings saves a minute per shot.

Posted 8 months ago #
SkintBrit

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msmoto said:
RE: Batch processing....I will copy the settings in LR and paste these to other shots in the same shoot. Then if it does not work, start from scratch. Often the paste of the settings saves a minute per shot.

Thanks Tommie, due to my critical lack of HD space, I've been too afraid to use my copy of LR4.1 yet. The consequences of starting a large LR "catalogue" of work on my C drive, sends shivers down my spine. Now I know you're all going to put you hands over your eyes, and start shaking your heads, but I was using .........V......i........e..........w........N..........X............2.........yesterday. Yes I know, I know, I shall immediately go out and beat myself with a large stick until I bleed, as penance for my stupidity! :-)

Posted 8 months ago #
TaoTeJared

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PB PM said:
Maybe we need to rethink the idea of getting it right in camera? In the digital age, getting it right in the camera could mean making sure that you balance the exposure in such a manner that you can get the most out of the file in post. That's been my point of view on the matter anyway.

That is what I do 90% of the time with one added caveat - I expose the image in a way that I know I can get my vision created in PP really fast! Example, If I want blue sky as a main subject, I expose for it and let the shadows fall away as I know I can bring them back. Opposite for shadows.

I hate Post editing especially for the events I shoot for conferences. For those (which 99.9% will never be printed) I shoot Jpegs and I always try to get it right in the camera - I use Expodisk for custom WB non-stop as lighting changes constantly and AWB just doesn't deal with indoor decorative lighting well. I actually have my WB disk clipped to my camera strap, belt loop, coat or whatever works the fastest - I no longer even look to do it except for the 'Good' on the lcd. I try to use flash with filters to match lighting as well or bounce it off of similar colored features to match the room lighting. Basically I pay attention to all settings and expose to the "left" so I can always recover highlights on bald heads or shiny foreheads. I can easily fire off 2000-3000 photos and with close to 500-1000 being sent to the client for end use. At 5 min a photo, that's 42hrs of editing that I usually just can't do. Also turnaround time is less than a week which makes a huge difference vs maybe a wedding with similar amount of shots but more time for edits.

If I get it in the camera, I don't have to do a thing. Custom WB may not look "right" in some situations but having the technically correct WB allows a much wider latitude in correcting it and B&W look much better. Usually I can set 3-5 presets in LR with the base edits (like MSMoto was describing) that get me 90% of the way there with just a couple of simple edits. That knocks my editing to maybe 1min for an image and most of that is waiting for it to load. If I didn't try to get it right, even if I shot raw, it would be pure hell.

Now if I'm doing just a photo or two or more artistic, I actually find myself being more "careless" and shoot RAW, less concerned about most everything as I know I will spend time with it in post.

The way I shoot, I am always concerned about DOF and bokeh as lenses do better than computers in my mind. Everything else comes a distant second.

Posted 8 months ago #
PB PM

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I generally have the same mind set, post processing is not my favorite thing in the world either. I don't shoot jpegs though, never been able to put together a set of in camera jpeg settings that I like. I have a basic set of curves, sharpening and saturation that I apply to each image in Aperture and go from there. Most edits don't take more than 2-5 minutes. I will use RAW to it's fullest when time permits, or when it is needed get the desired results.

Posted 8 months ago #
msmoto

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@ SkintBrit
I used View XYZ or whatever, and I could not figure out how ot get the images out of it to Aperture. And lost al the images, somewhere in Cyberspace. Then after a few years of Aperture, Lightroom came along.

As I enjoy the "darkroom" work in the computer, But then I enjoy it all...But, I like to start with the best possible image, then look for the improvement "pathway."

Posted 8 months ago #