Beginner Practise

Just a wee input from my two years since taking up the camera..

You must practise the use of the camera as often as you can.
Read about the exposure triangle, read and watch the tutorials available, it will all sink in, slowly but surely.

This is something you don't read much of...the more you do practise, then comes the things that help..muscle memory and breathing before and as you take the shot, big, big factors, you learn to caress the camera and work with it.
I'm still guilty of holding it tight but that introduces minute muscle tension that you can't notice but the camera does and shows in your image, learn to relax, time your breathing and lightly press the shutter button, even on a tripod.

Don't blame your equipment for a shabby image, 'cos when you do get a super sharp shot once in a while, then you know it's your technique and not the equipment at fault.

I have tinkered with pp but to my eyes it doesn't work for me, I do crop and slightly touch brightness etc slightly but in the main I try to get it right to come 'sooc'.

I post in the 'what birds have you seen today' thread, so you'll see my usual attempts there, I know that there is 'something' in the difference of my shots over the past 2 years and it is all due to practise, still a long way to go but at this time I can say i'm happier with my captures now than 2 yrs ago..

Hope this helps

tom24 said:

I have tinkered with pp but to my eyes it doesn't work for me, I do crop and slightly touch brightness etc slightly but in the main I try to get it right to come 'sooc'.

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This seems to have come up a lot recently and I find myself disagreeing with the whole concept of getting it right in the camera. By all means set everything up and take the shot with the intent that it'll take minimal processing but I don't think there's anything wrong with processing post capture as such or anything inherently right or more correct in relying on the camera output settings. By getting it right in camera aren't we just leaving it to Sony, Canon, Nikon or whoever?

Take 10 seconds or three weeks processing the shot if you like as long as the final output is what you want but I'm not convinced that getting it right in camera is something that I (ever?) do.

For example I shoot raw 99% or the time and I often expose to the right (or left) and therefore deliberately get it wrong in camera. In processing I apply NR, sharpening, maybe alter the WB, maybe add contrast, vibrancy and saturation, maybe tweak a few other things, maybe straighten, maybe crop, maybe clone something out and maybe adjust the exposure especially if I've ETTR (or left). That may sound a lot but in reality it may take 20 seconds. Maybe I'll spend longer and convert the shot to B&W, maybe I'll run it through Nik filters. I do these things because I believe that in doing so I'll get an image that suits me better than the JPEG settings in camera and I don't believe that relying on the image settings Sony or Canon or Nikon or Panasonic apply is in any way superior or more pure.

YMMV.

Oh I don't disagree with pp, just that anytime I personally try it, I come to much the same as the jpeg I've taken.
I do crop and lighten/ darken my jpegs but in my experience trying to pp a raw image doesn't help me, I seem to make the image garish for want of a better adjective.
Obviously just my amateur endeavours and I really need a hands on, sitting beside me tutorial to perhaps get the most out of a shot.
The on line tutorials for raw processing haven't helped tbh.

tom24 said:

Just a wee input from my two years since taking up the camera.

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Just a wee output from my 40 years passed behind the camera.

The SOOC approach comes from the time where shooting trans-
parencies was the ultimate form of shooting. Back then, PP was
hand-made, time consuming and expensive. I remember that pu-
blisters wanted perfect slides, ready for colour separation. This
SOOC approach was applicable to all formats from rolls to film
plates… even the Polaroids. SOOC, then, was the signature of the
accomplished photographers.

Nowadays, things are the same but done with new technologies.
New technologies that are growing more flexible and powerful than
ever imagine, expected.

Being from the old school, I still aim, workflow and gear, at producing the
best possible SOOCs. Furthermore, all in RAW!

tom24 said:

Oh I don't disagree with pp, just that anytime I personally try it, I come to much the same as the jpeg I've taken.

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For the viewer's point of view, you're right, it makes no difference as
"IT'S ALL IN THE PRINT!" … was true then and still is. However, I
think that mastering RAW processing with today's technologies and
market is a must, it is the sign of accomplished photographs from
accomplished photographers.

tom24 said:

Obviously just my amateur endeavours and I really need a hands on, sitting beside me tutorial to perhaps get the most out of a shot.

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Amateurs do not need to learn and go through the knowledge base
and sophisticated technical processes that are required by the industry.
But photography, with its beautiful technologies, is an art form and it is
very addictive, challenging and rewarding.

I witnessed your progression during the last year, Tom, and I believe
you can go much further, accomplish a lot more as you haven't said
your last word yet (no one ever does!).



— is still true today, more than ever.

tom24 said:

Oh I don't disagree with pp, just that anytime I personally try it, I come to much the same as the jpeg I've taken.
I do crop and lighten/ darken my jpegs but in my experience trying to pp a raw image doesn't help me, I seem to make the image garish for want of a better adjective.
Obviously just my amateur endeavours and I really need a hands on, sitting beside me tutorial to perhaps get the most out of a shot.
The on line tutorials for raw processing haven't helped tbh.

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All pictures are processed. Even a SOOC JPEC is processed by the in camera processing software installed by the manufacturer with any tweaks you add by upping the saturation or sharpness or whatever +1 etc. Shooting raw and processing the shot on your pc with software made by Adobe instead of Sony or Canon may have advantages and may give you more scope but these days some cameras have clever in camera processing with lots of presets and filters and things and some of these may be difficult and / or time consuming to replicate with Adobe or Capture 1 or whatever you use but conversely some looks that are possible to get with third party processing packages may be difficult or impossible to achieve in camera.

IMO either getting it right in camera or using third party processing software on your pc is all the same thing... either way you do it you're processing the picture to provide a look and the only difference is one way you're doing it in camera with software made by the camera manufacturer and the other way you're doing it on your pc with software made by someone else.

I never shot slide film, maybe they all have the same look? but as I remember my days shooting 35mm film and getting it processed there were things back than that were analogous to the processing we do today with digital. Just as the camera manufacturer sets the look that the JPEG's have and different cameras from different manufacturers give different SOOC results (and different third party processing packages can give different results) different films give very different results too. Does your choice of printing medium give a different result? Does the processing? Yup. I think so So nothin has really changed from film to digital except how we get there. With digital JPEG v raw my point is that if you're happy with your SOOC JPEG's then that's great but I don't see this as getting in right in camera, to me it's more processing it in camera using Canon or Sony software so that not much if anything is done on the pc or doing more on the pc with software from Adobe or someone else.

Maybe I'm being too pedantic but I don't see any getting in right in camera, it's not right in the meaning that something else is wrong and the right way being more correct and more pure it's just processing in camera rather than on the pc

woof woof said:

I never shot slide film, maybe they all have the same look?

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No, different. You'd never mistake a Velvia for an Ektachrome

woof woof said:

Does your choice of printing medium give a different result?

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Certainly - I can print the same file on the same printer on different equivalent fine art matt papers and get different mid tone contrast that's easy to spot. Which implies that SOOC will give a better result on some papers than others, or, alternatively, that SOOC will limit paper choice.

On the other hand, if you don't print and rely on monitor display, you're at the mercy of the monitor setup - and if you're intending to put the photos online for people to see, you have zero chance of everyone seeing them as you do.

There's a quote somewhere to the effect that the difference between an ordinary photo and a great one is in the subtleties; and these won't be provided by the camera as they will be different for each image.

Aim to produce the best starting point for the final image in camera; but there's a difference between the start and the finish line.

StephenM said:

No, different. You'd never mistake a Velvia for an Ektachrome



Certainly - I can print the same file on the same printer on different equivalent fine art matt papers and get different mid tone contrast that's easy to spot. Which implies that SOOC will give a better result on some papers than others, or, alternatively, that SOOC will limit paper choice.

On the other hand, if you don't print and rely on monitor display, you're at the mercy of the monitor setup - and if you're intending to put the photos online for people to see, you have zero chance of everyone seeing them as you do.

There's a quote somewhere to the effect that the difference between an ordinary photo and a great one is in the subtleties; and these won't be provided by the camera as they will be different for each image.

Aim for to produce the best starting point for the final image in camera; but there's a difference between the start and the finish line.

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Excellent point, which also works from the opposite viewpoint.

All the above shows how precise you have to be to take full control of the process.

And so if you are the kind of person who was happy to buy whatever film was on special offer and hand it over to a cheap high street lab, you can be happy with whatever JPEG comes out of your camera.

Just don't pretend that there was 'no processing', it's just that you don't care who did it and what they did or why.

I agree that practice with your camera is vital and something I am trying to do more and more of. PP is a little bit of a dark art as you never know what has been done to an image. It would be interesting to see lots of before and after images perhaps. I started paying more attention to PP for this very reason. I stumbled across a Youtube series by Gavin Hoey and his "15 minute photo challenge". He would take a series of images and then PP the best one. It was incredible how by following a few fairly simple steps he could take a good image and really make it "sing". I dont think you can PP a bad image and make it good but you can PP a Good image and make it better. but a lot of people myself included practise with the camera but not the PP side of it, because for me certainly its no where near as much fun and can be very frustrating ! But you also dont need to PP every mage you take. If you are taking some picture just to record a day out or a nice event and the pictures are for memory purposes only a JPEG will be fine. For other purpose some PP goes a long way. But the point is not only do you have to practice your camera work but Post processing needs to practised as well perhaps.

I think the phrase 'Getting it right in camera' is often assumed to mean 'No PP required', when for many is actually means 'Getting it suitable for PP in Camera' - which might mean giving some leeway for cropping, deliberately exposing to the right (or left), and even things like taking an additional shot with a grey / white card for WB.
(Some things, of course, need to be 'right' in the RAW file - using an ND to give a long exposure, the right aperture for the DOF you want, focussing on the right point, using the shutter speed to freeze (or blur) motion, etc.)

Faldrax said:

'Getting it right in camera' is often assumed to mean 'No PP required'…

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Right Jonathan.

Films emulsion were chemical, now sensors are mineral and
our vision /perception is organic.

A better job was done to render a more organic image by the
chemical based media than what is possible today with sensors.
The evolution of hard/softwares may impress but it will always
work on the quality of the recorded data.

StephenM said:

<snip>
Aim to produce the best starting point for the final image in camera <snip>

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Faldrax said:

I think the phrase 'Getting it right in camera' is often assumed to mean 'No PP required', when for many is actually means 'Getting it suitable for PP in Camera' <snip>

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Some things are better done in-camera; some things are better done in post-processing - and there's a fair amount of overlap.

Anyone that argues one course over the other is missing out, or sometimes using it as an excuse, eg "I only shoot by natural light" often means "I don't know how to use flash."