why must i always post process ????

[tikkeltokkel]

I find that i must aLways post process my images to get the best resuLts. I find it neccessary to up the contrast and saturation (different amounts for different pics) (thus no batch processing - i dont know how to do that anyway!) Does anyone eLse feeL they have to do the same ? I shot a wedding on the weekend with my new 24-70L and must have spent 4 hours working through mt raw fiLes in C1LE. And then some photoshopping curves etc. 200 photos !!!! Owwwww

Maybe someone expert among us can throw me some pearLs of wisdom.

Mike mikelambphotography.com

10D 17-40L 24-70L 70-200L and counting.
"pictures only appear to those that know how to take them" - Kertesz

[tpinchback]

I know how you feel man, right there with you. No answer sorry

[minicooper]

Totally agree, it's very time consuming, especially when shooting in RAW.

But you shouldn't think of this as a bad thing!

Turn your image preview off, set your parameters to sharp, saturated and contrasty, and shoot off a dozen or so shots as you would with a film camera. Take them to be printed without even looking at them, and you will see that because you have not had the luxury of looking at the shots you have had to be more accurate with your exposures, compositions and cropping.

Thinking more at the time of shooting could save you hours of time in front of the screen.

But then again, you may as well just shoot with film if you do that... its a vicious circle... arrg!

Tom

[robertwgross]

Only four hours from a wedding? That isn't bad. I've spent over twelve hours from a single wedding post-process, not counting printing. For any one scene, I might have six to ten poses, and they will generally need the same degree of exposure adjustment or contrast improvement. So, once I get it worked out for one, I can apply the same adjustments to the others of the same scene. Then for the next scene, I might need different adjustments.

A little time might be spent with the Waldo filter.

---Bob Gross---

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Mike,

I think a certain of post-processing does go with the territory. I think with C1 you have the best tool for an efficient workflow. Have you tried working more with the curves in C1? Once I got used to it, I found that for many pictures the Photoshop work was reduced to almost nothing.

Regards,

[fwhitesides]

Turn your image preview off, set your parameters to sharp, saturated and contrasty, and shoot off a dozen or so shots as you would with a film camera. Take them to be printed without even looking at them, and you will see that because you have not had the luxury of looking at the shots you have had to be more accurate with your exposures, compositions and cropping.

Thinking more at the time of shooting could save you hours of time in front of the screen.

That's one way of doing it, or you could enable the "Preview with Info" so you can see the histogram as you take each photo. With a wedding, you can't retake every single photo, but you can nail the posed shots 100% of the time if you look at the histogram and reshoot anything that doesn't measure up. This will help with proper exposure so you don't need to use levels/curves as much, but as far as saturation goes, I'd try pumping it up in-camera and see how that works (as minicooper suggested).

[Morden]

I believe that with post-processing there is a certain amount of, "I can so I will/must". If I shot entirely in JPEG and if I knew my kit, my subject and the conditions well enough, then I might well be very happy with my photos. However, given the luxury of shooting in raw and - given digital technology - being able to 'tweak' my photos after the fact, I almost always find something to "improve".

Overall, I think that this is a good thing.