100 reasons why getting it right in camera is better than PS

Composition and understanding what your camera can do is such a valuable tool.

Oh and a little luck helps as well

Enjoy

http://brightside.me …-without-photoshop-46555/

These are great photos Mike - thanks for sharing the link.

I do agree with you that getting it as right "as possible" in the camera is always the preferred way of creating great photos. I don't care for the overcooked photoshop look that we see a lot of these days. But I will continue to use PS to adjust contrast, exposure WB, as well as their dodge and burn equivalents just as I did in my old darkroom days. Many great photos were made even better with a little bit of custom printing .

Photoshops purpose is do what you can't do or is too difficult to capture in camera, not really for "fixing" a bad shot. Like taking a group photo where everyone has their eyes open.

My personal belief is that one should be attempting to produce the most optimum file possible in camera, ready to take into the next step, processing, just as we did when shooting film.

Looking at the linked photos I do not think that all of them are SOOC JPEG's. The shot of the digger with the cloud above it just looks wrong. I would be impossible to get the shadow side of the small cloud, the side that we can see, to be that bright. Just look at all the other clouds in the background. I grant that the photographer could have used supplemental illumination on the digger itself, as it is very obviously frontlit, but the cloud too?

I also struggle to believe that the image of the Namib is a single shot too. The difference in the levels of exposure in the sky/ground is just too great. Anyway I am sure I have seen this same set (or a large proportion of them) of images in the past as part of a quiz where you had to spot the photoshopped images, and quite a lot had been manipulated.

Alan

Heya,

I think it's safe to say that composition and subject matter with an intent or purpose and the memory or emotion it stirs, is really a large portion of what makes a photograph a photograph and not just a snapshot.

There's plenty of what some would call a "bad" shot out there, but they are prized photos to some because of what they make them think of or feel.

If nothing else, I think it's a good point to remember that a good photograph doesn't have to be the sharpest most contrasty image or have the thinnest depth of field possible and creamiest of bokeh.

Granted, it's hard to not get enveloped by reviews, measurements, etc, on message boards devoted to gear and less devoted to simply enjoying photographs to an extent.

I agree that getting most things you can in camera the first time is the way to go. But one big point to remember is that film was not an age of "no editing, no post processing." Film was full of post processing, very involved actually. The concept of today's in-camera JPG approach to taking an image, processing and everything already pre-applied and it's good to go "SOOC" is actually modern and new compared to Film (excluding film for the purpose of snapshot -> print that most families employed with their home film cameras).

Very best,

It only took them six photos to get to one that's been photoshopped...

DreDaze wrote in post #17837972
It only took them six photos to get to one that's been photoshopped...

The funny thing about the moon photo is that it could have been quite easily done in camera. The level of light in the sky is I think the giveaway in that not terribly good quality example. I shoot that event too, and in all of my shots taken at the full eclipse the moon is so dim that the stars that are very close to the moon, that we cannot normally see because of the overpowering brightness of the full moon. We should be seeing those stars in that image too. I hadn't really paid much attention to that one until you mentioned it.

Alan

There are several composites and blended exposures in there that look like they were caught perfectly in camera.

BigAl007 wrote in post #17838055
The funny thing about the moon photo is that it could have been quite easily done in camera. The level of light in the sky is I think the giveaway in that not terribly good quality example. I shoot that event too, and in all of my shots taken at the full eclipse the moon is so dim that the stars that are very close to the moon, that we cannot normally see because of the overpowering brightness of the full moon. We should be seeing those stars in that image too. I hadn't really paid much attention to that one until you mentioned it.

Alan

it wasn't an eclipse of any sort so there's no reason to be stars...it was a supermoon, so the light and everything are all actually right...the only thing was that he made the moon bigger, and moved it into the dish...it seems like he could've gotten a close shot just a few minutes before hand to what he made
http://www.nzherald.co​.nz …1503450&objecti​d=11544077


i do feel like most of the photos were probably run thru some sort of editing software like photoshop...but the term photoshop now seems to mean that things were altered from reality...

As proven by the image of the moon in the antenna, the "without Photoshop" bit is a crock. Just because a website claims something, it doesn't make it true.

umphotography wrote in post #17837443
Composition and understanding what your camera can do is such a valuable tool.

Oh and a little luck helps as well

I heartily agree that getting the shot as "right" as possible in camera saves you a great deal of time in post processing. I love blasting through images in ACR and saving them directly without having to go into PS. Only happens when I take the time to get my exposure and composition right before I start shooting.

DreDaze wrote in post #17838136
it wasn't an eclipse of any sort so there's no reason to be stars...it was a supermoon, so the light and everything are all actually right...the only thing was that he made the moon bigger, and moved it into the dish...it seems like he could've gotten a close shot just a few minutes before hand to what he made
http://www.nzherald.co​.nz …1503450&objecti​d=11544077

i do feel like most of the photos were probably run thru some sort of editing software like photoshop...but the term photoshop now seems to mean that things were altered from reality...

Andre I think the newspaper article that you linked to didn't gt all the facts right. On the early morning of 04 Oct 15 at around 02:30 GMT there was a combined total lunar eclipse combined with a full super moon. This was a quite rare combination of three reasonably common events. I think the next time this combination will occur will be some time in the 2030's. The red colouration of the moon is caused by the moon only being illuminated by the light that is passing through the earth's atmosphere and being refracted inwards, a bit like using the very edges of a lens. The atmosphere tends to absorb the high frequency components of the visible light, leaving only the red end of the spectrum. When this occurs the moon is really very dim in comparison to it's normal level of illumination. So unless the moon's colouration was also doctored in PS the shot of the moon must have been take during a lunar eclipse, that is the only time that the moon takes on that brick red colour, it's also known as a "Blood moon".

The report that I saw, that made me go out and test my brand new Sigma 150-600 C (I had only picked it up that afternoon from the shop) mixed up GMT and BST so I nearly missed it. So this shot is at a point near the end of totality, and the trailing edge is starting to become brighter. You can see just how much dimmer the moon was for this shot, 0.6s @f/6.3 and ISO 3200. Normally I would expect to expose a full moon at 1/125 @ f/8 and ISO 100. I make it approximately 12 stops difference. Having this occur near to dawn or dusk could of course have a major effect on how the background sky would look. In my case well away from dawn or dusk, that 12 stop difference allows you to see the starts in the background that are not usually observed.

Photo from BigAl007's gallery.
Image hosted by forum (750411)

Photo from BigAl007's gallery.
Image hosted by forum (750412)

When the moon is just over the horizon it tends to have that color. So theres no need for it to be during the eclipse...his photo is not nearly red enough to be a blood moon

It all depends on your goals, are you a documentarian or an artist. My own workflow is that every image is severely PS'd.

umphotography wrote in post #17837443
Composition and understanding what your camera can do is such a valuable tool.

Oh and a little luck helps as well

Enjoy

http://brightside.me …-without-photoshop-46555/

There's a good deal of photoshop going on in that list.

How can you really tell? As far as I'm concerned every single one of them looks like it's been through it's fair share of post processing, Photoshop or not.

Beautiful photos, however. Makes my itch to travel that much worse!