Digital has made us lazy

I come from a film background, having started in 1972 when you had a choice between fully manual film cameras and fully manual lenses and fully manual film cameras and fully manual lenses. Even today I still shoot film about 50% of the time, mostly with the Hasselblad. Nowadays, however, with digital and post processing software, you can correct a lot of things that those of us who shot film would have to correct or work around with filters, etc or what limited options we had in the darkroom. I am still a firm believer that it is of utmost importance to get things right IN THE CAMERA rather than having to go back and correct things in post processing. I am quite skilled in Photoshop, having used it for over 20 years, but admittedly am a little lazy when it comes to post processing. Why spend an hour trying to correct something that could have been fixed before the shutter was clicked.

Your thoughts?

ScottMurphy wrote in post #19264771
I am still a firm believer that it is of utmost importance to get things right IN THE CAMERA rather than having to go back and correct things in post processing.

I think the most important thing is to get the final image right. Producing a final image is a process that includes everything you do before you trip the shutter, and everything you do afterwards in post-processing. I don't countenance laziness or carelessness in either phase. But in the end, it's the final image -- not the production process -- that will live on.

Often the best images result from teamwork. Many photographers are meticulous during the shoot but really have no patience for post-processing. Similarly, many Photoshop jockeys (like me) are equally engrossed with post-processing but have little interest in using a camera. I suppose that's why the top magazines hire teams: first-rate photographers to handle the shoot, and first-rate post guys to do the rest. Division of labor. What a concept.

In any case, here are two myths that should be done away with:

1. Virtually anything that can be done in post can be done (if the photographer has sufficient skill) in the camera.

2. Virtually any mistake made in the camera can be fixed in post.

You could take it one step further and say that computational photography can make one even lazier.

Recently some non-photographers showed me photos they took with the iPhones, just by clicking the shutter. They were pretty darn good by any standard.

It sounds like you're trying to put rules on photography?

Digital makes people lazy? Hyperbole much? While it looks lazy to you, I fondly recall hordes of people with film cameras running around and did absolutely nothing with them other than snap, wind, snap and then promptly drop them off at a pharmacy to have developed and whatever came out of them, came out of them. Low effort in creating the photograph and absolutely zero effort developing and processing for final display. Even today's digital are are doing more, at the lowest level, having to use super low effort to digitally capture and make a photo, and then very low effort to real time edit said photo and then instantly share if they wish.

This all reeks of nostalgia and contempt for change throwing out lazy so broadly.

But maybe I'm misreading this or misinterpreting the message; maybe the actual message here is just supposed to be a discussion on how one does as much as possible in camera, be it film or digital, compared to "fixing things in post" (whatever that means?) and it has nothing to do with digital users being lazy. Maybe you can clarify that.

Very best,

ScottMurphy wrote in post #19264771
I come from a film background, having started in 1972 when you had a choice between fully manual film cameras and fully manual lenses and fully manual film cameras and fully manual lenses. Even today I still shoot film about 50% of the time, mostly with the Hasselblad. Nowadays, however, with digital and post processing software, you can correct a lot of things that those of us who shot film would have to correct or work around with filters, etc or what limited options we had in the darkroom. I am still a firm believer that it is of utmost importance to get things right IN THE CAMERA rather than having to go back and correct things in post processing. I am quite skilled in Photoshop, having used it for over 20 years, but admittedly am a little lazy when it comes to post processing. Why spend an hour trying to correct something that could have been fixed before the shutter was clicked.

Your thoughts?

Choose your laziness, really.

It is still nothing special to come from film and fully manual. But I quit from film for reason of photography as the content fist and foremost. Film is not productive due to huge waste of time if DIY. And I don't have tons of money to pay for decent results in film processing, DR printing.

So, you are rather lazy in digital PP, I'm lazy in wasting of my time with film processing, getting DR prints.

As for manipulating images digitally, I'm in the industry where it is done for more than twenty years. From my POV here is no magic wand with digital PP. Every processing step is loss of quality. If some has low acceptance level, so be it. I see zero issues with checking exposure while on the spot with digital. If not it is just been lame with so-so results in post.

I started in 1970, but I also started with a fully equipped BW/color darkroom at my disposal. My part-time job while I was in high school was doing the cleaning and chemical mixing in a professional darkroom, and the major benefit was having access to it. So I always had "post-processing" capability.

And I spent a lot of that time following Fred Picker and Ansel Adams, which was what those people who ran the darkroom were into. What I learned there was how to shoot negatives that provided the proper basis for the ultimate results I desired, with "post-processing" firmly in mind. Producing a "good negative" was conceptionally rigid but objectively flexible: Get all the information in the negative that will print the way I previsualized the final image...and that previsualization may or may not look like what any straight exposure in the camera might have attained.

It's no different for me now. "Getting it right in camera" means producing a RAW file that has all the data I need to achieve my previsualization of the image. I determine beforehand what part of that process will be more efficiently done in the camera and what part will be more efficiently done in Photoshop.

I find that digital has made me more experimental than lazy. The only real change to my approach has been that I don't need to worry about wasted film if something doesn't come out. That and the pleasure of having burst modes which give me a better chance of catching the moment I want to catch.

I know what the OP means and it's a common objection to digital which I've seen a lot over the years. Ultimately though, if you don't know what you're doing then the only real difference digital has made is that you'll come home with 6,000 terrible shots on a memory card rather than just the 24 terrible shots on a roll. I don't suppose too many photographers worthy of the name just stop thinking about the fundamentals of photography simply because they could choose to burn through as many exposures as they need and hope that one or two come out ok.

ScottMurphy wrote in post #19264771
I am quite skilled in Photoshop, having used it for over 20 years, but admittedly am a little lazy when it comes to post processing. Why spend an hour trying to correct something that could have been fixed before the shutter was clicked.

I wanted to comment separately on this point, because I've heard it made so often by photographers. I agree, there's no point in waiting until post to fix problems that can be avoided during the shoot -- like a tree in the background merging with a subject's head, or a crooked necktie that could be straightened at the scene.

This point, however, is limited by the countless number of things that cannot be achieved at the shoot, but can be done only in post-processing. Here are a couple of examples.

1. The photo of the man on the bench could not have been achieved in camera. He's sitting at a public bus stop (or train station, not sure which), he isn't a paid model, so you can't work with him that way. The fire hydrant couldn't be removed at the shoot. And most important, the changes in lighting could never have been arranged on the spot; they had to be done in post.

2. The day-to-night conversion could (arguably) have been done in camera, but I doubt that it could have been produced with such clarity. More important, to get that shot in camera would require endless hours of waiting for the right moment. And even then, I suspect that you'd still have to do considerable post-processing to achieve what I achieved here solely through post-processing.

Other practical considerations: I did this for a photographer-client who works for real estate agents. He produces animated tours of the houses, inside and out, and concludes with the daylight exterior shot that fades into the night version. They're very effective presentations, and his real estate clients loved them. I've done several hundred of these for him. There's just no way he could "do it in the camera" and get the night result that he needed for the animations. That's why he paid me to do them. He wasn't being lazy. He was being practical. He had the skills to take a decent daytime photo. I had to skills to do a day-to-night conversion that suited his needs.

So, to repeat, I agree with you: By all means get it right in the camera. But also recognize the virtually endless variety of outcomes (leaving aside composites, which obviously can’t be done in the camera) that you simply cannot achieve during the shoot.

I started shooting film when I was 12...by 14 I was shooting fashion shoots and headshots. By 15 I was developing color slide film (E-4 process) and printing color neg.I was on both yearbook and newspaper staffs in high school, photography editor of the newspaper in my senior year, and shooting interviews with sports and entertainment and other notable people. Shooting with flash back then was totally manual, you had to understand Guide Number arithmetic because photosensor flash did not yet exist. I would cover events shooting with flash using zone focus and zone flash setting.
In short, all of the precision of exposure was established decades ago, before digital photography. Digital allows one to reduce the areas of overblown exposure and increase the shadow detail, while getting the overall exposure correct...things not easily possible in the days of film. There were techniques to reduce the amount of prorblems in the film days, and those same techniques are just as applicable today, but diigital postprocessing tools allow so much more to be done to achieve the ideal exposure throughout the scene.

Having said that, I do believe that digital permits someone to get away with knowing less. The 'old school' skills are being lost because newer capabilities allow you to never learn the old school techniques to a greater extent. It is like driving...the driver of today needs to know so much less because the technology behind AWD and traction control allow you to simply understnad less and know old traction techniques to a lesser extent now.

What, specifically, do you think digital shooters are being lazy about?

ScottMurphy wrote in post #19264771
I come from a film background, having started in 1972 when you had a choice between fully manual film cameras and fully manual lenses and fully manual film cameras and fully manual lenses. Even today I still shoot film about 50% of the time, mostly with the Hasselblad. Nowadays, however, with digital and post processing software, you can correct a lot of things that those of us who shot film would have to correct or work around with filters, etc or what limited options we had in the darkroom. I am still a firm believer that it is of utmost importance to get things right IN THE CAMERA rather than having to go back and correct things in post processing. I am quite skilled in Photoshop, having used it for over 20 years, but admittedly am a little lazy when it comes to post processing. Why spend an hour trying to correct something that could have been fixed before the shutter was clicked.

Your thoughts?

I'm willing to bet if Ansel Adams were alive today he would be using Lightroom and Photoshop.

Going digital allows one to experiment and try different perspectives and test shots at almost no cost versus the film equivalency. So I personally think shooting digital involves more work and time in the end than film in some cases due to experimentation and more “keepers” you cannot bring yourself to delete.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #19265077
Going digital allows one to experiment and try different perspectives and test shots at almost no cost versus the film equivalency. So I personally think shooting digital involves more work and time in the end than film in some cases due to experimentation and more “keepers” you cannot bring yourself to delete.

As far as I'm concerned, there is never more than one "keeper" per session: The best one, and there is always a best one to a sufficiently discerning eye.

RDKirk wrote in post #19265279
As far as I'm concerned, there is never more than one "keeper" per session: The best one, and there is always a best one to a sufficiently discerning eye.

For those of us that sell photos, having multiple keepers even of the same subject but different looks and views, increase sales.

This is why a 20fps ES burst of a child running a ball to the goal can create multiple keepers. Different family members like different looks of their child or grandchild, for example. I always cull the bad ones or boring ones, but I will often have a few different looks and all interesting, so I include those and don't just select one per situation or time of action.

Me too. Stared in the 70’s but as a hobby. Got into event shooting between 2010-15 which forced me to learn flash photography. I’m glad I did for that alone.

Read all of Ansel’s books, had a 4 by 5 field camera and used the zone system. Had a SLR’s as well. I had no where near the patience to document all the steps Ansel did. I prefer the digital darkroom. Unless I win a lottery I’m not going back into the darkroom.

As far as digital I still pay attention to exposure and framing but it is much easier to crop. I purchased a couple of B&W programs but barely use them. I try to follow Ansel’s teachings when I PP. I found some excellent B&W tutorials using Lightroom and I’m sure they are out there for the other developers. These days I pretty much always do B&W from scratch.

I have say I’m glad I had the film experience before going to the digital paradise