Straight from camera - how often do you do it?

fret_wimp2

Had a family event this weekend and I was the designated photographer.
I got a lot of shots I was happy with, but every single shot required the following:

-white balance correction to remove tint.
-slight exposure adjustment.
-contrast increase.
-Vibrance increase.
-Clarity Increase.
-sharpness increase, amount dependant on image.
-noise reduction, amount dependant on ISO really.

I shoot in raw so some touch up to bring the photo to life is required, but
I was wondering how difficult it would be to get all the shots perfect in camera, so no photoshop was required, to be a purist if you will, but I imagine I would have ended up with almost no shots I was happy with then.

Out of curiosity, do you get many shots (percentage) that are perfect in camera, and require no touch up in photoshop?

Im not talking about cloning, removing objects etc, I mean basic touch-ups, brightness, contrast, wb, noise etc.

DaireQuinlan

I would say that there's no such thing as 'straight out of camera' with the exception of polaroids :-D RAW files need processing obviously somehow to transform them into a workable image, JPGs are processed already in-camera to some degree.

A case could be made for E6 as well, only one chance to get it right if you plan on projecting...

fret_wimp2

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

I would say that there's no such thing as 'straight out of camera' with the exception of polaroids :-D RAW files need processing obviously somehow to transform them into a workable image, JPGs are processed already in-camera to some degree.
QUOTE]

That's exactly what I was thinking, but just curious to see how far it can be pushed to get a minimally "touched up" image.

AnCatDubh

fret_wimp2 wrote: »

Out of curiosity, do you get many shots (percentage) that are perfect in camera, and require no touch up in photoshop

Perfect? No. Rarely.

But most of what I shoot at the moment (which is mostly family related stuff - or at least that's what its been over the summer months), comes off the SD card, and a crop is the most that i'll generally apply, and that only reluctantly.

I accept the imperfections. If there is a blown highlight or two...... meh! If I really screw up an image it probably isn't worth the effort. I'm not selling them.

I try get it as right in camera as I can. Of late I do very little post processing (never particularly enjoyed it anyway). In fairness, i'm not sure in what i'm shooting at the moment if there is too much scope to knock myself out on post processing.

I would often stick my camera into black and white mode and shoot in black and white and in jpg. No chance of getting anything other than what comes from the camera from an image. It will be whatever it will be.

Actually, that's the other thing i've been doing for a while now. Just shooting in JPG. No RAW. No RAW+JPG. For me, at the moment given that I don't postprocess much, RAW becomes just an overhead.

The old rule of get it right in camera (or on camera, or with the settings of the camera, or with the post processing your camera does on the raw image) has a lot of merit imho.

Promac

Because of how a digital image sensor works you need to apply a minimal amount of sharpening to any image taken in RAW and you'll also need to do your white-balance unless you're just lucky. There's no skill to either of these (well, sharpening is an art-form but that's another story).

There was never any such thing as "right in camera". I did more cropping, burning and dodging in a dark-room than I ever did in photoshop.

Edit: I f*cking hate these posts. Why do they bait me?

Paulw

When I shoot jpg for sport, most go straight from camera (well, just cropped and captioned). You quickly learn to get as much right as possible.

When shooting for myself, I shoot raw so process them fully later.

Promac

Paulw wrote: »

When I shoot jpg for sport, most go straight from how the camera thinks each image should look before sharpening and saving in the memory card as a jpeg

FTFY.

fret_wimp2

Promac wrote: »

Because of how a digital image sensor works you need to apply a minimal amount of sharpening to any image taken in RAW and you'll also need to do your white-balance unless you're just lucky. There's no skill to either of these (well, sharpening is an art-form but that's another story).

There was never any such thing as "right in camera". I did more cropping, burning and dodging in a dark-room than I ever did in photoshop.

Edit: I f*cking hate these posts. Why do they bait me?

Apologies if the post is a bit "noobish" or just annoying. Im constantly trying to improve and some of my criteria are:

-Take less and keep more. Current ratio of what I take vs what id actually think is worth bringing into PS and eventually printing is between 4:1 and 3:1. Its a lot better than where I was 18 months ago where id take 200 images and only get 2 decent ones(100:1 I guess!).

-do less fixing in photoshop. I realize that with Raw, I HAVE to do some touching up (WB, Sharpening, and maybe a little exposure and vibrance), but Im trying to get it to a minimum, so that I know in my head how to get the shot I want without having to spend hours on an image to make it how I want it.


This is why I like to see what other people do to gauge where I am at

Zascar

I'm no pro but I rarely touch up my photos. I just try to get the best photo can - often people take an average phot and process the hell out of it - not really fair I don;t think. Then again my photoshop skills are very basic and maybe I need to seriously start doing a lot more of it...

If you need to do that amount of retouching on every photo, would it not take you hours and hours from each outing with the camera?

Can you automate some of it if you do the same things each time?

ScumLord

The photos are going to end up in raw anyway so I'll always do some messing with them. I don't think I'd be able to leave an image as it comes off the camera.

Borderfox

When I shot events (horse shows) I would shoot in jpeg and the would be used straight out of the camera

Rew

fret_wimp2 wrote: »

-do less fixing in photoshop. I realize that with Raw, I HAVE to do some touching up (WB, Sharpening, and maybe a little exposure and vibrance), but Im trying to get it to a minimum, so that I know in my head how to get the shot I want without having to spend hours on an image to make it how I want it.

If you want to do minimal tweaks or "get it right in the camera" shoot jpeg, play with profile in the camera to apply the contrast etc that you want an be happy with the result and accept that it may not be exactly what you want every time.

If you want fine grained control shoot RAW and do the tweaking.

.Longshanks.

My cameras are set up so the 6D is RAW only and the x100 is jpeg only.
The x100 shots might get cropped but that's generally it

Zascar

I went and took a load of photos today and I'm just having a play around with lightroom. Can't get my head around it and how I generally manage my files etc - especially since I was shooting Raw+L. Watched a few youtube turoials but I'm still lost. I like the rating with 1-5 on the keyboard, I'd like to wizz through them, delete all the 1s etc not sure what the easy way to do that is.

How did you guys learn? Any advice appreciated

Dan Jaman

Long before I read that Sturgeon had written it, I realised that 90% of everything is crap and that especially applied to my photos On a good day, it was 70%, being ruthless with editing and that was when using a camera had a real cost, especially on transparencies.
Moving on to more modern times - my first proper dSLR was a Canon 10D and I used that mainly in jpeg mode, until I discovered that raw gave me a better keeper rate once some PP was done.
My later Pentax K10D improved that a lot and now I find the K20D's in-camera jpeg settings are such that I can, if I choose, spend all day shooting in jpeg and only bin a few because of unacceptable /dodgy highlights or colour balance, etc. Many more get binned because something else wasn't right, of course.
So, really with something fairly current, in-camera jpgs are much, much better than they used to be and are much more configurable. Raw, of course, is still very necessary if you really want to achieve the best out of an image and the handy thing about the Pentax is even in jpeg, raw is just a button press away for the next shot.

Basically yes; straight out of camera works, in the right circumstances, but you can't rely on it always doing so.

ditpaintball

When I shoot sport and events - Its all jpeg

When shooting family stuff I shoot RAW + Large Jpeg just incase I need to adjust anything. 9 times out of 10 I just use the jpegs and email them straight out to family

For studio stuff, I shoot Raw + small Jpeg. I only process the RAW but I shoot jpeg as I tether to the ipad and its quicker to display a jpeg than a raw file.

The processor in cameras these days are pretty good. Play around with picture settings and experiment. I know in a canon you can adjust the contrast, tone, saturation,, sharpening, tint etc all in camera. Handy if you want to be able to have good looking jpegs, ready to go.

squareballoon

I have uploaded shots to my site that I haven't processed at all but they would always be studio shots. If I've taken a custom white balance and I'm using studio light I know exactly what my pictures will be like for the entire shoot and can make my adjustments before I take them. At an event, no way would I not make adjustments but that's why Sync comes in so handy in LR and ACR.

magicbastarder

how about a SOOC thread so?