well I think this ability would put you squarely in the "serious" photography camp. 🙂
The bigger question is do you feel because you have this skillset that you should participate in a dedicated thread with people of similar ability?
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Sending Up an Idea Balloon: Anyone Interested in an Image Thread for Serious Photographers/Photography Only?
- Thread starter Clix Pix
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The bigger question is do you feel because you have this skillset that you should participate in a dedicated thread with people of similar ability?
Many interesting viewpoints here. I am impressed when I see what some folks can do by editing a photo. However, other than cropping a photo, I consider any other manipulation to be "cheating' and going against what photography is all about. I fully understand why many will disagree with my opinion and undoubtedly some are thinking, wow, I have seen some of this guys photos and good editing would have been a huge improvement 
.
I guess I feel that a photo captures a very brief moment in time for good and bad. If the lighting was bad or the colours not to my liking, well so be it. That is what existed in the real world at the time I pressed the button.
Nobody is right or wrong and photos taken under various schools of thought can all be interesting.
Snap away!! Oops, some folks may feel that the term snap is unprofessional and does not belong in a photo thread
.I guess I feel that a photo captures a very brief moment in time for good and bad. If the lighting was bad or the colours not to my liking, well so be it. That is what existed in the real world at the time I pressed the button.
Nobody is right or wrong and photos taken under various schools of thought can all be interesting.
Snap away!! Oops, some folks may feel that the term snap is unprofessional and does not belong in a photo thread
Ahhh Harpers Ferry. Going back again for the 4th time in a few weeks. Such a neat town.
Thanks again, everybody! More good thoughts here -- potential kickoffs for two or three more interesting discussion threads at least!
AFB more succinctly expressed some of what was kicking around in my head and which unfortunately I didn't really verbalize all that clearly -- what was bothering me is not so much the gear with which someone shoots -- it is that we've been seeing an awful lot of snapshots and subject matter lately which IMHO really belong in another section of MR, the popular Photo Gallery, which has threads on sharing those snapshots of pets, meals, one's desktop wallpaper, etc. And of course, not every image any of us who participates in the POTD shoots and shares is going to be a masterpiece ready to be hung in an art gallery, but there could be some care and thought given to the type and quality of images we post on here. This site and the POTD thread isn't Facebook!
I can see the possibilities for a vigorous discussion on the merits of retouching/editing and how a skilled retoucher can turn a mundane image into a stellar one, the pros and cons (even ethics?) of doing so, etc. There are those who fall into the purist camp where any altering of an image then makes it no longer purely a photographic record of what was actually seen and photographed, and there are those who take great pride in their ability to retouch, alter and manipulate an image so that it takes on a new look altogether, often more artistic than the original, and then there are those who fall somewhere in between.
Of course in some situations, such as photojournalism or forensic photography, altering an image in any way is unethical because it destroys whatever the actual historical photographic record of that particular moment in time was. Flipping the coin: when oohing and ahh-ing over a beautiful, pristine image which portrays its subject to perfection, how many viewers realize that it may have been manipulated to sometimes extreme limits and likely only offers clues hinting at the original photograph from which it began? Does that matter? How much, and why?
In the old days the motto was "get it right in the camera in the first place, right from the beginning," but now in the digital era it seems that for many people the motto is "well, if I make a mistake or two, no problem, I can fix it in Photoshop or in my iPhone editing apps." Others don't even think about the process at all, they just mash the shutter button and grab a shot of whatever momentarily caught their attention and move on. That said, of course sometimes shots are captured on the fly when a situation suddenly comes up and there's no time to think, just capture the action as it is unfolding. Still others give careful consideration to what they are going to shoot before they even leave the house or pick up the camera in the first place, and arrive at the location with specific concepts and ideas in mind, then spend an hour or more "working the subject" from all angles and different perspectives as they explore the creative possibilities. Some develop a vision in their head and work to bring it to life via time spent shooting with the camera followed by a session where the focus is in working with software editing tools.
Kallisti really summed things up in a way which says it all:
"While gear certainly can matter for some subjects, gear alone is a very poor predictor of the quality of a given image. Photography isn’t about gear, it’s about the image. Subject choice, composition, light, exposure. Those are the things that dictate whether an image is successful or not."
AFB more succinctly expressed some of what was kicking around in my head and which unfortunately I didn't really verbalize all that clearly -- what was bothering me is not so much the gear with which someone shoots -- it is that we've been seeing an awful lot of snapshots and subject matter lately which IMHO really belong in another section of MR, the popular Photo Gallery, which has threads on sharing those snapshots of pets, meals, one's desktop wallpaper, etc. And of course, not every image any of us who participates in the POTD shoots and shares is going to be a masterpiece ready to be hung in an art gallery, but there could be some care and thought given to the type and quality of images we post on here. This site and the POTD thread isn't Facebook!
I can see the possibilities for a vigorous discussion on the merits of retouching/editing and how a skilled retoucher can turn a mundane image into a stellar one, the pros and cons (even ethics?) of doing so, etc. There are those who fall into the purist camp where any altering of an image then makes it no longer purely a photographic record of what was actually seen and photographed, and there are those who take great pride in their ability to retouch, alter and manipulate an image so that it takes on a new look altogether, often more artistic than the original, and then there are those who fall somewhere in between.
Of course in some situations, such as photojournalism or forensic photography, altering an image in any way is unethical because it destroys whatever the actual historical photographic record of that particular moment in time was. Flipping the coin: when oohing and ahh-ing over a beautiful, pristine image which portrays its subject to perfection, how many viewers realize that it may have been manipulated to sometimes extreme limits and likely only offers clues hinting at the original photograph from which it began? Does that matter? How much, and why?
In the old days the motto was "get it right in the camera in the first place, right from the beginning," but now in the digital era it seems that for many people the motto is "well, if I make a mistake or two, no problem, I can fix it in Photoshop or in my iPhone editing apps." Others don't even think about the process at all, they just mash the shutter button and grab a shot of whatever momentarily caught their attention and move on. That said, of course sometimes shots are captured on the fly when a situation suddenly comes up and there's no time to think, just capture the action as it is unfolding. Still others give careful consideration to what they are going to shoot before they even leave the house or pick up the camera in the first place, and arrive at the location with specific concepts and ideas in mind, then spend an hour or more "working the subject" from all angles and different perspectives as they explore the creative possibilities. Some develop a vision in their head and work to bring it to life via time spent shooting with the camera followed by a session where the focus is in working with software editing tools.
Kallisti really summed things up in a way which says it all:
"While gear certainly can matter for some subjects, gear alone is a very poor predictor of the quality of a given image. Photography isn’t about gear, it’s about the image. Subject choice, composition, light, exposure. Those are the things that dictate whether an image is successful or not."
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Seldom does even the very best camera record exactly what we see. When I owned a custom photolab, my clients expected me to bring out the best in an image regardless of whether they had accidentally under exposed it, set a shutter at 125 when their flash only synched to 60........
Photoshop is just another tool in the box. One which need not travel with the photographer. What any individual chooses to do with that tool is entirely up to them. Often I am trying to capture the mood that inspired me to line up a shot and squeeze the shutter release. Sometimes I'm trying to tell a story. Routinely I will slightly or moderately underexpose an image to assure I capture highlight details. All may require some degree of post image manipulation. Even just getting a perfectly exposed image to reasonably match my memory of a particular subject may require at least some post image magic.
A great example is extreme contrast. The eye easily detects fine shadow detail and detail in the brightest highlights as well. To capture what I see, using admittedly bottom end gear, may require combining a brutal under exposure to capture highlights with a slight overexposure to capture the shadow detail. Not my best example of this technique but still a good illustration.
Photoshop is just another tool in the box. One which need not travel with the photographer. What any individual chooses to do with that tool is entirely up to them. Often I am trying to capture the mood that inspired me to line up a shot and squeeze the shutter release. Sometimes I'm trying to tell a story. Routinely I will slightly or moderately underexpose an image to assure I capture highlight details. All may require some degree of post image manipulation. Even just getting a perfectly exposed image to reasonably match my memory of a particular subject may require at least some post image magic.
A great example is extreme contrast. The eye easily detects fine shadow detail and detail in the brightest highlights as well. To capture what I see, using admittedly bottom end gear, may require combining a brutal under exposure to capture highlights with a slight overexposure to capture the shadow detail. Not my best example of this technique but still a good illustration.
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I used to be very much a purist but over the past several years I've slowly begun exploring the possibilities in moving beyond the basics in using editing software, seeing what a difference it can make in presenting an image and adding to its impact. I'll never be at a skill level where I'm using layers and creating composite images and all that sort of thing, nor am I interested in doing that kind of thing, creating digital art, but I can appreciate the time and effort it takes to work with editing/retouching tools in order to bring out the image one has visualized in one's mind.
For me part of the fascination of photography is seeing the world around me and picking up a camera and exploring that world in new and different ways. I like shooting a variety of subjects rather than the same thing all the time -- keeps everything interesting for both me and prospective viewers of my images. I like seeing what happens when I approach an ordinary everyday object and start looking at it through the eye of a lens, seeing how a change in position, perspective or angle can make all the difference, turning the ordinary into something quite interesting and extraordinary, seeing how the angle and amount of light can affect the object, seeing what happens when I deliberately blur part of the image by using selective focus and an appropriate aperture or when I envision this image converted to B&W as opposed to the color my eyes are actually perceiving....
The gear gets me where I want to go in terms of using a macro lens to get up close and personal with my subjects or a long lens to reach out and (almost) touch Alfred and his brethren, but yes, it's not the end-all and be-all, it is indeed just a tool for exploring the world.
For me part of the fascination of photography is seeing the world around me and picking up a camera and exploring that world in new and different ways. I like shooting a variety of subjects rather than the same thing all the time -- keeps everything interesting for both me and prospective viewers of my images. I like seeing what happens when I approach an ordinary everyday object and start looking at it through the eye of a lens, seeing how a change in position, perspective or angle can make all the difference, turning the ordinary into something quite interesting and extraordinary, seeing how the angle and amount of light can affect the object, seeing what happens when I deliberately blur part of the image by using selective focus and an appropriate aperture or when I envision this image converted to B&W as opposed to the color my eyes are actually perceiving....
The gear gets me where I want to go in terms of using a macro lens to get up close and personal with my subjects or a long lens to reach out and (almost) touch Alfred and his brethren, but yes, it's not the end-all and be-all, it is indeed just a tool for exploring the world.
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Personally I get as much right in camera as I can. Then edit what I can’t (or I got wrong). So for me cropping an image because my lens doesn’t have the reach is perfectly fine. But I’d not swap out the sky in PS as that’s really pushing it too far for me.
However I might have a different view if I was being paid for my images and you wanted to make the photo look better as it was a overcast day or whatever.
Personally I try to avoid extra computer time. I spend far too long with a mouse and keyboard as it is.
However I might have a different view if I was being paid for my images and you wanted to make the photo look better as it was a overcast day or whatever.
Personally I try to avoid extra computer time. I spend far too long with a mouse and keyboard as it is.
The so-called purist runs into another issue. Variation in monitors. I do my editing on an NEC 21" 1200x1600 LED monitor. Better than most monitors but still short of being the créme de la créme. I calibrate it so as to just show complete shadow and highlight details on a 256 step gray scale. Someone viewing my images on a retina type monitor may find them over saturated or even gaudy, whereas images edited on that retina monitor may often appear flat or even lifeless at my end.
Others may have their monitors set so that one end or the other of the scale blocks up. What I believe is pure may well appear washed out or overly gloomy on someone elses monitor.
Others may have their monitors set so that one end or the other of the scale blocks up. What I believe is pure may well appear washed out or overly gloomy on someone elses monitor.
I apply a lot of the same development modules in post--it's just part of the process. RAW files from my G9 would look really dark before the camera-specific basecurve is applied, so it gets shaky right out of the gate taking things straight from the camera. JPGs SOOC have the camera applying post processing for you, and you can tweak those, too. It's all very nuanced, and post-processing is just another skill to master.
Since I shoot a fair amount of wildlife -- birds on the lake, etc., I often have to crop even when using a long lens because the subjects may be still pretty far away (they don't always oblige me by swimming right near my deck!) or sometimes in order to remove that half of a bird that is in one corner of the frame because he or she swam into it as I was focusing and shooting my primary subject. I also crop when doing flowers outside on bushes and growing from the ground if there's no way to get the composition I want or there is too much distracting foliage around the flower I'm trying to get.
Shooting as well as I can in a given situation with whatever camera and lens I've got under whatever circumstances there are is what I try to do, and then in post-processing/editing, I look through the images and select the few which please my eye most and work with those, making minor adjustments as needed. Occasionally I'll fool around with a filter or two just to get a different effect, see what happens, but I don't do that often. I might remove an offending lamp post or a sign that is distracting and in just the wrong place so that I couldn't position myself and the camera in a way that I could avoid including it in the scene or so that I could use a handy tree or bush to obscure it, but that's about the extent of it. I never swap out skies or put in rainbows where none existed previously. All too often that kind of thing doesn't look natural and shadows are in the wrong place, the light angles are wrong, whatever. Luminar AI has some sort of function now where one can add objects to the sky and someone deliberately did an image where he filled the sky with giraffes, lions and whatever else -- it was hilarious but hardly realistic! LOL!
OldMacs4Me, you've brought up something which is definitely important and which a lot of times we don't even think about....our displays and monitors and how they may affect what we're seeing in our own and someone else's images. I've been using retina screens for so long now that I'd forgotten that there was a time when none of them were retina. Also the lighting situation under which someone is working can have an impact as well. If I'm out on the deck some afternoon with my 13" M1 MBP and get the urge to process an image really quickly in say Luminar AI, well, that's fine but more than once I've been surprised at how different that same newly-edited image looks on my 24" display in the house when I'm back in here and darkness has fallen! Whoa....
So, yes, some images may look garish and way over processed on a retina screen monitor. Also with a larger monitor one can more readily see flaws, can see those dust bunny spots that were overlooked during editing. That's where a 30" monitor can be really useful as opposed to a 21.5" one, for instance, or a 24" display as opposed to a 13" one. For quite a while I put off getting an external monitor to accompany my 15" MBP because there was a period where I wasn't doing much shooting or post-processing, so little need for a larger view. Once I started shooting more actively again, especially after I got new gear, I realized that the display on my MBP just wasn't going to cut the mustard and that's when I bought the larger display to plug in to it. Definitely makes a difference!
Shooting as well as I can in a given situation with whatever camera and lens I've got under whatever circumstances there are is what I try to do, and then in post-processing/editing, I look through the images and select the few which please my eye most and work with those, making minor adjustments as needed. Occasionally I'll fool around with a filter or two just to get a different effect, see what happens, but I don't do that often. I might remove an offending lamp post or a sign that is distracting and in just the wrong place so that I couldn't position myself and the camera in a way that I could avoid including it in the scene or so that I could use a handy tree or bush to obscure it, but that's about the extent of it. I never swap out skies or put in rainbows where none existed previously. All too often that kind of thing doesn't look natural and shadows are in the wrong place, the light angles are wrong, whatever. Luminar AI has some sort of function now where one can add objects to the sky and someone deliberately did an image where he filled the sky with giraffes, lions and whatever else -- it was hilarious but hardly realistic! LOL!
OldMacs4Me, you've brought up something which is definitely important and which a lot of times we don't even think about....our displays and monitors and how they may affect what we're seeing in our own and someone else's images. I've been using retina screens for so long now that I'd forgotten that there was a time when none of them were retina. Also the lighting situation under which someone is working can have an impact as well. If I'm out on the deck some afternoon with my 13" M1 MBP and get the urge to process an image really quickly in say Luminar AI, well, that's fine but more than once I've been surprised at how different that same newly-edited image looks on my 24" display in the house when I'm back in here and darkness has fallen! Whoa....
So, yes, some images may look garish and way over processed on a retina screen monitor. Also with a larger monitor one can more readily see flaws, can see those dust bunny spots that were overlooked during editing. That's where a 30" monitor can be really useful as opposed to a 21.5" one, for instance, or a 24" display as opposed to a 13" one. For quite a while I put off getting an external monitor to accompany my 15" MBP because there was a period where I wasn't doing much shooting or post-processing, so little need for a larger view. Once I started shooting more actively again, especially after I got new gear, I realized that the display on my MBP just wasn't going to cut the mustard and that's when I bought the larger display to plug in to it. Definitely makes a difference!
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True if one doesn't want to spend much time doing post-processing and wants to share images straight out of the camera, JPG is the way to go, and yes, it's interesting how these days we can still make some minor adjustments to those now, too. I've noticed that with my jpg images shot with the iPhone. That said, I still prefer the flexibility offered with shooting in RAW.
The browser they are viewing your images on will also play a part. But yes calibrated monitors is the right way to go (says the bloke who sells them for a living!).
Yeah, my point was more about taking things SOOC, versus what you chose to shoot with. With modern cameras, you can set different profiles for different situations, which means different in-camera JPG processing on-the-fly. It's still post-processing, just with minimal user intervention once the profiles are configured. It does lend itself well to various "snapshot" modes.
Also consider that MacRumors seems to wash out anything you post here. I can post the same shot on MU-43.com and the results are more vibrant/original than here.
really? I've never noticed a difference with my images. Are you exporting in sRGB?
Same browser? Could be to do with how the image is compressed or loaded on each site.
It's the exact same image posted to both places. I remember Alex noticed the same thing. Even Flickr posts lost a step of vibrance. Maybe they've resolved it with some forum updates, but it does happen from forum to forum.
My images look the same on Nikon Cafe as they do on here..... Both forums use Xenforo and the guy who owns Nikon Cafe also owns the Mu-43 forum, or at least he did in the past. He also owns a Sony-related forum and again, it uses Xenforo and again I have not noticed any differences in the appearance of my images on there as opposed to on here.
Color issues are almost always a browser issue. It's one reason why I stick to Safari even though there are browsers with a better overall experience. I don't ever have to tweak browser settings to get colors displayed properly. You used to have to jump through hoops and special codes to get Firefox color managed.
Ditto -- I never use anything but Safari. Years ago I tried Firefox (back in my Windoze days) and found it clunky. When I switched to the Mac that was pretty much the end of FF for me. I briefly tried out Google Chrome but didn't like it all that much and really don't need other browsers, as the early issues with some websites not being compatible with Safari are long gone, thankfully.
Checking today, I don’t notice a difference, but it was maybe more than a year ago where it was not the same. I might have even been using Safari back then, but still, it was the same image on the same browser with noticeable differences. The only variable was the website host. I guess it’s no longer an issue on MR, but it was at one time. I guess they fixed it.
I'd like a thread like "Show your RAW/Developed images" or likewise, but don't know if this is the right site thou.
I came here a couple of months ago, to get some initial start up help when switching to the Apple eco system and well, it's one of the nicest places on the web. As far as I know at least. Here we are, a friday afternoon/evening reading and writing about fun/nice stuff kind of besides the "Apple stuff" and I do enjoy it.
I came here a couple of months ago, to get some initial start up help when switching to the Apple eco system and well, it's one of the nicest places on the web. As far as I know at least. Here we are, a friday afternoon/evening reading and writing about fun/nice stuff kind of besides the "Apple stuff" and I do enjoy it.
if your iPhone supports .HEIC - give the a try, much smaller files and way more detail preserved compared to .jpg
My iPhone 12 Pro does indeed support HEIC as does the iPhone 11 Pro but I don't like to use HEIC because it is not recognized by a lot of systems yet and if I'm sending an email or text to a friend and want to include an image I've captured with the iPhone, I'd just as soon they be able to see that image -- and while my friends and family with Macs can, some others cannot. Now that I have the iPhone 12 Pro I've experimented a little with shooting in RAW with that and then working on the resulting image(s) in my regular programs but haven't done all that much with it yet. Easier to just keep the phone set to JPG and fire off images and if I want to do anything else with them or simply send them off unedited, SOOC, I can do so, no problem.
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