Pulling a new, rambling thread from the SharkDiver mag topic

I thought this comment quoted below sufficiently interesting, and relevant to the whole "fix it in post" brouhaha, that it warranted coming out here and starting a new thread.

I attend a local photography club that is "lead" by a guy who claims he has been a pro for 30+ years. He tells us that understanding appreture and shutter speed is no longer necessary, anything can be done in PS. He often refers to Ansel Adams postprocessing of this-or-that famous photo and tells us how even Ansel Adams did not create his pics at the shooting stage.

To which I reply: BALDERDASH and the manipulation of such are still reliant on a well chosen aperture and shutter speed.

People like to drag out Ansel Adams' comments like (paraphrasing) "the negative is a score and the print is a performance", and in the process seem to forget that Adams also made a big deal about "visualisation" of the image. Adams "created" many of his best images before he even stuck the 8x10 film holder into his camera, let alone triggered the shutter.

The point is, Adams (and other masters of the art) used the techniques and technology available to them at the time to allow them to express artistic vision. Adams overcame the huge contrast range in many landscape shots by altering the exposure and processing of his negatives, followed by selection of high or low contrast grades of printing paper, in order to arrive at the result he originally visualised. If good neutral density gradient filters were available to him at the time, he probably would have used them instead, and he would have become Galen Rowell :shock:.

Nowadays we have enormously powerful tools at our disposal that allow an unprecedented level of control over the imagery we create. But without a previsualisation of what we hope to achieve, no amount of photoshop wizardy will save a bad shot. So I think it is still important that people understand shutter speeds, apertures etc etc in terms of how they affect the image that is being recorded. Thus, on those terms, I agree with those who say that you should get as close to the ideal as possible "in camera".

At the same time, I think it is a criminal waste not to use the capabilities afforded by postprocessing to allow you to achieve things that would otherwise be very hard. Witness the recent surge in interest in the blending of two images derived from one exposure's raw data to improve the contrast range visible in the final shot. Taking a somewhat "holier than though" approach to this and saying "it should be done right in the camera or not at all" leaves you fiddling with split density filters or getting poor results. So I'm also with the post-processors, we should use the abilities of our tools to help us achieve what we originally visualised.

Well, here in Santa Barbara, a town with many pro UW photographers the most revered was Ernie Brooks. Mr Brooks shot a Hasselbad with a fixed lens of the equivalent of the Nikonos 20 mm lens. He always shot the same F stop and shutter speed. Using B & W print film. All adjustments were done in the lab. Pushing and pulling the film as necessary to get the exposure he wanted to print.

This doesn't sound too different than ignoring F stop and shutter speed and and adjusting all in PS

Now I don't agree with the idea that you can ignore F stop and shutter speed. I am a firm believer in "Crap in, Crap out" You need to start with a good exposure.

Though I have to admit on my last dive trip. Glenn; the owner of Truth Aquatics, asked me after watching me work an image in PS CS; "Dave, don't you consider that cheating?"

Its not cheating its having fun and creating

I think a lot of speakers tend to make outrageous claims that they don't believe 100% to try to make a point and add a bit of controversy to their presentation. When you add in all the ifs and buts to a claim it kinda looses some of its punch.

I think it's how you define what you are doing.

Are you making a creative illustration or are you making a photograph, showing a "real" scene in a new and different way? Both are fun to look at. But when stripping scenes and images together you are making an illustration; showing something that wasn't achieved "naturally" (for lack of a better term).

The difference is sort of like advertising photos verses journalistic.

There's room for both, but i think you have to own up to what you've done to achieve the image.

Jack

The guy who I referred to in my original post really does "preach" forgetting (or not learning) about shutter speed and aperture. He tells us it is "irrelevant" to digital photography. He also stated (as late as Friday) that if one follows or learns fundamental rules of composition, one will "fit into a mold" and never develop.

Needless to say I disagree completely. I am all for using photoshop and any other tools for creative postprocessing, but I think that some ppl (like the guy I refer to) has taken it way too far. I suspect it is his own lack of knowledge he is trying to hide, although he claims to be the absolute authority on digital photography, teaching us poor novices.

Anyway, I DO think that understanding how to control exposure and how to compose a pleasing image is still just as important with digital photography as with film. And I do think that knowledge allows you to better achieve an artistic vision as opposed to not having any knowledge, and trying to go out and reinvent the wheel.

If you ignore f stop and aperture, you will get crap exposure - which can only be fixed to a limited extent in photoshop/raw conversion software. You can't fix motion blur, you can't increase depth of field post exposure, at all, in photoshop. The gentleman making the comment is either trying to create controversy, or very inexperienced at using PS.

Over exposure can be only corrected if it is only 1-2 Stops (which is rare if you have a real overexposure, underexposer can be corrected up to 4 Stops but i wouldn't use more then 2 because it the gets really noisy. Normaly I use only use a +1/-1 range to do a finetuning of the exposure.