Re: Is this forum dying?
This topic comes round from time to time and I always get the feeling that post processing is often considered an evil. The days of film are often held up as a measure of faithful recording of what's seen though as John has already mentioned the dynamic range of the human eye is far greater than any technique of recording an image.
Film has so many possible variables, the stock you choose, some were known to give warm or cool images. Exposure latitude wasn't great and if you got near the limits colour cast and reduced contrast were likely. Faster films were not great for colour accuracy and could have grain the size of sand. Then the development of the film, temperature, time and the chemicals could produce negs of different quality. The print would be something else depending on the paper, time of exposure, filtration used, the chemicals used etc. Images with a predominance of one colour would need the filtration to be tweaked.
The time taken to print and adjust an image in the darkroom (dodge/burn etc) was ages and digital take a fraction of the time. In fact if you find you are making the same adjustments most of the time its possible to have these adjustments applied every time you import an image.
As Lez has said shooting JPEG means post processing is done by the camera.
After all that its OK if you don't PP but for most people its being used to get an image they consider to be a reasonable representation.
This topic comes round from time to time and I always get the feeling that post processing is often considered an evil. The days of film are often held up as a measure of faithful recording of what's seen though as John has already mentioned the dynamic range of the human eye is far greater than any technique of recording an image.
Film has so many possible variables, the stock you choose, some were known to give warm or cool images. Exposure latitude wasn't great and if you got near the limits colour cast and reduced contrast were likely. Faster films were not great for colour accuracy and could have grain the size of sand. Then the development of the film, temperature, time and the chemicals could produce negs of different quality. The print would be something else depending on the paper, time of exposure, filtration used, the chemicals used etc. Images with a predominance of one colour would need the filtration to be tweaked.
The time taken to print and adjust an image in the darkroom (dodge/burn etc) was ages and digital take a fraction of the time. In fact if you find you are making the same adjustments most of the time its possible to have these adjustments applied every time you import an image.
As Lez has said shooting JPEG means post processing is done by the camera.
After all that its OK if you don't PP but for most people its being used to get an image they consider to be a reasonable representation.
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