In my main album this month I am joining Sam @gigiflower and shooting Manual May.
I do shoot manual 95% of the time but have much to learn. I also shoot RAW and Jpeg so do have the luxury of making adjustments. Now - we all know I love to faff and fiddle in a variety of programs - this month I am going to try and limit the faffing - particularly with adjustments to exposure etc...but I can't promise I will be completely faff free! Hopefully faffing in other albums will satisfy my craving hahaha!
This image is the jpeg SOOC - oh it was hard not to faff!
Minimalist magic! I'm so annoyed with myself for not taking a shot like this... but I'm happy to be inspired by you! Now, a contradiction in your choices: shooting manually means you take control, using the camera's jpeg means letting the camera take control! (SOOC is a bit of a con with a digital camera because it has already done the fiddling and faffing!)
@annied@yrhenwr Great minimalist image... manual is over-rated - why pay a fortune for an all-singing, all-dancing camera and then do the heavy lifting yourself? And why do so few people understand the real value of SOOC I wonder? For me it's simply a commitment to creating the entire finished image at the point of capture. Whether that has value or merit is a personal choice.
@annied Why not, if you have shot manual? No choice but to fiddle and faff with the RAW file... it contains all the info about the image so yu have to take editing decisions.
@vignouse The heavy lifting is the important bit for me, more so than the final image, hence my interest in old film cameras. I am not happy allowing my digital cameras to do the heavy lifting and I no longer enjoy using them. What pleasure/credit can I take from a camera such as the EM5ii if it corrects so much for my ineptitude that the image comes out sharp?... its a triumph of technology, not of the operator. My point about SOOC is that it is NOT done at the point of capture.... it is post-exposure, software programmed by some geek that thinks this is what most people will like. It puts itself between the camera 'proper' and the photographer.
@yrhenwr Let's see if we can put this topic to bed: I have never said, suggested or thought that SOOC means not processed.... only that no further adjustment was applied to the Jpeg. Call it APiC - Automatically Processed in Camera - if you like. It's still me that chooses the focal length, the PoV! the point of focus, the composition, the DoF, colour or B&W and certainly with my Fuji cameras I have a wide range of decisions to make before pressing the shutter button as to how I want the resulting image to look. It gives me as much personal satisfaction to see the image I had imagined appear on the preview screen as it does making all that happen in PP which I also do often as you know I don't want you to produce your images my way... but I do demand the right to produce my images my way - and to label them accordingly.
@vignouse Not suggesting you do it any other way Richard... I think very highly of your images and I am well aware of your skill in producing them. I use RAW to give max. control over the development of the image, not to correct mistakes. If it needs major exposure changes I ditch the image. If I used the jpegs I wouldn't further process them either if only because of the risk of degrading the image. I'd be very surprised this topic has now been put to bed! :-)
