I am not sure how to word this, so I hope it makes sense.
If you are not using film and are using dslr, is there any true Sooc? Maybe this is more of a computer question and I am asking, not saying. I don't know enough about cameras or computers, but I know there are some of you out there.
Iso used to be actually different film. Is digital just processing that effect?
Different shutter speeds and aperture used to let different light hit the film, but there is no film there to effect.
Would sooc really have to mean raw? Does that even go far enough?
I've heard that RAW is compared to "the negative". when shooting in jpg it is apparently doing some processing on the image already. However, I see no sense in comparing either to film, since I see film and digital just being... different.
even if you are using film there is no such thing as SOOC different exposure times different papers and different chemical solutions have dramatically different effects on a print, as for Raw files they have to be interpreted by a programme for you to be able to view them the nearest you can ever get is a close approximation of SOOC
RAW is as close as you'll get, but, in my limited digi-knowledge, anything that has a JPEG artifact will be processed internally to the computers wishes (my words, as crappy as they are). Film is, and I do not like the 4 letter word...SOOC. Slide film is SOOC on steroids. See example below. Note the dimension, and vibrant color. This is straight out of the camera, for real:
@tigerdreamer There IS no practical meaning. It's too relative a term. To purists, it means that from the time you hit the shutter button to the time you display the photo in whatever way, you do nothing else to the image. To some people, you can crop, add borders, and put on your watermark and as long as you don't change things like the contrast, color balance, etc., it's still SOOC. It's not something you can define, like Rule of Thirds or Sunny 16. The meaning changes from person to person.
As @asrai says, but I would change that to especially with film, there is no SOOC. I would argue that the concept is flawed even in digital. See the threads linked above.
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this is for sure an interesting topic. I would assume sooc means no digital funny stuff added to the picture. Also it would show your ability to meet deadlines, considering the desired image from a such and such scene would show if you know how to make the adjustments in the camera you can avoid popular software like aperture or lightroom. Thus proving your knowledge of compensation and ability to adjust and compromise on location. These days people are spending 10 minutes taking pics and hours and hours on photoshop experimenting and making adjustments. My point of view on SOOC is that it will assist you in developing a better understanding of your camera and how and what you use it for, and also how wisely you spend your time. There is a lot to say about digital photo editing but having the skills to produce high quality images with the WOW factor with out these computer programs is highly regarded.
Given that film is processed entirely out of the camera it means very little to define it as SOOC, especially when it is subsequently scanned and reprocessed to digital. I agree with the gist of what Shelly says, but more specifically that SOOC, insofar as it means anything at all, means global adjustments only, in-camera or in the darkroom. An image that is cropped, rotated or watermarked, or has a border added cannot possibly be considered SOOC. @beautifulthing@cluvlj@lilbudhha@sdpace@asrai
@dieter Nice and succinct. Though, rotating an image stops it from being regarded (practically) as SOOC? Not sure about that one - if I pick up a piece of paper, turn it a bit, and put it back down... I haven't edited it. Cropping? To me that's a grey area. I mean, when you look at typical print sizes - 5x7, 8x10, 11x14 etc - they're all slightly different ratios, and one has to consider (when printing) where the crop will be. Not to mention that, in the darkroom, there was always a bleed area that didn't get printed (or got trimmed) - much as there is in digital printing. I'm not sure that cropping, therefore, really counts against it.
All that said, I don't believe there is any such thing as SOOC. In a literal, absolute sense. From a practical perspective... well, it is an easy way of saying, "I didn't edit this" without going into specifics. That's about all it is worth.
@jinximages good points, but I'll play devil's advocate for a moment anyway :) Last time I commented on this topic I got a bit carried away, so thought I'd stick to the word limit this time around.
There's a few reasons I don't think cropped or rotated images should be presented as SOOC, but in a nutshell it's that a large part of the challenge of shooting SOOC lies in successfully composing and framing an image using the viewfinder of your camera. Cropping is an incredibly powerful compositional tool; you can use it to visually alter the scene by removing distracting elements, to alter the native format of the image (to panoramic or square, as extreme examples), even to mimic the perspective distortion of longer lenses. As you say, some small amount of cropping is more or less inevitable, but a purist would take it as far as Cartier-Bresson, printing the film sprocket holes to demonstrate that he hadn't cropped. As for rotating an image, firstly you have to crop it after you rotate it, but you can also use rotation as a compositional tool (e.g. rotating 10 or 20 degrees to create a strong diagonal line that wasn't present beforehand). Both are grey(-ish) areas, sure, but if you allow, say a 1deg correction of a slightly crooked horizon, but not a large rotation to change your composition, then where do you draw the line? If you're going to exhibit the image or hang it on your wall, you correct the horizon. If you enter it in a SOOC challenge you leave it almost straight, that's part of the charm.
The reason I'm personally interested in this is that I've always found effective composition in-camera difficult - and have been especially lazy since switching to digital. The crop tool in Lightroom is my crutch. For me, the challenge of SOOC is all about 'crop less, compose better'.
With digital it is easy enough to come up with a workable definition of SOOC, in my mind a jpeg or tiff file straight out of the camera, to which only global adjustments have been made using in-camera functions (which rules out processing apps that apply borders, heavy vignettes or whatever.). As for global adjustments to tonal range, colour and contrast, these are as fundamental to photography as harvesting photons in the first place. That's what my big rant on the last SOOC challenge thread was about.
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter how you define it. SOOC is just a set of constraints that help you improve your camera skills, and that has to be a good thing :)
@tigerdreamer in answer to your original question about ISO: increasing the digital ISO simply means that the camera circuitry amplifies the output from the sensor (an increase in 'signal gain'). The problem is that, just like turning up the volume on your radio, this also amplifies the noise in the image. Cameras with larger sensors catch more photons of light to generate each pixel in your image and as a result tend to produce relatively less noise. That is why a DSLR is, in general, much less noisy than a compact digital camera at high ISO. Hope this helps :)
@jinximages@dieter@janmaki@beautifulthing@sdpace I think the "SOOC" thing is about as overused, overblown, and a really "who cares" thing that people seem to think is cool to say, like the dreaded "bokeh".
I am changing what SOOC means. I petition that it stands for "Sick Of Obtuse Cameraspeak". Think it'll catch on?
@dieter Ah, so by rotation you don't mean 90-degrees... gotcha. I can't disagree with anything else there. On a side-note, I have (often) shot for a square format print, but without certain MF gear I can't shoot that way. I'd still call it SOOC if I did nothing else to it (than crop it square, where I'd foreseen it). But, I don't do SOOC anyway... so who cares? Haha!
@cluvlj hear, hear. Just because it's a nearly meaningless concept doesn't mean it's not useful though. For one, it always starts discussions about what photography is and I always find that interesting. And for another, any constraint you give yourself can make you a better photographer: go out and shoot with just one lens for a week, leave your tripod at home, shoot with your phone, whatever. The challenge forces you to make different creative choices to what you usually would.
@jinximages oh yeah, even I accept 90 degrees is ok! :-)
Ditto the square format, and here's another example: I think it's really neat to shoot buildings with straight verticals 'straight out of the camera' which generally means you have to crop the bejebus out of it to get the image you had in mind. But I wouldn't call that ... um, you know...
@dieter Agree! I see people walking around with backpacks full of lenses, Gorillapods, and whatever other junk they try to sell you because you can't do without it. I take a camera (no strap), and 1 lens in each pocket, if that much. "Ya make do with what ya got"
@dieter "At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter how you define it. SOOC is just a set of constraints that help you improve your camera skills, and that has to be a good thing :)"
Thank you Dieter for this quote. I think this is where I will leave the thoughts for me about sooc, even though it's the beginning of my day. :)
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http://365project.org/discuss/general/10728/there-s-no-such-thing-as-sooc-or-is-there
http://365project.org/discuss/general/7228/what-qualifies-sooc
http://365project.org/discuss/tips-n-tricks/8442/sooc-b-tches
@cluvlj That was kind of what I was thinking about when I posted.
@sdpace Thanks for those. Although they quickly devolved into arguing merits rather than the practical meaning.
Welcome to the zoo.
All that said, I don't believe there is any such thing as SOOC. In a literal, absolute sense. From a practical perspective... well, it is an easy way of saying, "I didn't edit this" without going into specifics. That's about all it is worth.
There's a few reasons I don't think cropped or rotated images should be presented as SOOC, but in a nutshell it's that a large part of the challenge of shooting SOOC lies in successfully composing and framing an image using the viewfinder of your camera. Cropping is an incredibly powerful compositional tool; you can use it to visually alter the scene by removing distracting elements, to alter the native format of the image (to panoramic or square, as extreme examples), even to mimic the perspective distortion of longer lenses. As you say, some small amount of cropping is more or less inevitable, but a purist would take it as far as Cartier-Bresson, printing the film sprocket holes to demonstrate that he hadn't cropped. As for rotating an image, firstly you have to crop it after you rotate it, but you can also use rotation as a compositional tool (e.g. rotating 10 or 20 degrees to create a strong diagonal line that wasn't present beforehand). Both are grey(-ish) areas, sure, but if you allow, say a 1deg correction of a slightly crooked horizon, but not a large rotation to change your composition, then where do you draw the line? If you're going to exhibit the image or hang it on your wall, you correct the horizon. If you enter it in a SOOC challenge you leave it almost straight, that's part of the charm.
The reason I'm personally interested in this is that I've always found effective composition in-camera difficult - and have been especially lazy since switching to digital. The crop tool in Lightroom is my crutch. For me, the challenge of SOOC is all about 'crop less, compose better'.
With digital it is easy enough to come up with a workable definition of SOOC, in my mind a jpeg or tiff file straight out of the camera, to which only global adjustments have been made using in-camera functions (which rules out processing apps that apply borders, heavy vignettes or whatever.). As for global adjustments to tonal range, colour and contrast, these are as fundamental to photography as harvesting photons in the first place. That's what my big rant on the last SOOC challenge thread was about.
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter how you define it. SOOC is just a set of constraints that help you improve your camera skills, and that has to be a good thing :)
@sdpace @beautifulthing
I am changing what SOOC means. I petition that it stands for "Sick Of Obtuse Cameraspeak". Think it'll catch on?
@cluvlj Love it. Best. Acronym. Ever. :D
Ditto the square format, and here's another example: I think it's really neat to shoot buildings with straight verticals 'straight out of the camera' which generally means you have to crop the bejebus out of it to get the image you had in mind. But I wouldn't call that ... um, you know...
Thank you Dieter for this quote. I think this is where I will leave the thoughts for me about sooc, even though it's the beginning of my day. :)