The ‘correct exposure’ vs. ‘post-processing’ dilemma
by eNoBlog on Aug.04, 2009, under Post-processing, Techniques
Have you ever felt or been made to feel like a failure because you couldn’t get the shot perfect in the camera? Do you feel inferior to those who claim they nail their exposures while you have to go home and spend hours post-processing your RAW captures? Perhaps in response to this, I received cheers to the last paragraph in a recent blog write-up from folks who see post-processing as an essential, perhaps even “mandatory” step in the image-making process.
While I wouldn’t go as far as to say “mandatory step,” I would say that if post-processing was good for Ansel Adams, it’s good enough for me. His maxim was “Expose for the shadows; develop the highlights.” While Adams would spend days hiking to exotic locations, sometimes spending as much as a full day setting up and waiting to click off a single shot, what most people don’t realize is how much time he spent on the “develop” part — sometimes weeks for a single image. That’s commitment to getting it right.
On the other hand, there are applications such as Photojournalism where one must get the shot right, or as close to right as possible, right in-camera. There’s just no time with today’s deadline pressures to do otherwise. For photojournalists, getting the right composition and exposure in the field and capturing a JPG they can quickly upload or e-mail to a news organization is critical. And whether we are photojournalists or not, our goal should always be to do the absolute best in-camera that we can under the scene’s constraints. We also need to keep in mind that post-processing will more often than not help us maximize an image’s potential. I bet many forward-thinking photojournalists take both JPG and RAW images, just in case one of their price-winning images is selected for a future publication that requires higher image quality.
Interestingly, I have found the best post-processing results always come when working on an image for which I sought the best I possibly could in-camera. In other words, getting right in-camera and post-processing are complementary, not opposing steps in the image-making process.
August 4th, 2009 on 4:06 pm
Great article, I’m wondering if you could clarify the dilemma between getting it right and shooting straight to jpeg or shooting raw and editing after. I know that after spending time perfecting my picture controls and the colours, curves they give me, that I am always miserable when I have to edit those shots from scratch in Lightroom.
August 4th, 2009 on 4:14 pm
Dano: I will assume that “from scratch” means that you are starting with a RAW file. If so, your difficulty lies in having to duplicate the in-camera controls: White balance, and Picture control to name two. I bypass that issue by using ViewNX to do a first-order edit: usually exposure and White balance adjustment. Then I convert to 16-bit TIF and take it to the next editor — in my case, Paintshop Pro X2.
If OTOH you’re talking about editing a JPG that went bad in your camera, yeah, that’s a losing battle. Shoot both RAW and JPG if you want the best of both worlds: speed when the JPG turns out okay, and flexibility when it doesn’t.
August 4th, 2009 on 4:58 pm
Thanks again, I was referring to starting from the RAW file. I think I will try editing in View NX first and then using Lightroom, I wasn’t aware of that technique for maintaining my in-camera controls.