To put another spin on this thread - Are talking about the straight out of the camera elitist brigade ? They were mainly the group who used transparency film where getting the exposure correct was critical. They tended to snear at the darkroom hocus pocus. At least with neg film the lab had some latitude to make corrections for exposure and colour balance.

as a reversal film shooter for many years, atually started processing my own in the Sixties. Not much choice those days, in fact I think the only available reversal film available at that time was Ferrania colour, followed shortly afterwards with Ectachrome.

As you say I/2 stop out and you where in trouble, but you could push and pull in the 1st development stage and also to a certain extent during the 2nd development, but obviously this affected the whole roll.

With B&W and colour printing work it was the end result that mattered not how it was achieved.

The question of how the final print was achieved was never questioned, but often admired, when it was carried out by the experts.

Almost every photographic society had a least one or two of these masters and needless to say they always walked away with the various competitions.

This leaves us with the problem of when does post proccessing/manipulation go to far.

IMO this has already been answered in several of the previous posts.
The intent to decieve

Again in my opinion, with a liftime of photography behind me, I would say anything goes, with the above proviso.

I have been a member of photo forums "digital" for over six years, but this talk of "getting it right in the camera" is relatively new, and I suspect that the majority of people saying this are relatively new to photography.

I guess at this point I must mention at least one of my images in the gallery which is a composite. http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...php?photo=2295
This is a photo of a butterfly which was taken in north Yorkshire. I knew at the time that the photo would be rather poor due to the background.

Approx 1 hour later I noticed some thistledown and thought this should make a nice backdrop, So I took a photo, then combined the two when I got home.

The essential part of this image is the butterfly and in no way has this part been modified, and I'm more than happy with the result. maybe you will think differently :)

Harry

Harry

Should we start another thread called confession corner :rolleyes:

Nothing to confess Rob, been doing this kind of thing for a little over 40 years. It's always been part & parcel of photography, ask Ansel.

Harry

True

I don't know what all the fuss is about. But I do object to those who pretend it is a straight shot and what a fantastic person I am when the shot has been tweaked to hell. My experience is that you rarely get a perfect straight print and the other 99.999% need a helping hand of some sort.

Rob, I think the big guns will be after us :)

Well it will give them something to talk about. I think I'd best hide for the weekend until the dust settles. :D

Harry,

As an ex wet darkroom buff I can really appreciate what you have done with your image. Core subject untouched but ...... superb digital darkroom work.

Picking up on Robs post and ' confession corner ' a " Master Class Digital Darkroom " thread may be more in order. Before and after images should be posted, and as you have here the reasoning. Therefore it is seperated from Christines ' Image manipulation starter ' thread which as its title suggests is that.

I am reminded of an image that Stephen posted in what turned into RAW/JPEG thread, where the subject had a very high dynamic range and he used RAW to create exposure latitude ( for me that said in old money, dodging, mulitgrade paper, masking, in fact classic wet darkroom techniques ). So not manipulated but very skillfully processed.
Gidders Sunlight Acer is another cracking example.

In other words, considered images created from the use of good photographic techniques rather than rescues of sloppilly taken pics. Perhaps Stephen is inferring this in his thread starter ..... Get as much right as possible at the time of taking through good technique and understanding of the medium.

Don

Interested in Harry's butterfly which did slightly puzzle me at the time, though I would not have a guessed a full transplant, so I would say OK.

Have been pondering sky corrections on multi-plane landscapes as it seems impossible to get an exposure that does everything in imperfect light.
http://www.worldphotographyforum.com...1&d=1148723444

Chris,

This is the type of subject and question that a Master Class thread would be so useful for.

My problem is I am still reading my CS manual and trying to understand how to do things, so not necessarily the best person to fire one off. Hopefully Harry, Stephen, Gidders or another wizard will take up the challenge. If there are no takers I will, but I will probably be flamed. :D

I guess here we would need to recognise the limitations that some cameras impose on the photographer. eg: In camera processing, sophistication of control over exposure etc.


Don