Do I need an SLR? No - its not essential, but I enjoy the versatility it gives me. I still have and use my original digital camera - a Kodak DC210, and use a Fuji 645 film rangefinder camera. But I find Photoshop a much more essential tool. Henri Cartier-Bresson never made enlargements himself - he passed his negatives to a printing team who made all his enlargements. He then checked their work and then signed those prints he approved of. Post processing software is just an extension of the darkroom, allowing us to do in minutes what took hours in the darkroom. I agree with Rob, none of us see the same image, none of us record the same image. The perfect in camera image is like Rocking horse sh*t - it does not exist - It needs enlarging for a start and that is the first alteration....... unless you are using a 20-16 plate camera. It needs converting from negative to positive unless you are using digital. If using digital it again needs enlarging or magnifying to view it... which will alter the original image - so a straight from the camera shot does not exist. And yet again every viewer will have a different view as no two human eyes are the same. We all perceive things differently.
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