SOOC - the case for or against

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brusby

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Give reasons for your preference and illustrate with photos.

I'll start.

Leica M240, 35mm Summaron f2.8 hand held

Edited to resemble the feel of the location as I perceived it, which was sunset over a dark marshy area off the roadside:

M2403855 by Brusby, on Flickr


SOOC

M2403855 4 by Brusby, on Flickr
 
Great video Vince. I've been a huge fan and greatly influenced by his thoughtful approach to photography. 'Had a chance to attend one of his workshops in the 70's but was just out of college and too broke to afford it at the time. We're lucky to have some of his original prints in the rare book room at my alma mater. Hard to envision Ansel's work if he were constrained to images straight out of camera.
 
For workflow, I think also it's often useful to set the camera to B&W jpeg display and import the RAW and jpeg as separate files into Lightroom - to prevent Lightroom reworking the previews into color and keep that in the field review visualization intact.
 
Those are valid concerns, but for this thread I'm more interested in editing for artistic purposes -- as opposed to fabricating or falsifying images -- and hearing from people who advocate sooc shooting sans editing. I've really never seen the allure. But I want to be open minded and consider all points of view.
 
Since 2007 and up until recently I've only shot in Raw. Then I decided to give JPEG a try and I found I liked it okay. Thing is, I just keep right on opening the JPEG in Lightroom and working on the files like I did Raw. Nothing comes out of the camera looking the way I like it. Gotta work on the files like I did negatives in the darkroom.
 
I'm no pro when it comes to photography, even though I've been practicing it for many decades. So RAW is not my preferred method of image capture, especially since I use the rudimentary program of PS Elements. So if it doesn't look good SOOC, I will tweak the image as necessary to improve it.

Case in point, this one had a bit of burn-out in the sky to the left, which also made the near side of the locomotives too dark. A simple correction with the Smart Adjust tool brought the sky down to a proper level, and increased the detail of the engine sides. It apparently also increased the saturation a bit which made the small trees shine in the back lighting.


Paired Up by P F McFarland, on Flickr

I the cropped it to a 16x9 to rid the scene of some overhead wires, and the debris cluttered foreground.

This was the only frame in the entire shoot in which I had to make corrections to, all the others were just fine as they were. I like it when the camera is capturing the image mostly as I see it, but not averse to fixing things that kind of drag down the IQ such as over and under exposures. The above image now appears more even across the frame as far as exposure is concerned, with a definite though slight increase in detail on the main subject.

PF
 
I have dodged and burned plenty of darkroom prints. Digital merely makes it easier. While I don’t shoot color I can appreciate the editing options for digital photography when few existed for analog. I would say to use all the tools available to fulfill your vision.
 
Many of my images taken with dedicated digital cameras are SOOC.
I learned how to do it with my first 25K exposures taken in M mode.
My most used edit is to bring back shadows details to how it was seen.
This is due to sensors limitations.

For cheesy overprocessing I like to use mobile phone and dump them on FB, Insta. :)
 
I normally shoot raw because of the flexibility it gives for later editing. 'Got distracted by a model's mother just before a shoot a while back and ended up doing all jpg with sharpening maxed out (from testing the previous night). Shots came out ok but it was really a lot more work and pretty limiting. Some shadow detail that would have been recoverable with raw was irretrievably lost, like in her eyes and hair in the photo below from that shoot. And color manipulation was really odd; the skin tones in the shadows went red which I corrected some, but a bit of it still remains.

_MG_2543 by Brusby, on Flickr
 
I initially did a double-take on SOOC as I was conflating it with Leitz's SHOOC 135mm bright-line finder :)

I don't have anything against SOOC images e.g., quick snaps out of camera, but I tend to do some post (digital or analog).

This is an example of a chromogenic negative scan and digital post-processing. (Test shot from my 1958 M2 and '66 vintage 35mm 2.8 Summaron-M)


St. Leo's Cemetery #1 (untouched scan) by rdc154, on Flickr


St. Leo's Cemetery #1 by rdc154, on Flickr
 
I come from a film and darkroom background, and so learnt to work on my negatives to try to get the print I want. Therefore, I always shoot in RAW in order to capture as much information as possible, thereby permitting me to work on the file to get the desired image and print. This is obviously more the case with black and white, but my colour photos also have slight and subtle work in post.

Birch trees. X-Pro2, 10-24mm.
Birch trees by John Beeching, on Flickr

Baroque, blue and bird. X-Pro2, 35mm.
Baroque, blue and bird, Noto by John Beeching, on Flickr
 
An Old Dilemma

An Old Dilemma

The issue of SOOC vs. post production rendering is similar to choosing transparency vs. negative film.

Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. Post acquisition, one is more flexible than the other.

Information theory is more relevant to digital photography. Images are rendered using data as an information source. Raw files contain all the information recorded when the shutter was open.[1,2] SOOC JPEGs always discard some of that information. The issue becomes - how valuable is the discarded information?

When the exposure, color temperature parameters and other in-camera rendering parameters are perfect, then SOOC JPEG images make full use of the information content. While lossy compression discards much of the data, that data is redundant.

The discarded information has value when exposure, color temperature parameters and other in-camera rendering parameters are imperfect.

A straightforward example is a large room where one side is lit by tungsten light and the opposite side is lit sunlight. No single set of color temperature parameters can render an image with proper color hues. In post production one can selectively apply different color temperature rendering parameters for each side of the room. A raw file retains all of the data which provides maximum flexibility to selectively optimize the color temperature. This is not the case for SOOC JPEGs. Since shadow regions have the lowest SNR (i.e. information content), any information loss is problematic.

Similar arguments hold for image sharpening and noise filtering.

There are no miracles. SOOC JPEGs are more convenient. The price of convenience is reduced flexibility to optimize image rendering. Sometimes the impact is negligible, sometimes it is not.

However, it is difficult to be completely certain in all circumstances the exposure and in-camera SOOC JPEG rendering parameters will be perfect before pressing the shutter button.

1. All brands manipulate the raw data to some degree. This is unnecessary since post-production demosaicking algorithms can make the same changes. While the raw file data is modified, very little, if any data is excluded.

2. Some brands offer lossy raw file compression. Others offer losses data compression. The former could destroy useful information content while the later does not.
 
Another Old Dilemma

Another Old Dilemma

The flexibility afforded by raw-file rendering can be problematic. Just because one retains access to all the information content does not guarantee the information is well utilized. The rendered image can deviate greatly from how the photographer perceived the scene. The more non-realistic the rendering the more the result is open to subjective criticism.

This problem (subjective imaging rendering) dates back to the pictorialism era. In the late 19th and early 20th century pictorialism was practiced to offset criticism that photography was not a form of artistic expression.

I don't think unrealistic image rendering has anything to do with using raw files. SOOC JPEGs can be modified in post-production as well.
 
In one of his books Ansel Adams shows the straight print from ‘Clearing Winter Storm’ and the final print. You probably would not give the straight print a second glance, it’s so dull.
 
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