The SOOC (straight out of camera) thread

Ksanti

Ksanti

Ksanti

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I figured this could be a pretty cool thread to see how people shoot before processing. Obviously plenty of shots are made entirely with the intention of massive amounts of processing, but it'd be pretty cool to share what they look like coming into photoshop? Feel free to post the edited version as well but definitely post the straight into lightroom file (bar resizing obv) :)

One from today, not had a chance to do too much of my old school stuff so when the sun peeked through the clouds on a fine art shoot today I just had to get off a few :) Not sure if flare is cheating, but I love it

7XMWOzi.jpg
 
SOOC
8661632894_5d751f32dc_b.jpg


HDR final (not my best shot, but I was just starting out when I took this

8660531535_131ef8c2b7_b.jpg


Just had a twiddle with the original RAW and it turns out quite well, so there was no need for the HDR after all :p
 
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My processing style is very slight (slight USM, tweak exposure/contrast) and I try to get things right in camera, including WB and crop so pretty much every I post is SOOC.
 
D.P. said:
My processing style is very slight (slight USM, tweak exposure/contrast) and I try to get things right in camera, including WB and crop so pretty much every I post is SOOC.
Click to expand...

Thats what I'm trying more and more for. The was a time a few years ago when I'd got the in camera settings on my 30D nailed to my satisfaction so I was shooting RAW and JPEG and 9 times out of ten just using the JPEG. The 5Dmkii put an end to this as I don't have the memory cards to shoot RAW+JPEG and I've not managed to settle on a default process or two yet.

The above example is a pretty extreme job for me, I really like the subject and wanted to make something of it so despite having botched the origional somewhat (lack of fill flash was a real killer!) I wanted to get an end product and I was pretty happy with the result.
 
Very hard to properly expose (or at least so I found!).
Original:


After a bit of processing:


JAME3591 by munge, on Flickr
Not sure what else I could have done PP to make it better without it degrading any further.

FWIW, SOOC has to be the way forward in the ideal world, but digital lets you extract a picture that otherwise you might be unable to use - even with the push button, it still changed to manual mode and there was NO chance of getting the kids to pose again on demand!


Felt there was too much nice about the pose and spontaneity to just bin the photo for being waaayyy overexposed.

@ a1ex2001 - that's the classical look for the wrinkly old man face, perhaps a little metallic in the finish? And like my group shot above, without digital processing, could very easily have been a photo for the bin otherwise? Although not quite as dark as mine was overexposed.

@ ksanti - is it worth you adding in the finished photo, so those of us who know nowt about PP can see what you managed to achieve?

Edit: all taken with 5D Mkiii and 70-200 f2.8 is ii
 
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Ksanti said:
Not sure if flare is cheating, but I love it
Click to expand...

And isn't that the whole essence of photography really, using available lighting to achieve the effect SOOC if at all possible? After all, flash and lights are all about achieving this sort of effect artificially. I wish more of mine were better in camera, but I think that reflects a poor grounding in film, but at least I can practice and practice without cost.
 
I can happily say that a vast majority of the best photos I have ever taken (e.g 90% of my favorite 100 photos) the SOOC jpeg will look almost identical to the final processed RAW (the jpeg will have less details at 100% and slight contrast differences). If the lighting and composition is right in the scene, and you do everything right in the camera then PP just shouldn't be needed for most photos (unless you want to gave a massively digitally altered artistic processing).


Not to pick on a1ex2001 but conversion to B&W in post because the color photo doesn't look nice is one of the symptoms of not enough forward thinking. I like B&W photos to emphasize textures and patterns and typically I will know that the final photo will work well in black and white before the shutter is pressed - if my camera supported B&W jpegs then I could get a reasonable SOOC B&W jpeg.
However, maintaining the colour channels is very useful for PPing to get the balance, in B&W film days you would play around with colour filters on the lens to emphasis the sky, or trees, or rocks, etc, you can do this in post with a colour image with so much more control. So, PPing is essential here.

The only other time where I find PPing essential is in scenes with a strong shadow component, ETTR is mandatory in my work flow and will need a more rigorous PP session (saying that the auto exposure correction in PS/LR will largely bring the exposure to the right ball park with the advantage of clean shadows).
 
That image in particular I did very little to as I like it as is and don't like aggressively retouching particularly not on just casual shoots with friends (I'd be more aggressive if a client asked for it basically). The sum of what I did was bring the blacks back just a little bit, not a real preference but I wanted to do /something/ and just fixed the fringing basically.

7XMWOzi.jpg
eh15SwR.jpg

and a b/w for good measure
9KG74wK.jpg


On Alex's photo, I think it could work, but your clarity, b/w mix or localized contrast adjustments have made the bokeh incredibly busy and distracting which I think you need to sort out.

With regard to SOOC being the way forward, I'd say not at all. It depends of course on what you're shooting but I come at photography from a much more significant art/graphic design background than a lot of people so I shoot with an idea of how I'm going to process, of course sometimes getting it nice sooc is very nice but with a lot of work it just doesn't help that much. I tend to limit myself to colour processing, spot removal etc. and general things that you can't "get right in camera" but if my option is spend 30 minutes moving everything out of a scene on the shoot and killing the energy and momentum of a shoot, and spending 4 minutes in post sorting it out, it'll be the latter every time for me.
 
yep, all depends what you want to achieve. I simply want to capture the raw beauty of nature and I feel strongly about digitally altering a file to such an extent that it doesn't represent the atmosphere and feeling that I felt at the time. That doesn't mean no processing, but the processing should contribute to enhancing what I felt, not grossly altering photographic elements.


Besides which, spending an extra 1-2 minuets getting everything right in camera can save 30 minutes in Photoshop and however much you like to process getting it right in the camera leads to high quality images that are easier to work. Yeah, you can bring up a 2 stop underexposed photo, crop right into it, correct the WB and Photoshop out the distracting garbage bag but it will never look as good as a properly composed and exposed original.


But photography is a such a varied subject ranging from design and art to capturing reality (which is actually impossibly because you always make choices on lenses, exposure time, etc so you are only sampling reality). I simply want to capture the mood of the scene I am witnessing.
 
My images at the moment are all Sigma 85 with my D800, if I ever use the Sigma 35 I flag it up but ultimately you should really be able to tell the difference between an 85mm shot and a 35mm shot :)
 
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