Savageduck
On 2014-03-18 01:21:44 +0000, floyd@apaflo.com (Floyd L. Davidson) said:

Floyd L. Davidson
PeterN <peter.newnospam@verizon.net>wrote:

PeterN
On 3/17/2014 7:43 PM, Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

Floyd L. Davidson
PeterN <peter.newnospam@verizon.net>wrote:

PeterN
My word 'Play" was used in the sense of being creative and the ability to make major adjustments, far beyond that which can be achieved with a JPEG file. . That is certainly not insignificant. Very often I will take an image, and wuite often, usually after time has elapsed, the image will tell me what to do. Quite often if owuld be difficult to tell what the original image looked like. For my use this is not insignificant.

Floyd L. Davidson
To a degree that has truth. But "play" in your sense is not what I was getting at for RAW processing. I'm digging at the idea that JPEG by definition means "getting it right in the camera" as opposed to RAW meaning you can play an image to discover the correct creative adjustments that will produce an image. I want to see the resulting image first, *before* the shutter is released, and have data recorded that allows me to then produce the image that was already visualized. In camera processing usually just can't get very close because the parameters are estimated rather than set up inspection with full knowledge of precisely the effect, and also just because the granularity of the adjustment is large in the camera and much finer with post processing software.

PeterN
I make no claim that it's not best to get it as close to "right" in the camera, as possible. But remember, I also like to make a lot of abstracts.

Floyd L. Davidson
The question however is what is "right". I'm saying a final product is not "right". The material to produce the best final product, even though not finished at that moment, is the "right" thing to get directly from the camera. Your comments aren't about that, though they certainly do require the use of that methodology as an inherent part of creating a final product. Your "abstracts" aren't the product of previsualization. You aren't first seeing the eventual abstraction and using technical skills to produce an out of camera product that best suits a specific abstraction. Instead shoot many images, with no real idea of what any one of them might produce. On inspection you try various parameters to see what produces an appealing result, even though that result was not considered when the shutter was tripped. You're dealing a hand cards off the deck, and then drawing more to see if a happy match occurs. Not that it doesn't work... just that there are two distinctly different approaches to the production of art. The method you use is a bit haphazard? What I'm describing fits very well with the methodology of Pablo Picasso and Ansel Adams, as two examples of people with talent and the ability to previsualize beyond the wildest imagination for most of us. Of course I can't even begin to approach their level of talent and skill, but that methodology is what I try to work with and develop. However, where our discussion has clearly lined up is that we both believe that anyone who thinks "get it right in the camera" means a straight out of the camera finished product is grossly limited in artistic expression.

Savageduck
Agreed. While Adams took as much care as possible to capture a scene he had pre-visualized, his real creative work was in post in the darkroom and in the production of his prints.

The same was true of Ed Weston.