“Old School” Photography

[Graham_of_Rainham]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about going back to basics and working more on getting it right in camera, rather than post production.

This comes from mainly working, in the past, with slide film and having virtually no capacity to edit the final product.

I soon found myself thinking: “what camera produces the best jpeg images”. As this would be very close to the straight out of the camera results I had with slides.

As usual I Googled that question and found this very interesting and helpful article in AP

https://amateurphotographer.com/buying-advice/best-brands-for-jpeg-shooters/

I was, of course, very pleased to see that Olympus is given high praise for the jpeg output.

The internet being what it is, there are many other opinions on the subject and I am not looking to recreate the look of Kodachrome 64 or any other film.

So: I think I will begin with a “Factory Reset” and get back to basics, in an effort to rekindle my original enthusiasm.

Perhaps I should shoot 36 frames and wait a week to look at the results….

[alfbranch]

Graham
I hope you get the enjoyment you are after and the results work for you.

I often shoot RAW and JPEG when on holiday as many shots need no processing so it can save time. The RAW frames are for the difficult lighting shots and my more serious shots.
Many people are critical of the approach others take and I would say shoot how you wish and in this case it is an informed choice based on experience.

[Ian]

Andy Westlake at AP has a soft spot for Olympus/OM System and owns (and frequently uses I think an E-M5).

Josh Waller too.

Ian

[pdk42]

I'm nearly always disappointed (sometimes severely disappointed !) with SOOC JPEGs. For landscapes I think shooting JPEG is really too limiting - it's asking too much for a simple algorithm to fix the lighting variations that landscapes usually throw at you (bright clouds, deep shadows, colour casts in shadows, ...). For other genres I think SOOC can work very well - esp people shots, macro stacks, street, maybe even events. But as alfbranch says, it's really a personal choice. For sure, the immediacy of SOOC JPEGs is refreshing and it can certainly be a challenge to nail the exposure and other shooting-time settings right.

[blu-by-u]

Either I am a horrible photographer or a very lazy one. Almost everything is SOOC JPG. I have gone back to SPOT and I really like the WYSIWYG of the EVF. I would apply the AEL the recompose then shoot.

[blu-by-u]

...........
Perhaps I should shoot 36 frames and wait a week to look at the results….

Don't forget to fix your WB, ISO and turn off playback.

[BDennis]

Thanks for the link and reminder to try SOOC / in camera JPEG more.

"shoot 36 frames and wait a week to look at the results"

Well, I take a lot of RAW shots doing bird photography. Maybe up to 2000 in a session for a day at a reserve. I dump them all on a drive and often can't face looking at them for months due to the amount of them - OM-1 problem!

The idea of SOOC has appealed to me the last couple of years not for bird photos so much but for trips and holidays like Alf mentions where I mostly take scenics (ok, holiday snaps maybe).

I take RAW + JPEG and each day try and dump all the good SOOC shots on my Flickr in an album if I have good internet. Then it's easier to share them on social media with family / friends.

Last year we walked the Hadrians wall trail over about 10 days and I did this, I was too exhausted in the evenings to do RAW processing to share anything thats was processed and polished from RAWs.

I think there's some mileage in using SOOC and some of the computational stuff in camera - I quite like the Live GND computational grad filter on the OM-1 Mk ii for this to give skies a bit of a boost, I used it quite a lot. Here's one from the Hadrian walking with the ND 08 soft setting:

Hadrian's Wall walk Day 5 by Bill Dennis, on Flickr

I was glad I did this because it would have taken me ages to sort out the raw files and share anything with our friends who walked with us.

As for birds, sometimes it's possible to do some SOOCs - here's a Grey Plover HHHR shot SOOC JPEG

Grey Plover OM-1 HHHR SOOC JPEG by Bill Dennis, on Flickr

The thing is though, I'm not brave enough to turn off the RAW as there might be those one or two shots you really want to process to get the best out of them.

The challenge of SOOC is quite appealing though and there is some mileage with in-camera JPEG processing too as mentioned in the article. I sometimes wish that had a better cropping facility instead of the fixed aspect ratios.

Bill

[MJ224]

I think we all enjoy the journey, but the arrival is the imprtant bit.....??

Not for all though...



SOOC (jpeg) using the OM-5, on a rainy day. And no processing other than re-sizing.

[Graham_of_Rainham]

Don't forget to fix your WB, ISO and turn off playback.

Absolutely! I have always had the WB set at 5600K and the ISO at 200. Also I can’t remember ever having the “playback” on as I don’t often look at what I have taken and really only use the screen as a composition tool and SCP.

[Graham_of_Rainham]

BDennis I have always shot. RAW+JPG and can’t see that changing, as I will want to experiment with RAW files to see what settings I may want to change to get the end results looking more to my own liking.

[Graham_of_Rainham]

MJ224 I shall be looking into re-sizing, as I think there is a lot of processing going on, that adversely affect the quality of the end result.

Unfortunately, there is little or nothing that can be done about the processing that happens when we upload our images to social media platforms.

[MikeOxon]

I find that the Olympus JPEGs are usually satisfactory but I do shoot RAW+JPEG for use in 'pathological' cases. Often, when I process RAW files myself, I find I cannot improve on the JPEG - it's all too easy to apply too much contrast or saturation which looks OK when I move the sliders but then looks over-cooked, when I come back later 🙂

[MJ224]

I think I am guilty of applying a few "corrections" that are not needed....@(

[pdk42]

I guess the raw vs JPEG thing reflects to some degree what our objectives and approach to photography are. For me, photography is primarily a way for me to produce "art" (since I can't draw/paint/etc!). I know that sounds pretentious, but it's best way to explain my motivation. I don't do photography to document things, or to share with friends and family etc. I want to make images that are worth framing. I don't care if I only get one good image from an outing and sometimes I'll come back with nothing. If i make one really good image once a month, I'm happy!

So, I'm chasing the perfect shot from an outing and I'll spend time on that image - much like a painter will work on a painting. Using PP tools on a raw file provides a huge potential for creative expression. I can add mood and character, as well as do basic fixes like removing distractions and fixing tones and WB. It's no coincidence that the technical standard of photographs produced since the emergence of digital has dramatically improved - and I think that PP plays a large part in that step-change.

Thankfully I don't do action or wildlife photography, so I don't take a lot of shots at any one time. If I shoot 300 on an outing, it's a lot.

So, for me, shooting raw is really very little downside and a lot of upside.

[alfbranch]

I am a lot more like this Paul and I have plenty of shots that would not work at all in if shot in jpeg

I have turned up at some amazing spots (I have often been before) if the conditions are not working the camera may stay in the bag but if they are working for me I can end up shooting with two cameras one on tripod one in hand.

[Wreckdiver]

“Old School” …. Hmmmm. That’s something I thought about recently, that is back to using monochrome film. I seriously have a thing about getting a Mamiya 645 and 120 roll film. I used to use 120 B&W film in my very first camera, a Baldixette in the mid 60s. 12 photos to a roll if I remember correctly. Just a dream I guess, but you never know 😉

[Graham_of_Rainham]

“Old School” …. Hmmmm. That’s something I thought about recently, that is back to using monochrome film. I seriously have a thing about getting a Mamiya 645 and 120 roll film. I used to use 120 B&W film in my very first camera, a Baldixette in the mid 60s. 12 photos to a roll if I remember correctly. Just a dream I guess, but you never know 😉

I often find myself composing, and cropping, for square format. As for B&W, I still have several filters that we used to enhance monochrome pictures, I may even dig them out…

Interestingly it looks like the new OM3 has “film” effects built in. However that’s not really what I want to do. I mostly used Kodachrome 64 and sometimes 25 because I liked the results. I like what the Olympus camera produces and want to rediscover and improve my technique to get more “keepers” straight from the camera. (With just a square crop occasionally )