Getting it right in camera, or ....

I do what's best for the situation. Sports (speed) .. macro (dof, angle perspective on the object, etc). portraiture. It's all different.

When aircraft are coming 100+mph towards you, you get the shot and the priority is your focus point and shutter speed. And making sure you get the entire plane in the shot. You don't have much control over anything else. That is similar to sports. The action is moving and changing your viewing perspective.

Taking macro, portraiture, landscape .. try to get the shot as perfect as possible making sure white/bright areas have detail, etc

 

I started doing some portraits for friends and family in my garage recently. I have some umbrellas and a couple of flashes and I bought a huge piece of white muslin fabric for a backdrop. Well the muslin has some wrinkles in it that I ironed out the best I could but some I couldn't get rid of. I figured getting the subject away from the backdrop and blurring out the wrinkles in Photoshop would be easy but I couldn't have been more wrong. They look horrible and it's a nightmare getting rid of the wrinkles without making the picture look "fake".

I think if there are problems a person is seeing when shooting and saying "thats OK I can just fix it in post" it might be worthwhile to rethink the approach. But I hate with a passion having to do any kind of extensive editing in Photoshop so maybe it's just me.

 

In my field I have the option to take my time in composing the image and grooming the set/model before taking the shot. Clothes should be pinned if they don't fit right, otherwise there will be liquifying to be done later. Clothes should be steamed otherwise I'll have to spend ridiculous amounts of time fixing it in post; the same goes for making sure the hair looks good or the makeup isn't smudged. I know that if I don't take the time to fix these and similar issues before taking the shot, I'll be forced to spend a lot more time editing it later than what it would take to "get it right in camera", just to get a result that will likely be less than ideal compared to fixing the issue before the exposure is made. I just don't have the attention span or patience to do that much editing, so I put the work towards getting it right before the editing part. When I see people preaching "get it right in camera", I interpret it as good advice because it will save you time and work in most cases.

 

Have you tried using a steamer on it?

 

Getting it right in camera for me means nailing peak action, nailing the focus, getting my lighting the way I planned.
I can always crop but I cannot afford to lose that perfect moment while trying to frame it "perfectly."

 

When shooting film, especially slide, I try to get as much right in camera as I possibly can. With digital this is not as important but I still make an effort because it makes for better options in post the more I nail in camera.

 

The better you can get it in camera, the easier the post process.

 

What is the reason for getting it right in camera? Is it possible that there are multiple and different reasons?

It could be that getting it captured and close enough to then enable post-processing is the only need.

It could be that getting right in camera is about efficiency and reducing the cost (and time) spent in post-processing.

In my case, I enjoy the process of taking a picture just as much (and sometimes even more) than the picture itself. Sometimes I've gone through lots of setup to take a picture (and then tweaking to shoot it again), and been satisfied with the picture *on the back monitor*. I've even deleted that final picture with no regrets, because my only purpose was to take the picture (and not caring about keeping it).

 

Sure there are plenty of times that I like to just play with images in post processing. As a creative thing.

However, in my thought process getting it "right" in camera would be getting the maximum amount of data to work with. By that I mean, getting the WB as close to correct as possible, getting the exposure correct so that you don't blow out highlights or crush the black detail. I guess it would be also about getting as much dynamic range as possible out of your given camera.

For me shooting sports for the local paper it is about getting good images straight out of the camera so that I don't have to spend as much time in post to get them images. I have started working with the sports editor to get an image on social media at half time of both the girls and boys basketball games.