Ah yes, the poll. I've seen it. Good to know that sound scientific practices are being considered on your part of this "argument". I guess the article above is iffy based on their testing prior to the poll. 53 actual votes, why go on?
I sometimes wonder why we Americans even vote, lets just have a poll and be done with it.
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We talk about this all the time, same subject, almost the same cameras, since the RG days when the first digital back spouted an lcd, or the first Canon files turned orange in ACR.
As a photograher, not a color scientist, not a pre press specialist, not a color profile maker, I see things in a different manner.
What I want, I'm sure my clients want, what I know the printer, the publication, the web designer wants is an image that comes up on screen is the visual representation the photographer wants to present and I'm not just talking about numbers like under 255 or techniques like expose the histogram to the right, (actually I've never viewed a histogram on the back of a camera.)
What we need is a reliable standard that everyone can "visually" see.
Nothing freaks me or a client out like looking at orange faces, or blown out highlights whehter it's on a camera or an Eizo. Nothing adds more work in post processing than to drop a file into a converter and the file must be tweaked with 24 minute changes, just to get to where we were, or thought we were" in the first place.
You really want to freak out a client, show them a file in linear non profiled mode and all but the most savvy will have a stunned look.
You want to really freak out a film photographer that is moving to digital, let them shoot 500 frames and lock them in the room with an I-mac, any software suite and a deadline.
I firmly believe and understand that Canon, Nikon, Leaf, Phase, Sinar, Hasselblad, Leica, Sony, Adobe, . . . all strive to make the very best equipment and software possible.
I also firmly believe and understand that everyone of these companies wants to cover their own unique territory, but none of them have the same exact post processing routines as the other and the interfaces from V4, C1 3.78, Lightroom, Raw Developer, Flexcolor, LC110, V8, are all so different and unique you MUST work them for days, weeks and months, just to learn the basics, much less the nuiances.
Some files require conversion to dng, some decomressed, some converters read the whole profile, some just make it up as you go, some make it look film like, some are so far from any film I've ever seen that I know it's going to be a though night.
I know this is going to sound far fetched, or give the impression that I'm looking for a non post production workflow, but how great would it be to have a huge detailed lcd, that just plugs into the camera.
You shoot a file, turn some knobs on the handheld calibrated device (yes knobs, not lcd sliders)
change the color, tone, saturation and hue and once set, those settings go into the camera, into the files that all the converters read exactly like the lcd.
Or better yet, take your file in the handheld device, pull down nc100, provia, trix, Agfa 100x, Kodak EPR, whatever and the "film look" stays with the whole process unless you change your mind at a later date.
I can't imagine the time savings this would give us and better yet, I can't imagine how happy a client would be to look at a non orange face, a non flat shadow, a non blown highlight and a look, snap, feel of film right out of the camera.
I know post production is here and probably here to stay and I work files as hard an deep as anyone, but when I think back on my first volme digital camera, the Canon 1ds, my workflow was 1/10th of what it is today.
The camera made raws and the corresponding jpegs were in srgb. with a few simple WB adjustments the jpegs were right on for web galleries and contact sheets, usually without as much as a single tweak.
Then came the 1ds2 that all of a sudden switched to adobe 98 jpegs if you wanted a more neutral look, which required batch converting them to srgb for the web.
Now, since medium format backs don't make any preview worthy of putting online, I (and about a billion other photographers finish each shoot staring into a computer for hours on end, trying to roll our own film.
Sure, the converters are better, more full featured, faster and many have become much more stable, but still at the end of the day, we're still futzing with files and all of us only have so much time.
This is a copy of an original unretouched 1ds jpg. out of camera shot in 2004.
[a href=\"http://www.ishotit.com/4D5U6843%20copy.jpg]http://www.ishotit.com/4D5U6843%20copy.jpg[/url]
It's not perfect, obviously needs retouching, obviously will be worked in color and tone once selected, but for a first proof it's good.
4 years later we're still fighting to get the first proof image processed to this level for web galleries.
Today was a perfect example of time management. I spend 6.5 hours in front of the computer working on files and 1.2 hours talking to clients on future and current business.
Guess which one was the most profitable and rewarding?
JR