Discovery Day

I'm going to a Canon Discovery today in Cedar Rapids. (I got up in plenty of time [5:12 AM]). PhotoPro, a camera store in Cedar Rapids is sponsoring the day and it sounds interesting. It is a day of discovery of your camera. There are tons of options in the camera, and I know I don't come close to using the camera to the fullest extent I can.

There is a school of thought that says post processing should be kept at a minimum (working with Photoshop or other editing programs). As a matter of fact in photographic competitions there are rules regarding post processing. Photographers may perform enhancements and modifications of the image that could have been done at the time the image was taken, but that do not change the original truth of the image, e.g. cropping, and flipping the image are acceptable, adding or removing elements is not.

All major brand DSLR's have picture style settings that control color, contrast, sharpness, and saturation. And, all of these can be done in the camera. What I want to learn today is more about controlling the image in the camera with limited post picture taking processing. There are times when you need to "fix" a picture. I have frequently had only seconds to take a picture of a moving subject or the "right moment" before it was gone. there was no time to "tune" the camera to all of the appropriate setting of ISO, aperture, or picture style. It was a shoot right NOW moment or miss it. In that case, a little post processing is OK.

In competitions there should be a creative category where you can process all you want - and I like that category also.