Originally Posted by DeanCapture

Thanks again Munki!!!

I agree to a large extent. It really hit home with me a few years back when I saw some raw movie footage that was shot by Spielberg. It was raw footage, straight out of his camera on one of his big budget shoots. The footage was flat, little to no contrast and the color was way off and it really looked like poop. I later found out that this is typical of the way that film looks when it comes out of those big Panavision Movie Cameras that so many of the studios use.

They shoot "flat" to ensure that they have as much info as possible in the highlights and in the shadows. It's like "insurance" that they don't clip the highlights or block up the shadows.

It not until that footage makes it's way to the color grader (color corrector) that the footage starts to come to life. That's when they balance out the blacks, whites and mids and clean up the white balance. They can even adjust with the color even more to give the movie it's own style (think Matrix movies, they had a green tint). They can dodge & burn, adjust the color, contrast, hue & saturation and even add vignettes and change colors of particular items. Not that I go to that extreme but it's nice to see creatives in the movie world incorporating the technology that is available to them to blow us away with their art.

Truth be told, I try to get as good an image as I can when I'm shooting. But, I do have budget and time restraints that keep me from spending as much time as I'd like so I do have to rely on post processing to help me some. Does this make me any less of a photographer? To haters ... of course it does. To me ... It does not.

I always encourage shooters who ask me for advice to study as much as you can about Photoshop and everything that it has to offer. Every time I sit down to process pictures I try to experiment a little and try something new. Sometimes it looks like shit and sometimes it rocks. But if I never try.....I'll never grow

Thanks again for the commets - have a great weekend!