Editing or cheating?

[Steve Arnold]

When I had 35mm film cameras it was a matter of pride to get a good shot as near perfect with just the camera and photographers skill. I wanted to leave as little as possible to be corrected during processing.

Then I moved on to digital SLR cameras and could use Photoshop to edit my shots. Even then I would only tweak areas of my photograph, a bit like "dodge & burn" during development.

Yesterday I took some photos down along the river on my phone, when I got home I played around with them using the in-phone editing. Normally I just crop and make minor exposure adjustment, but this time I discovered the "AI" function.......

Which quickly became this, using the AI function.....

It's all getting a bit silly now, you see so many shots that simply are not of our planet!

What do you think?

 

[wetthrough]

Not an unpleasing result although AI forgot to move the reflection of the sun.

 

[mikench]

The problem is how to tell real from fake just like stories, films and facial photos. I still admire the photo of a bird, animal or landscape where by dint of skill, determination , perseverance and a bit of luck, a cameraman has captured a magical moment rather than Ai on a computer. Like the supporters of Kris Kringle, I will continue to believe. It used to be said the camera doesn’t lie.

 

[@Clive]

The AI has moved the position of the sun, but left its glare where it was. However, in my view it isnt cheating unless you claim or lead people to believe that it is original. The whole process of taking a photo is about editing whether it is the film speed, shutter speed, focal length, filters...... so in effect probably 99.9% of pro shots are edited in some way to create the desired image. It has been the case since photograhy was invented.

Only one of these photos is unadulterated.

The other two have had some Photoshop tweaking.

 

[mikench]

This was the 2023 Wildlife photo of the year.

ethereal picture of a shimmering golden horseshoe crab.

 

[@Clive]

Looking at the lighting set up, probably taken in a tank.

 

[mikench]

From the BBC website.


A picture of a mysterious and other-worldly horseshoe crab has earned Laurent Ballesta the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) 2023.
The golden marine arthropod is seen hugging the bottom muds in waters off Pangatalan Island, in the Philippines.
It is tracked by three small fish, hoping the crab's movements will expose an opportunistic meal in the sediment.

You will know better of course.

 

[mikench]

Like you Steve I have been interested in photography since being a boy and being given a box brownie. I still have all my 35mm gear but it’s never used. I wasn’t any good at all but I only did it for my enjoyment. I took a lot of black and white pics some of which were good in my eyes. I got fed up carting long lenses and a tripod around except when on a mission and bought a Sony compact which fitted in my pocket, had a very high spec( 30 x optical zoom) and which I could just point and shoot. My laziness now limits me to my iPhone. I still use the Sony digital on special occasions like family weddings. You clearly have an eye for a good photo and I admire many of those you take. My DIL takes some lovely photos with a similar eye which I, sadly , do not possess. She does it effortlessly. In my case I mess about too long and the critical moment has passed.

 

[Steve Arnold]

I think my limit of acceptable "adulteration" is slight adjustment to the exposure, contrast and maybe colour. Any changes to colour tend to be adjustment for failings in the digital camera, I adjust to what I remember my eyes actually seeing when I took that shot. I find that with some digital cameras that is becoming more difficult!

My memory is largely based on vision and my head is full of "snap-shots"

Sometimes I will also make slight adjustments to better suit the media likely to be used when viewing.

There is now (maybe always has been!) a point where a photograph is abstract art, I can admire that when done well. But to stick a setting sun in a photo without actually timing it, being there and using genuine photographic skill actually annoys me. The few times I have taken shots like that I felt such a sense of achievement it was like catching that "Unicorn" - a 10 lb+ barbel in a french river!

 

[@Clive]

From the BBC website.


A picture of a mysterious and other-worldly horseshoe crab has earned Laurent Ballesta the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) 2023.
The golden marine arthropod is seen hugging the bottom muds in waters off Pangatalan Island, in the Philippines.
It is tracked by three small fish, hoping the crab's movements will expose an opportunistic meal in the sediment.

You will know better of course.

And the background lights are very bright stars? If it wasn't taken in a tank it will probably have been lured to the 'studio' using bait. I would guess that the vast majority of entrants will have been manipulated in some way. That has been the case in wildlife photography for decades. Tame animals being used, wildlife parks being hired for the day and scenes and backgrounds created to disguise the location. Stuffed animals used,

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/compound-eye/most-of-the-wildlife-photography-you-see-is-fake/

Wildlife Photographer Banned from Competition After Faking Image

Staging a stuffed animal instead of capturing the real one.

hypebeast.com

'There's a lot of fakery': insiders spill on the dirty tricks behind wildlife photos

After a photographer lost an award for allegedly using a taxidermy anteater, colleagues describe cases of glued insects and trained tigers

www.theguardian.com

 

[Steve Arnold]

Like you Steve I have been interested in photography since being a boy and being given a box brownie. I still have all my 35mm gear but it’s never used. I wasn’t any good at all but I only did it for my enjoyment. I took a lot of black and white pics some of which were good in my eyes. I got fed up carting long lenses and a tripod around except when on a mission and bought a Sony compact which fitted in my pocket, had a very high spec( 30 x optical zoom) and which I could just point and shoot. My laziness now limits me to my iPhone. I still use the Sony digital on special occasions like family weddings. You clearly have an eye for a good photo and I admire many of those you take. My DIL takes some lovely photos with a similar eye which I, sadly , do not possess. She does it effortlessly. In my case I mess about too long and the critical moment has passed.

That has been my story with cameras as well!

Last year I borrowed a Nikon SLR from Alistair as I felt I could improve on some of the photos I have taken along the valley. It felt so clumsy to carry and slow to use that I quickly lost interest!

I took the Nikon into a local town square where I had taken good photos with my phone camera. Really, I felt so self-conscious and like a tourist I could not get a good shot!

When Alistair and I fished off a pontoon towards sunset I got this shot whilst his cameras languished in his car........

I noticed last week that he had upgraded his phone to a recent iPhone, he was actually using that for a photo

I still have a Sony Nex with wide and telephoto lenses. It takes brilliant photos but the batteries always seem to be dead. My phone battery lasts me 2-3 days of photos and videos, how things have changed this last decade or so!

PS, that sunset photo only had the lightest of adjustment with the editor, more about cropping than colour. The original shot had vivid sunset colours without any help from me. Such a view only last seconds, that's the great thing about sitting fishing with a phone in your gilet pocket!

 

[@Clive]

I think my limit of acceptable "adulteration" is slight adjustment to the exposure, contrast and maybe colour. Any changes to colour tend to be adjustment for failings in the digital camera, I adjust to what I remember my eyes actually seeing when I took that shot. I find that with some digital cameras that is becoming more difficult!

My memory is largely based on vision and my head is full of "snap-shots"

Sometimes I will also make slight adjustments to better suit the media likely to be used when viewing.

There is now (maybe always has been!) a point where a photograph is abstract art, I can admire that when done well. But to stick a setting sun in a photo without actually timing it, being there and using genuine photographic skill actually annoys me. The few times I have taken shots like that I felt such a sense of achievement it was like catching that "Unicorn" - a 10 lb+ barbel in a french river!

I used to have the Ansel Adams trilogy 'The Film', 'The Camera' & 'The Lens'. They were written about a hundred years ago and concerned the manipulation of black and white photos. He had glass plates loaded with different film emulsions that could offer a choice of coarse, grainy images or smooth images, differing contrasts and other small differences. Each glass slide distorted or enhanced the image in some way. This was enhanced by dodging and burning in the printing process. His field cameras could distort perspective to avoid the converging verticles that you get when pointing a camera upwards or downwards. And of course lenses offered different perspectives from wide angle where objects in the background look further away and the opposite with long, or telephoto lenses. He also used coloured filters to change tonal balance. A red filter darkened blue skies and a yellow or green one lightened grass and foliage. Nothing in the photo was left to chance. He could move his camera 2 inches and adjust the lateral perspective to effectively move a tree out of the way.

Ironically his best known photo was taken while driving back from a shoot when he came across a scene. He knew that he only had a minute or two before he would lose the perfect composition. Clambering onto the roof of his car he set up a tripod, mounted a field camera, added a lense and film plate, guessed the exposure and took the shot.

https://www.anseladams.com/story-of-moon-and-half-dome/

 

[mikench]

A nice photo is also a reminder of a moment in time, a place you visited or of a valued friend or loved child or grandchild. It’s great if the image is good but equally it’s the captured moment that matters to me.

 

[Steve Arnold]

I used to have the Ansel Adams trilogy 'The Film', 'The Camera' & 'The Lens'. They were written about a hundred years ago and concerned the manipulation of black and white photos. He had glass plates loaded with different film emulsions that could offer a choice of coarse, grainy images or smooth images, differing contrasts and other small differences. Each glass slide distorted or enhanced the image in some way. This was enhanced by dodging and burning in the printing process. His field cameras could distort perspective to avoid the converging verticles that you get when pointing a camera upwards or downwards. And of course lenses offered different perspectives from wide angle where objects in the background look further away and the opposite with long, or telephoto lenses. He also used coloured filters to change tonal balance. A red filter darkened blue skies and a yellow or green one lightened grass and foliage. Nothing in the photo was left to chance. He could move his camera 2 inches and adjust the lateral perspective to effectively move a tree out of the way.

Ironically his best known photo was taken while driving back from a shoot when he came across a scene. He knew that he only had a minute or two before he would lose the perfect composition. Clambering onto the roof of his car he set up a tripod, mounted a field camera, added a lense and film plate, guessed the exposure and took the shot.

https://www.anseladams.com/story-of-moon-and-half-dome/

Yes, wonderful stuff!

I have had good results with the panorama setting on my mobile phone. Oh, how does the magical chip and software manage to "almost" seamlessly join up so much input????

But the photographer still has to do his bit. I found moving just two feet along this lock wall completely altered the scene recorded, there was only one spot that gave the effect I wanted....

As much as I love the old photography skills I can still find a use for this new-fangled gizmo driven stuff. That shot "bends" the straight lock wall but gets the overall image pleasingly right! I would have been pulling my hair out to construct that photo using my old Photoshop programme!

 

[@Clive]

At the time of sustaining a serious eye injury that put paid to my photography I had probably ten grands worth of equipment mostly paid for from ebay dealings and photo sales. The 35mm outfit was based on a Contax RTS III with Zeiss optics plus a Contax G2 compact rangefinder. My medium format kit was Mamiya 67 and a Linhoff 6x7 field camera. But, as in my fishing I also used vintage equipment and sometimes I would go offon my motorbike with a small pocket camera bought from Cashconvertors for a fiver or an old German folding camera and a roll of mono film. The best small camera I possessed was an Olympus XA; https://gear.vogelius.se/-editorials/olympus-xa/index.html but I also had a 1936 Contax II that was a jewel of engineering until the Russians captured the factory, took it to Kiev and 'improved' it

Some of the photos taken with those little, old cameras are my favourites;

 

[Steve Arnold]

At the time of sustaining a serious eye injury that put paid to my photography I had probably ten grands worth of equipment mostly paid for from ebay dealings and photo sales. The 35mm outfit was based on a Contax RTS III with Zeiss optics plus a Contax G2 compact rangefinder. My medium format kit was Mamiya 67 and a Linhoff 6x7 field camera. But, as in my fishing I also used vintage equipment and sometimes I would go offon my motorbike with a small pocket camera bought from Cashconvertors for a fiver or an old German folding camera and a roll of mono film. The best small camera I possessed was an Olympus XA; https://gear.vogelius.se/-editorials/olympus-xa/index.html but I also had a 1936 Contax II that was a jewel of engineering until the Russians captured the factory, took it to Kiev and 'improved' it

Some of the photos taken with those little, old cameras are my favourites;

View attachment 28980


View attachment 28981

Some of those 35mm compact and rangefinder cameras were very good. I had an Olympus, might have been the Pen E, and the lens was excellent.

I also owned a Zorki 4, may have been the Russian version of the Contax you mentioned, that camera fouled up and wrecked a film I had shot up in the Arctic and the Norwegian fiords. I took the lens off the camera (the only good part!) went up to the frigates flight deck and threw the Zorki into the sea. It has probably rotted by now, somewhere deep between Norway and Rosyth!

 

[@Clive]

Some of those 35mm compact and rangefinder cameras were very good. I had an Olympus, might have been the Pen E, and the lens was excellent.

I also owned a Zorki 4, may have been the Russian version of the Contax you mentioned, that camera fouled up and wrecked a film I had shot up in the Arctic and the Norwegian fiords. I took the lens off the camera (the only good part!) went up to the frigates flight deck and threw the Zorki into the sea. It has probably rotted by now, somewhere deep between Norway and Rosyth!

The Pen camera was designed by the same man who designed the XA. The Zorki however started life as a Leica lookalike. When Germany was in retreat the Russians captured many businesses in the eastern part. Some of these were dismantled and shipped to Russia. The Contax / Zeiss factory was rebuilt in Kiev and staffed by slave labour including prisoners and orphans. The German factory had been run by on philanthropist principles similar to the Cadbury and Titus Salt businesses, by Quakers. Needless to say quality control went downhill. The Leica plant was captured by the Allies and its secrets shared, but remained in situ. The Russians obtained the plans and designs of both companies and exported the cameras to the west. Each new improved model was worse than the one it replaced. Sharp corners and edges were dangerous and they rarely worked for long. Back in the fifties through sixties to the seventies the governments of UK & USA were trying to convince us that Russia was technologically superior and needed to be feared. Russia's best attempts to secure western currency was by sales of such technological marvels as Zenith and Zorki cameras and Lada cars! I am sure that you would have experienced the similarly technologically superior Russian warships on your voyages.

 

[Ray Roberts]

I bought an Olympus XA when they first came out, around 1980. I bought it for a trip to Florida. It was excellent and fitted in a shirt pocket. It wasn’t cheap at the time. I found the receipt a couple of weeks ago in an old passport. It took really good photos and I used it until I got my first digital camera.

 

[Keith M]

When I served as a Naval Photographer in the Fleet air arm between 1971 to 1974 (I served in 3 different branches in total throughout my career) most of our photographic work was done using Rollieflex’s, Mamia’s, Pentax’s or hasselblad’s and occasionally we used Leicia’s plus a couple of larger (4x5”) format cameras and the very occasional Cini camera and other specialist camera.

For land/sea scape photos when the sky wasn’t that good I used to superimpose clouds during the printing process from sky shots taken especially for this reason.
We also did solarisation and colour toning and other processes to obtain different effects.

Keith

 

[@Clive]

When I served as a Naval Photographer in the Fleet air arm between 1971 to 1974 (I served in 3 different branches in total throughout my career) most of our photographic work was done using Rollieflex’s, Mamia’s, Pentax’s or hasselblad’s and occasionally we used Leicia’s plus a couple of larger (4x5”) format cameras and the very occasional Cini camera and other specialist camera.

For land/sea scape photos when the sky wasn’t that good I used to superimpose clouds during the printing process from sky shots taken especially for this reason.
We also did solarisation and colour toning and other processes to obtain different effects.

Keith

So you were a dodger and burner Keith

I used the lab that our Force Photgraphic Club had in the basement of HQ. As digital rolled out I got use of some Apple computers and imagery software at a college where my then girlfriend was studying. It was really difficult to understand af first, but then as I used the program more, the easier it became. There is a photograph taken by a Victorian photographer called 'Through the Station Doorway'. It is of an old sailing ship moored at Whiby harbour framed in the photo by the arched stone doorway of the railway station. I had taken a shot from the same location of the replica Endeavour sailing ship. By then the quay had been extended to incorporate a car park. There were lamp posts, signs, cars, etc. spoiling the view. It took me weeks to merge the two photos and remove all the modern clutter. I had got a printable image with the old station doorway complete with gas lamp in mono blending into a colour scene of the old ship. I took the image home on one of the file stick thingies and lost it

Three days before I set off to drive to France with cat, dog, bedding and computer with all my thousands of scanned and digital images on it the computer stopped working and the data could not be recovered. All I have left are a few hundred 35mm and 6x7 slides.

This digital malarkey has some serious down sides.