I haven’t got any staying power!
I’ve already given up on my JPEG project.
Just a month ago, I put up a case for shooting JPEG only – but the novelty has already worn off.
Does that mean I have just destroyed my own case for shooting JPEG only?
Not really. The JPEGs I have shot lately have mostly been pretty good. But not all have been perfect, and I have, in fact, done a wee bit of post-processing on nearly all the images I have posted on Facebook and to my daily photo page.
A little bit of levelling here, a bit of a crop there, a touch-up of blown-out sky or white balance tweak (neither easy with a JPEG!), addition of a preset, and so on.
Okay, I guess adding a full-blown preset is more than a little bit of PP!
What I have learnt is that despite SOOC images being good, verging on great, shooting JPEGs only is NOT for me!
I don’t want to get to the point where I am perceived as being that guy who brags that “all my images are straight out of the camera…”.
I’m not sure too many photographers like that lack of humility. (No offence intended to those of you who are SOOC experts).
I also very much miss the after-match stuff associated with taking photographs – the post-processing phase. That is all part of my photographic fun!
Besides, I can’t even hold my camera level half of the time, so I definitely need a way to straighten things up….
Anyway, before I get too far away from the topic of shooting JPEGs only and the SOOC experience, here are some photographs that, apart from levelling the horizon in a couple of cases, are genuinely straight out of the camera.
Can I say genuinely if I have straightened the horizon after the event?
What I mean is no colours manipulated…just good old Nikon colour science as baked into the D7500 DSLR’s VIVID setting for JPEGs.
These photographs were taken in January during an early evening bike ride along the Motueka foreshore.
The tide was neither right in nor right out, but the evening was absolutely breezeless, making for some lovely reflections.
The photo of the small dinghy above shows an example where SOOC JPEGs (IMHO) don’t really do justice to the scene.
The clouds reflected in the water at the top of the image look a bit like pixelation to my mind, so in post-processing, I would use a mask of some sort to maybe blur or defocus the cloud area to make it less distracting.
Maybe I’ll have a crack at doing that to the matching RAW file and share it at a later date.
The alternative is to zoom in close and use this one SOOC…
Or take a look at the back end…
No more reflections from here on…but more images from my cycle ride along the Motueka foreshore…
As I said near the top of this story, I’ve given up on my JPEG project, but I will continue to shoot JPEGs in my elderly D3000, mainly because when shooting in RAW + JPEG, the D3000 delivers “basic” lower quality/lower resolution JPEGs.
My D7500 is now reset to RAW + JPEG (Fine).
As to whether I continue my (JPEG-only) daily photo – I haven’t decided yet. At this stage, it seems like a distraction I don’t need. I may just post to FB only.
As I said, I have no staying power!
Hi Rick. I had to laugh at this post, because it perfectly echoes my recent decision to shoot Jpeg only, which also lasted about a month!
And like you, I also enjoy some post-processing to finish an image.
I concur with your conclusion – jpeg only is not for me….
Ha ha – I’m glad I bought a little laughter to your day Wayne. I do, however, have another jpeg story coming up soon…”streetscapes” shot in jpeg with some home-grown presets applied.
Happy days
Rick