Photoclubalpha

Pat opened a thread about image manipulation here http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... =17&t=7383 and some of us had a bit of a dig and a poke at the subject, it was quite an interesting thread I thought.
I think anyone would have to admit that digital imaging is open to vastly more manipulation by many more people than film ever was, but when it comes to ‘cheating’ then you have to ask yourself if the particular image is ART or is it supposed to represent reality, personally it’s fine by me whatever the intention is or isn’t except when it’s something that’s been heavily manipulated and then passed off as being real.
If the image is INTENDED to be art it doesn’t matter a hoot what manipulation has been done, there isn’t any deception involved.
For example, when I see an outdoor scenic image shot by a camera with a wide angle lens its art, it was never intended to portray reality in the first place, those kinds of photos are usually reasonably easy to identify and assess accordingly on the basis of art for its own sake and often are very good too.
Convexly the same image could have been shot by the same camera in panoramic style from further back with a standard lens (vanishing point coincides with the horizon as it does in real life) and then it would qualify as a reasonably accurate portrayal of reality, those can be more difficult to do though due to limited backup space, and the perspective is often not as dramatic.
Likewise with processing, it’s usually reasonably obvious when images have started to become coloured plastic and that’s ok, its art too, hey as art it looks fine and catches the eye, nobody can say you should do art this way or that way, it is entirely up to the individual taste and what they like to do with their images and the level its done at as well.
What I’m not keen on is manufacturers making cameras that are handicapped from being capable of doing a clinically accurate record type image if one wants to do one.
Greg

Good reminder of Pat's thread, Greg. I wonder where she is? Not seen her post for ages.

Yeah Birma I dunno where Pat is, she usually pops in when their business is in the off season (if I remember what she said correctly), we seem to be misplacing our best and most respected females lately.
Greg

Just a quick note, been looking at the A77 II images in raw and the difference is fairly small from what I can see. Maybe a side by side would be more revealing (hard to tell what's going on exposure wise) AF does look interesting if you require that beefed up capability or the big buffer. I'm surprised some of the DPR posters are duped by the stronger jpeg NR though, there might be a modest improvement in raw performance (but really quite small) but the jpegs look quite awful to me (tons of NR and chroma NR not well dealt with) should be interesting to see the reviews though. I do wish Sony would get their head around NR "off" hit the colour noise..don't try to remove all the luminance noise, it kills detail and 9 out of 10 you'll never see it in a print anyway (at normal sizes)

At £599 I'd take a look at the A77 II, but at nearly £1000 I'll pass on that right now. Still at least it fits the A77 grip which I now have. One to look at later on down the road maybe, at least there is another A Mount body. Maybe Sony will do an affordable full frame later this year, that could work if it's competitive price wise

Some reports of A77 II SSS issues on a number of forums.
Appears to only affect the EVF SSS.

Mike

I saw that whilst the feature looks handy I'd doubt I'd use it much I even started turning off the AS to stop wear on the Km5d's I have unless I needed it.