Part III: Improve photos?

Every now and then you meet people who say with a certain pride that they never edit pictures or even accuse editors of falsifying something. While disinterest, laziness, a lack of knowledge or ability can certainly be accepted as reasons not to undertake any processing, the allegations of falsification and the perfect image straight from the camera are nonsense and are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the digital image. It all goes back to slide photography. In fact, at that time it was imperative to perfectly consider all aspects of the photo before pressing the shutter button. In addition to the correctly set exposure from exposure time, sensitivity, aperture, also the image composition, the horizontal background, the size of the subject, the perfect moment, etc. In addition, the film had to be laboriously changed every 36 images. Then you got the finished result with a standard development in an external laboratory without the possibility to influence it. But even then almost everyone has experienced the lab adding scratches, color casts, or misdevelopings. 

An image is still developed today, albeit digitally in the camera, without shipping it and without any external chemicals involved. The sensor does not take a finished picture that you can show unadulterated or unedited. If you were to make an unprocessed sensor image visible directly from the camera, there would usually only be a mosaic of 3 colors (red/blue/green) of different brightness. So that would be the real “unadulterated” and “unedited” photo. You could tell little about it. In a first step, the camera calculates an image based on company-internal specifications or selection buttons on the camera. This means that 99% of the editing is done in-camera without your control. Instead, programmers who don’t even know what you are photographing have defined an algorithm that you can’t influence. In addition, there are e.g. dust spots or sensor errors on the picture, which certainly have nothing to do with the reality of the subject. In order to be better involved in this process, you should first of all photograph exclusively in RAW format. The RAW format is an intermediate step in image development. Not all properties of the image are finally defined. The images usually look a bit dull, but can then be edited excellently.

What are the goals of image processing? The initially obvious answer of fidelity to what you have originally seen, can definitely not, otherwise you would have to take a sharp photo over the entire image of your whole view. In fact, an image catches our attention when it is unusual. In terms of the situation, the colors, the perspective, the dynamics, the sharpness, etc. Even a telephoto lens shows something that we can’t see at all, but only a part of it, with macro shots it’s even more dramatic. Colors are also perceived differently by everyone. Many already see a difference with their left and right eyes. Fast recordings result in images that show something that happened far too quickly for us. In all of these cases, the pictures show things of which we don’t even know what they look like beforehand. In order to actually develop an image that shows something interesting without distorting it, it is imperative that I do some image processing.

The RAW format allows me to fine-tune numerous image factors such as sharpness, colors, dynamics, brightness, contrast, etc. This is the only way I can either try to reproduce the situation as realistically as possible or set my own accents. The camera intern processing can do neither of it. It should be noted that this is only the image development. First of all, all this has nothing to do with Photoshop and similar programs, that actually replace pixels. However, the boundaries are fluid, since image development programs also allow basic image manipulation. This ranges from the necessary removal of sensor spots to color changes that are definitely no longer within a permissible image development of a true nature image. Apart from that, it is of course crucial whether I have a more natural or more artistic approach to my photos. Under no circumstances should this be left to the engineers of the camera manufacturers.

In summary, one can say that image processing in nature photography should take the following aspects into account:

1. Correction of falling horizons
2. Desired brightness and contrast
3. Elimination of sensor spots
4. Optimize colors and saturation
5. Optimize sharpness and noise
6. Crop (image detail)

For illustrations any other change, e.g. massive changes in color or the addition or removal of image components using Photoshop, is also permitted, as long as this is not done with the intention of deception, but is clearly recognizable as a work of art. For example, nobody would think of calling a black/white conversion a fake just because the colors are missing and this not natural.

In addition to structural and material differences, there are essentially 3 factors that have a strong influence on the amount of light that ultimately reaches the sensor:

II.1. ISO (or ASA)
Indicates the sensitivity of the sensor to light. While this was actually a hardware property of film in the film days, it is now simply a default for image processing. Higher ISO numbers enable photography with less light, but this is often bought at the cost of quality losses, especially image noise. This does not mean that there are no differences in the light sensitivity of the sensors. On the contrary, these are actually quite significant. In contrast to film, however, this sensitivity is not preset to a specific value, but has the effect that with higher sensitivity of the sensor you can get by with less loss of quality with less light.

All 3 factors mentioned above influence each other in an antagonistic way and must be set differently for each motive and each situation. In fact, choosing the best compromise for each photo is an art. A wildlife situation where you have the freedom to manually set all 3 factors to the optimum is rare. Stopping down for more depth of field can be compensated for with a higher ISO and longer exposure time, for example, but then you have more image noise and possibly blurring. You can freeze fast movements with a very short exposure time, but then you have to compensate for this with an open aperture and a higher ISO number, with the disadvantages mentioned above. Here are a few suggestions (strongly depending on the camera system and the situation). Most of these can also be quickly selected via presets or function buttons/wheels: