NIKON D3200 TEST SHOT: Down on the Farm at Sunset (curves, shadows/highlights, unsharp mask)

--Lannie

Here is a 100% crop.

--Lannie

the blue looks blown out, and the red looks too strong.  best, j

Jamie, there was no saturation increase, and the use of curves was limited to a very shallow "S" curve.  There was a nice glow over everything due to fact that the sun was almost down to the horizon when this shot was made.

--Lannie

Here is the original file, resized.  (Sloppy work, I know.)

--Lannie

Here is a 100% crop from the original file.

--Lannie

the posted one looks unnatural to my eye, though.  i knew you'd say you hadn't done much to it.  i'm not sure why there is this generally held belief that what comes out of the camera is some kind of ground truth.  it's digital's fault.  no one with any sense at all would have said that in the film era.  best, j

I'm not passing the buck to digital, Jamie.  I actually think that I like the colors (I'm not entirely sure yet myself), at least in terms of the richer colors that you do not--although "I have to admit that the unprocessed 100% crop looks pretty good--"unprocessed" by me, that is.  Saying that is not to blame the camera at the default landscape settings, but to praise it, at least on this particular shot--and so your aside leaves me a bit puzzled.  I have never presumed that what comes out of the camera is accurate, neutral, or anything else.  We all know that it is not neutral, that there are all kinds of factory presets, and we also know that we can modify some of them.

I can certainly see some mild color and contrast changes due to the use of curves in Photoshop.  I rather like the effect of the mild use of curves, or at least I did when I applied them.  I am not so sure now.  Maybe it looks overcooked now.  I do know that one shot from this shoot required me to BACK OFF ON SATURATION, and so I have the sense that maybe the default settings are not to my taste.  I like conservative out-of-camera results so that I can decide what to do with the "digital negative." I do not like the idea of someone in marketing making those decisions for me by telling the engineers to jazz it up a little here and there.  I will do the jazzing up, thank you very much.  I simply do not know what I am seeing with the "digital negatives" on this camera.  They seem to be all over the place.  What on earth has been done?  Is my only alternative to look for a more expensive camera in which so many decisions have not been made for me?

Another fundamental concern is whether or not this level of pixel density is causing problems.  This camera has a LOT of pixels per square unit of surface area.  Too many?  Are they causing problems?  I have no idea.  I do not get the sense that accomplished photographers are buying this camera in droves, but I might be wrong.  Even if they are, what do they have to say about the default settings?  Are we seeing some things here that are related to over-reaching in terms of pixel density?  Are image issues more compelling to prospective buyers than ergonomic issues are for this tiny camera?  I do not know.  I do know that there are a lot of things not to like about this camera, but, when it does impress me, it does so in a big way--yet even then, I am not sure that I like the overall effect, such as the bird shots, which overwhelm me with resolution but which look strangely weird--with or without further processing.  It is a curious and even paradoxical conundrum, and thus do my test shots continue.  The camera puzzles me, which is not to blame it so much as to say, "What is going on here?  I haven't been here before."  I reserve the right to sell it and buy the D7000 or save the money for the D800.  I really am of that much of a divided mind about what I see coming out of the camera--and even more of a divided soul about what I am able or not able to make of those files once I run them through post.  I think that the D90 gave me better colors--to my taste anyway.

The only other thing that was done besides using curves and unsharp mask on this shot was to use (moderately) the Shadows/Highlights "filter" in Photoshop.  If I didn't like the overall effect, I would have cropped it and posted it exactly as it came from the camera, and maybe in this case that would have been the better option.  Sometimes the presets are better than my judgment, although in most high end cameras they are a bit weak.  With an entry level camera?  Perhaps not.

But if I were to post the original without any manipulation, without rotating, cropping, and resizing, I would indeed be saying that "This is what came out of the camera."  To me that would not be passing the buck; it would simply be stating a fact--a neutral fact about this camera under these lighting conditions, etc.  In fact, this shot has had some manipulation applied, and so to me the real issue is whether it is better right out of the camera or as I have manipulated it--or some other way.  I plead innocent on the pre-digital/post-digital issue as to how "we" evaluate a picture, since it is a non-issue for me--I do not ever assume accuracy or neutrality or anything else out of camera anymore than I did with film.  I will say that there is something about the shots right out of the camera with the D3200 that I sometimes do not like--but you and I both know that cameras do not record what we see, and that they are never neutral.

It also occurs to me to wonder all the time if different monitor settings and monitor quality allow us to be talking about the same image.  Are you seeing what I am seeing?  I have no idea. 

Now, if you are getting at the question of the accuracy or "naturalness" of what comes out of the camera, all that I can say is that this entire shoot surprised me with its results, and not always in a good way. 

Frankly, this camera does puzzle me in its color treatment (with default settings for "landscape"), but I am not sure that my own efforts have made it better or worse.

With high end Canon, I usually had the sense with the out-of-camera file "This is your understated file.  You fix it like you want."  With this particular Nikon camera, I do get the sense that someone has taken a lot of creative options away from me.  Perhaps that is because beginners do not use Photoshop, and the manufacturers feel that the pictures should "pop" right out of the camera in order to please the popular demand for brighter colors and high contrast--a look I personally despise.

In any case, I do not see this as a brand issue, but as a "5D II" versus "entry level" issue.  More precisely, it is a D3200 camera: do I like the image quality of this camera or not?

I don't know yet.

--Lannie

Bottom line on this shot, Jamie:

What came out of the camera was pretty close to what I saw, I think.

(I'm not sure that my "enhancements" were an improvement.  Perahaps the reds are too red, but the sky looks right to me.)

Sometimes I think that someone pre-programmed the in-camera processing to make this a glorified Point and Shoot.  Maybe I should just accept that and use it that way, and just simplify my life. . . .

--Lannie

Jamie, focusing issues aside, here is one where I am pretty sure that it is (sad to say) an accurate rendering of reality, for what that is worth:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=16312473&size=lg

--Lannie

it's you?  hadn't picked up on that.

"Jamie, there was no saturation increase, and the use of curves was limited to a very shallow "S" curve. There was a nice glow over everything due to fact that the sun was almost down to the horizon when this shot was made.

--Lannie"

which amounts to a claim that you didn't do too much. People seem to say that to indicate that the processing was judicious, but it seems to me that if the colours are too strong, then the processing was not judicious, even if there was none whatsoever. Cameras are just tools, and sometimes they fail. I do understand that you liked the colours. I was just commenting on the justification, which I find odd, even though I'm sure I do it myself.

I don't think too many pixels is a problem. You just have to remember not to stop down. You probably lose resolution beyond f/5.6. best, j