It’s Not Possible To Get It Right In Camera!

Hi and welcome to my blog. I hear this all the time, “I get it right in camera”. Well in a literal sense, it’s impossible to get it 100% right in camera. If you allow the cameras metering system to calculate exposure, it going to be wrong. If you allow a light meter to calculate the exposure, it will be much less wrong. To see why a camera gets exposure wrong see this post. The bottom line it’s impossible to get it right in camera.

When I say it is impossible to get it right in camera, I mean it is impossible for your camera to accurately make a picture of a scene that is full range. An example would be if you place targets in a scene from black to white and try to make a file make a file that is 100% right, you will fail. When I say right, I am not talking about subjectively right, I am speaking about literally right. If you place targets with known values from Black (=0 on a histogram) to White (=255 on a histogram) it is impossible to capture a file that represents those vales without further action in post. A digital camera’s sensor does not have enough dynamic range to capture an entire scene from solid black to solid white.

Digital Photography is just like film photography in many respects. First off, your goal is to try to capture a range of information on the sensor that allows you to develop a final image at a later stage that will display fill range. I’ll say it here and now, no matter how great you are as a photographer, you will always have to go in to the darkroom to develop your images, In our case the digital darkroom.

So what does “getting it right in camera”, really mean? It means one should to do everything possible to limit the amount of post work needed to make a final image. You should be setting a proper white balance, getting exposure as close as possible, framing your subject correctly in camera, gelling your lights if needed, ect… In general you should be doing everything you can to limit the amount of time you spend in post.

Check out the video below to see why I say, “It’s Not Possible To Get It Right In Camera”

The goal of all of us is to try and get it right in camera.