My intention was to spend a minimum of time fiddling with my pictures. What? First spend $$$ on a camera, and then have as little to do with it as possible? No, what I mean is I want to spend as little time as possible in front of the computer, and a maximum amount of time outdoors taking pictures.
The first attempt of a complete picture flow was inspired by Ken Rockwell. Ken shoots jpeg. So, I thought, would I. Then I could just copy the pictures up to flickr and some backup media, and be done. So I spent some time while shooting, choosing the right picture control, selecting a suitable white balance. And the pictures looked like washed-out garbage. After browsing the web a bit I thought I had bought a camera which seriously over-exposed everything. Darn!
But no, when checking that handy histogram I found that the pictures were not over-exposed. The highlights were not blown. The picture was just washed-out anyway.
Then for take 2: I started shooting raw + jpeg. Whenever I found a picture I did not like, I loaded it in ViewNX (yes, I am too cheap to pay for photo editing SW) and tweaked it. Tried fiddling with sharpening, contrast, brightness, etc. And suddenly there was some life in the pictures. When happy, I would regenerate the jpeg from raw.
Soon I found I was adding the same tweaks to most pictures. I also found that those tweaks were available in the picture controls, both in-camera and in ViewNX. Regenerating individual images became a hassle, as I wanted to tweak more and more pictures.
Which brings me to take 3: shooting raw. Yes, I shoot raw, even though I like to spend as little time as possible in post production. The flow is like this:
- When I can, I spend time in the field adjusting white balance and finding a good picture control for the situation (landscape, portrait, action picture, etc). If I don't have time, like when taking a shot of my kids from the hip, I just press the trigger. Auto modes are your friend.
- As I load the image in ViewNX, the white balance and picture control settings are applied to what I see on the screen. If I like what I see, I just move on to the next picture. If I want to, I tweak.
- In a first review sweep I throw away bad pictures, and add titles/comments to the keepers. I keep a lot. I'm not great, just indiscriminating.
- Then, when all pictures have been reviewed, I select the lot and do a batch conversion to jpeg.
- Finally, I upload jpeg images to flickr and save both raw and jpeg on backup media.
This way, with the Nikon picture controls, I feel I get the best of both worlds. I get to be outdoors and tweak my photos, when I have the time. As I'm no Ken Rockwell, I also get the second chance of fixing my mistakes and misexposures after the fact - raw mode is great for fixing exposure compensation and touching up highlights/lowlights later on.
