Camera never lies?

I've just bought my first digital camera, a Pentax K10D. Though I felt guilty about leaving film, I love it so far. This is my first image

The day was a bit too sunny (midday with the sun overhead), so the stone was over-exposed and the rest was under-exposed. I did a quick job in Photoshop, putting the stone on a new layer and darkening it, while I tweaked the levels on the background layer.

My question is this: am I being somewhat dishonest as a photographer in that this wasn't what the camera originally captured? I know you can dodge and burn in traditional photography but digital imaging offers so many more tricks.
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If you are making a record shot and you remove things, add things, etc., then there is a potential for it becoming dishonest. Hence troubled times recently for several press photographers who went too far.

If you are creating an image and want it to look a particular way, want to clean it up, remove cables and cars, etc., then it is an artistic decision and anything goes as there is no misrepresentation.

This applies as much to film as digital. Manipulation has always been with us. It all depends on the purpose and intent and whether or not there is an attempt to mislead.

Adjusting contrast and brightness levels and cropping is a very minor thing and is certainly not cheating at all.

I totally agree with John and feel that if you are after a pleasing image that satisfies you and is pleasing on the eye then there is no conflicts of conscience. However if you are recording a scene for posterity then the less manipulation ( or none at all) would be best.
Very nice shot by the way and welcome to the club.
Harry

What is the best way to isolate an object and bringing it to another layer? I am still having problems with it.
Do you use the magnetic lasso tool or is there another easier method?

My choice, and others may have a better way which I'd love to hear about, would be to duplicate the layer and then use a mask to remove everything but the rock from the top layer. This works great on things like rocks, when it comes to trees and people hair and leaves make matters harder.

I'm honestly quite surprised that this image needed any tweaking at all. If the stone was overexposed I cant see how the rest could really be underexposed. Can you give us the EXIF data?

pentaxer.
Welcome to the forum. your image is crap.....or is that cr-aa-p as they would say in Ireland

Seriously tho', DONT use your digi as you would a film camera, PUSH it to its limits, bracket your exposures like theres no tommorrow, it no longer cost anything to see the results (if you preview on a PC of course)

At the end of the day all that count is .....are you happpy with the shot you took

PS, sorry for the "crap" score, I just got a new Samsung 22" monitor and have'nt got ot calibrated yet

PS.....its waaaay over exposed, even the K10D isnt perfect.

Heated debate on the subject here:
http://www.ephotozine.com/topic/t-52518
Matt

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!

We've heard it all before, the film fanatics who think digital is the devils creation and the digital cheats who think its ok to...well cheat.

I say do what the heck you want with what you want, just be honest about it and dont try to pass off a manipulated image as something thats straight out of the camera, Pentaxer has been honest about his manipulation (even thought the stone is still overexposed ) so good for him, pat him on the back and lets give him some more help at manipulation.

Agree with this totally, be honist about what you have done or not done to a photo and no-one can complain. We are artists after all, there is a little something called "artistic license".

A friend of mine is such a purist he umms and arrrs over the allowability of cropping an image to fit a given sheet of paper, always prints at 3:2 ratio even in the dark room. Obviously he and I differ on some key points, but he's still a good photographer (well, as good as me anyway, which doesn't say a lot but he knows which end to look through!)