straight or processed?

I'm not understanding the question.

When I shoot an image, I have a final result in mind, which means I factored the post processing before clicking the shutter.

What Ansel Adams called 'visualisation'.

It all depends on how much time I have to get the photo. I usually set the camera to underexpose a little and concentrate on aperture, shutter speed and focus - things you can't change later.

Changing levels, contrast, sharpness, etc in Photoshop is no different to what I used to do in my darkroom.

The idea that doing things in post production is 'wrong' or 'cheating' seems ridiculous to me. I have even been known to crop and straighten!

For digital I expose an image so that there are no problematic blown highlights. This can often mean that overall the image is a little dark, but a few quick tweaks in Lightroom sorts that out easily enough. If I am suspicious that I cannot get the full range of tones I wish in a single exposure, I then bracket to allow for some form of HDR if needed. Often, it isn't!

Other than that, I try to get as much right in camera as I possibly can. The more time I can spend out and about taking images and the less time I spend messing about on the computer the better.

K.

That just about says it for me, too. Except I don't have Lightroom.

What did they used to say? For prints expose for the highlights, for slide expose for the shadows.

Well I now expose for those highlights as per print film, and know I should be able to recover a lot more shadow than previously

I do whatever is best for the image which means get the best shot out of the camera & then improving & finishing it off in post production.

The two go hand in hand, all pro images have some post processing, no pro would let unprocessed images out into the world, digital cameras are just not perfect enough, whether that is 1d or d3 to a ist d.

I have been fortunate to work alongside some of the best pro editorial photographers in the world & some of the post processing you see go on would make you scratch your head in head disbelief, the amount of work that goes into those images you see in the papers. If its good enough for them its good enough for me too...

I tend to shoot 'best' quality jpegs, then carry out any minor adjustments in MS PictureManager. On my recent trip to Amsterdam I discoverd I was somehow leaning to the left when I took my shots - canal water does not flow downhill, so had to adjust the rotation of hundreds of pics - the computer could not have coped if they had all been raw! I finished the 'project' by renaming, & sorting (by time taken) the files from 3 camera's (almost 1000) in Adobe Album Starter.
Regarding highlights, Pentaxs underexpose anyway to protect them.

The greatest didn't.

HCB (whom some people consider to have been the greatest) seldom did his own processing.

However, he was primarily a journalist, and therefore didn't have much control over how his pictures were presented. He seldom shot landscapes, and was much more interested in capturing a significant moment in time, nearly always with people as the subject, encapsulated in a breathtaking composition.

Ansel was preoccupied more than almost any other photographer with technique, and with producing technically perfect prints.

It's easier to follow Ansel than HCB, because a perfect print is a matter of craftsmanship, whereas a perfect composition is art.

Discuss.

G

I for one strive to get the image right in camera, that for me is the essence of photography, I did when I used film and I do now with digital, the only exception to that would be cropping, an envisaged scene does not always "fit" onto the format used, likewise some subjects like wildlife may be better shot and cropped later.

In the days of the darkroom a well exposed negative would always be easier to print regardless of whether the photographer did their own, and likewise a well exposed digital file will need less PP. the vast majority of my images get adjustments to levels, cloning out of dust and sharpening.

Just to make things clear.
What i meant is deliberately do some thing while you shoot with the understanding and purpose to get a better final image once you've processed it.
That's really something else then correct a mistake you make.

For most work,
I use a light meter, and a greycard....
I incident meter the highlights, and use flash, other lighting, ambient, or reflectors to fill in the shadows, and make sure I don't blow the highlights.
Usually metering off a grey card yields an "Expose to the right of the histogram" shot.
The end result is a slightly brighter image that I pull down in aperture.