Curvemeister Forum

Thanks Mike Arst for the pointer to this interesting article:
http://www.livick.com/method/treadmill/pg1.htm

BTW - check out Mike's recent images from Sweden, and be sure to leave comments.
http://www.pbase.com/mikearst/image/85801127/medium

The article is right on, I also think that there are too many options on digital cameras that we will never use. Software programs on your computer are the same.
  Barry

I have to agree - OTOH the complexity keeps going up, driven by the market.  As an example closer to home, the number of features in Curvemeister is increasing at a steady rate.  I guess the key is to make it possible to ignore the features that are not necessary.

Wait, gentlemen, not so fast!  As Mike has recently gone "against raw" I'd like to point out that if you shoot raw files, many of that somewhat-confused photographer's gripes about "complexity" simply disappear.  With raw files (which is properly spelled "raw" and not "RAW," since it's not a particular file format or an abbreviation for an extension, but the plain word "raw") we can just forget about these things when we're shooting:

-- No "quality" settings
-- No "size" settings
-- No "white balance" settings

Are there more things we can forget about when shooting raw?  Maybe, but I've forgotten them . . .

Also, "more complexity" means "more possibilities" -- and that you or Joe or Peter or I have no particular need of "feature X" in a camera or an application doesn't mean it's not useful to a lot of other folks, and their needs count no less than yours or Joe's or Peter's or mine. 

Oh yeah, and these also we can happily forget when shooting raw:

-- No "sharpening" settings
-- No "picture control" (saturation/contrast) settings

Frankly, it would stress me out a lot if I were to shoot nothing but JPEGs, with all those hard-wired settings to worry about and getting right! And I've now figured out what that upper-caps "RAW" term is an abbreviation of: "Relax And Work." :-)

(which is properly spelled "raw" and not "RAW," since it's not a particular file format or an abbreviation for an extension, but the plain word "raw")

As in "uncooked"?... like the thought?... Or is that half-baked?

Right on. Uncooked ain't half-baked!