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Ken,
You'd be struggling to come up with any image you see today in magazines or anywhere else, which hasn't been subjected to post processing and manipulation and usually lots of it. A classic case is the top models we see in fashion mags, and you wonder how such flawless creatures exist. The answer is they dont. The shots selected for publication are massively manipulated- spots and minor blemishes are removed, their teeth and whites of their eyes are whitened, stray eyebrow hairs are removed, eye colour is enhanced, in short, anything which delivers the image they want us to see is done. I read of one top model who has to have tattoos removed by post processing for all her shots where they're on show.
It's actually always been this way, it's just that digital photography has made so much more possible. In the film days the same techniques were carried out laboriously by manipulation in the darkroom, airbrushing of the actual print, and even by incredibly skilled people working on the negative itself, scraping away tiny bits of emulsion to improve shots. Fleet Street photographic printers were some of the worlds best at producing good prints from poorly exposed negatives from all sorts of laborious darkroom techniques. There can't be many left now who haven't 'gone digital' so they can now do so much more.
We should always strive to get the best images we can at the time of taking, because whether you post process them or not they're the ones that really produce the goods, and give YOU most satisfaction.. There's no substitute for getting it right in the first place. All that really matters though is the final print or the image on your screen, that's where we judge the shot. The argument about whether photography is an art form or not is as old as the hills, and personally I don't really know or care, but it's a powerful medium for self expression which is a hundred times more flexible with the advent of digital post processing. For me, regardless of what you do to your pictures, they only lose integrity if you deny it. :wink:
As for your SLR predicament - it's a no brainer, your photography will improve in leaps and bounds. I'd have hesitated to recommend a DSLR only a couple of short years ago, but just taking two obvious choices for you, the Canon 300D and the Nikon D70, they'll both produce superb results and are both bargains at the price. The only thing I'd say is that there are some great compacts on the market which now come with built in zooms giving respectable wide angle and good telephoto coverage. There really isn't much point in buying an SLR unless you're going to change lenses so the bad news is you're always going to be wanting and striving for that next lens, but that comes with the territory. :lol: The whole point of an SLR is that it's just the basis of a huge system of lenses and accessories which ensure you wont outgrow the camera as your experience and your needs grow. For starters though, try and buy your DSLR with the most flexible and useful zoom you can if possible, which will reduce some of the urgency to add extra lenses.
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