APPA : Ken Duncan finally says what a lot of us have been thinking

[I @ M]

For me it depends on the purpose of the photo.

Amen.

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My guess is the older the photographer the more they lean towards minimal post processing (and start waxing lyrical about the excitement of seeing an image materialise on a sheet of paper ).

I'm ancient but I enjoy seeing well done image manipulation.

I do find 30 year old hipsters, single speed bicycles and polaroids hilarious though.

[Hamster]

I do find 30 year old hipsters, single speed bicycles and polaroids hilarious though.

Yeah, I've told all my team if I see any of them riding a fixie I'll get their engineering degree revoked.

[John King]

That's the easiest, but even that's not clear. How much saturation, highlight, shadow, contrast adjustment. Only global adjustments allowed, or local like dodging and burning. If dodging and burning, then surely localized saturation, contrast, sharpening is also ok. Can you clone out a distracting spot of white bird poo on a foreground rock? Before you know it there's masks and layers and you're getting accused of not being a photographer.
Even if you say you try and replicate exact conditions you saw, that can be tricky to get right back at home as memories are pretty poor and trying to exactly reproduce the tone of the sunset is impossible.
And what about dynamic range? The camera can't capture what your eye saw, so bracketed photos combined in layers are needed in many cases.......etc

Ham, I do not do any of those things, unless attempting to restore a photo of an old photo ...

What is "pure"? No need to answer, because really it's whatever you want it to be, within limits already mentioned in answers by Ricktas and myself and also that article I linked to.

What I consider to be "pure" is global adjustments of around the minima that can be achieved in camera. For example, one cannot adjust cameras in 1/10 or 1/20th of a stop; one cannot remove specular glare;

I neither add nor subtract anything from any photo I take, with a couple of rare exceptions - e.g. a portrait where I was constrained to shoot from the audience and my flash caused a shadow of an out of frame microphone to be cast on a light coloured wall in the background.

I only very rarely crop images I take. The exception to this is slight rotation when I don't pay sufficient attention to how level I hold my camera/s.

Bottom line, I reckon follow your own rules to produce what makes you happy, and if you enter a competition, be bound by the rules others have decided on.

Like most things in life, there are rarely absolutes, much as some may think otherwise. However, one can attempt to attain closeness to such ideals. In this regard, and with this caveat, I try to ensure that my images reflect, as far as possible, what I saw in real life. This includes composition, framing, colour, use of a suitable FL lens, aperture and exposure. Sometimes I get closer than I do at other times. However, at no time do I consider that I "can fix things in post". Rather, I acknowledge to myself at least that I have cocked things up to a greater or lesser degree, and try to learn from those mistakes. Better that than heroic editing to try to pass off a pig's behind as a silk purse ... Just FWIW, and IMHO.

[wayn0i]

So can I come out of the naughty boy's corner?

I believed my photo was all about the subject and I wanted to show that as cleanly as possible. Instead of changing the background I could have spent many, many hours cloning and blurring and smudging and not come up with something I was pleased with.

No issues from me, come out of the naughty corner!

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I can see the cows coming over the hill now!

[feathers]

Would a purist be one who only shoots in jpeg?.....

[John King]

Would a purist be one who only shoots in jpeg?.....

Who knows?

I always shoot RAW + LSF JPEG. I use the JPEGs for emails, posting images on the web and such like. I only rarely bother to PP a RAW file for upload to the web, and the JPEG files I upload are almost invariably just run through an automated PS action that I made years ago. It resizes the image, applies a USM, converts to sRGB and applies a mat and copyright notice.

RAW files get PP in PPRGB 16 for printing etc.

[sanger]

Would a purist be one who only shoots in jpeg?.....

I only shoot jpeg but would be far from a purist...whatever that is

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For now my post processing consists of one button...delete

[Mark L]

..... I try to ensure that my images reflect, as far as possible, what I saw in real life. This includes composition, framing, colour, use of a suitable FL lens, aperture and exposure. Sometimes I get closer than I do at other times.

I fine it hard to produce what I see in real life on a screen.