There are some photographers who claim to not use Photoshop (or similar programs) in their photo workflow; that what  you see is what the camera saw.  They wear that like a badge of honor, that being able to claim that their pixels were never touched outside the camera makes them somehow better than the rest of us. I don’t care if you did it with a box of crayons; if you like what you have created, that is what matters.  If others like what you have created, even better!

For those that claim that mighty power, more power to them…it means they really have an understanding of their camera controls and are able to set their camera settings in such a way as to evoke some of the same emotion we might be adjusting for in our image editing application. 

I also know that some photographers only shoot jpegs, either because they like to, or don’t understand a raw workflow or  their work requires they do so.  I know in particular news photographers will shoot jpeg because it speeds up their process, often sending files directly from the camera to editors prior to distribution.  

The AP (one such news organization) has published their code of ethics for all employees (writers, editors and photographers) here: https://www.ap.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/ap-news-values-and-principles-1.pdf

I have reproduced a key photo-related paragraph here: “No element should be digitally altered except as described below. Minor adjustments to photos are acceptable. These include cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, elimination of dust on camera sensors and scratches on scanned negatives or scanned prints and normal toning and color adjustments. These should be limited to those minimally necessary for clear and accurate reproduction and that restore the authentic nature of the photograph. Changes in density, contrast, color and saturation levels that substantially alter the original scene are not acceptable. Backgrounds should not be digitally blurred or eliminated by burning down or by aggressive toning. The removal of “red eye” from photographs is not permissible.”  (From the Associated Press’ Values and Principles)

I know all cameras are different, and what I describe here may or may not apply to your camera or way of shooting.  My Nikons (for years) have been able to accurately set exposure, allowing the operator to automatically compensate for back lit or extremely bright situations with +/- controls on the camera.  You even may have a histogram viewable as you shoot to help indicate under/over exposure and clipping of highlights or shadows so you can make adjustments on the fly.  Getting deeper in the weeds, digital cameras have the ability to adjust (again either manually or automatically) for color balance.  In the “good old (and they are becoming more old)” days of (color) film you could select film for appropriate lighting, daylight or tungsten.  Working in a low light situation, choose a film with a higher ASA/ISO speed. Need to compensate for different lighting,  select daylight or tungsten film or add a filter to your lens to adjust the color balance, and even adjust for fluorescent lighting with an FL-D filter of some sort.  Now that all may be handled by the camera or in post processing.  

My Nikon has the ability to preserve highlights (one of my favorites).  Would have loved to have had something like that in the film days.  

Back when we were shooting film, we also had tone controls, we controlled tones with our film selection.  Fujichrome, Ektachrome, Kodachrome all had their own “feel” to them.  By choosing a film to match your subject, you essentially had tone control. Color negative film not so much because the person or process printing was an additional color variable, not much different than making color adjustments in your photo editing software. 

My newer Nikons also have tone controls with lots of defaults and the ability to create custom settings.  In the Shooting Menu on my Z9 is the “Manage Picture Control” area. Here you may select  from a long list of things like Auto, Standard, Neutral (which is my default), Vivid, Monochrome and a few dozen others.  You may elect to use the predefined settings or modify them to your liking. These settings allow the photographer to choose a level of Sharpening, Clarity, Contrast, Brightness, Saturation and Hue.  My controls are pretty flat since I prefer to make those changes on my color calibrated high quality monitor.  I currently use a discontinued NEC Spectraview (my second one).  Not sure what I will do when this gives up the ghost. 

In addition to modifying an included Picture Control setting, you can also create a custom control on your computer and import that into your camera.  Have a hankering for some Velvia (a beloved slide film from Fuji) you can do that.  Check out the website https://nikonpc.com/.  It allows a user to select from a list of film types (and other profiles) and compare them to a standard. There are several photos that may be used to check the results.  A user may modify the tone curve creating their own custom curve (maybe a bit more warmth in the shadows?) and save that. These may be downloaded and then loaded into your camera. The instructions are on the page.  Don’t like what you see, you can easily go back to one of Nikon’s canned profiles, or go back even further and use Adobe’s profiles. 

In Lightroom (or Camera Raw in Photoshop) preferences, in the Presets area a user may set the Raw Defaults to Adobe Default (the default), Camera Settings (which is what I choose to do) or a preset you may have imported somewhere along the way.  This is an important setting IF you want to use the camera’s Picture Control Settings. If you are working in JPEG, this does not matter, the conversion will occur in camera and will be baked in to your photograph. I used to wonder why my friends’ photos on Canons looked warmer on the back of the camera than mine did on my Nikon.  

In wrapping this up, there is always  subjective reality when adjusting photos especially photos that you would consider “art.”  Reliable photojournalists have a different set of standards.   I do not hesitate to add some clarity, sharpness, denoise or saturation to my wildlife and landscape photos, but I prefer it to be subtle.  If asked “did it look like that” when I pressed the shutter release, I tend to respond with that is what I saw in my mind’s eye, or that is how I felt when I captured the image.