Hamish’s Workflow

An insight into my Post Process of colour images shot with the Leica M9 in low light

Almost every time I post some photos taken with my Leica M9 I have people asking me “is this straight out of camera”, or “what post process have you done to these” etc. This seems to be a common question with digital photography, especially with mine. I suppose this comes down to people trying to assess from my images what the camera and lens are responsible for, and what is being achieved in post process. The problem is, it’s a just a bit of a hard question to answer without going into lots of detail…

On this particular occasion, the images in question do give me a bit of an opportunity to talk a bit about a specific part of my low light post process when it comes to files out of the Leica M9 – so I thought I’d take the opportunity to go into that bit of detail.

Overexposure latitude or: how to cheat your way to perfect film photography

Film photography doesn’t need to be difficult, in fact in many ways I think it can be much easier than digital. I’ve had a few people ask me recently how I have the guts to shoot film commercially. I’ve got to a stage where even the question seems alien to me, it’s just photography, I’ve been doing it professionally for nearly a decade. But then I remember, if you’d asked me about the idea of specifically shooting film professionally as little as 18 months ago, I’d probably have looked a little more worried. 18 months on I now find it no more of a challenge to get consistent results from film than I do from digital. If there is one thing I’ve learned in the last 2 years – one thing that has taken me from being worried about working as a film photographer, to being completely comfortable and confident in my work – it would be how to properly expose negative film. Actually, let me rephrase that, if there is one thing I have learned it would be how to overexpose negative film.

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