Which brings up what to me has always been an interesting "ethical" question -- should photographic images show what we saw or what we wanted to see?
IF there is very little red, undetectable red let's say, is it "right" to bring it back in the final image?
Me, I shoot jpeg (I'm very lazy) with a strobe and almost always shooting macro and I've never been convinced that, when shooting macro with a strobe, it makes much difference if you shoot RAW or JPEG.
If you only shoot macro with a strobe, you don't need RAW, just shoot JPEG. The strobe gives balanced light, and your subject should be accurately exposed as if it were near the surface. In a sense, if you have a RAW image and you enhance the red channel, you are enhancing the light that is already present, not adding new light. I see it as similar to using flash, or changing the depth at which an image is shot.
Regarding ethics, I think the answer depends on how the image is to be used. In a legal domain, there's one standard. In journalism, there is another. In an artistic domain, another. In the real world, there is a spectrum of demand for accuracy and demand for artistic appeal, depending on your field.
LEGAL: I'm not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice. I suspect there is a whole field of study in criminology regarding digital images that covers many issues. Some of the board members have been forensic photographers in the past, not me, so I'm just giving my personal opinion without that training.
I personally would never trust a digital image to be unaltered unless I knew the exact chain of evidence for the image. Even if you believe the image is unaltered, how accurate is the camera? The camera factory technician adjusts the camera and no two cameras shoot exactly the same image even with the same settings. They set each camera to a known standard for white balance, focus, sensitivity, and so on. There may be dead pixels on the sensor that get mapped out by the camera, and replaced with an average of their neighbors. A lens could be dirty, or the sensor have dust or hair on it. If an image is used in a capital criminal trial, or a large damage civil trial, I'd really want proof that it was an accurate unaltered image. The camera, the media, the photographer, the image storage, all that would need certification.
We all know that people can be compromised if the money is right. Suppose a camera was altered with a WIFI transmitter to send the captured image to a nearby mobile lab, where it could be altered by a technician and sent back to the supposedly secure camera. If a vast sum or money, or the life of a powerful person is at stake, could there be a motive for trying something like this? Very sci-fi I know, but... What if?
Something to think about. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.
JOURNALISTIC: In journalism, the photographer has an ethical duty to make an accurate image of his subject. But if the image is not interesting, not visually exciting, not eye-grabbing, will it sell? For a newspaper, probably yes, the event was captured. For a product review, sure. For a feature article, unlikely. For the cover of a magazine, never. That is a different standard, between the legal and the artistic.
ARTISTIC: If we look at how an image is captured by a digital camera, a RAW image is closest to what the camera saw. But it may not be "pleasing" to the eye, what most photographic artists seek. The digital camera makes enhancements to the image in many ways. If we add artificial light, aren't we changing the scene from natural? Before the image is captured, the camera may set the aperture, shutter speed, white balance and focus, all of which affect the image
before it is captured.
Faces are a special case. Many cameras are designed to find, focus on and automatically expose for pleasing exposure and white balance on faces, but they adjust
mainly for Asian or white faces! As a wedding photographer, I always adjust brighter, say +1/2 ti +1EV, for darker skinned subjects to show the character of the face -- even if the background might be over exposed a bit. There are many special lighting situations like this that require an artistic override of the camera.
After capture, software in the camera "fixes" the image using a vast amount of computing, based on lots of experience the camera maker has with digital images. The in camera software compresses the image and changes it to make it more "pleasing", removing noise, perhaps brightening shadows, altering white balance, fixing red-eye, and so on. Usually that's what the photographer wants. But he may want even more processing by the camera. For that, some cameras have artistic "digital filters" that alter an image more. In any case, the digital camera always changes the image, usually for the better or at least based on the artistic intention of the photographer.
So, I can see different standards for accuracy and creativity depending on the field the image is to be used in.
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The great photographer Ansel Adams would take about 4-8 images per day with his cumbersome 8x10 view camera. A lot of time was spent hiking to the site, moving around for the right vantage point, or waiting for the perfect light, part of his genius. It took but a moment to expose the plate. But his real genius was in the darkroom development of his negatives and prints. He sometimes took what I would think were uninteresting images and with his magic touch in developing and printing, made these altered images into monumental art.
In contrast, I have a large coffee table book of Ansel Adams photos documenting the UC Berkeley campus during the Vietnam War era. Not a single picture was included of protests, sit-ins, arrests, drugs, or anything else related to the subject of politics of the era. They were on the nightly news every night, but not in this book. Perhaps that was the editor's choice, but my impression of the man was lowered by seeing this work. I consider it appalling by the standard of journalism, but acceptable by the standard of art. I suppose that even great artists have to put bread on the table.
But I suppose the conclusion is always shoot images that meet your ethical standards, in addition to artistic standards. You will be remembered as a photographer for both.
