straight-out-of-[the]-camera
(SOOC)

“Straight-out-of-camera” is a term that was sometimes invoked in film photography but is often meaningless in the digital era, especially when referring to smartphone photos (where it can gloss over numerous radical manipulations).

The term “straight-out-of-camera” is never used on this site to describe TTG photographs, although the term “unaltered” can sometimes fill the same role.

It’s an old term

“Straight out of the camera” was traditionally used to refer to film images that had not undergone any post-exposure manipulations.

The term has often been used by film photographers who want to declare they have not doctored an image — granting that in the 21st century the term routinely refers to photographs that were first chemically processed, then scanned, then adjusted in Photoshop for posting on the web

But the world has changed

In our time, the term “straight-out-of-camera” is of very limited value because so much “post-exposure processing” occurs immediately, within the device, before the photographer even sees it on the device’s screen.

• The typical smartphone instantly performs far more post-exposure manipulations to a photograph than most photographers perform using a computer —

— so a smartphone photo labeled as “straight-out-of-camera” may be far more manipulated than a non-smartphone photo that is “straight-out-of-computer.”

• Furthermore, it is not difficult to program many devices to perform TTG-disqualifying manipulations before the image first appears on the device’s screen — see #3–5 in this brief — leading many smartphone photographers to think their just-taken photos are far less manipulated than the photos actually are.

For the reasons listed above, “straight out of the camera” is never used to describe the requirements, expectations, or characteristics of TTG photographs.

Notes

• Despite the variety of baked-in manipulations, it is easy to make TTG-qualified photos with any smartphone.

• “Unmanipulated” vs. “unaltered” vs. “undoctored”

• If VUOs become viable, they may play the role that “SOOC” once played.