Is it possible to push and pull with DSLR as you would with film camera? :)

Are you talking about exposure compensation or adjusting focal length during long exposures?

In developing? I think you can in PS LEVELS, or sliding the 'thingies' in the histogram in Photoshop to save the Dark or highlight areas..just a guess...

Masters, please enlighten us

I am not very much knowledgeable about photography in general, but in film you can set a certain aperture and override the iso setting and extend or shorthen the developing process of the negative to achieve certain effects. How is it possible in dslrs without the post processing? or is it possible or not? if possible, how? please enlighten us masters.

i think the way to push in digital is to underexpose by 1 stop using exposure compensation, and then tweak the resulting image using levels. For example, if you are shooting at iso 800, but underexpose by a stop, then you are essentially shooting at iso 1600. Underexposing (or pushing) by a stop is already pushing it (pun intended), and 2 stops may be disastrous with current digital sensors (except maybe for fuji sensors).

Unlike film, digital's tolerance for this kind of processing can be less forgiving, and you will most likely get very noisy or unusable images as a result.

curves, levels, contrast adjustment, color correction, brightness level.. everything's possible with photoshop..

Is it possible to push and pull with DSLR as you would with film camera? :)

Traditionally in film, pushing is done for the following reasons:
1. You accidentally underexposed your subject - you need to overdevelop to hopefully retain shadow details.
2. You are in a situation where your normal ISO is too slow for a workable shutter speed. You will need to up your ISO.
3. Film only comes in one ISO speed.

So, with digital you can go from 100 to 1600 (maybe more in some models). There is no need to push since you can adjust your camera to any situation.

The only problem is that like film, digital is optimize for a certain range of ISO, maybe between 100-400 (guess) So upping the ISO will give you noise ( grains in film).

thanks for all your informations i find them all informative. It just occured to me that Nikon does have features that somehow does onboard what pushing and pulling does on film where you could alter the contrast of the image and other things. i am wondering if this is what nikon had in mind in incorporating such feature. Though with this thought im not really sure.

Do not confuse pushing ISO rating with changing contrast. Pushing like I said is changing the sensitivity of your sensor (film) to prevailing light source. For example, if you are shooting an exisiting light situation and your shutter speed is too slow for you to handhold, you will want to up your ISO so that your new shutter speed will not blur your subject.

Changing contrast on the other hand is done after you take the picture. Post processing in PS or developing and then printing in film. If you have a flat scene, this is where you want to increase contrast - you are separating the shadow from the higlight as far as feasible to your taste. If you look at the Levels in PS, you move the pointers either way to gain/reduce contrast.

I hope this is what you are asking.

I have found out that with dslrs (for nikon d80) you cannot just alter the iso setting after taking the meter reading of the subject otherwise it will adjust again the reading if the iso rate is altered. I even tried locking the exposure but still it reads a new exposure level after adjusting the iso to a new rate. Is this the same for all other camera brands?