shooting raw

[elsaspet]

Ummm, there are LOTS of reasons to not shoot raw...

Media people often shoot jpeg because speed of workflow (and keeping your workflow as quick as possible) is more important than the benefits of raw. After all, most press images are used quickly, once, and then forgotten about.

I virtually never shoot RAW simply because of the number of images I shoot, and the fact that my images are shot to appear online where resolution doesn't matter very much anyway.

If you are a wedding and portrait photographer, or an art photographer, I can see your point... but when I go out and shoot high school football for the local paper, take 400 or so different images (which will be converted to black and white) and have exactly 2 hours after the end of the game to have them sorted, cropped, adjusted, the players and plays identified for the cutlines and then on to editorial so they can make the morning edition... RAW is simply a waste of time, space and energy.

Media People huh?
My background is Wire Service Photojournalism. And yes, we ALWAYS shot raw.
All the PJs I know of shoot raw. It takes a nano second to convert and upload.
I always uploaded via remote site, and being wire service I had literally thousands of other photogs going after the days events at the same time. I didn't know one single person shooting jpg. I honestly didn't.
If you shoot RAW, and want to FTP on the fly, all you do is convert and FTP. It takes less than a second. Literally. Even remotely.
But again, it gives you that little bit of break in case you want to take that other nanosecond to change an exposure if you need to.
This has been my experience in professional wire service and photojournalism, and I have to stand by that.

 

[elsaspet]

And to the second point on your post, all you have to do is use a simple conversion, and you are up, if you need to be. No one makes you change and adjust exposures. It's just a convenience in case you have something amazing.
And, btw, I never had two hours...... Case in point, with some of the events I covered, riots, and hurricanes, it was minutes to FTP, not hours. Every second was a new headliner.

 

[sabbath999]

Well, out here in the sticks we don't see too many of the wire service people... the locals all want JPEG... it's a long way from the local small circ. daily to the AP, know what I mean?

As I recall the exact quote was "Now what the hell am I supposed to do with that thing... give me something I can use"...

Not exactly the New York Times. Still, that's what the folks around here do, so there we have it...

 

[elsaspet]

I meant no offense, and definately don't see ANY other photojournalist as a hick, no matter the amount of townpeople. News happens everywhere.

I wasn't saying to send anyone anything in RAW. I was saying shoot RAW, and if no changes are needed hit a blank conversion and FTP. If you DO need to make an adjustment you can make it.
A lot of people in Tomball, TX, population 680 would have never thought they would have been international news. But a few years back they were.
I admire all photojournalist. It's a hard road that I once used to travel myself. No one is saying big city is better than small city. Not the point at all. Vanity Fair buys from the same pot as does the smaller papers. That too is not the point.
The point is that RAW can be a great advantage.
There was no ill intention towards you or smaller news agencies. I was just giving you my knowledge on the matter.
peace!

 

[Rick Waldroup]

Well, I do a lot of PJ work, including some wire agency work every now and then, and it is pretty much split down the middle. Half of them only want it shot in jpg and the other half in RAW or sometimes both.

I also do some work here and there for my small town paper too, and all they want is jpg. I also shoot every now and then for a local magazine here in Texas and they want nothing but RAW. It has gotten to the point now that I try to shoot both if I have the room for it.

For my own personal work, most of the time, I shoot RAW.

 

[elsaspet]

LOL. I KNOW they only want JPG. What I am saying is no one is nailing you down and making you shoot that way. I've NEVER submitted in RAW.
Take Leeson for example. Shoots RAW. Pulizer Winner. Stresses shooting raw. It can take you from submission to acceptance and if the Gods are with you, Pulitzer.
(Ok, that's too far for me to think, but you get the point.)

 

[elsaspet]

Oh hey Rick,
Don't you have a PJ blog? I think I read it. Great PJ! If I'm thinking of the right guy, you were one of the ones who helped me out way back when.
Thank you. You are HUGE to me!

 

[MarcusM]

Good article Why RAW

Thanks for the article. I glanced through it a bit; will have to read it in full tonight. I am dabbling with the RAW functions a bit right now with my Digi Rebel. I have taken some RAW shots, but don't know how to finish through with processing in order to get them to a printable or emailable format. A couple questions that I was wondering about that I didn't see it addressed although I may have missed it:

When shooting RAW, would it make more sense to convert to a TIFF before printing rather than a JPEG so as not to lose as much quality?

Does all processing of RAW images thus result in compression and image degradation?

 

[Jon, The Elder]

Media people often shoot jpeg because speed of workflow (and keeping your workflow as quick as possible) is more important than the benefits of raw. After all, most press images are used quickly, once, and then forgotten about.

Same here for horse events. Generally a 'one-print' buy and then archived. Customers attitude is 'you are only as good as your last event'.

We use RAW for specials and posed shots. Push a button, click of a dial and you can switch in a blink anyway.

 

[Richard]

One thing that confuses me is, Lightroom lets you change WB and exposure, basically I have all the same adjustments available and it doesn't matter which I shoot. Now I understand that RAW has more info, I just have to look at the file size to know that, and if I was doing something that was a paid job I would quickly shoot in RAW no question. But I don't understand why people say shoot RAW because you can change WB or exposure when I know Lightroom lets you do that for RAW or JPEG?? :scratch:

 

[JDS]

RAW basically just gives you what the sensor sees, unedited. With JPG, it sets the WB itself (automatically, or by whatever you have it set to - cloudy, daylight, shade, etc..), before it saves it. When the JPG is saved, the image has the other information stripped out of it, so changing the WB on that isn't quite as good, because that information isn't there any more. It's basically giving a 'best guess' at what the WB should look like when you adjust it.

Feel free to throw a rock at me if this makes no sense..it's late in the day, and what makes sense to me may not to anyone else.

 

[Richard]

RAW basically just gives you what the sensor sees, unedited. With JPG, it sets the WB itself (automatically, or by whatever you have it set to - cloudy, daylight, shade, etc..), before it saves it. When the JPG is saved, the image has the other information stripped out of it, so changing the WB on that isn't quite as good, because that information isn't there any more. It's basically giving a 'best guess' at what the WB should look like when you adjust it.

Ya I wll have to shoot the same photo both ways and compare.

 

[Antithesis]

I had it explained to me pretty well. RAW is good if you are shooting in low light or questionable conditions were you might need to adjust exposure and white balance later on. Also, if you are someone who has to take thousands of shots, RAW seems to get a little inefficient and therefore you'd want to shoot in jpeg. I think it also has much to do with how confident you are behind your camera. Since I'm a newb, I'm going to start shooting in RAW so I have the freedom of adjustment after I take the photo's as I've already had to trash a lot of would-be good photographs.

I also read somewhere that you spend all this money on a nice camera that has tons of money into it's processing capabilities. You might as well use it.

 

[Mike Jordan]

There are a couple of very good reasons why people shoot jpeg and not raw... and it has nothing to do with the camera. The reason is to shoot raw you are going to generate larger files. Larger files require lots more disk space to save those files, both in your memory card and in your computer. Raw files do have to be converted and though they can be converted with modest amounts of ram and cpu speed, if you shoot a lot of images, not everyone wants to start the process and go to bed in hopes it's done by morning. After you have converted, then you have all those big raw files to keep AND the even bigger converted tiff files (if you are going to shoot in raw it only makes since to convert to 16 bit tiff as your work files). Then you have the finished files, both for printing and for the web. So realistically, you can end up with at least 4 files... the raw, the converted, the finished print file and finished web file. Some of us end up with more if you start getting into layered files and save as you work. Then you have to have the software... yes, the camera software will convert. But it's slow and doesn't give you a lot of options. I've never cared for Adobe's converter, which is why I have used BreezeBrowser since my D30 days and still use it now.

So someone shooting raw could end up spending more on their computer, software and storage space than they spent on their whole camera system. This is a big reason why some people do not shoot raw or at least not very often. The unseen costs of shooting raw doesn't hit people until after they start shooting it.

I've shot pretty much only raw for the last 5 years or so. Sometimes I shoot 1400 or more images at a session. I don't delete work files, converted files or raw files. This is also why I have over a terabyte and half of disk space on one computer (this doesn't count my others) and I've outgrown CD, DVD and tape backups. And why I carry about 15 gigs of CF Cards and a 30 gig Image Tank to dump images in if I need to when I sh oot some of the events I shoot. And occasionally I'll take my laptop but not very often so it doesn't get stolen. While some of you news shooters can shoot and upload, those of us that shoot events have to carry all those files with us until we get home. But I wouldn't shoot anything else but raw unless I was running low on disk space and had to switch to jpeg to squeeze more in. There are a lot of advantages to raw, but there are some downsides as well.

Mike

 

[kittymaguire]

Lightroom may allow you to change the WB of a jpg but give you the same result as changing it in a RAW file. The RAW file contains the base image data and the instructions how to produce the image, when Lightroom edits a RAW it changes the instructions. A JPG the base data and instructions are merge together, thus software has to use complex algorithms to change the WB. It all comes down what you are going to use the image for and what image size you need to produce.