RAW with High ISO

keith204 · Jul 21, 2008

I started shooting RAW quite a bit more than I ever have, and couldn't believe how much better my high-ISO shots look. It's unreal. The grain doesn't look bad...it actually looks good IMO. It leaves SO many details that are lost with high-ISO jpegs. I haven't done a side-by-side test yet, but I will sometime to show it. Anyway, pretty excited & had to share

Sw1tchFX · Jul 21, 2008

Oh yeah, when you have the time/space, there's no other way. That's why camera high-ISO tests are worthless without looking at the RAW files, that's where the real meat is.

sabbath999 · Jul 21, 2008

keith204 said:
I started shooting RAW quite a bit more than I ever have, and couldn't believe how much better my high-ISO shots look. It's unreal. The grain doesn't look bad...it actually looks good IMO. It leaves SO many details that are lost with high-ISO jpegs. I haven't done a side-by-side test yet, but I will sometime to show it. Anyway, pretty excited & had to share

What you are seeing (somebody correct me if I am wrong) is the removal of the noise suppression that your camera uses in high ISO JPEG pictures.

I know my D300 is vastly sharper in RAW when I push it past 3200 ISO up into the higher limits of the ISO range.

Image quality at 1600 ISO and below isn't affected with the D300 (at least not to my eyes at 100 percent). 3200 is about where you start to see a difference in sharpness between RAW & JPEG on my camera.

I ALWAYS shoot RAW when shooting at 3200 and above... even though 6400 ISO shows some noise, it is still quite sharp on the D300 with RAW... but not with JPEG.

Bifurcator · Jul 21, 2008

Yeah, it's not just " the removal of the noise suppression" though. It's also selecting colors and stuff - and such selections can very often cause more noise than what you would see in the RAW sensor data. I guess there is a fairly high percentage of shots where applying the color levels and fitting them into a profile adds more "apparent" noise than the sensor alone detected/generated. If after that the in-camera noise removal software has to clean up the mess then that's going to snuff some detail that wouldn't get snuffed (maybe) if you did those things on your computer instead. And then of course there's also the lossy compression of the JPEG format itself.

Garbz · Jul 22, 2008

The dark side claims another member. We hope you enjoy your stay. It's good to have you with us, even if it's just for a day.

keith204 · Jul 22, 2008

Garbz said:
The dark side claims another member. We hope you enjoy your stay. It's good to have you with us, even if it's just for a day.

Haha. you've claimed me for longer than a day. I said I'd never shoot RAW at the auto races, because it would take too much space (500-800 photos per night). However, maaan... I shot RAW 3200 at the night races and was VERY impressed with the way they turned out. There were several shots where I pulled up the brightness quite a bit and they turned out GREAT!!! It's just AMAZING the detail and potential with this stuff.

This shot was quite dark, and I bumped the exposure in LR. Sure, it's grainy, but IMO the grain doesn't look bad like in a JPEG. Shoot, this IS a jpeg, just compressed with Lightroom 100% compression rather than in-camera. I'll try to get a 100% crop when I get home. I'm absolutely loving it. I'll try some more RAW shots at the next races, like of real racing action in some of the lower-lit areas that provide better content.

Bifurcator · Jul 22, 2008

Kewl image!

dEARlEADER · Jul 22, 2008

I guess the same isn't true with little kids cameras....

My high ISO NEF's converted to JPEG by Nikons ViewNX are lousy... even at 400... The incamera JPEG processing is far superior up to 1600. This was even mentioned in a recent issue of Popular Photography (I can't remember the month but the D60 was on the cover.... maybe may).

I think they rated D60 ISO raw conversion as fair but in camera jpg as excellent.

RyanLilly · Jul 22, 2008

keith204 said:
Haha. you've claimed me for longer than a day. I said I'd never shoot RAW at the auto races, because it would take too much space (500-800 photos per night). However, maaan... I shot RAW 3200 at the night races and was VERY impressed with the way they turned out. There were several shots where I pulled up the brightness quite a bit and they turned out GREAT!!! It's just AMAZING the detail and potential with this stuff.

C'mon Keith, it's fun to live on the dark side all the time. Plus didn't you just get some big cards for really cheap from that weird "follow these instructions exactly, for a special deal" thread? One 8gig card should have you covered for the night. Well, maybe keep and extra 4g handy. :mrgreen:

Joves · Jul 22, 2008

RyanLilly said:
One 8gig card should have you covered for the night. Well, maybe keep and extra 4g handy. :mrgreen:

Because there is never enough storage. Yes and welcome to the darkside it is the good side to be on.

Hawaii Five-O · Jul 22, 2008

I started shooting in RAw on my little panasonic DMC-FZ8 today, I was surprised this camera had that file format. I thought RAW only came on the dSLRs.

I need a bigger card if keep shooting in RAW though. It dropped the 1gb SD card from over 300 pics to 57 haha.

Garbz · Jul 23, 2008

That noise looks nice and uniform. Throw Noise Ninja at it. I think one of the problems with JPEGs is the compression causes slight artefacts in the noise which makes the job harder for programs which profile the image. But I am just guessing here.

keith204 · Jul 23, 2008

Garbz said:
That noise looks nice and uniform. Throw Noise Ninja at it. I think one of the problems with JPEGs is the compression causes slight artefacts in the noise which makes the job harder for programs which profile the image. But I am just guessing here.

That's a great idea, and a very reasonable explanation. I'll give it a try.