What will Raw do for me?

[lennon33x]

It is only you that wants to discuss JPG. You can't do this in JPG. In JPG, just how would you correct flash WB on a couple hundred studio shots? In Raw, that is one click, lightning fast. Plus, you have the raw range for end to end like Daylight to Incandescent. Plus you have lossless editing, you are not shifting previous JPG back and forth over itself. How would you correct vignetting with JPG tools? (on several at once?). Raw tools are simply designed to do camera jobs. It becomes correction, not editing. Pondball was right, my use of "me" obviously meant me, not you. To each his own, but Raw is the easy way.

Your video is titled "Why Shoot RAW?"

Your direct implication is RAW over JPEG. How is it that Designer is the only one who wants to continue discussing JPEG? This entire thread is the idea that RAW shooting is better than JPEG.

 

[WayneF]

I will drastically disagree with you on one point. You said that WB is NEVER correct. I'll disagree vehemently. If you know your gear, know your subject, know your environment, you can get correct white balance. I understand that there are limitations with WB in the camera, but to say it always has to be adjusted is a misnomer.

The goal initially with teaching beginning photographers should be to shoot in RAW, teach them post processing, and teach them to get it right in camera, that way, all they are tweaking are little things

Well, to each his own, but White Balance is never right for me. Flash color varies with power level. We turn studio lights down and they go red. We turn speedlights down and they go blue. These can be pretty large changes, but the dumb camera has one setting called Flash, which is just its assumption about the unknown flash. The camera is a pretty crude tool in some respects.

Incandescent lights, cool, warm, daylight, what is it? Plus even if we knew, and even if they were accurate, their color will vary with wattage and age. What is it? Fluorescent is even worse. The Sun is the most constant, but Bright at 5500K and Cloudy at 6500K has several stages in between. OK, in-camera Custom WB could handle some situations (and it depends on camera Auto WB), but that takes time to always be doing that ( and is not good for Raw that does not have WB in it). Faster to just add a white card.

"Get it right in the camera" only means "get it close enough we are not too offended, then we don't care what it actually is"

 

[Designer]

Contrary to your assumption that I want to discuss JPG, I really hoped that the video would answer the question posed in the title. I missed that, and you missed being able to conceive and execute a teaching video.

 

[astroNikon]

I like the video
The only problem is newbies just don't understand.

For instance when I bought my d7000 i was happy shooting away in JPEG.
All that RAW and photo editing ad nuesea just was beyond my basic understandings.

I started learning more about the camera and WB whilst shooting while sitting around in the bathroom just going through the menu, and wondering my my white bathtub was yellowish in the photo. Thus I learned about in camera WB correction. The in camera correction tools pushed me to learn more. Then, as time went on, as I mentioned before a FTP project pushed me to learn to use LR (which I had owned for at least 6 months but never used).

This is a good video to give newbies to strive for. But getting from point A to point B is missing .. but then that could be a 400 hr video on it's own.
It is a good learning video of what you can do and how in regards to RAW.

fyi .. newbies aren't doing a couple hundred studio shots, or weddings ... or at least you hope they aren't

 

[BillM]

I think the intended audience is the beginner who asks "why shoot RAW". We have all seen hundreds of those threads as they pop up every few days and have been popping up for a long time. In that regard I think the video is an excellent resource for the intended audience.

 

[WayneF]

I really hoped that the video would answer the question posed in the title. I missed that, and you missed being able to conceive and execute a teaching video.

No argument with that. First post at top of thread described it as "Video is NOT my thing, but I just whipped out a quicky short amateurish video to try to show the first ideas of Raw. Not deep, just fast."

My notion was that it might be of interest to those that never saw Raw before, and had no clue how easy and powerful it is.

 

[Derrel]

I watched the video a few days ago. It seemed to me that something like, "Beginning Editing Basics for RAW Files" would have been a good title.

 

[BillM]

Agreed, it is a nice place to start for the beginner :thumbup:

 

[lennon33x]

"Get it right in the camera" only means "get it close enough we are not too offended, then we don't care what it actually is"

Get it right in camera means less work in post. I'm only aimed at getting it right for my clients and myself.

 

[WayneF]

FWIW, I have replaced the first link (top of this thread) with a second try video. It should be boring the second time because it is still the same material, same script so to speak, still same intentions, but arguably implemented a little better, at least a few more words, fewer omissions. I changed the title, it is not debatable now. I find this to be a huge subject to try to fit into a few minutes.

 

[pondball]

Weighing in again, fwiw... But this newb was saved a lot of aggravation and embarrassment today... Went to our curling club and got a bunch of shots... All in raw, thanks to Wayne... A good number looked pretty good considering my shallow, but growing knowledge of things like wb, +\-, and even kelvin... Went home with the intent of posting some on our curling FB page... Until I loaded them up and found out the most were either underexposed or overexposed... Yet not all looked that way in the wee 3" screen on my camera... Must say that I was able to save most of the shots in cs5 after importing them thru the mini-bridge component... Was easier than I thought it would be and while I no doubt could have done a better job of it, I was able to post some quick pics online that at least our curlers are enjoying. They are not exactly portfolio material but they look realistic to the venue... Lighting In Rinks is notoriously horrible for photographers... At least for this one, however having shot in raw I now know I can go back into cs5 and discover what my best bet is for in camera settings next time out, and be more concerned about composition and what speed I want to shoot at ( some of today's shots were shot at too low a speed to be useful... Apparently the sweepers were working harder than I thought!)... I can also make a better decision regarding the correct kelvin setting as I quickly found out while editing them after... And now know, after reading Wayne's recent post that I can also do some crafty batch processing... And... Best yet... It will not affect the RAW file I started out with... Which is important on today's shoot as there will not be opportunities for shots quite like what I got today... And messing around with jpg would have been a little more dangerous if I'm reading things correctly... Anyway... I believe that already That's why RAW is probably for me... Over jpg or tiff or...

 

[BillM]

I think I have seen almost every minute of Olympic curling coverage so far :heart:

 

[WayneF]

And messing around with jpg would have been a little more dangerous if I'm reading things correctly... Anyway... I believe that already That's why RAW is probably for me... Over jpg or tiff or...

Glad to hear it was a positive experience. Overexposure is harder, an impossible problem, data is lost from the clipping, and it is not recoverable. 1/2 stop over is not so terrible in Raw, and Raw can help one stop over, but it is best not to be over (because clipping simply damages the original). In CS5 ACR, the Recovery slider helps overexposure cases, helps simulate clipped pixels. Your camera histogram (the RGB triple histogram) will tell you if you are clipping. We heroically try to prevent clipping. But in the case of underexposure, unless using high ISO, we can always push exposure a little higher.

I'm sure the lighting was tough. You might try next time to include a white card in a first test shot in that lighting, for reference. Or there probably is some white clothing, shirts, etc, that can be a rough starting point (sometimes pretty good, far better than nothing).

When such edit is needed, there is absolutely zero advantage of using JPG for that... You can, and it can help, but there is much downside.
So, if Raw is available, this next really makes no practical sense....
But.... some do shoot JPG, and regarding lossless, there are a couple of ways to attain lossless JPG edits.

One, if you religiously always archive your original JPG (intact, no edit whatsoever, no exceptions), and always only work on copies of it, then it remains lossless, in that you can always start over from the original JPG. But once you ever overwrite the original JPG file, the original is gone.

Two, Adobe Camera Raw will also edit JPG files, losslessly (just open in Raw, same way). In the same way as Raw, the original JPG is never modified (by ACR). The list of the changes are saved somewhere in the Exif area (it can be in the original camera file without adverse effect), and ACR will apply that edit list of changes to any access. You don't have to start over each time, you start from your previous list of changes. Still JPG, but now also with advantage of using the better Raw tools.

However, other programs reading that file dont know about that, and all they will do is show you the unchanged original JPG (as if nothing has happened). So ACR is the only program that can access them properly now, and ACR will need to output another JPG (containing your edit changes), for all other programs to use (same as Raw requires outputting the JPG for the other programs.) Any subsequent edits simply discard any previous JPG modified versions, and then modify the saved list in the original file - which does not change the original pixels... Only the Exif is rewritten, the JPG data is NOT recompressed and rewritten (no new JPG artifacts). Then output a new JPG. So now, there are only two sets of JPG artifacts, the original set the camera did, and the final one set. In this ACR way, JPG can be better than JPG. No doubt Raw is better though, the 12 bit range is much greater, and only the one final set of JPG artifacts.

I use ACR to edit my wifes compact JPG, the usual exposure and color issues, but always needing the Red Eye tool, and cropping 5:4 to 3:2 to print 6x4 prints. She thinks her little compact takes really great pictures.

 

[WayneF]

I replaced the video (first post in this thread) with a second try, hopefully improved. However, the first 20 or 30 seconds is blurred, then it clears up OK. I think that must be YouTube? The original is fine here.

 

[ABJayce]

I use RAW professionally. Weddings, commercials, shoots, portraits etc I will shoot in RAW and edit them later. A day out and about taking photos I know I will not want to process I will switch over to JPEG