Why to shoot in raw mode.

[Ysarex]

I think it's a mistake to separate technical aspects from artistic ones. It all flows together. The necessary technical details can be taught in hours, though, and so obsessing over them is a waste of time, unless of course the technical details are what you enjoy.

RAW versus JPEG is a minor nicety which is rarely applicable to artistic vision. Sometimes it is, though. Luckily it's also trivially easy, so when your ideas need it, there it is

That one's for agreeing with me now after saying I was totally wrong.

These are for "taught in hours" and "trivially easy." You, and we, know better.

Joe

 

[photoguy99]

You've said a lot of stuff, Joe, only some of it is wrong, to be fair I agree with all the stuff that's right, of course!

And I stand by "taught in hours" and "trivially easy". Of course the rabbit hole goes down forever. Having spent about 20 years exploring it, I am confident in that assertion.

But:

You can be taught a toolbox suitable for a broad range of expression in a few hours, if the teaching is organized well. The people who are good at the "let's give some inner city/poor rural/whatever kids some cameras and see what happens" game have demonstrated this repeatedly.

You can be taught what RAW is good for in a few minutes, and taught, again, a useful toolbox in a few more minutes. Perhaps an hour.

But, sure, the rabbit hole goes down forever, if you want to think of it that way.

 

[Ysarex]

You've said a lot of stuff, Joe, only some of it is wrong, to be fair .....

Oh, please be specific -- I'd love to correct my errors.

Joe

 

[photoguy99]

I was specific. Post #112.

 

[Ysarex]

I was specific. Post #112.

You don't quote a single thing I said in that post. "Specific" you can google it. Show me where I said the things you're making exaggerations about. Quote me.

You do it like this. You said: "The necessary technical details can be taught in hours, though, and so obsessing over them is a waste of time, unless of course the technical details are what you enjoy.

RAW versus JPEG is a minor nicety which is rarely applicable to artistic vision. Sometimes it is, though. Luckily it's also trivially easy, so when your ideas need it, there it is"

And that is complete rubbish. I've spent the last 30 years teaching photography to college students -- both undergraduate and graduate. They study for years to learn. Too bad they didn't talk to you first, they could have saved a lot of time and money. So 30 years and thousands of students later I've gotten pretty good at it but I haven't been able to whittle it down yet to a couple of hours.

Here's one of the textbooks we use in our Photo I class: Photography (10th Edition): Barbara London, John Upton, Jim Stone: 9780205711499: Amazon.com: Books

You need to get a hold of Barbara, John and Jim and tell them it doesn't take 3 people and 416 pages for just a Photo I text. A couple of hours -- they should be able to fit it into 50 pages easy with room for illustrations.

Oh, and the Pros who hang out here at TPF what they do is really just "trivially easy" and can be learned in hours -- can't imagine why they'd even want to refer to themselves as professional photographers since a Sunday afternoon is all that's really needed to learn to do what they do.

Joe

 

[photoguy99]

No, Joe.

This is not a thesis defense. This is an internet forum. If you cannot follow my argument, then that's a shame, but I don't care. I'm not here to count coup and win arguments on the internet. I'm here to learn stuff and from time to time to offer information.

And, since the rabbit hole goes down forever, if you're given a semester or three years or 50 years to fill, of course you can and you do. If you have two days, or an afternoon, you can get it done in that time as well. It's not very complicated stuff.

 

[photoguy99]

Also perhaps worth noting. You quote me, and then blunder off the rails immediately:

"The necessary technical details can be taught in hours"

you seem to interpret as:

"everything there is to know about photography can be taught in hours"

which isn't what it says at all. But, again, you're here to win arguments, and I am not, so I should just step away now and let you.. win. However you plan to do that.

 

[snerd]

.......... Here's one of the textbooks we use in our Photo I class: Photography (10th Edition): Barbara London, John Upton, Jim Stone: 9780205711499: Amazon.com: Books......

Damn that thing is expensive!!

 

[bribrius]

.......... Here's one of the textbooks we use in our Photo I class: Photography (10th Edition): Barbara London, John Upton, Jim Stone: 9780205711499: Amazon.com: Books......

Damn that thing is expensive!!

why do you think i try to learn online for free. And we have these photography instructors on here that will explain things to us for no cost at all while everyone else is paying course and book fees.

 

[DanOstergren]

This last weekend I accidentally did an entire shoot in JPEG. Fortunately the images are for a clothing brand that only wanted to use them for posting on the internet and not for print, and I made sure by habit to get the exposure/lighting/whitebalance right at the moment of exposure, but my heart sank hard when I got home to put them on my computer and realized there were no RAW images. I'm now dealing with banding in some of the images which is making editing take a bit longer. Lesson learned; I will ALWAYS check to make sure the camera is in the right setting. This time we rented a camera and I forgot to check. Never again...

 

[bribrius]

This last weekend I accidentally did an entire shoot in JPEG. Fortunately the images are for a clothing brand that only wanted to use them for posting on the internet and not for print, and I made sure by habit to get the exposure/lighting/whitebalance right at the moment of exposure, but my heart sank hard when I got home to put them on my computer and realized there were no RAW images. I'm now dealing with banding in some of the images which is making editing take a bit longer. Lesson learned; I will ALWAYS check to make sure the camera is in the right setting. This time we rented a camera and I forgot to check. Never again...

yeah, i hear ya. flipping back and forth i have forgotten. There are so many settings it seems near impossible to remember where you left them next time you shoot. suppose if you just leave everything the same or factory default or whatever it wouldn't be such a problem but those of us that do a lot of settings playing.....
picked up the camera last night and was kind of like "wtf is wrong with this thing" then remembered i left the focus in 3d tracking. Looking through the images notice something is off. oh yeah, i had changed it to mid size on the jpegs. huh... switch to user preset and snap hdr, huh? oh yeah i had changed it to heavy hdr before i need to put that back... notice the iso is at 4k, forgot to reset that limit need to change that back. shot through twenty last week all underexposed because i didn't notice my exposure was -1 at first.
don't know how people every keep track.

 

[Ysarex]

Also perhaps worth noting. You quote me, and then blunder off the rails immediately:

"The necessary technical details can be taught in hours"

you seem to interpret as:

"everything there is to know about photography can be taught in hours"

which isn't what it says at all. But, again, you're here to win arguments, and I am not, so I should just step away now and let you.. win. However you plan to do that.

And you throw out superlatives like "trivially easy", "taught in hours", "totally wrong" and "everything there is to know" and expect to not be challenged.

I know what you're saying. You can unbox the new Xmas camera and go through the manual with a little help in a couple of hours and start taking some respectable JPEGs of the kids that will look great to your FB friends. I also know that way too many of those people manage to catch a few "isn't she soooo cute" snapshots and a month later Precious Moments has a FB page open for business.

Sure, you can open a raw file in LR, press the auto button and wang a few sliders around till you like what you see and that was easy. It's not so easy to get excellence. It's OK for some people to want and expect the best.

No, I'm not talking about "everything there is to know" that again is a superlative. I'm talking about knowing enough to be able to control the process to an expected outcome. I do this for a living (well I did for 40 years) and I take it seriously. Sure it's not rocket science, but you really want to stick with trivially easy and not get called out? Maybe ease off on the superlatives.

You and I shouldn't be at odds over any of this. I never advocated obsessing over the tech in this thread. I advocated understanding how it works so you can control it and get the results you want. I believe you in fact endorse that. And again I'm sorry for the sarcastic tone I took with Runnah and for these:(don't know what to call them).

Joe

 

[Gary A.]

The Exposure Comp is easy to adjust on Fuji's. It is an unlocked dial next to the shutter release on the the right edge of the camera. It took a while to learn not to accidently touch that dial. Fortunately, during my formative years in photography, I had to exposure by eye. My skill level in that department is seriously reduced by neglect, but when I was shooting regularly, the TTL meter was used more as a backup and/or fine tuning for my eye than my primary metering. The EVF on the Fuji's is so good that usually I can catch Exp/Comp under-over exposure if I accidentally hit it.

 

[pixmedic]

Othello!
I just got it.
PS and LR are Othello!
(noone remembers the old 80's Othello commercials?)

 

[Ysarex]

This last weekend I accidentally did an entire shoot in JPEG. Fortunately the images are for a clothing brand that only wanted to use them for posting on the internet and not for print, and I made sure by habit to get the exposure/lighting/whitebalance right at the moment of exposure, but my heart sank hard when I got home to put them on my computer and realized there were no RAW images. I'm now dealing with banding in some of the images which is making editing take a bit longer. Lesson learned; I will ALWAYS check to make sure the camera is in the right setting. This time we rented a camera and I forgot to check. Never again...

yeah, i hear ya. flipping back and forth i have forgotten. There are so many settings it seems near impossible to remember where you left them next time you shoot. suppose if you just leave everything the same or factory default or whatever it wouldn't be such a problem but those of us that do a lot of settings playing.....
picked up the camera last night and was kind of like "wtf is wrong with this thing" then remembered i left the focus in 3d tracking. Looking through the images notice something is off. oh yeah, i had changed it to mid size on the jpegs. huh... switch to user preset and snap hdr, huh? oh yeah i had changed it to heavy hdr before i need to put that back... notice the iso is at 4k, forgot to reset that limit need to change that back. shot through twenty last week all underexposed because i didn't notice my exposure was -1 at first.
don't know how people every keep track.

Yep, that's the first thing I do in a class on the first day in the first hour. I make them all get paper and pen and we go over the settings in their cameras and we determine an appropriate set of defaults that we want the cameras set for. I make them write them down and then I tell them they must develop the habit of setting those defaults before they turn the camera OFF. It's OK to change them once they start working but it's absolutely critical that they set the camera back to "default" before they turn it off so it'll be there the next time they turn it on. We can refine the defaults as we learn more but the habit of setting "default" before turning OFF the camera is so important.

Joe