Why to shoot in raw mode.

[480sparky]

I guess we should all do things Wayne's way or else we're failures.

 

[bribrius]

Something usually left out of the discussion is this:

Almost none of this matters if you're reducing the size of the final output. You can trade lateral resolution in for bit depth, any time, and with great success. Edit that JPEG all you want. Artifacts all over the place, ugh. Now reduce it to 640x480 for use on the web. Boom, virtually all the artifacts are gone. Ugly posterization is blended away. Block chunky crap is smoothed right out. Blown highlights are shrunk down to tiny white dots that actually look pretty good. Etc.

Since almost every photograph that is ever seen by anyone other than the photographer is radically reduced in size, it doesn't matter all that much how you do it.

Just another way to say that some people simply don't care about best quality.

might have something to do with purpose of photo. Jpegs are damn good and will show negligible if any difference in many cases. some cases though, yeah, go to the raw...

course, there are those that believe every single photo has to be the highest quality artwork and are ocd. But that is another story and not often found in those that shoot a lot of general purpose photos I would think.

 

[photoguy99]

Something usually left out of the discussion is this:

Almost none of this matters if you're reducing the size of the final output. You can trade lateral resolution in for bit depth, any time, and with great success. Edit that JPEG all you want. Artifacts all over the place, ugh. Now reduce it to 640x480 for use on the web. Boom, virtually all the artifacts are gone. Ugly posterization is blended away. Block chunky crap is smoothed right out. Blown highlights are shrunk down to tiny white dots that actually look pretty good. Etc.

Since almost every photograph that is ever seen by anyone other than the photographer is radically reduced in size, it doesn't matter all that much how you do it.

Just another way to say that some people simply don't care about best quality.

I see the smiley, but this is still a complete mischaracterization of what I said. Reality is that full sized photos are, for all practical purposes, un-viewable in any meaningful way on most computer screens. And when it's shrunk, the artifacts are gone. They're not just hidden, they're not there lurking. They are gone.

 

[WayneF]

course, there are those that believe every single photo has to be the highest quality artwork and are ocd. But that is another story and not often found in those that shoot a lot of general purpose photos I would think.

Mine are hardly artwork, and while I've done this camera thing for many decades, I still seem unable to guarantee every frame will be perfect. Things just happen, you know? The camera white balance tools are so crude. Bright sun is decent, but incandescent is impossible, and flash varies with power level. I think it can be closer than Auto. And reflective light meters are crude in their way. At least sports can take time to get their first one right, and then shoot away.

But Raw is so easy and so fast and so good, they become totally trivial to fix right. Why do you think there are so very many raw advocates? New game in town, and I promise Raw can change your life. One should at least look into it.

 

[bribrius]

course, there are those that believe every single photo has to be the highest quality artwork and are ocd. But that is another story and not often found in those that shoot a lot of general purpose photos I would think.

Mine are hardly artwork, and while I've done this camera thing for many decades, I still seem unable to guarantee every frame will be perfect. Things just happen, you know? The camera white balance tools are so crude. Bright sun is decent, but incandescent is impossible, and flash varies with power level. I think it can be closer than Auto. And reflective light meters are crude in their way. At least sports can take time to get their first one right, and then shoot away.

But Raw is so easy and so fast and so good, they become totally trivial to fix right. Why do you think there are so very many raw advocates? New game in town, and I promise Raw can change your life. One should at least look into it.

I steer the more important ones toward raw, the ones going to print more likely will go to raw. Or if I am planning on friggn with it then it will go to raw. Never really felt the need to use raw for every image. Not a pro though. If I was more photos would be going to raw they would count more (paycheck)

 

[Ysarex]

Something usually left out of the discussion is this:

Almost none of this matters if you're reducing the size of the final output. You can trade lateral resolution in for bit depth, any time, and with great success. Edit that JPEG all you want. Artifacts all over the place, ugh. Now reduce it to 640x480 for use on the web. Boom, virtually all the artifacts are gone. Ugly posterization is blended away. Block chunky crap is smoothed right out. Blown highlights are shrunk down to tiny white dots that actually look pretty good. Etc.

Since almost every photograph that is ever seen by anyone other than the photographer is radically reduced in size, it doesn't matter all that much how you do it.

Absolutely right. Intended use makes all the difference and standards for expectations and best practices are established by that intended use. I regularly create JPEGs at 800x600 pixels for posting on the internet and once sampled down to that size multitudes of evils just vanish. I can plan to work that way. If that's what photography is for someone that's OK. I can adopt that standard when it's appropriate.

But I also make 16x20 prints which requires that I adopt a different set of standards. I hung four prints in a gallery last week. If I had shot and processed JPEGs those prints would not look as good as they do and no one could fix that -- one of them would have been impossible shot as a camera JPEG. It's also OK to want to do the best possible.

A problem with so many of these types of arguments is assuming one standard fits all or rather that "my" standard fits all.

Joe

 

[imagemaker46]

Aside from recovering blown highlights or under exposed shadows to a point, if you can’t edit a JPG as well as you can a RAW file, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

Simply not true. You must not have any Raw experience? Minor adjustments can work in JPG, but any major shifts suffer seriously. Raw has much more range for edit. Shoot a JPG in Incandescent but as Flash, and then try to fix it? (enough to actually be good).

But there is much more...

With Photo Shop once you open the file past the first Adobe raw editor you can make the exact same edits and once in PS, you can do the same edits past recovering exposure that you can in ACR.

Raw has camera oriented tools, like White Balance and Exposure tools. Photo editors don't.
Photo editors (including Photoshop) have graphic oriented tools, general purpose.
Like PS Color Balance... RGB Color Balance has three adjustments for Shadows, Midtones, Highlghts, possibly meant to be versatile, but what we need is an easy tool that does WB on the whole photo range. Plus it is RGB. How do we do those three RGB, and the three tonal degrees, in the right porportions for WB?
Yes, we can shift to Lab color to have the two necessary sliders (aka WB), but there is still the three: Shadows, Midtones, Highlghts.

Raw offers the actual WB tools, two sliders instead of six,, excellent tools for the specific purpose. Calibrated in degrees K. Plus presets for Daylight, Incandescent, Auto, etc.
Easy, fast, good. Built for the job.
And while Levels White Point is Exposure, Raw calls it Exposure.

Plus Raw is lossless edit, and RGB is not. We are always working from the baseline of the original raw image pixels (we can uncrop for example). Then Raw does any data tonal shifting only the one final time to output RGB.
In RGB (JPG), one edit starts at the previous edits results, needlessly shifting tones back and forth. That's not good. That's the pits.
(OK, Adobe Raw software does also offer opportunity to do lossless edits on JPG, and the Raw tools are better, but JPG is still 8 bits).

These are all pretty big deals for anyone that knows and cares. Not everyone does know or care. But if you care, and have a few extra minutes, you should try Raw. It can change your life.

Sports photogs with a one hour schedule certainly do have a rush issue. Fortunately, they are blessed with most shots being the same field scene, one setup. Wedding has it tougher, indoors in a dark church, outdoors in sunny reception, etc.
Amateur has it worst, in all possible conceivable scenes. Needs more individual attention.

You obviously have never shot sports in changing weather conditions. It's not set one and go. Using that statement is incorrect, and speaks to the lack of experience when being faced with changing light conditions. Shooting any sports outdoors requires constant changes to exposures, even under lights, and is more challenging than shooting a formula wedding set up.

Stick to the information that you know.

 

[imagemaker46]

course, there are those that believe every single photo has to be the highest quality artwork and are ocd. But that is another story and not often found in those that shoot a lot of general purpose photos I would think.

Mine are hardly artwork, and while I've done this camera thing for many decades, I still seem unable to guarantee every frame will be perfect. Things just happen, you know? The camera white balance tools are so crude. Bright sun is decent, but incandescent is impossible, and flash varies with power level. I think it can be closer than Auto. And reflective light meters are crude in their way. At least sports can take time to get their first one right, and then shoot away.

But Raw is so easy and so fast and so good, they become totally trivial to fix right. Why do you think there are so very many raw advocates? New game in town, and I promise Raw can change your life. One should at least look into it.

Of course nothing ever changes when shooting sports, I set the exposure before I leave the house and away I go, that must be why so many people say they can shoot sports, it's only one setting to get it right.

 

[photoguy99]

They should make a sports camera that only has one shutter speed. That would save a ton of money.

 

[imagemaker46]

There are people that seem to believe that shooting sports only ever requires one thing already, having any camera and one exposure.

 

[Gary A.]

Something usually left out of the discussion is this:

Almost none of this matters if you're reducing the size of the final output. You can trade lateral resolution in for bit depth, any time, and with great success. Edit that JPEG all you want. Artifacts all over the place, ugh. Now reduce it to 640x480 for use on the web. Boom, virtually all the artifacts are gone. Ugly posterization is blended away. Block chunky crap is smoothed right out. Blown highlights are shrunk down to tiny white dots that actually look pretty good. Etc.

Since almost every photograph that is ever seen by anyone other than the photographer is radically reduced in size, it doesn't matter all that much how you do it.

Just another way to say that some people simply don't care about best quality.

might have something to do with purpose of photo. Jpegs are damn good and will show negligible if any difference in many cases. some cases though, yeah, go to the raw...

course, there are those that believe every single photo has to be the highest quality artwork and are ocd. But that is another story and not often found in those that shoot a lot of general purpose photos I would think.

" ... course, there are those that believe every single photo has to be the highest quality artwork and are ocd. But that is another story and not often found in those that shoot a lot of general purpose photos I would think."

There is absolutely nothing wrong with much of this thinking. Striving to get it right in the camera, striving to shoot for your highest standard on every frame, being able to self-critique one's images ... again, to that highest standard ... I think, is a good thing. Just be careful not to go OCD with it. Striving for excellence and being able to catch and build on your deficiencies and build on your successes is the way to go. (If photography is important to you. If it's not, then shoot jpeg. Actually, I'm thinking of shooting jpeg just to sharpen my metering, I am getting lazy knowing I can fix it in post.)

 

[Village Idiot]

course, there are those that believe every single photo has to be the highest quality artwork and are ocd. But that is another story and not often found in those that shoot a lot of general purpose photos I would think.

Mine are hardly artwork, and while I've done this camera thing for many decades, I still seem unable to guarantee every frame will be perfect. Things just happen, you know? The camera white balance tools are so crude. Bright sun is decent, but incandescent is impossible, and flash varies with power level. I think it can be closer than Auto. And reflective light meters are crude in their way. At least sports can take time to get their first one right, and then shoot away.

But Raw is so easy and so fast and so good, they become totally trivial to fix right. Why do you think there are so very many raw advocates? New game in town, and I promise Raw can change your life. One should at least look into it.

I haven’t been doing this for ages, but I shoot extensively with non-ambient lighting mixed in with ambient lighting conditions with changing and often varying light sources and this is really the wrong way to look at it if you don’t want to spend your life fixing things in Photo Shop. Most DSLRs let you set a custom WB varying by 100 degrees which lets you get pretty damn close to white. There are also gels that allow you to alter your color temps. Unless I’m shooting a light source to purposely be a different color, I try to avoid correcting in Photo Shop. It’s not fast an easy to alter the WB of every single photo you’ve shot when you shoot lots of images. Even changing the WB on 20 separate images can be a pain. And a good flash should remain fairly constant in color temperature between power levels. I know there will be some minor variations depending on the brand, but I mean good, not Alien Bees.

RAW has its place but any good photographer should know when they should and shouldn’t use it. It’s not necessary all the time and insulting people with saying they must have no experience with it if they say it’s not needed all the time shows a certain lack of knowledge. When I shoot an event for a group that has several hundred mindless photos with the same lighting throughout, there’s no need to clog up my HDDs when I can get the shots I need with shooting JPG. When I shoot in other situations like models, engagement sessions, weddings, etc… I’ll shoot RAW files, but it’s like most everything in photography; you should know when using it will benefit you and when not using it will benefit you. It’s like pulling out a flash when it’s not needed. You may look like a professional, but you’re not doing anything to enhance your photography.

 

[pixmedic]

As I drift back through past memories of identical threads, I have to admit to losing a slight chuckle at some of the age old arguments.

Only the final product matters....
as long as you shoot in manual, raw, and get it mostly right in camera (it must be a full frame camera of course)

the real truth is...if you print that image, (or strip exif data) noone has any clue whatsoever what you shot, how you shot it, or how it was processed...The workflow is completely irrelevant, except to the person doing the work.

Personally, and i mean strictly speaking for my own personal workflow preferences, I edit every file. yup. every file i deem not bound for circular file 13. (i only work 10 days a month, and I don't do a ton of photo work...i got time for it) Most go through LR, a small amount through PS. They all get at least some minor adjustments, even if im just moving some sliders around to see how it would look a few different ways. That being the case, there is little to no reason for me not to shoot raw since there would be no real change in my workflow shooting jpegs, and I retain the advantage of the extra data in raw files in case i need it.

but heres my actual answer as to why someone should shoot raw.
ya ready?
Because you feel like it.
yup. that's pretty much it. If it feels good, do it.
It doesn't matter one wheat cent to me how you get the picture you wanted. In photo editing, the ends really do justify the means.
you want to shoot in jpeg? go for it. aperture priority? full auto rapid fire? who cares.
im sometimes amazed that there are people that care more about critiquing camera settings than the actual picture.

crap this rant is going on forever....hold on, let me wrap this $#&^ up.

my point is...
don't be a racist.
raw and jpeg can coexist in harmony.

 

[imagemaker46]

I use auto WB all the time, and I have very few issues with it under most light conditions, indoors or out. Where the light is not ideal, it is generally takes seconds to fix in photoshop. I work with other photographers shooting the same events and they stress over the settings, are constantly making changes and when I tell them I haven't made any changes they look confused. What ends up happening with some of these guys is that they make so many custom changes that they end up having to go back to the defaults and start over when the light changes.

I shot a hockey game last week, no changes at all and then I looked at images shot by another photographer and they were all yellow, i already knew the light in this arena was a little cyan, but that is a quick fix. I think that some people overthink everything they do, and in the end screw up. I keep it simple and concentrate more on what I'm seeing.

 

[bribrius]

As I drift back through past memories of identical threads, I have to admit to losing a slight chuckle at some of the age old arguments.

Only the final product matters....
as long as you shoot in manual, raw, and get it mostly right in camera (it must be a full frame camera of course)

the real truth is...if you print that image, (or strip exif data) noone has any clue whatsoever what you shot, how you shot it, or how it was processed...The workflow is completely irrelevant, except to the person doing the work.

Personally, and i mean strictly speaking for my own personal workflow preferences, I edit every file. yup. every file i deem not bound for circular file 13. (i only work 10 days a month, and I don't do a ton of photo work...i got time for it) Most go through LR, a small amount through PS. They all get at least some minor adjustments, even if im just moving some sliders around to see how it would look a few different ways. That being the case, there is little to no reason for me not to shoot raw since there would be no real change in my workflow shooting jpegs, and I retain the advantage of the extra data in raw files in case i need it.

but heres my actual answer as to why someone should shoot raw.
ya ready?
Because you feel like it.
yup. that's pretty much it. If it feels good, do it.
It doesn't matter one wheat cent to me how you get the picture you wanted. In photo editing, the ends really do justify the means.
you want to shoot in jpeg? go for it. aperture priority? full auto rapid fire? who cares.
im sometimes amazed that there are people that care more about critiquing camera settings than the actual picture.

crap this rant is going on forever....hold on, let me wrap this $#&^ up.

my point is...
don't be a racist.
raw and jpeg can coexist in harmony.

For me it does matter how that final image is made. Don't really so much care what others do but on a personal level it really matters and I will tell you why.

I separate photography from digital imaging. while this is very difficult to do with the advent of digital cameras I believe there is still a difference. There are arguments about comparing later edits in software to the darkroom, with some merit. But entensive reliance on post process as it has become is what I consider digital imaging. which I still to a large extent, separate from getting it right in camera which I consider the primary being photography. Learning, one is best to use the theory of best practice, as in the end I believe it DOES EFFECT final image outcome if not directly than indirectly in your mentality toward doing this at all. As businesses developed best practice theory, science testing has a best practice theory in its own form etc. it seems reasonable to expect anyone engaging in a activity they hope to be proficient at would derive themselves some form of a best practice theory. . one can separate that into photography, or post processing and digital imaging depending on where concentration is pointed. But having some basic set of practice I think is of overwhelming importance.

Beyond that there is another thing, not all photography has the main purpose of being art, and art itself is derived in many form and ways. How the art piece came into being is a direct reflection of both final outcome and in how it is perceived by self and others. There is no way to avoid this. One can say the final image is all that matters, but that is not true. If it were true the standards for that image wouldn not vary so greatly on how it is attained in formulating depending on the use of it and area in which it is attempted to be approved of. while in certain forms of art, yes, the final image is all that matters. In general, that is far from the case.
If how the art (or finished product it isn't all art) came into being, was not important. People would not base both financial value on it, rarity considerations, and keep it such a hot topic of debate all these years. There is a reason the trademark of certain products, and items in and out of the artworld is directly related with perception and value based on the way it came into being. That said, yeah, shoot whatever the hell you want to or what you deem appropriate. Perhaps those that push in camera settings and getting it right in camera are just interested in learning and practicing from a different methodology and might even be resisting the changing of photography toward a primary digital imaging platform (which we might consider less photography and more something else)