Why to shoot in raw mode.

[imagemaker46]

They are all digital images. I agree getting it right in camera is still something that people should strive for, but in the majority of cases that just isn't going to happen for most. I usually make a few minor adjustments, crop where I have to, lighten/darken and subtle colour tweaks where required, but not often. That's it, basically the same things I would do if I was printing from film. It's still a digital image and end result is still going to be a digital image.

Bingo. With film, we had to do the darkroom work, and we understood how to fix the exposure and contrast, etc. It was just part of the process. It rarely came out perfect. That was black&white. Or (most of us), we could send color to the drugstore, and the guy at the drugstore corrected the white balance and exposure for us (he wanted to sell the print). So we shot negative color film in incandescent, or daylight, or we might use a blue flash bulb, or not... whatever... most of us then did not even understand the difference, never heard of white balance then. The guy at the drugstore fixed it for us. Analog had much more range than digital (digital clips at 255, analog light does not).

But with Digital, there is no guy now. The shop just feeds the JPG file to a print machine now. So we are that guy now, if we want any corrections to be made. It is good to know how and be able to fix this. Raw makes that be easy, fast, and good.

I grew up processing and printing black and white film, slide film and colour negs, I printed them all as well, so I was that guy. I don't send anything out to get my images printed, i do all the work myself, so I'm still that guy. Working from jpegs is also easy, fast and good. I've never had any concerns with the quality or the final product. It doesn't make any difference to me or my clients what the starting point was, all I care about is the end point. If I look at one of my images on a 60' wall mural and the client is thrilled with it, does it matter that it was a jpeg. Nope.

 

[FArrival]

If you plan on spending a lot of time editing pictures for a desired effect shoot RAW. Otherwise stick to JPEG, which you can still post process quite a bit.

 

[Derrel]

I shot thousands and thousands of images on color slide film, both Kodachrome, and Ektachrome, a bit of Agfachrome in the early 1980's. The images I shot were exposed as they were. I shot for in-camera perfection. For the most part processing was "100%. Correct. By the book." Everything developed to "factory specifications". There were tens of millions of slide shooters who worked this way from the 1940's, through the 1950's, 60's 70's,80's,90's, and beyond. The vast MAJORITY of serious non-wedding work was shot on color reversal film--AKA color slide film AKA color transparency. The idea that there was ,"Always manipulation of the film original," is utter bullshit. No, there was a HUGE, world-wide population of serious amateurs, working professionals, and even hobby shooters who worked at creating the EXACT image they wanted to capture, frozen in time, in an emulsion, on a single, unique piece of film. That is the central difference between photography with analog systems, and digital imaging: in analog photography, the goal is to create "an image" that is permanently recorded in a physical, finite, tangible form, captured in a light-sensitive emulsion. There is "an original" image, one that can be accessed and seen by the human being, without the need for a computer to decode binary code and create an arrangement of pixels that form an image once a computer, and computer display are brought to bear on "the file".

I am always surprised to hear otherwise experienced photographers from the past spewing B.S. so freely, and so willfully ignoring over sixty years' worth of how the majority of "serious photography" was actually undertaken when done on color slide film, and how almost all images were printed mostly "straight". A ton of revisionist B.S. is being spewed in the rabid defense of this new 2010's idea that, "RAW is the holy grail" argument, as seen on the internet. Amazing.

Apparently, the most critical thing is not taking photographs, or making good photos, or finding good subject matter, but simply that ALL images need to be shot in raw mode. Do I about have that right? I think so.

 

[bribrius]

I have a question. these formulas they put into cameras for in camera processing to sooc jpeg. Are these formulas based on the pre existing notion of "straight" photography? Kind of like the iso is related to film iso and the darkroom often attributed to post processing?
we hear lots of talk of in camera processing formulas. And I wonder how they come up with them, and what standard they use to come up with them. Maybe they are established in the manner of the straight photography meme? Like, "hey film is gone, but if you were to do straight photography this in camera processing and adjustments are the closest thing we can come up with in our formulas to mimic it"

clearly none of it is the same, but seems all digital is a attempt of replication of film photography aspects in a digital means. so the jpeg image i would wonder must replicate something. Maybe even just 35 mm straight with drug store processing. something.

 

[bribrius]

'There is No Formula': Cinematographer Gordon Willis on Testing the Limits of His Craft
what is even more interesting is they have similar debates in film. Read through the comments on this article. The colorist would be the one dragging the image into pp in raw perhaps. The cinematographer the one picking out the pov and lens. The director the one with the vision deciding how he wants it shot.
Maybe some in digital photography are just closer to a cinematographer, some closer to being the director, some closest to the colorists. Some doing it all but concentrating attentions or better at a certain aspect of the show.
As technology increased, notice the debate increases on if the colorist is becoming more and more important, and the director and cinematographer less so.
fascinating. like photography but on that next level.
They even compare the importance of the colorists effects vs. the importance of the vision of the director.

The movie processing has gone so far ahead now some of the movies i have seen lately are down right amazing from the processing aspect. Course, we all complain they cant come up with a original idea at the same time and keep repeating the same plots. lol

what is somewhat in the obscure, is the occasion blair witch project or movie that is purposely filmed with flaws and errors in lower quality, giving a greater degree of authenticity and realism to the audience and gaining artistic effects manually rather than through the colorist. Really brings you there. But then the next technological genius in animation comes out in the theatre and you are like "oh wow! this is sooo cool!"
or throw on the 3d glasses and give it a whirl..
lol

 

[Ysarex]

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.

The problem you've got to deal with there is that all photographs no matter film, digital, glass plate, polaroid, negative, slide, print, whatever are manipulated images. Lenses manipulate the image before it's even recorded. So you've got no point where a black/white line exists and crossing it you have one versus the other. All you have is a range or gradient of manipulated images that starts with grey on one end and progresses darker. There's no white end to that gradient. Now you have to select a point to draw your line. What criteria justifies where you draw that line?

When you say you want to separate out a photograph versus a digital image I assume you want to say the photograph is a more faithful representation of reality and that matters to you. But no matter how you produce that photo it is a manipulated representation.

You use a digital camera. So do I. Consider this then: I also strive to make my photos be very faithful representations of the reality that I photograph. That's one important reason I typically shoot and process raw files. The heavy, crude and inaccurate editing applied by the camera software when it processes a JPEG is usually way too far a departure from reality for me and I want a more faithful representation of what I photographed. To get that I discard the automated camera processing that makes all kinds of inaccurate assumptions about what I photographed and then applies it's best crude guess to mangle the result.

You're using a digital camera. You don't think that all the processing algorithms engineered into that camera were created individually for every image you may in the future want to take and were created to produce a "faithful" rendition? Canon camera's even have a picture setting they call "faithful" -- now there's a good laugh.

Joe

That line is already drawn. Their are numerous restrictions on post processing depending on use of photo, so it is drawn in many different formats by many different organizations. They don't have a problem coming up with lines. so the idea that they are all altered really doesn't fly as more than one has come up with criteria to separate just the amount of altering from other amounts of altering.

Exactly my point. You just contradicted yourself. First you said, "that line is already drawn." You used line and the article "that" as singular. Then you went ahead and noted many different organizations which suggests many different lines. Dozens of wiggling lines in different places isn't a line. The best you can do for example in journalism is draw the line that content shouldn't be removed or added to the photo except for cropping (which can be a heavy-handed manipulation). Does that same line hold for advertising photos? How about fashion photos? There's no line if there's lots of different lines. And the lines that are drawn remain arbitrarily drawn. On one side of the line you don't get no manipulation versus manipulation. What you get is acceptable manipulation versus unacceptable manipulation. All photos are manipulations of reality in many different ways. You're just making your choice and maybe agreeing with one group or another. Other groups will draw the line differently.

For example is your goal to make sure that a photo you show to me is seen by me as faithfully as possible compared with how you saw the subject? That would seem an appropriate goal of someone who doesn't want images manipulated. Do you then refrain from using wide angle and telephoto lenses so as to not manipulate perspective when the images are viewed? How would you calculate the focal length to use so that a viewer would experience the perspective as you saw it taking the photo? Using a wide angle lens is a manipulation, but that manipulation is acceptable right? -- why does that get put on one side of "the line?" I've known photographers who have obsessed over this issue of the viewer seeing the scene in the same perspective as they saw it when the photo was taken. They use only one lens focal length and make sure you view their prints from a fixed distance by stringing a line in the gallery where you're supposed to stand. Their position is extreme but they're drawing their line and can't stand the kind of heavy manipulation that you employ by using a zoom lens. For example you posted a heavily manipulated photo of a seagull last week. That kind of editing would drive them nuts. (In the same way that your color editing in that photo drives me nuts)

Joe

 

[bribrius]

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.

The problem you've got to deal with there is that all photographs no matter film, digital, glass plate, polaroid, negative, slide, print, whatever are manipulated images. Lenses manipulate the image before it's even recorded. So you've got no point where a black/white line exists and crossing it you have one versus the other. All you have is a range or gradient of manipulated images that starts with grey on one end and progresses darker. There's no white end to that gradient. Now you have to select a point to draw your line. What criteria justifies where you draw that line?

When you say you want to separate out a photograph versus a digital image I assume you want to say the photograph is a more faithful representation of reality and that matters to you. But no matter how you produce that photo it is a manipulated representation.

You use a digital camera. So do I. Consider this then: I also strive to make my photos be very faithful representations of the reality that I photograph. That's one important reason I typically shoot and process raw files. The heavy, crude and inaccurate editing applied by the camera software when it processes a JPEG is usually way too far a departure from reality for me and I want a more faithful representation of what I photographed. To get that I discard the automated camera processing that makes all kinds of inaccurate assumptions about what I photographed and then applies it's best crude guess to mangle the result.

You're using a digital camera. You don't think that all the processing algorithms engineered into that camera were created individually for every image you may in the future want to take and were created to produce a "faithful" rendition? Canon camera's even have a picture setting they call "faithful" -- now there's a good laugh.

Joe

That line is already drawn. Their are numerous restrictions on post processing depending on use of photo, so it is drawn in many different formats by many different organizations. They don't have a problem coming up with lines. so the idea that they are all altered really doesn't fly as more than one has come up with criteria to separate just the amount of altering from other amounts of altering.

Exactly my point. You just contradicted yourself. First you said, "that line is already drawn." You used line and the article "that" as singular. Then you went ahead and noted many different organizations which suggests many different lines. Dozens of wiggling lines in different places isn't a line. The best you can do for example in journalism is draw the line that content shouldn't be removed or added to the photo except for cropping (which can be a heavy-handed manipulation). Does that same line hold for advertising photos? How about fashion photos? There's no line if there's lots of different lines. And the lines that are drawn remain arbitrarily drawn. On one side of the line you don't get no manipulation versus manipulation. What you get is acceptable manipulation versus unacceptable manipulation. All photos are manipulations of reality in many different ways. You're just making your choice and maybe agreeing with one group or another. Other groups will draw the line differently.

For example is your goal to make sure that a photo you show to me is seen by me as faithfully as possible compared with how you saw the subject? That would seem an appropriate goal of someone who doesn't want images manipulated. Do you then refrain from using wide angle and telephoto lenses so as to not manipulate perspective when the images are viewed? How would you calculate the focal length to use so that a viewer would experience the perspective as you saw it taking the photo? Using a wide angle lens is a manipulation, but that manipulation is acceptable right? -- why does that get put on one side of "the line?" I've known photographers who have obsessed over this issue of the viewer seeing the scene in the same perspective as they saw it when the photo was taken. They use only one lens focal length and make sure you view their prints from a fixed distance by stringing a line in the gallery where you're supposed to stand. Their position is extreme but they're drawing their line and can't stand the kind of heavy manipulation that you employ by using a zoom lens. For example you posted a heavily manipulated photo of a seagull last week. That kind of editing would drive them nuts. (In the same way that your color editing in that photo drives me nuts)

Joe

it is hard to faithfully replicate a scene, as it was exactly. I have tried. For me, it seems near impossible. It is much easier to drag a seagull into post process and post process the hell of it in some artistic way than make that image identical to what was there. Kind of like i can come up with a abstract a lot easier than photographing a street exactly as it was. Notice i am saying "as it was" vs. "as i saw it". Because the first element is removing yourself from it. How you saw it doesn't matter. what was there does. I have not attained realism in my photos, by and large. It seems perhaps the hardest thing to do. short of maybe shutter speed or depth. Still don't cut it. And lens, yes, i would have to have a much higher end lens as it all starts out at perfect vision it is your eye that misinterprets it. Making them less real, now that is easier.. The lens. yes the lens...!!! How do we fix that? Have yet to get the colors exact too.

 

[imagemaker46]

Shooting film, especially transparencies, was a get it right or don't get it at all. Different light, different film. I blew a bunch of exposures even after shooting for years. Getting the right exposures on kodachrome shooting in bright sun on a ski hill using a spot meter. Always a challenge, but that was all we knew, so we worked at it. Thinking back now, it's a much easier way of shooting now. The challenge to come up with great images is still the same.

If I ended up with an exposure on film that looked the same as what I was shooting, that was perfect. I don't know how the digital systems are calibrated, I've said before, I'm not technical, analogue. If the digital image I'm looking at on my computer screen is what I was shooting, that's all I care about. I don't care how the inner workings of the camera got me to that point. As far as I'm concerned, film/digital, doesn't matter, it's all about light and the image I want. I just take pictures.

 

[Ysarex]

I have a question. these formulas they put into cameras for in camera processing to sooc jpeg. Are these formulas based on the pre existing notion of "straight" photography?

No. They're based on the pre-existing principle of make the largest number of consumers happy with the result. I am not joking.

Kind of like the iso is related to film iso and the darkroom often attributed to post processing?
we hear lots of talk of in camera processing formulas. And I wonder how they come up with them, and what standard they use to come up with them. Maybe they are established in the manner of the straight photography meme? Like, "hey film is gone, but if you were to do straight photography this in camera processing and adjustments are the closest thing we can come up with in our formulas to mimic it"

clearly none of it is the same, but seems all digital is a attempt of replication of film photography aspects in a digital means. so the jpeg image i would wonder must replicate something. Maybe even just 35 mm straight with drug store processing. something.

As the cameras get more sophisticated and more expensive the JPEG processing engines are offering the user more in-camera options but all of those options come with a spin. A specific example: Last year I bought a Fuji X-E2 which I'm very happy with. That camera was proceeded by the Fuji X-Pro and X-E1. The X-Pro had already developed a following of sorts and was pretty successful given it wasn't a Nikon or Canon. When Fuji released my camera the X-E2 they also released a new JPEG processing engine (Fuji's EXR-2 processor). The angst and uproar in the Fuji user world was deafening -- they squealed like stuck pigs. Fuji changed their beloved JPEG processing from the X-Pro camera version. And so if they bought the X-E2 there was no way they could have that processing back. Since then Fuji released the X-T1 and didn't fix it for them -- betrayal!

Let's stick with Fuji here since you asked if there's an attempt to replicate film. Fuji is short for Fujifilm. They were in this business long before digital primarily as a film manufacturer. Fuji cameras then come with JPEG processing options to emulate Fuji's better know films. The standard JPEG processing in a Fuji camera is Provia but there are also JPEG options for Astia, Velvia and neg stocks. Now it's worth noting again that when the EXR-2 processor came out all those films changed ;-)

Another digital twist: Film's analog response was chemically predictable. When we loaded a role of Kodachrome into a camera what that film was going to do was a clean and clear function of light exposure and chemistry. As such the results were pretty predictable. Computer algorithms on the other hand have this structure: if(){}else(){}elseif(){}else(){} etc. In other words they try and branch to different results based on earlier evaluations and then again and again. That's a very different process and as such will always bear the mark of the programmer. In other words; based on elseif() you did what?!! Seriously??!! Are you an idiot? There will always be an engineering team back at Nikon or Canon tinkering with those algorithms and always a marketing executive looking over their shoulders (that would be the idiot referenced above).

Joe

 

[runnah]

Scott summed it up nicely in the last couple lines.

If people spent more time worrying about getting a compelling image rather than about their equipment the world would be a better place.

 

[Ysarex]

Scott summed it up nicely in the last couple lines.

If people spent more time worrying about getting a compelling image rather than about their equipment the world would be a better place.

There you go! Very well thought out except that you forgot to tell everyone how to do that. I'll help:

 

[runnah]

Scott summed it up nicely in the last couple lines.

If people spent more time worrying about getting a compelling image rather than about their equipment the world would be a better place.

There you go! Very well thought out except that you forgot to tell everyone how to do that. I'll help:

I'd rather people use that mode and focus on the shots they take.

 

[bribrius]

Scott summed it up nicely in the last couple lines.

If people spent more time worrying about getting a compelling image rather than about their equipment the world would be a better place.

hey. Some of us don't know it all and have some empty spaces on the shelves to fill in.

 

[Ysarex]

Scott summed it up nicely in the last couple lines.

If people spent more time worrying about getting a compelling image rather than about their equipment the world would be a better place.

There you go! Very well thought out except that you forgot to tell everyone how to do that. I'll help:

I'd rather people use that mode and focus on the shots they take.

This may be a really over-the-top idea, but do you think people could learn how to use their cameras and also focus on the shots they take? Is there any chance those two things could work together? Naw, what am I thinking -- I was born back in the day when there were photographers. That won't work today; modern cameras are just too hard for fauxtographers to really understand. I mean they're designed so you don't really have to know how they work. That's hard. So I have a better idea! Don't worry, Be happy!

 

[runnah]

You come off as a bit of an elitist.

Want to come round and yell at my kid for not using proper shading techniques when he is finger painting?

My point is that when I see a great photo I done care what camera, lens or file format they used. People are so obsessed with the technical aspects that they have forgotten the point.