Topic: Digital Photo Manipulation

[Mike]

Jimmy, no I never suggested that RAW is crap.  I don't see the word 'crap' in my message? And further, I have not misinformed forum readers as to what is best.  My comment related to the fact that my pictures are taken in JPG and if RAW is better then I would use it if i knew explicity the ins and outs of how they differ, to which i don't and don't profess to be an expert.

Just because I use JPG does not make me an advocate of it, it just suits my photography at the moment.  My comments related purely to the fact of an opinion of a professional photographer and that does not mean that i agree with it. My comments did not say anything about 'you should do this' or 'you should use that'.

So-what if her camera is worth tenfold than mine!  We all have a preference, if you use RAW then good on you, but i think you've turned my initial comments around somewhat and labelling me as saying something i did not.

[enak_12]

I shoot raw then convert to tiff. I save in tiff because the photos can be edited without the image quality degrading unlike JPEG. The draw back is that tiff files are huge compared to JPEG and so some of my less important photos I convert to JPEGS.

RAW is handy because you can easily fiddle around with the camera settings such as white balance and exposure after the photo has been taken, so its like being able to take the photo again. This is great luxury IMHO and worth the extra file size. If you stuff up a great photo in JPEG your pretty much stuck with how it was taken unless you want to degrade the image quality by editing it. In RAW and later TIFF you can edit the image without effecting the quality. Heres an example:


underexposed original RAW


edited

[Jeff Brislane]

Raw files are like a digital negative but in fact they are far more versitile than a negative or slide for that matter ever was.

For starters you can adjust the density of your raw digital exposure after shooting as enak_12 has suggested. You could never do this with a negative or slide as with film you were stuck with the density that you shot. So in a sense raw images are much more versatile in this regard than film.

Secondly as enak_12 has also said, by shooting in raw you can edit your photo's as either raw or tiff format which allows you to edit without loosing image information. With jpg file you loose information everytime you save your file even if you don't alter it!

Thirdly as enak_12 has also mentioned you can alter the white balance of your raw images without degradation. This has all but eliminated the need for me to use filters which means even less image degradation as I don't have to place another piece of glass or plastic over my lenses. I can simply change the colour temp to suit the mood I want. It also means that I can shoot in tungsten or flouro light with out filters.

As for professionals like myself, some shoot jpg's because it's more practical such as journo's like Nick Moir. For journalism you don't need huge file sizes for printing plus you want to be able to upload via a laptop so jpgs are the norm. Some wedding photographers also shoots jpg's only because they are either comfotable with them, having gotten used to them before raw was invented, or because they want to decrease their workflow.

But a lot of portaitist's and landscapist's like myself will only shoot in raw so they can edit in tiff without degrading the final image and so they can enlarge their files in a lossless format.

As for software all canons with raw format come with zoombrowser which raw image task included allowing you to edit and save your raw files as either jpg's or tiff's.

Now i would strongly recomend that unless you have a specific reason for shooting in jpg's, you should shoot everything in raw because you don't know how you might need to use your images down the track. And because it's a lossless file saving format you will never have your images suffer degradation ever.

Jeff.

 

[Michael Bath]

Thanks to recent posts here and a couple of days with Jimmy on chase I have decided to shoot in RAW as well. The D70 will save RAW and a JPG combo, so I can still quickly use the JPGs for web use - which is of course where I mainly use the images. 

Regards, Michael

[Jimmy Deguara]

Hi Mick,

Don't worry I was not having a go at you

Without diverting the topic, I wanted to ensure that whatever the preferences, readers of this forum understand that RAW is the better format and is widespread in useage in all top end and professional models. I think subsequent emails have explained even in greater detail my main message. Nice to see Michael Bath converted!

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

[Mike]

Hey Jimmy,

I do so apologise for all to see.  Too many Michaels on the forum and since it was after my post i 'assumed' (which is bad) that it was in answer to me and was not until i read MB's post that i realised that you and he were at heads with JPG and RAW.

But you know what?  It does not really matter what we use, so long as we're getting the shots we want and we're happy with them!

[Jeff Brislane]

I have split this thread and started a new thread for RAW file editing. If you want to talk about RAW files go HERE otherwise you can still use this thread to talk about general image manipulation

[Brad Hannon]

Hi all, I work with someone who does wedding photography (Eos 1DS MkII) on weekends and lives and breathes cameras.  He recently gave me a document that really puts RAW v JPG into perspective as well as 8bit v 16bit imagery.  The order of magnitude of the levels of control RAW provides over JPEG is huge.  I will endeavour to find a link to it and post it up here.  I've been shooting RAW since chasing with Nick and Jimmy and I'm glad I did because I stuffed up a lot of my exposures and white balance when I was learning on the go (and still do!).  With RAW I have the ability to correct my mistakes properly with no image degradation.

Brad.

[Brad Hannon]

Hi all, here is a link to an adobe document that I found very useful for explaining the differences between RAW and JPG, as well as 8-bit and 16-bit images.  I recommend you all have a read, especially pg 3-7.

http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_filmtodig.pdf