[Jonathan Slade]

Originally Posted by djotaku

One important thing - with RAW you usually can't do the same thing the other way. What I mean is that if you shoot the file too dark, it will probably look like crap if you bump up the exposure too much. This is because cameras dedicate a lot more of the bits to the light end of the range than the dark end.

Second, I always hear people complain that with RAWs you have the extra step of fixing it and you like how the camera does it and blah blah blah. Here's what I do and I think it's a great workflow. (Also it answers the question above about keeping raws)

1. Transfer the RAW files to my computer
2. See which ones are immediately crap - completely out of focus, looked better on the little screen on the camera, etc and delete those
3. Convert to DNG. This makes them take up less space and work with more programs. Why would you ever delete the RAW/DNG files? If you were taking analog photos would you throw away the negatives? Plus HDD are cheap! You can get 1 TB for $100
4. Go over my photos, if I like how they look - why tweak the settings? In other words, the myth of RAW is that you need to be a pro at tweaking the settings. If you like how it looks out of the "box" just leave it be. Unless you're OCD and have to be 100% you have the best photo possible.
5. Convert to JPEG - sure this takes extra time, but I just go do other things - mow the lawn, take out the garbage, cook, clean, w/e depending on how many photos it is and how long it'll take

And actually for step 4 what I do is go through all the photos and rate them (in Lightroom - used to do it in Bridge before Lightroom) I only upload to flickr whatever makes it to 3 stars or higher (or 4 stars if I have to go through more rounds) And then, if you want, you only need to convert THOSE to JPEG. Why convert photos to JPEG if you dont' need it? You can always convert on demand if someone sees the RAW on your HDD and asks for it. On a modern machine shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Finally, I shoot everything in RAW because you never know what you'll want to tweak. Maybe you dont' want to this week, but two weeks from now or a year from now - you'll wish it was RAW. Memory cards are cheap - just bought 4 GB for $60 ($30 after mail-in rebate) and on my 400D that gives me 382 photos in RAW. Total I have 13 GB and that's more than plenty for any trip I've been on.

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Thanks for sharing your workflow process.