RAW or JPEG [Archive] - Digital Photography School

smc1377

03-09-2007, 07:15 AM

Well I just thought this comment was the best of them all...

# Mike Panic Says:
March 9th, 2007 at 12:22 pm

OK I didn’t read all the replies but I definitely went through a lot. There are a lot of misinformed people in here and a lot of sloppy photographers. To preface, I work in the camera industry and have been shooting for nearly 10 years now. I also think a LOT of people on here could benefit from attending a shootsmarter.com seminar.

RAW is not to save yourself later, it should be used when shooting fine art or when you cannot control your white balance. We’ve done (my work) extensive testing shooting known subject matter (think a coke can red, box of colored pencils, etc.) in RAW with auto-white balance, then the same shot (camera on tripod) doing a custom white balance. Open up the photo in CS2’s raw processor and tried to adjust the white balance of the AWB compared to the custom white balance, the AWB didn’t come close, no matter what we did to it. Not only that, we wasted a lot of time doing so. Use a grey (or white) card and do a custom white balance whenever you can – they take less then a minute and will save you time post processing.

JPG can be used whenever you know what your final output will be OR whenever you have control over your lighting. A Jpg shot on the highest setting will produce stellar quality prints. The place I work uses a Noritsu minilab, the quality just doesn’t get much higher for laser printers.

RAW is not a save-all grace… the digital real is much tighter then film is it is much closer to chrome – so you must hit your exposure and white balance. Learn to shoot first, post process second. If you don’t need to do 2 hours of post processing because you nailed the shot in the first place, why?

I’m not dissing RAW, it has a time and a place and I use it quite a bit, but know what you are doing before you think you will “just fix it later”. Lastly, buy a color calibration tool; I prefer the eye-one software over most others out there. If you are not color calibrating your monitor, you shouldn’t even bother doing any sort of adjustments for color or density. Don’t borrow your friends either; it needs to be done at least every 30 days.

I just find that when I shoot in RAW, I spend WAY too much time playing with the photos in post processing. I've gone back to just getting it right in the first place. When I don't have the time to get things right, then I'll shoot in RAW and suffer later. Another instance when I'll tend to shoot in RAW is when I shoot outdoors on a bright sunny day where shadows and highlights are at their worst.

Not only that, but both at work and at home, my pictures are shared with all others on the network so there's the issue with compatibility and ease of use. It'll be a cold day in hell before my wife will let me show her how to process RAW photos on the computer. And same with the coworkers.