What’s Your Preference?

sdo · #1 (**permalink**) 07-08-2009, 03:12 AM

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but if you ever need to convince someone that shooting in RAW mode is a good idea, look no further than here. This is a photo of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.

Here's the export directly from Lightroom with no adjustments:

And here it is with some MAJOR adjustments to exposure, brightness, and contrast:

There was tons of smoke on stage and banks of huge strobe lights that kept going off. It made exposure and metering an incredibly moving target. The strobes went off just as got this shot. When I got it into Lightroom, it looked completely over-exposed. It was lousy and I tagged it as a reject. I had 1200 photos to go through, so I could only spend a few seconds to rate or reject.

But for some reason I went back to the rejects... and pushed the exposure WAY down. A usable image started to appear... some pushing around some sliders later and I had something that was pretty cool. I'm glad I didn't toss it.

This was a really important lesson... ALWAYS SHOOT RAW and DON'T THROW AWAY PHOTOS. I knew that, but this has given me a great example to convince others. I would NEVER have been able to pull that out of the images if I hadn't shot them in RAW... just not enough bits to do the job in jpeg.

In fact, I'm kind of kicking myself because I didn't even really follow my own rule during the show. I did delete some photos in the camera because I was afraid of running out of card space (brought 3x 4G cards... filled them all). I wonder if I saw an all white screen more than once and deleted it. I wonder what great photos I blew away because of it.

wunterb · #2 (**permalink**) 07-08-2009, 04:01 AM

Excellent rescue!!!

ckodonne · #3 (**permalink**) 07-09-2009, 02:40 AM

One of my favourite musicians...

What a great save...smart of you to go back just to see. I would have just completely tossed it. There's no indication whatsoever in the original that you could've salvaged anything...RAW's a lifesaver.

manwez · #4 (**permalink**) 07-09-2009, 02:55 AM

My camera has the option to shoot RAW + jpg so it takes one of each. Do you think that is a good idea or not a good idea, or indifferent? I've been trying to figure out the advantages to shooting in RAW and you might finally have me convinced!

Great save!

ckodonne · #5 (**permalink**) 07-09-2009, 03:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by manwez

My camera has the option to shoot RAW + jpg so it takes one of each. Do you think that is a good idea or not a good idea, or indifferent? I've been trying to figure out the advantages to shooting in RAW and you might finally have me convinced!

Great save!

Shooting in RAW will give you more data to salvage in case you, like in this example, over-expose an image. You can go into a RAW editor (if you have Photoshop you already have a RAW editor...and I'm sure there's a free open-source one floating around somewhere you can download) and adjust the exposure +/- 2 stops... perhaps more in certain circumstances. You can also edit saturation, contrast, brightness, etc without losing/damaging as much data as it would if you adjusted these same things regularly in PS.

So, in short, RAW is great if you edit your photos often. If you don't do any editing at all and shoot a lot, then there's no point in having a large RAW file taking up space on your hard drive.

manwez · #6 (**permalink**) 07-09-2009, 03:10 AM

I've done some shooting in RAW and have used Digital Photo Professional (canon program?) but am still trying to figure it all out. Guess its just taking time to sit down and learn it all and experiment.

ckodonne · #7 (**permalink**) 07-09-2009, 03:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by manwez

I've done some shooting in RAW and have used Digital Photo Professional (canon program?) but am still trying to figure it all out. Guess its just taking time to sit down and learn it all and experiment.

That's all it takes man! Patience and sticking with it. Try a simple google search for something like "raw editing techniques" or "raw editing introduction"...something along those lines. There's got to be a million tutorials on the subject which will give you a general understanding to start with.

B.. · #8 (**permalink**) 07-09-2009, 05:53 AM

Wow!

And ... wow! You need to be sure your workflow gives you the space to start from some seeming failure to explore it to get to something of worth.

Thanks more than words can say for that lesson!

2stroke · #9 (**permalink**) 07-10-2009, 05:08 PM

I have made it a point to shoot in RAW + jpg all the time now because it seems I have to make up for some poor shooting techniques at some point, or at least balance out a shot that may have had a blown out sky and the subject underexposed.

I havent figured out which raw converter I like better tho, ACR or what came with my Sony, mainly because I am not really skilled at either yet. I still get lost on the sharpening.