Why Shoot in RAW???

[SNOOPY]

with my entry level Camera, the difference between RAW and jpeg is nothing short of amazing...
Something about this Camera compressing too much in jpeg.
I simply refuse to use anything but RAW now... mostly because I am 'consumed' with sharpness levels.

[velvet4269]

I shoot RAW + JPG for a couple of reasons: 1)I can quickly go through the files on my windows machine & decide which ones I want to keep and which ones I simply can't save, and 2) the JPG has all my EXIF info, whereas once I'm done processing my RAW photo, I have nothing. Not all my RAW photos get the same processing, and I'm kinda stuck using the stuff I have on hand (although I'm about to shell out the money for the mac mini-DVI converter so I can hook up my macbook to my big monitor & see about using GIMP to do processing ... still doesn't solve the EXIF problem, though; that I still have to add in post-processing with EXIFER). I pretty much have to buy a new computer before I can upgrade from PS7.

All my computer stuff is pretty ancient My Mac's still running Tiger, and my PC is a Celeron :\ "New Computer" is actually on my list before "New Lens"

[Swisstony10]

I've never really understood why people shoot RAW+JPEG. When you use a program like lightroom you can import the raw and quickly convert the entire stream to jpeg with any sort of batch adjustment you might want.

That's a little like saying "I've never understood why people sit sweating and uncomfortable in their cars on hot days. When you drive an Audi you can just turn the climate control settings to keep you nice and cool, and can specify your preferred temperature which the car will maintain for you." - not everybody can afford expensive software like Lightroom, and not everybody can afford the spec of laptop that will run it. I'm on a fairly limited buudget, and my laptop is about 7 years old, was mid-spec at best at the time, and just about copes with Photoshop Elements 2.

That said - thanks for the tip about Instant Jpeg from RAW - I might have to give that a go next time I'm going to need to convert a high volume of images from one to the other. For the situation I described, however, downloading the images from my camera to my croaky old laptop and burning them straight to a CD in my hotel room while I got ready to go down for breakfast was about the quickest and easiest way to do it. Card storage space for two file formats was much less of an issue than wanting to spend time with all my friends at the wedding the day/night before.

My opinion on the RAW vs Jpeg debate was exactly that - my opinion, and was my answer to the initial question posed by this thread - "Why shoot in RAW????". I find that RAW works best for me. Other people find that Jpeg works best for them. They're not wrong, and nor am I. We're all taking photos, and we're all right.

Russ.

[fletch]

Originally Posted by dcclark

Nobody has ever said to me "I would totally buy this photo, but you didn't shoot it in raw!"

(Fletch went and made that comment on one of my photos on flickr, just to shush me, I think :P)

No - I was serious. I would have bought it but alas, no RAW.

Anyway

RAW is great. As long as you have a decent RAW converter that can batch process quickly (which may be dependant on the speed of your computer) then in camera JPEGs are redundant, unless you need continuous shooting frame rate or are using a camera phone.

[Quo Fan]

Your DSLR came with a RAW converter. It is the software that was bundled with your camera. If you can't afford Lightroom (understandable), then use the bundled software to edit/view your RAW photos.

I shoot RAW all the time. Saved my butt several times. Had a shoot of a bike race on ice, and about half of the shots were way over exposed. Had I shot jpeg, they would have been lost. In RAW, I was able to recover them.

[Swisstony10]

Oh yeah, the 400D came with Canon's RAW software, and it's reasonably good as an emergency substitute for Photoshop (it's on the laptop so I can do quick sessions of minor processing from that to the old version of Photoshop Elements when I can't get to my desktop). Unfortunately, on my clunky old lappy it still takes longer to batch process nearly 500 photos taken over the course of a wedding and subsequent reception than it took to plug the memory card into the card reader and burn nearly 500 Jpegs to a CD..

Russ.

[kirbinster]

Originally Posted by velvet4269

I shoot RAW + JPG for a couple of reasons: 1)I can quickly go through the files on my windows machine & decide which ones I want to keep and which ones I simply can't save, and 2) the JPG has all my EXIF info, whereas once I'm done processing my RAW photo, I have nothing. Not all my RAW photos get the same processing, and I'm kinda stuck using the stuff I have on hand (although I'm about to shell out the money for the mac mini-DVI converter so I can hook up my macbook to my big monitor & see about using GIMP to do processing ... still doesn't solve the EXIF problem, though; that I still have to add in post-processing with EXIFER). I pretty much have to buy a new computer before I can upgrade from PS7.

All my computer stuff is pretty ancient My Mac's still running Tiger, and my PC is a Celeron :\ "New Computer" is actually on my list before "New Lens"

If you download the latest codecs from MS you can view the thumbnails of raw photos in windows explorer just like you would view jpegs. If you were to use Lightroom you would have all the exif data from the raw. If you don't want to spend the money you can still use the free program "Instant Jpeg from raw" and the extracted jpeg has all the exif data in it.

[fletch]

Originally Posted by Quo Fan

Your DSLR came with a RAW converter. It is the software that was bundled with your camera. If you can't afford Lightroom (understandable), then use the bundled software to edit/view your RAW photos.

Unless the camera in question is an Olympus. Olympus Master is the slowest program I have ever had the missfortune of having to use. Editing one RAW is painfull enough. Batch processing is so unbeliveably slow I can't imagine anyone in their right mind would use it.

There are open source alternatives available though.

[pjl]

Hehehe…chime in from a relative ‘newb’.
I’ve shot raw/jpeg since I got my D80 last Sept.
Only edited the jpegs; I’d had a couple p&s cams and was used to tweaking jpegs.
Kept all the raws on the hard drive; ‘someday…maybe…I’ve read about raws somewhere…’
Processed lots of jpegs from the D80.
Elements 3, upgraded to E7 along the way.
Only used crop/lighting/contrast.
I’m partially color blind so see things ‘differently’ than those not so afflicted.
(“There’s a rare green streak in that sunset shot I took??? WHERE??? D’oooohhh!”)
Results came out pretty well, lots of ‘oohs and ahhhs’ from family/friends.
Even got me some requests to shoot some events! (Dressage competition, crew/sculling Nationals, etc…)

Wild hair recently arose in nether regions; tried out raw editing.
Elements 7.
HOLY moly!
WHAT a difference!
In about the same amount of time I’d spent on the jpegs, I got MUCH better results with raw.
Smoother lines, less ‘crispness’ (unless I made it go that way), better color blends; list goes on…
(All my shots on Flickr are jpeg edits; haven’t thrown the raw edits up as replacements…yet…)

I look at it as another learning curve to photography.
P&S vs. DSLR; kit lens vs. faster/crisper; simpler editing program vs. more involved.

Edit jpegs to yer heart’s content.
Save the raws until you get better with the jpegs.
THEN go hawg wild!
Or just damn the torpedos and take on raw from the get-go…

[fletch]

Originally Posted by pjl

Edit jpegs to yer heart’s content.
Save the raws until you get better with the jpegs.
THEN go hawg wild!
Or just damn the torpedos and take on raw from the get-go…

RAWs are way easier to edit than JPEGs. Colour correction? Just use the WB slider. etc etc.

I would just use the RAWs from the get go.