questions on taking portraits

[cloverlane]

do you guys shoot in RAW or JPG? and for the most part how do u hold your camera horizontal or vertical?

thanks a lot

[LightChaser]

I pretty much shoot everything in raw.

As for horizontal or vertical orientation, I find myself shooting vertically more often than not (even for things other than portraits). I'm making an effort to go horizontal more often though.

[beatles2]

I never take my camera off raw. I go back and forth, and some time I'll shoot the same shot both ways, and decide latter which one I like.

[Sime]

Always RAW here, framing / orientation - I go with whatever suits the mood at the time.

[Saralonde]

Like a lot of people, I started off jpeg only, moved to RAW + jpeg (I was nervous!), and finally to RAW only. Love RAW now, it has saved me a number of times when I forgot to set my WB on camera.

As for portrait of landscape, most of my close-up portraits are in portrait (vertical), but I do quite a few in landscape (horizontal). It all depends on backgrounds, the feeling of the image, the amount of people in the shot among other things.

Here I used horizontal because the I wanted to give a sense of space to the blowing seeds and it gives the subject an area to look into:


This is done vertically because I wanted the feeling of dancing down the road, so you could follow her down the path as she heads to the back of the picture:

[cloverlane]

thank you all for your response, appreciate them
the reason I asked was i started a part time gig doing portraits
my first free session was shot everything in RAW and combined vertical and horizontal orientation, i guess i just wanted some reassurance or help from my friends here at DPS

another question though is do you fill the frame with the subject or leave some room for the " crop factor" .I currently use Canon D40
thanks again

[trelaflip]

I shoot everything in RAW then I verify all photos in Canon DPP. I then export all photos as JPG then into Lightroom to edit. RAWs then get deleted.

Reason why I switch to JPG is so I can keep the origional picture style / colors. Even with Adobe's Canon recently released calibration settings it still isn't a 100% match.

Only reason I do shoot RAW is for that 1 of photo I messed up or in a tricky enviroment where I know white balance can be tough.

90% of my photos though are shot vertical.

[oldwolf]

I always shoot in RAW. Vertical vs. horizontal depends on the mood and the subject. I try to remember to leave room for the crop factor. I don't always remember though.

[Jessia]

I'm new to the world of SLR, but I learned to switch over to RAW early. I'm horrible at choosing the right white balance.
I thought I did a good balance of both portrait and landscape shots, but looking through all my images this weekend has made me realize that I shoot mostly in landscape. I want that to change as I start taking more and more portraits though.

[simplyjoed]

Are RAW pics have more use of memory? what do you do with the RAW pics after you edit it? Will I have a problem in editing RAW? I heard some had problems.
Thanks.