RAW photos

[foRSter.]

Ok so been told by alot of people to shoot in RAW, I've been doing abit of reading up and can't really make sence of it, I know working with your photo you have more colours ect with 16bit, but once I open the file in Photoshop the raw file plug-in opens up and you can adjust the settings to how you want them, but why bother? Why not just use adjustment layers to do the exact same thing? Is the difference that big when printing? What other benefits do you get over jpeg?

Cheers

 

[dunganick]

It basically gives you the ability to work the colours back from greater extremes. So where a JPG image has already had the cameras processing put across it, the RAW image is yet to have this, so you retain some of the colours/data that a camera might clip when it adds colour space/WB/Contrast etc... . This means there are occasions where you can use additional data in RAW that the JPG file doesnt contain, such as shadows/shades in a blown out white.

One main use is if you are having to capture very important unrepeatable images. RAW means if you slightly screw the image up, you stand a better chance of getting it back.

There is also a small IQ advantage as the files are not compressed or use lossless compression unlike most JPG files.

I would compare it to saving a photoshopped image in .AI or .JPG, With the .AI you can go back and edit the actual image, with .JPG all your really doing is adding filters/brightness/contrast.

Personally i shoot JPG, the storage space is of more use to me and the processing time for RAW goes through the roof.

 

[foRSter.]

Thanks for that, I can imagine the editing times can get stupidly long, I think I need to have a real play with a raw image to see what will benefit me most, it just seemed to me that after the pre-edit "raw plug in" there wasn't much left for me to do other then resolve some of the imperfections

 

[Andy.]

Open up some raw files in Adobe Lightroom to get a very clear idea of what you can do. I only shoot RAW these days as I use Lightroom to manage my catalogue so it makes no difference for me.

File sizes are rather large but 1TB drives can be had for just over 50 quid so it is manageable for me. I know that Nick takes a lot more shots than I do though which would explain his choice.

 

[The Boosh!]

If i'm shooting something important I use RAW.

If it's just holiday snaps/random pictures I shoot JPEG.

 

[Revels]

Wedding - Raw.
Everything else - JPEG.

 

[foRSter.]

Yea tell me about it I think the raw pictures I was taking are about 10mb each soon fill up my measly 320gb hd, I'll have at lightroom, is it impossible to edit a jpeg the way you could edit a raw file?

 

[DanFreemanPhoto]

I used to have the attitude to shoot in RAW for 'important' stuff etc. But now I am 100% RAW. If you get familiar with a proper RAW editor, there is so much more information in RAW shots you can reveal/edit.

And you can alter the white balance, recover blown highlights, and fill lighting in slightly underexposed areas. I would never shoot JPEG again tbh.

 

[bomber]

ive never shot in RAW up until being tutored a little by Shadowness, now i've seen how much can be done with it i shoot everything RAW and just delete the guff more regularly

 

[DanFreemanPhoto]

^Bigger memory cards FTW

 

[sneeks]

I only shoot in RAW, I prefer having the added editing capabilities in all photos.

 

[bomber]

^Bigger memory cards FTW

meh, ive got a mortgage lol

 

[dunganick]

I'm going to give RAW a go this afternoon on some Jobs, wanted to try it at Donington tomorrow, except i only get 250 shots out of a 4gb card. Thats not even enough for 1 race! Especially when im shooting to two cards. I need to get some more cards!

 

[DanFreemanPhoto]

Memory is getting cheaper and cheaper. Try picstop.co.UK. they're always good on price, and sell some items VAT free!

 

[dunganick]

Well i gave RAW a go at a Hockey and Rugby match today, to be honest it hasn't effected my processing too much, i was able to recover a few images that were totally under exposed. However truthfully i would usually just skip these shots as they wont warrant the processing time. The images also take forever to load (they are about 3-4 larger files) so do effect my processing time in that sense.

However... the sharpness, god only knows what is going on with the JPG compression, but the RAW files defiantly produce sharper images.

I will give it another go tomorrow at Donington (as im processing on site there) so can just use a few cards, still not sure, but more convinced than previously.

 

[DanFreemanPhoto]

Just imagine if one of shots you recovered was very important. That's the advantage of RAW. And you can output the raw shots to tif etc too for high quality printing.

 

[dunganick]

Yup, but i cant think of a time this has happened in the last year, and im not sure i fancy the 3-4x the storage....

 

[Andy.]

Does the 1DIII also do sRAW? It'll save you a fair amount of space if you don't need to do big prints.

 

[dunganick]

Hi Andy yes it does. Although i tend to crop heavily on alot of images so probably best left on HQ.

I had a weird issue today. When shooting RAW the images would import to LR3 with a very odd standard setting. And none of the preset options were even in the right ball park. Pretty frustrating and not something i found yesterday, so who knows what was going on.

 

[DanFreemanPhoto]

This might be useful: http://www.digitalslrphoto.com/Back_Issues/587056/october_2010_issue.html

Normally I dont buy photography magazines as I find you cannot learn that much from reading, only actually going out there with a camera and learning from your mistakes.

I may buy it later today at Heathrow as I can get away with a magazine on expenses

 

[foRSter.]

okay so started to shoot in raw at the rws yesterday and ive made a balls already haha, ive taken the pic, uploaded it into iphoto, moved the file into my pictures so i could open in photoshop, saved the edited image as a .tiff file also save a .jpeg for net use. I rushed the edit abit so wanted to start a fresh but when ive been to open the .NEF file again it has gone! I assumed when i tranfered the image from iphoto it would of duplicated it, not transfer the actual image. So now im left with only a edited .tiff file and .jpeg is there any way to revert the image back to its original state in photoshop or would this image be salvageable? many thanks