reignite the debate, to raw or not to raw

I know that this has been debated ad naseum but once again into the fray.
Since purchasing my 20D I have taken all my shots in RAW. The files are all
about 7 - 8 mg and I back up to two hard drives and one external hard drive
(Maxtor and love it). The camera is used primarily in Ap priority mode and
from an exposure/colour temp perspective doesn't often make to many mistakes
with me driving. Hence very little appears to be gained from RAW mode. I
am now considering moving to JPG and based on my conversion practices to
date, I will not appear to loose much control over my images as they don't
generally need much fixing when going from RAW to JPG. Ok, there must be a
downside, lets hear it.

regards

 

No downside at all, horses for courses really, under ideal conditions jpg
may well do what you want, when the conditions are difficult then shoot in
RAW so you can extract the last bit of useable info.

 

Well, for one, you'll fit twice as many shots on a card, and you'll be
able to click off even more shots per moment. If you're curious, shoot RAW
+ Large JPG and copy off just the JPGs. Then see if you even refer to the
RAWs.
As a sports shooter, for me JPG is the only way to go. I'm not saying
to just pray-n-spray, but speed is a major advantage when you can't
manipulate the scene.

Dave

 

Necromancer you are not:
http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/necromancer.htm

Austin

 

Just curious: what did/do you use to process your raw files? And why did
you
pick that program?

 

Yes, this is the way to answer the question for oneself. I find I can
almost always get better results from the RAW if I'm willing to spend
the time. I'm not always willing though.

 

I have shot professionally, but todayI primarily shoot like most other
amateurs...vacation, family, etc. I honestly can stated that in the 4
years I have had a digital camera with RAW capabilities, I never used
RAW to its full potential until just recently! My point... many/most
people shooting digital will NEVER need the advantages of RAW! I have
found, in the past, that my non-professional needs generally were met
well enough, simply by using Photoshop LE to edit JPEGs. But...
Last month I attended a wedding as a guest, andI brought my Canon
20D to get photos that could be passed on to bride's parents (our
friends). In shooting many weddings on film in the past, I would rely
largely upon the pro lab to color balance, etc. and use the latitude
inherent to color negative film to help get all my exposures, even in
some marginal conditions. But digital is more unforgiving, like
slides...unless you shoot RAW use RAW editors! I was able to perfectly
color balance even difficult mixed lighting shots, and I was able to
salvage shots underexposed simply because I didn't wait long enough for
the in-camera flash to recycle. (Yeah, shooting professionally with a
pro-level flash that uses a power pack and recycles in < 1 sec, puts
some really bad habits into you, like shooting before your in-camera
flash has had what seems half a lifetime to recycle!).
I can say, even after that recent wedding, that MOST shots I have
taken with my 20D I probably would never process in RAW -- simply
because I was not intending to SELL the photos or enlarge them to very
large sizes! This recent wedding (even though unpaid) deserved the
time to process RAW to extract the most from each shot simply because I
wanted to provide the absolute highest quality to my friends. But most
people looking at your photos on a computer monitor probably would
never truly appreciate the extra level of effort you put into working
RAW files!
So it comes down to how YOU wish to use your photos, and whether
you think you will exploit the advantages of RAW...or if Photoshop'ing
JPEGS meets all your needs! I currently use RawShooter Premium 2006
and Paint Shop Pro 10 and can recommend both highly.

--wilt

 

In my experience, if you don't need to do much to the picture, then
you might as well be shooting JPG. But I have found that if I want to
tweak brightness or saturation or anything more than a tiny bit, it
tends to bring out all the artifacts in the JPG. Make no mistake, with
JPG you are losing information. Whether that matters or not depends on
whether you need that information later.

 

If you run your CR2's through the adobe DNG converter, you can knock these
down to about 1/2 that size using lossless compression - know that they're
in an "industry standard" format, and do away with XMP files to boot!

The advantage of RAW that I like is that the initial adjustments can be made
whilst the gamma is still at 1.0 (ie linear) - giving you more "headroom"
for adjustments in certain tonal ranges before it starts to show. Personal
choice at the end of the day - in my experience, if you use Adobe Bridge for
your sorting and initial selects than it's really no more difficult to work
in RAW - and you'll know that you've got the best opportunity to capture the
best quality data. And if your shots don't require any adjustment then you
can always get ACR to batch convert to JPG for you whilst you go watch a
rerun of Bewitched.

 

Using ACR with RAW lets me use a very large color space and go to
16bit tiffs for submission to Alamy and produce the very finest images
possible. I also shoot everything in Manual mode as I want complete
control of the image process.

I think jpg is at best a very weak compromise and of course you lose
data with.


**************************************************************

"There has always been war. War is raging throughout the world
at the present moment. And there is little reason to believe
that war will cease to exist in the future. As man has become
increasingly civilized, his means of destroying his fellow man
have become ever more efficient, cruel and devastating.
Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which
has existed throughout history by means of photography?
The proportions of that notion seem ridiculously out of balance.
Yet, that very idea has motivated me.

James Nachtwey
War Photographer
http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/

 

I have Raw shooter professional as well as Breezbrowser Pro along with
Canon's DPP (which I don't like). I tend to use Breezbrowser but have only
just started to play with RSP. Don't know which I will stay with. One of
the respondents to the post has indicated that shooting in raw and then
converting to DNG for space saving may be the way to go. Comments on that
proposal welcome as always.

regards

Don from Down Under

 

Amen. I agree fully. It all depends on what you shoot
and how you will be using the results.

And there is no single answer even for a single photographer.

You could have gone out the next day and done some shots for
a web page illustration where 800x600 pixels would be overkill.

---- Paul J. Gans

 

Fortunately the 20D shoots raw and large jpeg simultaneously. I have shot
raw this way for a wedding and for a formal portrait shoot. Just in case
really. I currently get the raw looking as good as the digic II adjusted
jpeg. Damn fine in camera system that. I select the neutral not the
overcooked setting that is standard on the eos 300D that i also own.

Should i ever get more proficient in using raw then i can go back to RAW
shots i've taken. For sport i will stick to jpeg for a faster shooting
speed and more continous images 23 versus six.