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Believe it or not you RAW loving freaks but I have found the use of the RAW format to greatly reduce my photographic output.

Whilst it is a fantastic format, and the ability to change a miriad of settings after the shot has been taken is an absolute godsend, I have found that I now spend an enormous amount of time fiddling with settings trying to make every shot absolutely perfect!!!

How do you all cope! I have now switched back to JPEG and am busy shooting away without the pressures of weighty post production!

From this moment on I will be championing the virtues of JPEG and encourage those nonRAW shooters to do the same, the exposure might be crappy sometimes, but we won't be spending 3 hours trying to get it bang on!

The upside of this is that I now have to make sure that my technique is right to begin with .

Ed.

edneeves wrote:The upside of this is that I now have to make sure that my technique is right to begin with .

That is certainly an upside, but I suspect that you've missed the point somewhere along the way. I doubt I'd spend more than a few minutes on any image in PP: a quick look at curves and wb, maybe a tad exposure adjustment, review sharpening, and that's about it.

The major problem I have with shooting jpg is that, as soon as i've made the exposure, I've thrown away maybe 90% of the image's data, never, ever, ever to be recovered.

That means that I'll have forever lost the chance to turn that "maybe" shot into a winner. Yeah, ok, stop laughing, but you get my point.

If you're happy to lose all that data (and remember, jpg is an inherently lossy format to start with) then please, go right ahead; I'm not going to try to change your mind.

But I will be the first to say "I told you so" when the need arises.

I don't see any problems in shooting RAW which I used on the DSLRs for few years now. Shooting Jpegs is another try but as Gary said, you're not able cover anything done by mistakes, and mistakes which easy make due to our daily tasks, and one you made mistakes about setting, you're not going back and able to shoot the same photos.
Shooting RAW and I'm not hardly spend long hours to correct or pping my photos. Perhaps for few first tries but after if you know what to do then you'll be in love with RAW.
Most of people I've known always shoot RAW, PJs shoots Jpegs often cos they don't need more than quality for the paper.
We had a poll and few threads before about RAW vs Jpegs

If that's the case with jpeg, why not still have the same mentality of trying to get the shot right the first time and shoot in Raw? It's a win-win combo, that way you master the camera as well as have the ability to print out and manipulate decent images later.

The key point is to know when to shoot RAW.

And if you're not sure, I recommend you to shoot in RAW+JPEG. You can review all the images by looking at the JPEGs (no need to open PS!) and quickly delete the ones you don't like (though it sometimes requires displine ).

That way, you're completely in control. You can play with the smallish JPEG files or spend time perfectioning this winning RAW shot...

Link.

Great suggestion there Link

I expect there will be a bit of debate on this - thanks for generating the discussion Ed.

I'm a RAW shooter.

I spend at most a minute or so on most of my PP. Sometimes I'll spend maybe 10 minutes when I want to alter the image (eg compare the two below), but the big thing for me about Raw is it gives me latitude to fix mistakes. I try to get it right when I take the shot, but for a multitude of reasons (including my severe lack of skills) I can get it wrong. With RAW I can undo things I just can't do with JPEG (a simple example - I adjust the EV for some shots at sunset. Next morning I go take some daylight shots and don't notice the EV is off - with RAW fixing this is a snap. Better it didn't happen, but I'm fallible)

The trap with RAW is to fiddle excessively. I ONLY do PP to make minor changes like Gary UNLESS I've stuffed up and even then it adds an extra minute or two to PP. I see this as good value.

My samples: First image is before PP, second is after PP - I spent about 10 minutes on this because I wanted to enhance the shot. Raw gave me this ability. WHile I could have tweaked a JPEG too, I would have been starting with less detail.

I do prefer shooting in raw mode, but am at a loss as to the best raw conversion software to use. I haven't got cs2, and cant afford most of the other programs. The trial periods that I've used up have shown me the wonderful things that can be done with raw, but where do I go

Personally I enjoy the time I spend in front of my computer working on my images. I wouldn't have it any other way.

fotoart wrote:I do prefer shooting in raw mode, but am at a loss as to the best raw conversion software to use. I haven't got cs2, and cant afford most of the other programs. The trial periods that I've used up have shown me the wonderful things that can be done with raw, but where do I go

For free you can get Raw Shooter Essentials (commonly called RSE!)

Was the mist shot somewhere in the Hunter? Lovely image.


Bob

rjlhughes wrote:Was the mist shot somewhere in the Hunter? Lovely image.


Bob

Nope, down your way Bob. Taken on the road in to Jenolan Caves during the D70 shoot there in March. The larger version is here in my SmugMug gallery.

I used to shoot jpgs when I first started, then I tried RAW and never looked back. Yes, I agree the PP is long and tedious (especially on a slow and old computer) but the benefits outweight the downside, for me anyway. A lot of bad shots get discarded straight awayy after initial examination. It's only the keepers that get tweaked and sometimes a little tweaking makes a huge difference. What I don't understand is how people tend to batch process photos. I find all of mine require unique approach.

Alex

No wonder the shot appealed to me - that looks like somewhere near Good Forest, on the high ground above the Coxs River.

If that's the west facing escarpment at Medlow Bath you can see in the distance, then this is somewhere near where Rosemary Laing did her famous flying women shots that were on display at the MCA in Sydney.

And yes it would be interesting to do a chopper shot over that.....


Bob

Jpeg is a lossy compressor, the compression effects are cumulative.
If you shoot in jpeg, edit the image then re-save the image as a jpeg, even at 100% quality compression you still loose data on an image that is already interpolated by the image editor/computer, effectively your placing alot of trust in the computers hands. So in the end you end up with a more synthetic image from what you started off with.
To counter jpeg lossyness It's best to resave jpegs as Tiffs before further editing.

To see the effects of jpeg compression, zoom in real close on an evenly toned part of the image, you will see R.G.B blocks of colour - these are artefacts, not the highly sought after archeological kind but the kind you wish you never discovered.

I don't know much about RAW except it's analogous to a RAW steak, it's bloody tasty and full of delectable substance, that make your eye buds wild and flutter

Shooting in jpeg is as enjoyable and rewarding as eating a wooden peg, compared to a RAW steak served with a Jubilee Sauce

that said....

i shoot in jpeg because my coolpix 8700 can't shoot raw steaks fast enough

wendellt wrote:Jpeg is a lossy compressor, the compression effects are cumulative.
If you shoot in jpeg, edit the image then re-save the image as a jpeg, even at 100% quality compression you still loose data on an image that is already interpolated by the image editor/computer, effectively your placing alot of trust in the computers hands. So in the end you end up with a more synthetic image from what you started off with.
To counter jpeg lossyness It's best to resave jpegs as Tiffs before further editing.

To see the effects of jpeg compression, zoom in real close on an evenly toned part of the image, you will see R.G.B blocks of colour - these are artefacts, not the highly sought after archeological kind but the kind you wish you never discovered.

I don't know much about RAW except it's analogous to a RAW steak, it's bloody tasty and full of delectable substance, that make your eye buds wild and flutter

Shooting in jpeg is as enjoyable and rewarding as eating a wooden peg, compared to a RAW steak served with a Jubilee Sauce

that said....

i shoot in jpeg because my coolpix 8700 can't shoot raw steaks fast enough

wendellt

This will change soon when you have the D2x then ton of stuff you need to learn

Shhhhhh Birddog
I don't wan't anyone to find out

you mean my D2X server board right, this is a kick ass motherboard replacement for my busted computer
when can i pick it up?

you accept dodgy credit cards?

wendellt
ETA is next week, confirmed this afternoon from your trusted sources Maxwell

Maybe I'm missing something, but for me the difference in PP between Raw and Jpeg is about 2 minutes.
If I open the raw image in whatever program and just convert is to jpeg without doing anything else, it takes less then 2 minutes. I am then at exactly the same point as if I had taken the shot in Jpeg. Whatever PP I do after that in photoshop will take the same amount of time and I have the insurance of a raw file if needed.

I'm with Philip on this. That's with 95% of the photos. Occasionally you get a real winner and want to perfect it which RAW allows you to, but that's 1 in 100 or 1000 for me.

Alex