benefits of shooting in RAW

ianflynn

i did a search but it turned up little info.
what are the benefits of shooting with raw?
it takes up alot of space, is converting it to jpg simple enough?
convince me :pac:

Morrisseeee

Shoot RAW if you want to post-processs afterwards, as there is ALOT of info in a RAW file. Shoot JPEGs for file size and the very minimum post-processing. (RAW is your negative).

PopeBuckfastXVI

Once you go RAW and get a decent conversion tool you'll never go back.

Basically 'shooting jpeg' is letting the camera automatically convert your RAW file to jpeg, based on settings it is deciding (white balance, exposure comp, noise reduction, colour curves etc.) and deleting the RAW. Keeping the RAW file and performing the conversion yourself lets you decide these settings for yourself.

A for instance, you may have shot a bright sky and some detail is clipped because it's too bright, your camera makes your sky all white when converting to jpeg and discards the RAW, however the RAW contained more image data than was used when creating the jpeg, and that data has now been discarded. A decent RAW converter like Bibble will allow you to perform highlight recovery which will put detail back in the sky, while leaving the rest of the image unaffected. If you throw out the raw you throw out more image data than is left in the jpeg and you throw out so many more options for what you could do.

It's up to yourself, but with SD cards not costing the earth I'd rather come home with as much image data as possible and decide then what I want to use and discard, rather than letting the camera decide for me based on a limited set of 'automatic' algorithms.

.Longshanks.

The main benefits I think is the ability to control white balance, pull back overexposed highlights, adjust contrast and saturation etc without degrading the image. If we were all brilliant with our cameras we would get it 100% right each time – but using RAW means you have better chance at correcting problems after.

JPEG is a compressed file format and because its compressed, most cameras add a few filters like a touch of sharpenening etc. Raw is uncompressed with nothing added or taken away, therefore giving you total control over what effects, if at all, are added later

ianflynn

was actually your pics of the opc that made me consider this...
Im hardly a processing guru, i cant even do the basics yet. i have the cs4 extended edition of photoshop, and dont have a clue! so it would take alot of practice.
I might possibly set the camera to raw + fine quality, see if i can work with the raw, and if i cant, at least i'll still have the fine there and wont have lost a good picture due to my lack of processing knowlege!
p.s. we have to get a photoshoot of the st and the opc together

.Longshanks.

ianflynn wrote: »

was actually your pics of the opc that made me consider this...
Im hardly a processing guru, i cant even do the basics yet. i have the cs4 extended edition of photoshop, and dont have a clue! so it would take alot of practice.
I might possibly set the camera to raw + fine quality, see if i can work with the raw, and if i cant, at least i'll still have the fine there and wont have lost a good picture due to my lack of processing knowlege!
p.s. we have to get a photoshoot of the st and the opc together

sounds like a plan:D

PopeBuckfastXVI

Ian,

Converting from RAW is not the same as editing in Photoshop, there is a RAW conversion plug in for Photoshop, but there are also standalone converters like Adobe Lightroom and Bibble 5, which provide a much more targeted set of functionality for working with RAW and converting to jpeg/tiff or whatever.

FWIW I use Bibble, and don't own a copy of Photoshop. Very rarely take files into Gimp to do any pp either, normally satisfied with how it comes out of Bibble.

Rb

I wonder which would yield a better result, shooting in JPEG and letting it do the corrections itself or shooting in RAW, opening it in Photoshop/Lightroom/Bridge and just hitting "Auto" to everything -> Auto exposure, auto white balance, auto levels, auto curves etc.

I presume the latter. If you want to get used to processing RAW files, shoot a few RAW pics and pop them on the computer and play with the sliders in Photoshop/Lightroom/Bridge to see what they do.

Fwiw OP, Lightroom 3 is currently beta testing and is free til the end of April, very good for processing RAW files.

CabanSail

You may not have the ability to do PP at present, but you still can get some really good shots. In the future when you have learned more about ways to process your images you can then work on those shots. The opportunity may not be there to go & reshoot.

The analogy of RAW being a "Negative" is quite good. If you shot a roll of 35mm & took it to the local MiniLab then they would process it & give you back a set of Prints & the Negatives. Those Prints will have been processed using the general settings in the MiniLab. This is much the same a the Jpeg from the camera. If you threw away the Negatives then the data in that print is all you have. You could scan it & work on it that way but rest of what is on the Negative is lost. For most Family Snapshot stuff this is quite OK. So P&S Cameras do the same today. If you wanted to get more from an image you would have taken the Negative into the Darkroom & worked on it there. This will then allow you to use everything available to make a different & hopefully better photo. Now you may not have had a Darkroom available but you would still keep the Negative for when you did have that facility.

There are reasons why you would just shoot Jpeg but generally most Photograpers will shoot RAW these days.

lafors

I was asking the same question last year and once I changed to using RAW and a good PP program, Lightroom in my case, I wouldn't go back. Here's an example of a photo I saved from a friends wedding recently, the alterboy was a cousin of the bride. The church was painted yellow and the lights were giving off a yellow so all photos were basically yellow (I wasn't using a stand-alone flash).

Fenster

Disadvantages:

You are shooting with a proprietary data format. You might be able to access the files now, but can you say the same about your images thirty or forty years down the road? This is an actual concern for me because the current formats will be incrementally superseded and support for them will eventually be depreciated. Simply running an older version of Photoshop/ufraw/Bibble isn't an option owing to the constantly evolving nature of operating systems. Photoshop 2032 simply won't be able to access .CR2 files and Windows 27 won't run Photoshop CS4.

Ware obsolescence!

Advantages:

As stated above you will have extra information regarding shadows and highlights to aid in the post-processing recovery of an image. I firmly believe, however, that you can 'get around' this advantage by putting more effort into correctly exposing.

You are forced to work non-destructively with RAW files, meaning that even if you make a bollicks of it all, accidentally saved the work in progress at a bad spot and quit out you can still go back to the start and begin again from scratch.

Colour depth? Can anyone explain the advantages of this to me, because I honestly rarely do prints...

White balance!

Ghost Train

Just to say that you will normally get software supplied by the camera maker to process raw files if Raws an option on the camera.... you can normally download it on their website... might be easier than starting out photoshop, the gimp etc

Another disadvantage of Raw is the extra time it can take to process the photos

ianflynn

i got a disk woth the camera, just havent used the software yet.
extra time doesnt matter, i took up photography because i have no job, so have all the time in the world. good or bad thing, i dont know ha.

thanks for the info everyone, i'll try out shooting in both formats next time as i have the option to save it as both.
an 8gb sdhc should do me for a shoot anyway! i'll see how it goes and see if i have an immediate or distant future with it! I know i'll always be learning, but for now its still only the basics!

.Longshanks.

The 8GB card will be good for about 400-500 shots no problem so no issue there

henryporter

The way I look at RAW vs. jpg is the way I look at Vinyl or CD quality music vs. MP3, in fact the file sizes appear to be quite similar (30MB for a CD track as opposed to 3MB or less for MP3), and the difference in quality being very noticeable between the two. Having finally gotten around to figuring out how to use the RAW function on my camera, and then importing it into Photoshop I must say that the ability to be able to control the image is astounding. It's the only way to go. The other thing to think about is you can save RAW to jpg but not the other way around.

CabanSail

Fenster wrote: »

Disadvantages:

You are shooting with a proprietary data format. You might be able to access the files now, but can you say the same about your images thirty or forty years down the road? This is an actual concern for me because the current formats will be incrementally superseded and support for them will eventually be depreciated. Simply running an older version of Photoshop/ufraw/Bibble isn't an option owing to the constantly evolving nature of operating systems. Photoshop 2032 simply won't be able to access .CR2 files and Windows 27 won't run Photoshop CS4.

Ware obsolescence!

You can convert RAW files into DNG Format (Adobe Digital Negative) This is becoming the Generic RAW Standard, so when other file formats have been discontinued it should remain.

PopeBuckfastXVI

CabanSail wrote: »

You can convert RAW files into DNG Format (Adobe Digital Negative) This is becoming the Generic RAW Standard, so when other file formats have been discontinued it should remain.

Well if we're talking about RAW v jpeg, assuming that jpeg continues to be supported, you are processing your RAW's through to jpeg anyway, instead of the camera. So the point is moot.

mrboswell

Basically RAW is a safety new in case you messed up your exposure when taking the picture.

Can also be handy if you want to make dramatic changes to the original image.

Files take up way to muck space on you hard drive though.

daycent

You would be mad hot to shoot RAW in my opinion. Especially if you intend to do any PP.
And to eliminate worry about white balance for one example.

If you're 100% confident about getting a perfect exposure shooting JPEG work away.

I'd recommend downloading Lightroom 3 (free at the moment), shooting in RAW + Jpeg, and try to adjust both using Lightroom. There's no comparison between the 2!

ColmDawson

I find RAW extremely useful for when I have to underexpose due to a bright sky. I can then bring lots of detail back out of the dark areas of the picture, making them bright enough and still having a sky without blown highlights.

pixbyjohn

For the average photographer (like me) JPEG is fine but if you want to "mess" around with post processing and correct all your "mistakes" then shoot in RAW.

charybdis

You should shoot RAW if you're going to post-process the image, there is no benefit to doing so if not.

It should also be noted that there are plenty of reasons to post-process an image besides wanting to heavily modify it or correct a mistake, for example: you can choose to slightly overexpose your shots when shooting at a high ISO and pull the exposure back in post to reduce shadow noise.

Freddie59

Why not shoot in RAW+Jpeg if your camera supports it? Some shots may require no PP, and this would reduce your conversion time.

duffarama

I see no benefit myself, on the occasions where I've shot RAW + Jpeg (super fine jpeg, 10mb file I think) I'll get home and all the jepgs will be just fine.

mossym

Freddie59 wrote: »

Why not shoot in RAW+Jpeg if your camera supports it? Some shots may require no PP, and this would reduce your conversion time.

was thinking the same, just got my first dslr, but am shooting in raw+jpg, cause even if i don't psot process the images now no way of knowing what i will want to do in the future..

CabanSail

I would not have been able to take this photo if I had been shooting in Jpeg.



In the shot you see above there is detail in the snow as well as in the statue. A Jpeg would have given only one or the other, not both. I suppose I could have bracketted the shot in Jpeg & used the Snow from one & Statue detail from another, but that seems like a lot of work when it's all there in the one RAW file. Hopefully this PP returns the image back to what would be perceived by the eye if someone were there (and having monochrome vision) rather than what the camera would have have shown without editing.

PopeBuckfastXVI

I always feel like an evangelist for RAW when I talk to people who start shooting first, it just makes so much sense to me to have that control, rather than abdicating it to the camera. I almost feel like I'm arguing with someone who wants to continue to shoot jpeg! Anyway each to their own

Eirebear

PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »

Well if we're talking about RAW v jpeg, assuming that jpeg continues to be supported, you are processing your RAW's through to jpeg anyway, instead of the camera. So the point is moot.

Not really.

If we think of RAW as the equivalent of a negative then that makes the jpeg almost the digital equivelant of a print, or a copy.

Would you throw away your negs after making one print?

PopeBuckfastXVI

Eirebear wrote: »

Not really.

If we think of RAW as the equivalent of a negative then that makes the jpeg almost the digital equivelant of a print, or a copy.

Would you throw away your negs after making one print?

The moot point was that you shouldn't bother keeping RAW from the camera because it may not be supported in the future. The point is moot because you'll be making jpegs from your RAW either way.

Edit: Ah I see now, I quoted CabanSails post, but it was Fensters point to which I was referring...