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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Shooting in RAW (2 Viewers)

south banker

Well-known member
Lately I've been "trying" to photograph hovering kingfisher ( using AV+ JPEG)I am now going to shoot in manual for a week to see if I get along with that..my question is..if I had shot in raw ..instead of deleting the dark shots would I have been able to rescue them better with raw..also are there any free raw conversion softwares/apps anyone can recommend..that's why I shoot JPEG so I didn't have to convert & also got more shots..any help appreciated.
 
Lately I've been "trying" to photograph hovering kingfisher ( using AV+ JPEG)I am now going to shoot in manual for a week to see if I get along with that..my question is..if I had shot in raw ..instead of deleting the dark shots would I have been able to rescue them better with raw..also are there any free raw conversion softwares/apps anyone can recommend..that's why I shoot JPEG so I didn't have to convert & also got more shots..any help appreciated.

Shooting RAW will allow you to recover shadows and whites significantly over a jpeg. What camera are you shooting? I believe most cameras that shoot raw have a free photo program they come with.

Here is a old link with a few "free" RAW editors:

http://photoluminary.com/2011/08/free-raw-editing-software/

I would try GIMP (believe it has a RAW version) though I have no experience with it directly.
 
As HantaYo says, you can rescue RAW files more effectively than JPEG though how well depends on the software. I couldn't see what platform you are using but for the PC there is RawTherapee and Scarab Darkroom and the Mac, Darktable and LightZone, all free.
 
A compromise if you happen to own Photoshop is to open JPEGs in the RAW editor.

This has been invaluable as a knowledgable Photoshop user using consumer point-and-shoots and bridge cameras.

Even though my camera will let me shoot in RAW, I still shoot JPEG over RAW most of the time to preserve a faster burst speed. Using the RAW editor on JPEG files, in addition to using ETTL techniques, has let me "save" quite a few shots in the last year.

That aside, RAW simply has more usable data and will make it easier to rescue shots, and rescue shots that would be impossible even with the JPEG-as-RAW trick above.
 
Lately I've been "trying" to photograph hovering kingfisher ( using AV+ JPEG)I am now going to shoot in manual for a week to see if I get along with that..my question is..if I had shot in raw ..instead of deleting the dark shots would I have been able to rescue them better with raw..also are there any free raw conversion softwares/apps anyone can recommend..that's why I shoot JPEG so I didn't have to convert & also got more shots..any help appreciated.

Did your camera not come with camera software for working with RAW files?:t:B :)

Steve.
 
The proprietary software in my experience is not so good. But Lightroom and the like will make a huge difference to your raw files provided you take time to learn the tricks. I have had Lightroom now for about three years and I'm still learning new things about how to use it for the best. It really can transform your raw files, re-exposing, lifting shadows, getting the best white balance, changing selective colour temperatures, cropping and re-composing and to a degree sharpening too. I'm now perfectly confident with ISOs up to 4,000 of getting usable results, and therefore I can use much faster shutter speeds even in the poor light we seem to be getting every day at the moment.
 
The OP has abandoned this, but my quick thought is that I love using selective exposure brushes to darken over-exposed sky, like in this one I posted earlier in another thread.

White-browed Piculet (1).jpg

You can typically recover 2 or maybe more stops, with the downside being the extra noise that shows when doing this.
I just did a trial shooting RAW only in the jungle, and I'm sticking with it.
Only 2 of my 27 keepers needed RAW adjustments, but that's still 2 out of 27. I'm converting them all to jpg on the pc, doing my sorting with the jpgs to make it faster, then editing any that need RAW adjustments to get a good jpg.
I'm then planning on deleting all the RAWs. Sacrilege maybe, but it's a nice, simple workflow with the main benefits of RAW built in at the start.
 
Certainly keeping all original raw files takes up a lot of disk space. On the other hand I think that post-processing software is going to improve over time, and by keeping the raw image I may be able to get more out of it down the line.

In contrast with you I keep all the raws (plus the information about adjustments made in Lightroom), and I only produce jpgs when I have a specific purpose for them (for the web, for printing, or even for my screensaver).

I think of this also as a nice clean work flow.

Andrea
 
I've had a DSLR since 2007 and keep original RAW files. With software improvements and me being better at post processing than I was back then, I am able to vastly improve on some of the images I was happy with in the past.
For me, rule number one is never to save changes to or delete original files. I accept that they can take up lots of disk space and I keep far too many images than I need to but storage is relatively low cost.
 
That does sound like a nice, clean workflow, Andrea and in many ways superior to mine.

But I've decided to compromise in some ways, and gain speed/time (for me it's never been about the disk space, I have oodles of it).

Now I think about it, my change in attitude came when I switched from my 7D to an Olympus micro 4/3 camera and I think there were two factors:
1) The EVF meant that suddenly I was shooting 90% of my pictures with perfect settings in-camera. I think this is sometimes overlooked as the best thing about the mirrorless cameras (now that the EVF is so good)
2) The Oly colours are beautiful

So, I found the quality of the in-camera jpgs were amazing 90% of the time and I was able to have a really simple camera to Mac to iPad workflow. If I am not shooting birds I won't even use raw, but when conditions are changing quickly and I might get exposure wrong, I use raw. This does mean I have an extra couple of hours wait while my Mac slowly converts to jpg when I get home, or I'd have to sort them using the raw files which is a drag. It's also the first time I've used the camera-brand software, to make sure I get the perfect colours.

Of course, one day I might think "I wish I had the RAW to retouch this photo in a new style," but I have consciously decided to take the other route and I have no pretensions that it is the right direction for anyone else but me.
 
Every few years I used to try and play with relatively representative examples of different manufacturers equipment, just to see if I am missing out on something. It is not scientific, but it shows strengths and weaknesses, purely from my point of view.

However - it was very apparent last year that at the obvious starting point of sooc shots that some images needed more manipulation than others to get acceptable results - in a couple of cases - just to get acceptable colours, compared to others shot at the same time.

I am afraid that I came to the conclusion that life was to short and I didn't like spending too many hours just getting to the starting point, so horrors of horrors I ditched Lightroom earlier this year.

Yes, I am now unable to use some of the brilliant features of some equipment and have had to adapt my photography accordingly, and I still shoot RAW on occasions.

The situation is now, much as when digital started to work for me and I reluctantly ditched my film darkroom - using labs for any residual high quality film work - I can shoot images that are acceptable to me without slaving over a hot computer all the time and I'm loving it.
 
In photography the best solution is almost always whatever it takes to get you taking more pictures. When you hit a technical roadblock, that is the time to upgrade the hardware. The reason being that you will then understand the how and why on a very personal level. First priority is to do it, then do more of it, then do it better.
 
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