Will shooting in RAW help reduce the mistakes I am making. (1 Viewer)

senatore · Sep 15, 2006

In another thread I started mistakes we all keep making when taking pics was discussed with exposure compensation adjustments being amongst the most common.

In one post it was suggested that shooting in RAW would help to solve many of the mistakes made when taking pics.Is this true and where would it help?

Max.

jeff · Sep 15, 2006

senatore said:
In another thread I started mistakes we all keep making when taking pics was discussed with exposure compensation adjustments being amongst the most common.

In one post it was suggested that shooting in RAW would help to solve many of the mistakes made when taking pics.Is this true and where would it help?

Max.

I think shooting in RAW just allows you more opportunities to correct any mistakes made.

nigelblake · Sep 15, 2006

It depends how big the mistakes are, but generally RAW will allow you to correct exposure and colour balance, you should also be able to recover detail in blown highlights, as long as they are not severely blown.
RAW will not allow you to make any soft or badly focused images any sharper.

The drawbacks with changing to RAW are that you do have to spend more time processing the images and that it will take time to get used to the processing, however the end result is that the RAW file is considerably more versatile than a jpeg as it has many more processing options with regard to colour space and shadow highlight detail, particularly if using it in combination with 'High dynamic range' software.
Once you get used to shooting and processing RAW you will become more aware of the benefits that it brings to the final image.

johnruss · Sep 15, 2006

I did a real no no. I let my brother in law use my camera at a family function. He took my camera off the RAW format.Why I have no idea as I had a 1g card in it that was empty. The very next day I came across a couple of fox kits playing outside their den. I was about 80 yards out hiding behind a guard rail. I shot about twenty shot using my Nikon 50 with a 50-500 sigma lens. plenty of lens for the shot. I went home to print some up. When I tried to zoom in the pics were too grainy. In their original size they are nice but if the camera was in its RAW format I could have some spectacular close up shots. Shooting in RAW does make it hard to reduce shots to post on Bird Forum

senatore · Sep 16, 2006

Thanks for the replies everyone.My one venture into the RAW world showed me that it does take much longer to process the pics something I did not fancy if you have filled a 1Gb card.

Max.

DOC · Sep 17, 2006

Many say that once you start shooting in RAW - you'll never returm to Jpeg- i find it very true .
There are many advantages in Raw - especially exposure \ colors \temp and WB - you can alter the WB - a very important factor .
The main disadvantage is the HD being filled up with huge amounts of Gb's, and the time consuming process of looking through the pictures, adjusting them , then converting them etc' etc ' .
I think you need much more than 1 Gb card ( at least 4Gb in my opinion ) .

bkrownd · Sep 17, 2006

You can't use continuous/burst mode with RAW format. (Not with any camera I can afford, anyway.) IMO that makes it totally useless for bird photography. The problems I encounter the most are focus, motion blur, and birds facing the wrong way or partially obscured by foreground foliage. RAW won't help with any of those. The only post-processing I do with my images is cropping.

Roy C · Sep 17, 2006

bkrownd said:
You can't use continuous/burst mode with RAW format. (Not with any camera I can afford, anyway.) IMO that makes it totally useless for bird photography. The problems I encounter the most are focus, motion blur, and birds facing the wrong way or partially obscured by foreground foliage. RAW won't help with any of those. The only post-processing I do with my images is cropping.

You can use continuous with RAW and the 350D and that is a entry level camera so I do not undestand what you mean!

colonelboris · Sep 18, 2006

What about TIFF? Is that any good compared to JPEG?

nigelblake · Sep 18, 2006

You can only produce a full data tiff from a RAW file, you can save a jpeg as a tiff so that it does not lose data when processed, but it will only have the shot jpeg's data to start with.
There are some cameras that will save tiff format images but none of the current DSLRs will do this.

johnruss · Sep 18, 2006

DOC said:
Many say that once you start shooting in RAW - you'll never returm to Jpeg- i find it very true .
There are many advantages in Raw - especially exposure \ colors \temp and WB - you can alter the WB - a very important factor .
The main disadvantage is the HD being filled up with huge amounts of Gb's, and the time consuming process of looking through the pictures, adjusting them , then converting them etc' etc ' .
I think you need much more than 1 Gb card ( at least 4Gb in my opinion ) .

I have a 1g card in my Nikon 50. shooting in the RAW format only lets me shoot about 200 shots or so. Just a estimate for the purist. I download these on to my computer using Adobe Elements. Now this is when I process my takes. I download after every trip in the field whether its a dozen or a hundred shots. This keeps my card empty. My computer was very slow processing my results. I then added RAM memory from 256 mb to 2Gbs. The best couple of hundred dollars I think I ever spent. My computer was on my next replace list which it isn't now what a difference.That RAM memory is very important if you don't like waiting. I have a lot of other things to do in my life than waiting, except when it comes to waiting for that bird or whatever to do its thing.

bkrownd · Sep 18, 2006

Roy C said:
You can use continuous with RAW and the 350D and that is a entry level camera so I do not undestand what you mean!

"Entry level"?? :eek!: Entry level to you maybe, but that camera's way way beyond my budget. Weighs twice as much as mine, too.

nigelblake · Sep 18, 2006

bkrownd said:
"Entry level"?? :eek!: Entry level to you maybe, but that camera's way way beyond my budget. Weighs twice as much as mine, too.

So what camera are you using? 350D IS an entry level DSLR and will shoot bursts in RAW

bkrownd · Sep 18, 2006

nigelblake said:
So what camera are you using? 350D IS an entry level DSLR and will shoot bursts in RAW

Panasonic FZ7.

If that camera can shoot burst mode directly to RAW it must have about a factor of 10 faster write speed than the Panasonic FZs. I wouldn't have expected that much difference.

Roy C · Sep 18, 2006

bkrownd said:
Panasonic FZ7.

If that camera can shoot burst mode directly to RAW it must have about a factor of 10 faster write speed than the Panasonic FZs. I wouldn't have expected that much difference.

The 350D will shoot RAW at 3 fps. the limiting factor is the number of shots you can take before the buffer fills.
As far as I know All DSLR will shoot RAW in burst mode.

Keith Reeder · Sep 29, 2006

johnruss said:
Shooting in RAW does make it hard to reduce shots to post on Bird Forum

Don't follow that, John.

Many of the pictures in the BF gallery will have been from RAW files (all of mine, surely - and I know that Nigel uses RAW all the time).

Regardless of whether it is you or the camera that does it, a conversion from RAW to jpeg has to happen before you've got something you can post here.

Keith Reeder · Sep 29, 2006

Max,

if the picture is more or less OK for focus, sharpness, exposure and whatnot (and as has already been said, RAW can't perform miracles on buggered pictures) it should take very little more time to deal with a RAW file than a jpeg.

OK, I'm just an amateur and a beginner myself, but - once I've downloaded from the card to the PC - I can get an image to a state where it is ready to use in about 30 seconds from opening it in the converter application (I use Bibble Lite at the moment), applying any white balance and EV comp adjustments I might want to make and saving to jpeg.

Admittedly I'll then open them up again in a "proper" image editing app (Paint Shop Pro X for example) to make any tweaks to the contrast and sharpness (and because I like to do such things, adding a frame and signature), but there's hardly any extra work involved there.

There's no mystique about RAW, and given a half-decent starting point, it takes very little to get a RAW image file to the stage where you can post it up.

gmax · Sep 29, 2006

Keith Reeder said:
Max,

if the picture is more or less OK for focus, sharpness, exposure and whatnot (and as has already been said, RAW can't perform miracles on buggered pictures) it should take very little more time to deal with a RAW file than a jpeg.

OK, I'm just an amateur and a beginner myself, but - once I've downloaded from the card to the PC - I can get an image to a state where it is ready to use in about 30 seconds from opening it in the converter application (I use Bibble Lite at the moment), applying any white balance and EV comp adjustments I might want to make and saving to jpeg.

Admittedly I'll then open them up again in a "proper" image editing app (Paint Shop Pro X for example) to make any tweaks to the contrast and sharpness (and because I like to do such things, adding a frame and signature), but there's hardly any extra work involved there.

There's no mystique about RAW, and given a half-decent starting point, it takes very little to get a RAW image file to the stage where you can post it up.

Hello Keith (and everybody),

I've just started shooting in RAW (just once), and my first impression is that it takes longer than usual to get to a decent point (then moving as you do to another image editor); I'm currently using RawShooter Premium, would you suggest:

just applying automatic white balance and EV comp to the whole bunch of images, and then choosing the good ones to edit in image editor (I use mainly Photoshop)

or

first binning all bad images (right from the RAW converter browsing tool) and working individually only on the good ones, both in RAW conversion AND in image editor?

Do you apply a bit of sharpness during the RAW-stage or you do it at the end in photo editor? I found that there's more noise in the image now, and harder to remove (in Neat Image)
These are my first steps, and I'd like to improve my workflow ... any suggestion on the SW to be used?

Thanks for your advice

Max

Roy C · Sep 29, 2006

gmax said:
Hello Keith (and everybody),

I've just started shooting in RAW (just once), and my first impression is that it takes longer than usual to get to a decent point (then moving as you do to another image editor); I'm currently using RawShooter Premium, would you suggest:

just applying automatic white balance and EV comp to the whole bunch of images, and then choosing the good ones to edit in image editor (I use mainly Photoshop)

or

first binning all bad images (right from the RAW converter browsing tool) and working individually only on the good ones, both in RAW conversion AND in image editor?

Do you apply a bit of sharpness during the RAW-stage or you do it at the end in photo editor?
These are my first steps, and I'd like to improve my workflow ... any suggestion on the SW to be used?

Thanks for your advice

Max

Max, The first step that I do after uploading to the PC is to view at full screen via the windows RAW image viewer - obvious duffers are deleted at this stage (sometimes this could be say 75% of the shots).
Only after I have done this do I start looking at them in my RAW conversion software (Adobe ACR). Once in ACR I may still decide to delete a shot before proccesing any more.
In ARC
1) Crop if required
2) Check the white balance ( I leave it as shot 99% of the time)
3) Get the exposure right (iff poss)
4) Tinker with Shadows and Contrast
5) Very often I add a bit of saturation
6) Save as a Tiff

Then I open the Tiff in CS2 and make all the adjustments, save the tiff.
Resize for the web (re check sharpness and noise) and 'save as'

gmax · Sep 29, 2006

Roy C said:
Max, The first step that I do after uploading to the PC is to view at full screen via the windows RAW image viewer - obvious duffers are deleted at this stage (sometimes this could be say 75% of the shots).
Only after I have done this do I start looking at them in my RAW conversion software (Adobe ARC). Once in ARC I may still decide to delete a shot before proccesing any more.

Thanks Roy, this would save time .. but .. what do you mean with Windows RAW image viewer?

Will shooting in RAW help reduce the mistakes I am making. (1 Viewer)

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