Raw or JPEG?

[OreoCookie]

If you have a lens that's prone to chromatic aberration (CA), it's almost trivial to correct if you have a RAW file. In JPEG... not so much.

Two things: first of all, I didn't say, there is no reason to shoot RAW, there are many people who can harness the power. Noobs don't know what chromatic aberration is, hence I wouldn't expect them to be able to correct it. See it as a step-by-step process: you can go more in-depth later on.

If you see CA in your images (yes, I know what it is ), then you make the conscious decision to shoot RAW to have more leeway to correct it. But that gives people a wrong idea about photography: instead of focussing to get the basics right (essentially composition, focus and exposure), they read up on chromatic aberration, they learn that this may be avoided with lenses that have certain coated glass which has an anomalous dispersion relation, they start worrying that their camera has more noise than the competitor, all of which is useless most of the time with modern cameras. Instead of focussing on getting the exposure right, they shoot RAW.

By the way, if you use a recent lens, then the digital camera automatically corrects artefacts internally such as vignetting. This information is also used by the RAW converter in your computer as well. There are also settings in your camera (e. g. Normal and Portrait in my D80) that allow you to influence to look of your pic.

 

[Westside guy]

Good grief, that was a touchy response; plus it's kind of weird you just assumed I was referring to something you wrote - especially since you seem to be focussed on exposure, which has little or nothing to do with CA. I was answering the original question; I didn't really pay much attention to what you were saying at all.

 

[cgratti]

raw

 

[epicwelshman]

By the way, if you use a recent lens, then the digital camera automatically corrects artefacts internally such as vignetting. This information is also used by the RAW converter in your computer as well. There are also settings in your camera (e. g. Normal and Portrait in my D80) that allow you to influence to look of your pic.

I find it confusing that you're talking about noobs not being able to harness the power of RAW properly, but then you mention scene modes on the D80 as a legitimate tool... which, face it, they're not.

 

[OreoCookie]

I find it confusing that you're talking about noobs not being able to harness the power of RAW properly, but then you mention scene modes on the D80 as a legitimate tool... which, face it, they're not.

I'm not talking about exposure modes for noobs, but about the presets of image parameters and two of them happen to be Normal and Portrait, others are Vivid, More Vivid and B&W. AFAIK even if you shoot in RAW, Nikon Capture will also use that setting to generate the picture (unless you choose otherwise). I don't know whether Aperture notices this, though.

 

[mcmadhatter]

RAW + JPEG

though if you have trouble with getting your post processed raw's to look good you could download a photoshop action to do it for you (one that mimics what the camera does to store a jpeg) and keep the raw's as well incase you need them or want to edit them.

 

[.JahJahwarrior.]

I shot two wedding recently. One I was hired for, the other I just shot because it was a friend. I shot the first wedding in jpg. When looking at pictures, I realized alot of them weren't necessarily exposed perfectly. And if looked at 100%, you could see lots of jpg "jaggies." I was NOT happy. I shot my friend's wedding in RAW. Using a free program, UfRaw, I was able to do the most basic of post processing. Almost every shot was underexposed, as I did not use a flash, because I wasn't the hired photographer, and they were filming it. I was able to make many shots look decent, and the UfRaw raw-JPG conversion left less jaggies. And I have enough harddrive space that I can shoot Raw. I have 5 gigs of SD card space, I can shoot almost 500 pictures in RAW. That is much less than I can shoot in Jpg, where I can shoot about 1500 pictures. But, the pictures come out much higher quality and I can salvage many more shots. Therefore, I shoot almost anything "important" in raw now, but things that don't matter much will be done in .jpg, like if I'mt rying to sell something, those pictures are .jpg

Most people I know seeno reason to shoot in raw until they actualyl do. Then they don't look back.

 

[epicwelshman]

I'm not talking about exposure modes for noobs, but about the presets of image parameters and two of them happen to be Normal and Portrait, others are Vivid, More Vivid and B&W. AFAIK even if you shoot in RAW, Nikon Capture will also use that setting to generate the picture (unless you choose otherwise). I don't know whether Aperture notices this, though.

AFAIK, CaptureNX recognizes in-camera settings, but Aperture throws it all out the window and just processes the base RAW file.

 

[OreoCookie]

AFAIK, CaptureNX recognizes in-camera settings, but Aperture throws it all out the window and just processes the base RAW file.

I thought so.

 

[jburns]

I'll agree that exposure is the most difficult to correct even in RAW... not much wiggle room if the highlights are blown, but I manage to save quite a few with levels in pse. The foam in my surf pics always gives me a hard time unless I get it spot-on with the original.

You can recover more than you think even with JPGs. Here's a rather extreme example from my wife's point and shoot. Result far from perfect but recovered a usable snapshot.

 

[dogbait]

Great example above of where raw helps. For an even more extreme example of the power of raw:

http://flickr.com/photos/35237096496@N01/450812330/

 

[jburns]

Great example above of where raw helps. For an even more extreme example of the power of raw:

http://flickr.com/photos/35237096496@N01/450812330/

Actually my example was shot as a JPG with a little point and shoot camera..

 

[dogbait]

Alright I missed the 'JPG' part.

But just imagine how much better it would have been raw...

 

[termina3]

(I've found that) RAW delivers more resolution and sharper pictures. No compression=no loss.

While I prefer RAW, many times I'm forced to shoot JPEG because of it's much, much smaller size. I prefer RAW because it gives me so many more options (and more room to mess up )

If you do shoot JPEG, which is fine, use software that doesn't have to resave the file every time you make changes to it, because every time you save a JPEG (even if you haven't made a single change), you lose some of the detail in the picture (JPEG is known as "lossy compression"). I know Aperture is a great program for this; I'm sure others have their own suggestions.

 

[Mike Teezie]

I shoot RAW now, after making money taking pictures for two years shooting jpg.

I feel like my RAW post processing workflow finally caught up to my JPG workflow with CS3. My photographer collegues always gave me grief about shooting jpg, but I loved it.

Now, I'm enjoying the numerous advantages of RAW, and the workflow end is great. I had to buy a couple more 8 gig CF cards, but hey, storage is cheap these days.