Obsessed with Raw ?

I think that's the main point here... raw files are like digital negatives. I am one of the few people I am aware of who actually archived film negatives... most people seem to get prints made and TOSS THE NEGATIVES!!!! AAAGH!!!! "Well, I had DUPLICATES made! SHEESH!" Yes, but what if, years later you want to make an enlargement or print? Oh well...

To keep and archive raw files is a lot like archiving negatives. But different. The raw files that my 5DII and G5 produce are so vastly better than the raw files from my first digital camera - a Canon 1DII - and they really weren't bad! The dynamic range captured by today's sensors is significantly greater - as is the resolution. And our ability to process those files will just keep improving. A print I made recently of a raw file I took 5 years ago came out so much better than the first time I tried to print it - mostly due to software improvements.

Additionally, raw processing software has improved so much - early raw files were PAINFUL to process before Adobe Camera Raw (no, it wasn't always here). It was so slow and tedious to do. Now, it's virtually instantaneous - and our cameras' abilities to shoot raw has so vastly improved.

And digital storage? How much greater is that than it was as digital photography began to develop? We meausre our hard drives in Terabytes, not gigabytes or even megabytes. One 16 bit image from my 5DII is bigger than many whole hard drives I used to have. I remember being told that a 20 megabyte drive is all the storage I would ever need.  Hah! Things have changed, and raw is so much easier to work with.

If you want the camera to decide what to do with your image - shoot jpg. If you want to make those decisions yourself, shoot jpg. Or both.

I couldn't STAND having even professional labs make decisions about the white balance or color to make prints from my slides or negatives - I was almost never happy. How could they know what I saw? Now, with a profiled system, a pro printer (Epson 4880 with RIP), and amazing software - I ALWAYS know what I'm getting, and I get to decide.

But I developed those skills over the past 10 years of LOTS of shooting and printing. Most people don't understand or want to know what's involved. They just want to click and enjoy. There's nothing wrong with that if it makes you happy. It would drive me nuts (and that's a pretty short drive!).

Larry Becker