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Who shoots in RAW?

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chrisinthesun

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Who here shoots in RAW format?

I've just been trying this with my EOS300D this afternoon, and using Capture One PRO for processing..... but on some images I get nasty gradation etc - and also, the same scence shot with both JPG and RAW - the JPG image seems richer in colour to me.

What gives? - any hint/tips?

Another thing that puts me off a bit is that RAW files are twice the size of JPG ones, so that means half as many pictures per card. Even with a 2gb card, this seriously reduce the number of shots you can take before you need secondary storage.

Is it really that bad to shoot in JPG as opposed to RAW?
 
chrisinthesun said:
Who here shoots in RAW format?
Click to expand...
Eli does. And most people, I think.
chrisinthesun said:
I've just been trying this with my EOS300D this afternoon, and
using Capture One PRO for processing..... but on some images I get
nasty gradation etc - and also, the same scence shot with both JPG
and RAW - the JPG image seems richer in colour to me.
Click to expand...
You gotta fine tune all the RAW images... so play around until they look good. Also, to get the color right, they sell these color cards that you take a picture of in the lighting setting where you are shooting and use that to calibrate the RAW settings and make a recipe.
chrisinthesun said:
What gives? - any hint/tips?
Click to expand...
chrisinthesun said:
Another thing that puts me off a bit is that RAW files are twice
the size of JPG ones, so that means half as many pictures per card.
Even with a 2gb card, this seriously reduce the number of shots you
can take before you need secondary storage.
Click to expand...
They are worth it. Plus I get like 110 RAWs on my 1 gb card with the XT. You should get more than that. How much storage do you need?
chrisinthesun said:
Is it really that bad to shoot in JPG as opposed to RAW?
Click to expand...
For everyday snapshots, probably it doesn't matter. For things to frame on the wall, RAW is usually better.
--
Eli
http://www.ninjabugs.com (under construction!)
 
Unlike what you will hear around this forum, JPG is not evil. RAW is better (no question) but the real question is - 'will you get better results using RAW?'. That depends on many factors - how close your exposure is to begin with, how your workflow is, etc. I shoot JPG almost all the time. I do use RAW when I am unsure of the exposure (I got a chance to ride in a small plane this summer to take pictures, and was not sure what effect the altitude would have on exposure: haze, reflections etc.- basically something I'd never done, so I shot RAW), but almost all the time I shoot JPG. It's the same resolution as RAW - so big prints are the same. If you have to PP a lot, then the extra latitude/bit depth of RAW can help save a picture.

As mentioned above - choice is good. Just make the choice based on what you want and your experience.
--
Come and look at my ego site (I mean website)
http://www.outnumbered.ca
 
Can't address the first issue... try other software. Raw Shooters Essentials.

As for the second point, it's completely worth it. Once you understand the benefits of RAW, you'll shoot RAW also unless you need the speed of JPG bursts... though you have the 300D so that's pretty slow regardless, so it's not as much of an issue to you.

That's the only time I'd shoot JPG is when I need 3fps and a lot of frames... like football from the sidelines... and even then I'd be tempted to shoot RAW.

The flexibility and slack you get in exposure is very valuable to me. Probably means I'm lazy, but when I press the shutter button I know I just got perfect white balance and exposure for the most part because I shot RAW. Can't say the same with JPG. That's worth the money to buy a decent memory card to hold the RAW files. I just use two 1GB cards.
chrisinthesun said:
Who here shoots in RAW format?

I've just been trying this with my EOS300D this afternoon, and
using Capture One PRO for processing..... but on some images I get
nasty gradation etc - and also, the same scence shot with both JPG
and RAW - the JPG image seems richer in colour to me.

What gives? - any hint/tips?

Another thing that puts me off a bit is that RAW files are twice
the size of JPG ones, so that means half as many pictures per card.
Even with a 2gb card, this seriously reduce the number of shots you
can take before you need secondary storage.

Is it really that bad to shoot in JPG as opposed to RAW?
Click to expand...
 
I've just tried RSE, and I like it very much, but I have one problem.

When I output from RSE as a TIFF - I have the .tiff file on my HDD no problem, but Photoshop CS does not seem to want to open it.

When I select the .tiff file to open from within Photoshop CS, I am instead presented with a new image dialog box, and I get a small, blank canvas, instead of my tiff image being loaded - any idea why?
 
OK, I fixed the image loading problem - but I am noticing that my .tiff images are a lot more jaggy than a JPEG image of the same scence.

here are two examples - first is a 100% crop from the tiff file, the second is a 100% crop from the same scene, but shot in JPEG.

is this a feature of shooting RAW, and how do I get rid of the jaggies?



 
It depends on what setting you used to convert to the TIFF. It looks like oversharpening to me.
--
Rick
 
photoguynorth said:
JPG artifacts are masking the jagginess. No big deal - it won't
show in a real image (as opposed to 100% crop) regardless.
--
Come and look at my ego site (I mean website)
http://www.outnumbered.ca
Click to expand...
if the JPEG artefacts are masking the jaggies in the natively shot JPEG image, then how come with the TIFF image above that I saved out as a JPEG, the jaggies are still visible?
 
chrisinthesun said:
Is it really that bad to shoot in JPG as opposed to RAW?
Click to expand...
No, jpg is not bad. Shoot perfectly and jpg will work great. For the rest of us imperfect mortals RAW is better.

Until I built up enough large CF cards I shot both RAW and JPG. I was always unhappy witht the JPG's.

Not sure about the post processing problems. It should be fine. I use photoshop elements 3 with no problems.

Best of luck!

--
CityLights
http://www.pbase.com/citylights/favorites
.
 
I shoot raw, but use Raw Image Task that came with the camera as my fist step.

I first go through all my photos making a selection of what I want to keep and what not. The ones I want to keep, I bring in to Raw Image Task. It uses the presets I set in camera, but I can always change them if the settings do not suit a particular photo. It's quick and easy to set.

I then make a second selection: those that need further postprocessing and those that don't.

Those that need more PP, I convert to 16bit tiff files and work on them further in Photoshop.

The rest, I can convert to JPEG as if they had directly come out of the camera like that.

I've tried other converters but I usually come back to using Raw Image Task and Photoshop.
 
I shoot in RAW, for images that matter. And in Large/Normal JPEG for personal snapshots. I have no use for Large/Fine - if the picture quality matters enough that Large/Normal isn't good enough, the jump to Large/Fine buys almost nothing but the jump to RAW buys a lot.

To me, RAW does the same thing for post-processing that the DSLR does for the image capture: it greatly increases the possibilities. I bought a DSLR because I wanted more flexibility than I could get out of a P&S, and I shoot in RAW because I want more flexibility than I can get out of a JPEG. As with the DSLR, there is much to learn about post-processing RAW files.

The flexibility that I personally value most about shooting RAW is color balance, exposure, and contrast control. The extra exposure latitude is particularly valuable to me. I love it when I can produce intermediate working images (fed into PhotoShop Elements 3) where none of the channels is blown out on either end. Heh - occasionally I botch the original exposure bad enough that I even blow out the RAW image. But in those cases, RAW still is less blown-out than JPEG.

As Katania mentioned, the Raw Image Task (XT/350D) or EOS File Viewer Utility (DReb/300D) can be used to produce essentially the same JPEG that the camera would have, so you should always be able to get at least equivalent results to in-camera JPEG.
 
I find it too much trouble and not worth it since you loose on speed and space and time for processing.

the .jpg of the XT is great..so I find no need to shoot raw. I also have no problem with exposure and woudl only use RAW to gain on dynamic range in difficult lighting situations.
chrisinthesun said:
Who here shoots in RAW format?

I've just been trying this with my EOS300D this afternoon, and
using Capture One PRO for processing..... but on some images I get
nasty gradation etc - and also, the same scence shot with both JPG
and RAW - the JPG image seems richer in colour to me.

What gives? - any hint/tips?

Another thing that puts me off a bit is that RAW files are twice
the size of JPG ones, so that means half as many pictures per card.
Even with a 2gb card, this seriously reduce the number of shots you
can take before you need secondary storage.

Is it really that bad to shoot in JPG as opposed to RAW?
Click to expand...
--



Please do not start new thread for private message to me but send them to me via email instead! thanks.
 
I have been shooting weddings and since getting the XT and shooting raw I will never go back....at least for this type of shooting.
 
I forgot to add that to me it's quicker processing this way. Before I checked out all of my shots in photoshop, now I can do batch processing using many of the shots from same locations (like church, salon, etc.) and it's much quicker and results better as far as I'm concerned.
 
Navyvet said:
I forgot to add that to me it's quicker processing this way.
Before I checked out all of my shots in photoshop, now I can do
batch processing using many of the shots from same locations (like
church, salon, etc.) and it's much quicker and results better as
far as I'm concerned.
Click to expand...
I've had the same experience. I used to shoot all JPEG, but editing them just takes so much longer. With RAW, you can make corrections to large quantities of similar images instantly. And even when you go through RAW images one by one, it still goes faster because opening and saving JPEG's one by one still takes longer.

I still don't think there's an ideal RAW converter yet, but hopefully the future will bring better softwares.
 
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