Have E-M5 JPGs rendered RAW obsolete ?

Wellington100 said:

I think that both jpeg and RAW are two standards that have not kept pace with technology and are relics of an earlier era of coding and compression.

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I agree, but all efforts to create or extend open standards seem to have trouble gaining traction these days. Look at how long Adobe has been pushing DNG, but most manufacturers just keep on putting out newer proprietary RAW formats that are not compatible with older verisons of RAW editing software without an update. There just aren't good incentives for manufacturers to support a single open standard with it comes to RAW.

I could have Lightroom convert my RAW files to DNG during import, but I don't do this right now because I am not convinced DNG will have any more longevity than the RAW formats I'm shooting. Fortunately it is easy enough to convert to DNG or export to JPEG any time I want. In fact most of my photos already get automatically converted to high quality JPEG whenever I use Lightroom to batch-upload them to Smugmug or Facebook. For better or worse JPEG is the current standard with the most promise for longevity. It's not as good an image file as we could have, but I guess most think it is good enough.

Sean

TEBnewyork said:

But here is the part I don't get. Where do you get the 100 minutes.

I copy the card to my hard drive. Takes about a minute.

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TEBnewyork said:

I import all of the files into LR
I can start working right away. I'm not waiting for 30 seconds per shot.

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so what you are saying is, anything you do is instant

take it to extremes, a D800 RAW is around 40Mb
you cant see that a transform would take longer than a 2Mb jpeg

really... I cant think of a way to explain it to you were you would get what I mean

TEBnewyork said:

Where do the extra 30 seconds per shot come into play?

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TEBnewyork said:

You have a workflow that works for you and you are under different deadlines, then by all means continue what you are doing. I don't know that many people on this forum that are trying to turn around work and get it out the door the way you are. All I know is that I'm not spending time waiting on RAWs but I also don't time the process down to the second.

Rriley said:

TEBnewyork said:

Speed really isn't an issue assuming you have a reasonably up to date computer set-up. If you are happy with your setup keep using it. There are photographers (sports etc) that are on very tight deadlines that need to submit files very quickly. In those instances I can see having jpegs immediately and using them. I believe the new D4 is set up to directly transmit images over wifi which for photographers on a deadline could be amazing.

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Terry nothing I have ever seen on any box is instant

and trust me this box is very fast
I average 30 frames an hour for interiors, and outside shots its about 45
the average between them is 41 frames an hour

if over 200 frames can save 30 seconds per frame, and last time I tried it thats how it measured, thats 100 minutes a day to me

TEBnewyork said:

Rriley said:

TEBnewyork said:

I'm not really sure I understand the premise. If I load a shot into LR the workflow for a jpeg and a RAW are exactly the same. Why start with a file that has less flexibility?

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its not like I never tried it both ways

the size of RAWs incrementally loses speed in loading between apps, plugins and saves
I cant imagine what D800 RAWs would be like at 200 images a day

the way I do it, do have you see anything you would describe as somehow less?
that is apart from my cr4p photography

what I do is lightweight and fast
and speed on the workload here is very important to me

TEBnewyork said:

The only time that I shoot jpegs is when I know I'm going to need to give a set of files to someone else and it is just faster to shoot RAW + jpeg.

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--
terry
http://www.terrybanet.com

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--
Riley

any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended
support 1022 Sunday Scapes'

marike6 said:

Leo said:

marike6 said:

Leo said:

It is already desided on this forum that e-M5 killed D7000. Here is question - one step up ...

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I assume this D7000 line is a joke (I not religious, but in this case I'll pray that it is).

marike6 said:

Have E-M5 made D800 and D800E obsolete?

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This is clearly an attempt at humor as well is it not? If not, I can tell you with certainty that the only camera that could do that is the D900.

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I agree The D900 may crack 2000 more walnuts than E-M5 before its AF should be considerd unreliable. However for 6x4 prints and Web they are abouty the same.

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D800 AF destroys the E-M5, there is absolutely no comparison. Don't know what nonsense you've been reading but it shares the D4 AF module which is as good as it gets, allowing it to quickly and accurately focus in light a dim as -2 EV.

The D800 is a better camera than the E-M5 in EVERY way. And quite honestly to hear grown men continually complaining about the weight of a 2 lb / 1000g camera is plain embarrassing.

The EM-5 IQ struggles against APS-C, so how do you think it could possibly compete with the D800?

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No disagreement. However, on this forum many do not print large images but smaller and also view them via Web.

In the past I have printed many from Olympus E-XXX, 4/3. My limits were 14" for the longer side after some cropping. The D7000 images easy pass the 14" longer side limit.

marike6 said:

..... As far as web-sized images, a P&S and the E-M5 are the same for 4x6 and web-sized, so what's your point?

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That is my point. Then these two can compete in number of cracked nuts instead.
Leo

I'm not saying that everything is instant. If you doing a transform on 200 files a day it is a whole different scenario than what I'm talking about and you have a completely different use case. No they aren't instant. Nor do I think that 99% of the people replying on this thread work that way. Finally I didn't get the impression the OP was talking about your use case.

I have no idea on how big your final output size is or a number of other aspects about your workflow. As I said before if you are happy with your workflow continue with it. For my work and what I need to do with files there is ZERO difference in time working with RAWs vs. jpegs.

Rriley said:

TEBnewyork said:

But here is the part I don't get. Where do you get the 100 minutes.

I copy the card to my hard drive. Takes about a minute.

Click to expand...

Rriley said:

I import all of the files into LR
I can start working right away. I'm not waiting for 30 seconds per shot.

Click to expand...

so what you are saying is, anything you do is instant

take it to extremes, a D800 RAW is around 40Mb
you cant see that a transform would take longer than a 2Mb jpeg

really... I cant think of a way to explain it to you were you would get what I mean

Rriley said:

Where do the extra 30 seconds per shot come into play?

Click to expand...

Rriley said:

You have a workflow that works for you and you are under different deadlines, then by all means continue what you are doing. I don't know that many people on this forum that are trying to turn around work and get it out the door the way you are. All I know is that I'm not spending time waiting on RAWs but I also don't time the process down to the second.

Rriley said:

TEBnewyork said:

Speed really isn't an issue assuming you have a reasonably up to date computer set-up. If you are happy with your setup keep using it. There are photographers (sports etc) that are on very tight deadlines that need to submit files very quickly. In those instances I can see having jpegs immediately and using them. I believe the new D4 is set up to directly transmit images over wifi which for photographers on a deadline could be amazing.

Click to expand...

Terry nothing I have ever seen on any box is instant

and trust me this box is very fast
I average 30 frames an hour for interiors, and outside shots its about 45
the average between them is 41 frames an hour

if over 200 frames can save 30 seconds per frame, and last time I tried it thats how it measured, thats 100 minutes a day to me

Rriley said:

Rriley said:

TEBnewyork said:

I'm not really sure I understand the premise. If I load a shot into LR the workflow for a jpeg and a RAW are exactly the same. Why start with a file that has less flexibility?

Click to expand...

its not like I never tried it both ways

the size of RAWs incrementally loses speed in loading between apps, plugins and saves
I cant imagine what D800 RAWs would be like at 200 images a day

the way I do it, do have you see anything you would describe as somehow less?
that is apart from my cr4p photography

what I do is lightweight and fast
and speed on the workload here is very important to me

Rriley said:

The only time that I shoot jpegs is when I know I'm going to need to give a set of files to someone else and it is just faster to shoot RAW + jpeg.

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--
terry
http://www.terrybanet.com

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--
Riley

any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended
support 1022 Sunday Scapes'

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--
terry
http://www.terrybanet.com

Thanks to the two posters who took me up on posting Raw and Jpeg side by side. I'll take a careful look on my good monitor tonight!

Re: "Both should be replaced by a new smart file that eliminates junk data and incorporates all of the critical data from the RAW file..."

The "raw" file is every bit (literally) of information read from the sensor. You get to consider how to process it, and then do it on your (probably) Core i7, > =6GB of RAM computer using Adobe Camera Raw ... certainly a candidate for being the best raw developing program.

Now, whatever new format you can imagine still starts with raw data from the sensor and then converts it automatically according to some algorithm (without your considered judgement) using a battery powered processor, running a program that probably is a small fraction of ACR's size, very likely using a small fraction of the RAM ACR would need, and yet the in-camera conversion would still have to finish in a fraction of a second.

I think that is an insurmountable burden. For people who are willing to take the time, RAW will always be more satisfying. Very low power microprocessors are getting better, but so are power hungry desktop processors.
--
js

The OM-D RAWs look very good at times, but the JPEGs are really not very impressive (I doubt I'll win any popularity contests for saying so).

NR begins to creep in really early up the ISO scale you get weird NR artifacts. It's not pretty. It's not as strong as some of the Sony's water color effect but it's still pretty nasty looking. Here's an image from PhotographyBlog's review of the OM-D and at 100% you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.



They have the identical image at the this link (see below) available as a ORF. I processed it in Lightroom 4 (ACR) and it's noisy, but it looks dramatically better with no weird NR artifacts making the edges of objects look crumply at 100%.

The RAW (ORF) sample of the above image is at this link under Sample RAW Images.

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/olympus_om_d_e_m5_review/sample_images/

This is just one reason why E-M5 haven't obsoleted RAW.

Detail Man said:

Some people seem to think that E-M5 JPGs represent a revolutionary evolvement in JPEG encoding

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Be that as it may, a jpg is STILL a lossy encoded compressed image. Once you toss data away it can never be recovered.

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

GodSpeaks said:

Detail Man said:

Some people seem to think that E-M5 JPGs represent a revolutionary evolvement in JPEG encoding

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Be that as it may, a jpg is STILL a lossy encoded compressed image.
Once you toss data away it can never be recovered.

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GodSpeaks said:

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves
into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'
- Rayna Butler

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That is why I generally always make my JPEGs loss-less (no Chroma Sub-sampling, no Quantization).

If you talk to God, you are praying;
If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia .
- Thomas Szasz

Detail Man said:

That is why I generally always make my JPEGs loss-less (no Chroma Sub-sampling, no Quantization).

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So you use JPG2000 then?

Are you also saying that the OMD generates JPG2000 lossless files? If so, I would like to see you substantiate that.

In any event, jpg will NEVER replace raw, at least not for me. I have yet to see an incamera jpg that was as good or better than what I can obtain from the raw file.

--

The greatest of mankind's criminals are those who delude themselves into thinking they have done 'the right thing.'

• Rayna Butler

GodSpeaks said:

Detail Man said:

That is why I generally always make my JPEGs loss-less (no Chroma Sub-sampling, no Quantization).

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So you use JPG2000 then?

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No. It does not look all that great, it is not at all widely adopted, and can produce ringing artifatcs.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000

GodSpeaks said:

Are you also saying that the OMD generates JPG2000 lossless files?

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No. I am not. Where did you ever get that idea ?

GodSpeaks said:

If so, I would like to see you substantiate that.

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See above.

The only loss involved in an encoded "standard" JPEG (encoded with no Chroma Sub-sampling and no Quantization) are the (relatively small) quantization errors from computations surrounding the Huffman encoding, etc. JPEG 2000 encoding processes must certainly be similar in that respect ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG#Encoding
http://www.dspguide.com/ch27/6.htm

GodSpeaks said:

In any event, jpg will NEVER replace raw, at least not for me. I have yet to see an incamera jpg that was as good or better than what I can obtain from the raw file.

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Did I ever say that it would for me, either ? Or did I make some declaration about what you should think or do ? No. Note that my original post (title/content) asked a question, and did not make a declaration. Reading what is written (verbatim) helps prevent the imagination from running wild

Although the Oly JPEGS are a bit better than some, they are still nowhere near the RAW files in detail, never mind flexibility and I don't understand how these debates come about in the first place as it's the same with every other Bayer sensor camera I've ever tried.

But, there is an exception. Fuji have managed to do something remarkable with their jpegs in the X1/100 which, in my limited testing experience, don't seem to leave much to be desired. And of course there are problems creating a decent RAW developer for these cameras because of the different sensor technology

David

Wellington100 said:

Wellington100 said:

Wellington100 said:

Instead jpegs contain lots of junk data. The proof of this is that as ISO rise, the jpeg gets bigger, yet the IQ falls, so all that extra data is junk.

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Jpeg file sizes increase with ISO because information increases with ISO - not info you want but noise, it is very information intensive - lots of tiny dots - this kills the JPG compression - so actualy you are getting more detail as the ISO and file size increases - thing is that detail is detailed noise not detailed captured image!

Like for video - one of the most intensive images to commpress for video is the fuzzy old school un-tuned tv static... that stuff is so random and changing compleatly from frame to frame that video encoders hate it and can only reproduce it with good quality if the bitrate goes waaayyy up!

J R R S said:

J R R S said:

J R R S said:

J R R S said:

Instead jpegs contain lots of junk data. The proof of this is that as ISO rise, the jpeg gets bigger, yet the IQ falls, so all that extra data is junk.

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Jpeg file sizes increase with ISO because information increases with ISO ...

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Not if the camera settings described by "Exposure Value" (F-Number, Shutter Speed, and ISO Gain) remain the same - which they would for the same recorded image-brightness. Read/Dark Noise will either stay the same, or (more often) decrease somewhat with increasing ISO Gain ...

Rriley said:

TEBnewyork said:

I'm not really sure I understand the premise. If I load a shot into LR the workflow for a jpeg and a RAW are exactly the same. Why start with a file that has less flexibility?

Click to expand...

its not like I never tried it both ways

the size of RAWs incrementally loses speed in loading between apps, plugins and saves
I cant imagine what D800 RAWs would be like at 200 images a day

the way I do it, do have you see anything you would describe as somehow less?
that is apart from my cr4p photography

what I do is lightweight and fast
and speed on the workload here is very important to me

Rriley said:

The only time that I shoot jpegs is when I know I'm going to need to give a set of files to someone else and it is just faster to shoot RAW + jpeg.

Click to expand...

Rriley said:

--
terry
http://www.terrybanet.com

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--
Riley

any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended
support 1022 Sunday Scapes'

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It obviously works for your business and what you do, which is all that really matters. My point in my post was simply that, no matter what, the RAW files are going to have more to work with, be pushed further, are cleaner etc. In the case of what you do (sounds like high end real estate photography), it isn't something you need and just results in at least a slightly slower work flow. When you are getting paid, unless it turns out you need to shoot in RAW, it doesn't pay to slow your work flow any.

In my case, for my photography, even shooting it "perfectly" JPEGs are, most of the time, not going to give me quite the same result I can get by shooting in RAW and tweaking from there instead of teaking the JPEG. The very slight time penalty paid in working with a larger RAW file than a smaller JPEG isn't worth the lower quality of the final result that I am able to achieve working with a JPEG than with a RAW file. For me.

Then again I typically don't have to handle a couple of hundred images for a client. I might have to handle a couple of pictures up through a few hundred for no one but myself/family/friends. So the difference between 90 minutes to go through 100 images and 2hrs isn't a big deal generally.
--

Many things dealing with Olympus and their OM and Pen cameras, plus my general photography and musings http://omexperience.wordpress.com/

Rriley said:

TEBnewyork said:

I'm not really sure I understand the premise. If I load a shot into LR the workflow for a jpeg and a RAW are exactly the same. Why start with a file that has less flexibility?

Click to expand...

its not like I never tried it both ways

the size of RAWs incrementally loses speed in loading between apps, plugins and saves
I cant imagine what D800 RAWs would be like at 200 images a day

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Of course your mileage may vary depending on your computer, the software you use, the RAW files themselves, etc. but my modest five year old dual core machine with 8GB of RAM and Windows 7 64 processes my Nikon and Panasonic RAW files (as well as the OMD RAW files I've downloaded...still waiting for the camera) just fine using Lightroom 4.1 and for some photos Photoshop CS5.5 and Nik plugins (Silver Efex, Color Efex). Back when I had only 4GB of RAM (really just 3GB since I had a 32-bit OS at the time) things would slow down after I would open both Lightroom and Photoshop and process a few images with the plugins, but using 8GB of RAM this is not an issue. I can leave both Adobe products running and use the plugins over and over without any significant slow-downs.

Rriley said:

the way I do it, do have you see anything you would describe as somehow less?
that is apart from my cr4p photography

what I do is lightweight and fast
and speed on the workload here is very important to me

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By all means stick with what works for you. I don't think most people on the m4/3 forum are professionals trying to meet deadlines, so they are probably not as concerned about quick turnaround. However there is no reason why a RAW workflow can't turn around 200 images in hardly any time at all. It all depends on how much time you want to devote to certain images. If you just want to apply the same settings to the entire batch, it takes only seconds to have Lightroom do what the camera would have done if you shot JPEG. I typically batch process the bulk of the images. For a given series I will spend a few minutes processing one, and then I will copy/paste the development settings to the others. Then I am ready to print or I can drag them over to my Smugmug folders that are replicated in Lightroom and Lightroom will automatically upload them to my Smugmug site.

Typically I will flag a few shots for further development using Photoshop, Silver Efex, or Color Efex. These are photos I want to spend time working with.

Sean

Amazing that such an idiotic original question should generate so much response.
Roy

Personally I have been shooting Raw almost exclusively for about a decade.

Back when I was shooting with a Kodak DSLR they had a very interesting twist on the Raw vs. JPEG debate. The ERI-JPEG or Extended Range Imaging JPEG.

Of course Kodak DSLR's are history now but the idea of a file that could combine the convenience of JPEG with the flexibility of a Raw file is a clever one.

Rob Galbraith wrote an article about it ten years ago:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-4540-4568

--
Ziggie

SeeRoy said:

Amazing that such an idiotic original question should generate so much response.
Roy

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I was going to say, "You're obviously new around here ;-)" but I see that you are not. Which means you shouldn't be surprised

wow 7 pages just to say no don't be silly.