when shooting in raw, what settings should i be shooting in, for example should my white balance and image effects buttons be on auto or should they be set a certain way to capture the best photos? when shooting portraits, should i shoot in manual mode or in portrait mode to get the best photos? and when should A-DEP mode be used? i hear that shooting in manual is the way to go and that i should be leaving the auto modes alone.
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Shooting in raw
- Thread starter kyep10
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Solution
AnandaSim
Veteran Member
The raw file records metadata of your settings and suggests it to your computer program when you first load the image - if you are using the manufacturer's program. Then all the settings affect that initial image.
If you are not using the manufacturer's program and you are from the word go, wanting to manipulate the image, then wb, image effex, sharpening, saturation, contrast are not locked in and can be extensively changed.
You can shoot portraits any way you like - people shoot fair portraits even with phone cams. However, if you have a serious camera, often we want a blurred background and softness around the subject and sharpness on the subject (which can be tailored) so we often use an f/2.8 lens and equivalent 85mm optical focal length for 35mm film size sensor.
Some people shoot manual. Some people shoot P A S. Some people shoot Auto and post process like hell.
Mark S Abeln
Veteran Member
I find it very helpful to set the white balance on the camera manually, either by using one of the standard white balance settings (such as daylight or incandescent) or by setting the white balance with a neutral target — although now I’ve got enough experience to be able to select the white balance after the fact. This makes it a bit easier and faster once I get the image on the computer.
The various scene modes, such as portrait and sports, are useful for beginners, although experience and knowledge make such modes less useful, and high-end cameras usually omit these.
I don’t have A-DEP on my camera, but it does appear to be useful, but may give you problems because the camera will often select a slow shutter speed with this.
Shooting in full manual mode is usually unnecessary (although I do use it on occasion) and can lead to frustration due to bad exposure. I would rather use an automatic mode and learn about how to use exposure compensation.
Once you get really good at photography, the camera will become something like an extension of yourself. You eventually should be able to set the most important settings by feel alone, not having to even look at the camera. Also, you will know ahead of time what settings to use.
Guidenet
Veteran Member
Whatever settings you set in the camera are not applied to the RAW file. The RAW file only records the Red, Green and Blue dots your sensor knows how to record. That's basically all a RAW file is. It's not even an image. You can't see a RAW file.
What you see when you look at a RAW file is really a tiny JPeg image stored with the RAW file which depicts what the image would have looked like had it used the camera's settings. When you load that RAW file into your RAW Converter and Image editing program, it shows you that Jpeg as a starting point most of the time. You an look at that image to adjust settings like White Balance, Saturation, Contrast and other things. The image changes to reflect your choices but the RAW file is still RAW at that point.
When you're done, you save the image. At that point, the converter and editor converts the image to an RGB image type and applies all the settings you've been doing. It saves it as whatever you tell it to. i.e. Jpeg or Tiff.
The advantage is that your computer's software and converter are usually a lot more robust and powerful than the converter and editor located in the camera. You can also make adjustments then cancel them. You can adjust exactly to taste as if you were back there where you pressed the shutter button. Once you've saved your adjusted new image, you still have that RAW file. You can do it again later when you get better at it. Nothing is applied to the RAW file, remember. You can even change the exposure a good bit.
Setting certain things in the camera just applies to that little Jpeg attached to the RAW file so you can use it as a starting point if and only if you want to. I don't.
If you don't do any adjustments to the RAW file, and just save it as a Jpeg, it will look just like the JPeg came out of the camera, because it uses the settings you set in the camera. The difference is that it uses them at that time instead of back when you pressed the shutter. That makes little sense though. Better to take advantage of your converter and editor.
Different editors work differently. Lightroom converts the RAW to an RGB while you're working on it, then applies the settings when you save. The conversion is transperant to the photographer.
Photoshop converts the image to an RGB, then you move the RGB to Photoshop to finish editing. The RAW to RGB conversion is already done at the start in Adobe Camera RAW. ACR edits are done before conversion, but PHotoshop edits are done after. I do most editing in ACR. It's cleaner to do them before I convert the RAW file. I do final pixel level edits in Photoshop. Lightroom is easier to learn though because it does it all for you. You can't even tell you're working on the RAW file.
Anyway, forget the camera editing settings. You do those settings at home, not in the camera. Just worry about composition and exposure in the camera. A-Dep is some Canon thingie that has to do with exposure, so that's a camera thing, not an edit. The modes have nothing to do with image editing like white balance and saturation. They are just training wheels to help you get the exposure the way you might want. Really advanced cameras don't have modes like scene modes. They just have P,S,A, and M.
Solution
In Aftershot Pro they look different. Sometimes a little different, and sometimes a lot, but with my three cameras (d200, d3100, s95), the imported RAW file is not the same as the jpg. With the s95 it is impossible to duplicate the jpg from the RAW because the Canon noise reduction is different. I don't know that I would call the differences important, but they are different.
With the d200 the differences seem to be mainly due to white balance.
Josh Hunt
Forum Enthusiast
I always shoot AWB as i will be adjusting taht in post anyway.
AnandaSim
Veteran Member
There are nuances in accuracy of descriptions. I've been burnt often at DPR when I speak generally and it's not accurate for various reasons.
Guidenet
Veteran Member
Also to add to what Ananda said, the editor and converter of choice make a difference. If the demosaic converter is of the same brand as the camera maker and probably the same basic engine as the camera's converter, and if the camera's settings are used by the converter as the starting point, the resulting Jpeg, providing no additional adjustments are made, should look pretty much the same.
Aftershot Pro uses a different algorithm slightly and may not apply all the camera settings in the default condition so should look different. The same would hold true of Adobe Camera RAW, but they are pretty close to the rendition of Capture NX, a Nikon product.
The point I was making still holds true barring slight differences in various algorithms and whether camera settings are default.
AnandaSim
Veteran Member
Sometimes when seasoned veterans go into detail, it fogs the mind of a very raw beginner (pun intended).The point I was making still holds true barring slight differences in various algorithms and whether camera settings are default.
For the record, I don't think Aftershot Pro, Raw Therapee or Adobe Lightroom load the embedded JPEG for the first view. My observation is based on Olympus ORF files. They render the initial screen based on a default preset of metadata stored in their configuration. I have no encounter with Capture NX or Canon DPP.
I think Faststone and ilk for rapid display use the JPEG.
I don't think Picasa uses the JPEG.
My experience with Olympus Viewer 2 is that this software is set by Olympus to use the same JPEG engine, down to curvilinear distortion compensation, shadow lightening, as the camera's firmware. And in this software, in the raw develop module, you actually twiddle sliders that "think" nearly identical to the sliders in the camera menus.
The metadata in ORF and the camera engine is not available to third party software.
Devil's in the details.
Happy New Year Craig and all
Wow thanks everyone for in depth and very detailed responses to add to shooting in raw. Whether for everyday use or post production should I be shooting in raw or high quality jpeg? Does it matter aside from post production?
@ guidenet
lol I thought you were hitting the wet lands ..I hope your not interrupting your work to answer my question .. As much aaa I appreciate it lol
@ guidenet
lol I thought you were hitting the wet lands ..I hope your not interrupting your work to answer my question .. As much aaa I appreciate it lol
Guidenet wrote:
The point I was making still holds true barring slight differences in various algorithms and whether camera settings are default.
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The point I was trying to make is that with Aftersho Pro the RAW file looks substantially different, and generally better. I think it completely ignores any camera settings and renders it's own view of the file directly from RAW. There might be a way to get it to use the camera settings, but by default it seems not to.
Guidenet
Veteran Member
Well, I didn't get too deep into which used a rendition based on the meta data or which used the embedded Jpeg because I didn't think it would make much difference, I didn't know, and it would just muddle up the explanation.
That all said, I'm not sure about ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) but the viewable RGB you first see in the ACR editor certainly looks like some kind of default, but then I don't look hard at it. My intent is to make most of my edits at that point including presharpening which I'm now starting to learn more about. Sometimes Capture NX produces a better rendition and sometimes Adobe. I just have to try. Either produce better than any other RAW converter I've ever used including Bibble, which I own too, but will not upgrade anymore.
Ananda, you too have a wonderful new year, my good friend.
That all said, I'm not sure about ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) but the viewable RGB you first see in the ACR editor certainly looks like some kind of default, but then I don't look hard at it. My intent is to make most of my edits at that point including presharpening which I'm now starting to learn more about. Sometimes Capture NX produces a better rendition and sometimes Adobe. I just have to try. Either produce better than any other RAW converter I've ever used including Bibble, which I own too, but will not upgrade anymore.
Ananda, you too have a wonderful new year, my good friend.
Guidenet
Veteran Member
It might look better than the JPeg based on your choice of settings. That indeed might be true. I was just trying to explain that when the Jpeg and the initial RAW conversion looks the same, why it looks the same. Not so much about when they look different. I guess I wasn't clear enough. Sorry.BobSC wrote:
The point I was trying to make is that with Aftersho Pro the RAW file looks substantially different, and generally better. I think it completely ignores any camera settings and renders it's own view of the file directly from RAW. There might be a way to get it to use the camera settings, but by default it seems not to.Guidenet wrote:
The point I was making still holds true barring slight differences in various algorithms and whether camera settings are default.
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You know what I'm talking about though. Lots of times on these forums a person will say they don't understand the reason they should shoot RAW because the RAW file looks exactly the same as the Jpeg that is output from the camera. I was just explaining why that could be and often is the way it is and why that's not a reason to skip RAW workflow.
Guidenet
Veteran Member
No, I think I did go out that day if I'm not mistaken. I often do. What day did I mention it? The last day I hit the wetlands was Sunday, I think. December 30th. I put some shots in the gallery from that day. Several of a Forster's Tern feeding, a couple of Sandhill Cranes, a Glossy Ibis and various waterfowl in Viera Wetlands in Brevard County near the coast in East Central Florida.
A few more in the Gallery. Before that was on the 27th, three days prior. I go quite often when I'm off. LOL Join me sometime.
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Cheers, Craig
Follow me on Twitter @craighardingsr : Equipment in Profile
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Guidenet wrote:
It might look better than the JPeg based on your choice of settings. That indeed might be true. I was just trying to explain that when the Jpeg and the initial RAW conversion looks the same, why it looks the same. Not so much about when they look different. I guess I wasn't clear enough. Sorry.BobSC wrote:
The point I was trying to make is that with Aftersho Pro the RAW file looks substantially different, and generally better. I think it completely ignores any camera settings and renders it's own view of the file directly from RAW. There might be a way to get it to use the camera settings, but by default it seems not to.Guidenet wrote:
The point I was making still holds true barring slight differences in various algorithms and whether camera settings are default.
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You know what I'm talking about though. Lots of times on these forums a person will say they don't understand the reason they should shoot RAW because the RAW file looks exactly the same as the Jpeg that is output from the camera. I was just explaining why that could be and often is the way it is and why that's not a reason to skip RAW workflow.
I thought you were saying that they /always/ started out looking the same. Mine never start out looking the same.
It might be possible to make changes to the settings in either the camera or Aftershot Pro that would make them start out looking the same. I don't know. I'm not really interesting in finding out, because they look better the way it is
For me, a recent convert to RAW processing, there really isn't any downside besides marginally bigger file sizes.
Guidenet
Veteran Member
and Thursday the 27th at Merritt Island Wildlife Sanctuary and Indian River Lagoon and Estruary.
LOL It depends on which day I said that about heading back into the wetlands. I go into the wetlands a lot, especially this time of the year when the migratory birds are active.
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Cheers, Craig
Follow me on Twitter @craighardingsr : Equipment in Profile
LOL It depends on which day I said that about heading back into the wetlands. I go into the wetlands a lot, especially this time of the year when the migratory birds are active.
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Cheers, Craig
Follow me on Twitter @craighardingsr : Equipment in Profile
Attachments
nice shots bud! yea im in new england we are are suffering in 1 degree weather with some snow on the ground this past week. so i have no really been out practicing...im worried of the weather damaging my equipment. i havent not read any articles about shooting in cold weather so i didnt risk it lol...but i took some landscape shots myself. what do you think?
ISO 600, 55mm, f/5.6, 0.6s...night shot
ISO 200, 25mm, f/4, 1/500
ISO 100, 250mm, f/10, 1/800
ISO 100, 24mm, f/6.3, 1/80
ISO 200 , 60mm, f/4, 1/250
ISO 100, 25mm, f/4 1/1000
ISO 600, 55mm, f/5.6, 0.6s...night shot
ISO 200, 25mm, f/4, 1/500
ISO 100, 250mm, f/10, 1/800
ISO 100, 24mm, f/6.3, 1/80
ISO 200 , 60mm, f/4, 1/250
ISO 100, 25mm, f/4 1/1000
Guidenet
Veteran Member
Those are beautiful shots. Nice job.
AnandaSim
Veteran Member
It's like you have the 4WD SUV and the Compact Car. Which one should you use? Each of us has different preferences. Each of us even changes preference depending on what task we are doing.
The RAW is "reliable" - like the 4WD SUV. It can be clumsy - some lower range cameras, the time it takes to save can be slow and lose you the oppurtunity. It is not "instant" - if I am travelling, haven't got my best screen and set up computer, I can't assess my work on the raw correctly - I would prefer a well done JPEG straight out of the camera.
The JPEG for me, needs no tuning in an Olympus camera but needs a lot of initial assessment in a Panasonic (the one I have). If I mis guess and want just 0.7 more room to recover highlights, I can't. If I don't have control and the WB is not good, it's pretty hard to clean that up on the computer with the JPEG. And if I need creative control in shadows, mids, highlights and want to cook my own rendering, it is harder with JPEG.
It does when you want creative more creative control of the shot. Post production is always part of the creative control.
BTW nice work you did in the photos
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