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Questions for RAW shooters...

  • Thread starter Thread starter TomJ
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I think to be a RAW shooter or just a jpeg shooter can be limiting. I have been trying to sort out for myslef which is best but have come to the conclusion that having the advantage of both should be made use of.

I now use jpeg if I am doing a large number of shots, need memory, have confidence in the shooting environment etc. And I use RAW if I am taking a smaller number of shots, need it to be right almost every time, if I am unsure of the conditions etc. I now use both.

Don't limit yourself because they both have advantages and disadvantages. As I am becoming better at PS, I find I am more confident to take 300 jpegs on a shoot. Batching is easy and storage is low.

Mark
TomJ said:
Just wanting to see if I can get a better understanding of the
reasons why some 10D users are such big proponents of shooting RAW.
In my (admittedly limited) experience shooting RAW with the 10D and
with the Oly E-20 before it, I see very little actual benefit to
shootingn RAW as oppesed to Fine/JPEGs.

I'm not wanting to start anything here, but please educate me. I
understand all the theoretical reasons why RAW is supposed to be
better (limited exposure correction, white balance changes), but in
my own real life experience, I seem to keep coming back to the fact
that any real gains in image quality seem to be marginal at best.

Recently I have been using Photoshop CS to convert the 10D's RAW
files and after doing some side by side shots of the same subjects
using RAW and then Fine/JPEG I conclude that if I have gotten the
exposure and white balance down when shooting in JPEG, there is not
anything noticeably different (ie superior) about the RAW captures.
In fact, just the opposite.

By that I mean when I zoom in on an image, say of a person's face,
to maybe 300-400% to do some retouching of fine facial lines or
whatever, I can see what appear to be the same kind of "patchwork"
artifacts that one would normally expect to see in a JPEG file
that's been resaved multiple times and is beginning to show it. On
the other hand, with my Fine JPEG images I see much less of that
even when zoomed in to the same magnification. So it's easier to
use the healing brush tool on most shots because the JPEG file
itself seems to be "cleaner" if that makes sense. This goes against
all conventional wisdom on the subject, so I wonder if I'm doing
something wrong, or if others have noticed anything like what I am
describing. Is the Canon RAW really as lossless as it's touted to
be?

The bottom line being when viewed on screen at lesser
magnifications and in the resulting prints from either type of
capture they both look equally good even when printed to 24"x30" on
my Epson 7600 printer. I do not seem to be realizing any
quantifiable benefit to shooting RAW.

And in the occasional times when I do wish to alter the white
balance with a JPEG file (for instance to warm up a portrait shot
in the shade) I find that a simple adjustment of the Red and Blue
channel in Curves does the trick with no apparent ill effects to
the resultling file. They still print up beautifully.

Anyone care to shed some light as to why you prefer shooting RAW,
or how you see real benefits besides the theoretical?

I'm all for shoooting RAW, I just am curious what others have seen
to convince them to use it over Fine/JPEG. I'm still on the fence
myself.

Thanks,

TomJ
Click to expand...
--
http://www.pbase.com/markgillett
 
I shoot mainly fine jpg, but I'm very careful of white balance. If you get that right, you don't need RAW IMO. However, if you are in a tricky lighting situation or if it's a crucial shot, you might be safer shooting RAW.
 
Tom, Comments below.
TomJ said:
To be honest, I never really considered future RAW converters
perhaps being even better than what we have now and that possibly
making a difference as to improving images shot in RAW today even
further.
Click to expand...
Things improve. RAW converters have improved if only because people, on average, have more computer power and can do more within a reasonable time. Of course, the software makers find better and more user friendly ways of doing things. There is a significant improvement in Photoshop CS verses the RAW plugin for Photoshop 7.
Member said:
However, I seem to keep hearing and reading that if you "get it
right" in JPEG, then there is little advantage to shooting in RAW.
Click to expand...
I believe that is pretty much correct. I have a good friend who shoots jpg most of the time and gets good results. He is much better than I in judging exposure and gets exposure flexibility by using exposure bracketting. One of the three shots will be good. On the other hand, you are still accepting Canon's view of what the tonal curves should be and other factors in doing the initial jpg image. You can do some reasonable adjustment in Photoshop for jpg images but there are limits as information has been lost generally on the shadows and highlights ends. With RAW, you choose the curves and other parameters to suit your eye and, since you have all the bits available, have more adjustment "head room" if the exposure was not quite right. Many times I don't need it. Sometimes I do. In some sense, my friends exposure bracketting trades off with one shot with RAW (although I occasionally do multiple shots if I am uncertain about something).
Member said:
I shot chrome film for many years and have an appreciation for
making sure the exposure is accurate. Same goes white balance only
typically I'd use CC filters over the lens or light sources to
insure proper color balance.
Click to expand...
If you use jpg or film, the approach of getting a "good" exposure is the similar except for exposing for shadows in film and highlights in digital. In using auto exposure, you overexpose bright stuff and underexpose dark stuff. In raw, the approach is different. You don't necessarily want a "good" exposure in the conventional sense. The camera is just a data collection device. A "good" raw exposure is where you put the histogram as far to the right as possible without blowing out any color channels for all cases. This captures the maximum information with the highest density of tonal levels. The image won't look right out of the camera but that is what raw processing is for. You work tonal curves and other adjustments to get the exposure and others features of the final image correct. In some sense, the burden of getting a good final photograph is now shifted a bit away from the camera and to the post processing, the premise being that a skilled person with a good computer and raw processor can do better than any camera by itself with canned "decisions."
Member said:
No offense taken. I may do this for a living, but I'm here to learn
as much as the next guy.
Click to expand...
On a professional level, I would go with the methodology that satisfies the customer with the most efficient workflow. If that is jpg in a particular case, go with it. It may be raw on other times. It probably is a good idea to become skilled with raw to have the flexibility to have it in your set of capabilities.
Member said:
Thanks for your comments, Julio.

So far no one seems to have commented on the artifacts I see when I
shoot Canon RAW as compared to shooting Fine/JPEG. Anyone else seen
this?
Click to expand...
Sometimes I see some, sometimes I don't in my raw shots. I have not quite figured out what is going on. In any event, I have a processing step that solves the problem quite well. I'm using Photoshop CS. Regarding the "artifacts" and such, I open in raw in CS. I generally use about 25 for sharpening, 5 for luminance smoothing and 25 for color smoothing. I export to Photoshop proper in 16 bit with an resolution of 6144x4096 (Big file! Usually, if you have done a good exposure (white point) and black point adjustment going to 8 bit has little cost. Maybe even a bit of contrast.) I then immediately do a Noise/Median with radius of one. I then go back to 3072x2048 with bicubic. This does a good job of removing the offensive "artifacts." Your mileage may vary. You might want to experiment with the balance between the median method and the amount of raw sharpening if the images after the median step are too soft.

The median technique is pretty powerful. Upsampling, using median and downsampling is a good way to control the median command (which normally is limited to radii of one or more). I sometimes triple the resolution to get a lesser effect although at increased processor time.
Member said:
TomJ
Click to expand...
--
Leon
http://pws.prserv.net/lees_pics/landscapes.htm
 
........and your not hearing the truth.

The desired exposure setting for any shot is nearly impossible. It was even more impossible with film because with film we did not have the instant histogram (learn to lean on this heavily) nor the crude but highly informative playback.

Digital has greater dynamic range than film. This wasn't true in the beginning but it is now.

My experience? I began shooting film as a kid in the 1950s. I seriously pursued the trade professionally beginning in the late 1960s. I lived in the darkroom. I rolled 25 to 30 rolls of 40 shots each each day! Came home and developed same.

You're talking to Rob here when you say that exposure should be done correctly and that if done correctly there is no need for RAW.

I come from an era before meters were built into cameras. We carried reflective and incident light meters. When I say we, I'm refering to people such as Ansel Adams, Roman Vishniac, Margaret Bourke-White, Winston Link, Weston, Yousuf Karsh and on and on and on. These lightweights of photography spent more time striving for the perfect exposure and never got it.

You do the best you can in the field and then the real work begins in the darkroom. This is where a RAW file comes into it's own. It is a negative. It has not been processed by the camera. It only has the exposure information that you fed to the negative (RAW file) via your choice of shutter speed, aperature and choice of lighting, either artifical or natural. A .jpg has already been adjusted by the camera. You have next to nothing to say about it. My highly experienced eye tells me the cameras .jpg processing is not anywheres near accurate enough for getting the best results. You're starting with a great deal of information that is lost because of that processing. Now this is fine if you are very, very lucky. If, however you want the best exposure results to work with, you don't want some computer chip doing the job of your eyeball. Do you limit yourself to autolevels and auto contrast and auto.....in Photoshop? If so than I won't make any further points. If not and you want the best results, use RAW. More precisely, START with RAW! It'll save you far more work in the digital darkroom than starting with .jpg.

In summary. Getting the perfect exposure for each shot is an impossibility. That's why the bracket function is built into the better cameras. That's why pros who are expected to produce and get paid for the best results don't settle for one shot hypothetical non-existent perfect one shot exposures burn several rolls of film in an effort to get that perfect result. Pros that use $1000 dollar incident meters, grey cards, hired help to hold lighting control, thousands of dollars more in lighting. The list is long. Few if any at all use jpg. A level 6 compressed .jpg is not happening when you're after the best as you claim you are.

Pardon the lecture but I've been doing this too many years. I've forgotten more than most people will ever learn. I think I'll head out into the garage and do some woodworking!

 
Read this article:

http://www.cps.canon-europe.com/articles/article.jsp?articleId=1240&pageId=1
Member said:
Just wanting to see if I can get a better understanding of the
reasons why some 10D users are such big proponents of shooting RAW.
In my (admittedly limited) experience shooting RAW with the 10D and
with the Oly E-20 before it, I see very little actual benefit to
shootingn RAW as oppesed to Fine/JPEGs.

I'm not wanting to start anything here, but please educate me. I
understand all the theoretical reasons why RAW is supposed to be
better (limited exposure correction, white balance changes), but in
my own real life experience, I seem to keep coming back to the fact
that any real gains in image quality seem to be marginal at best.

Recently I have been using Photoshop CS to convert the 10D's RAW
files and after doing some side by side shots of the same subjects
using RAW and then Fine/JPEG I conclude that if I have gotten the
exposure and white balance down when shooting in JPEG, there is not
anything noticeably different (ie superior) about the RAW captures.
In fact, just the opposite.

By that I mean when I zoom in on an image, say of a person's face,
to maybe 300-400% to do some retouching of fine facial lines or
whatever, I can see what appear to be the same kind of "patchwork"
artifacts that one would normally expect to see in a JPEG file
that's been resaved multiple times and is beginning to show it. On
the other hand, with my Fine JPEG images I see much less of that
even when zoomed in to the same magnification. So it's easier to
use the healing brush tool on most shots because the JPEG file
itself seems to be "cleaner" if that makes sense. This goes against
all conventional wisdom on the subject, so I wonder if I'm doing
something wrong, or if others have noticed anything like what I am
describing. Is the Canon RAW really as lossless as it's touted to
be?

The bottom line being when viewed on screen at lesser
magnifications and in the resulting prints from either type of
capture they both look equally good even when printed to 24"x30" on
my Epson 7600 printer. I do not seem to be realizing any
quantifiable benefit to shooting RAW.

And in the occasional times when I do wish to alter the white
balance with a JPEG file (for instance to warm up a portrait shot
in the shade) I find that a simple adjustment of the Red and Blue
channel in Curves does the trick with no apparent ill effects to
the resultling file. They still print up beautifully.

Anyone care to shed some light as to why you prefer shooting RAW,
or how you see real benefits besides the theoretical?

I'm all for shoooting RAW, I just am curious what others have seen
to convince them to use it over Fine/JPEG. I'm still on the fence
myself.

Thanks,

TomJ
Click to expand...
 
Rob Patterson said:
........and your not hearing the truth.
The desired exposure setting for any shot is nearly impossible. It
was even more impossible with film because with film we did not
have the instant histogram (learn to lean on this heavily) nor the
crude but highly informative playback.
Digital has greater dynamic range than film. This wasn't true in
the beginning but it is now.
My experience? I began shooting film as a kid in the 1950s. I
seriously pursued the trade professionally beginning in the late
1960s. I lived in the darkroom. I rolled 25 to 30 rolls of 40 shots
each each day! Came home and developed same.
You're talking to Rob here when you say that exposure should be
done correctly and that if done correctly there is no need for RAW.
I come from an era before meters were built into cameras. We
carried reflective and incident light meters. When I say we, I'm
refering to people such as Ansel Adams, Roman Vishniac, Margaret
Bourke-White, Winston Link, Weston, Yousuf Karsh and on and on and
on. These lightweights of photography spent more time striving for
the perfect exposure and never got it.
You do the best you can in the field and then the real work begins
in the darkroom. This is where a RAW file comes into it's own. It
is a negative. It has not been processed by the camera. It only has
the exposure information that you fed to the negative (RAW file)
via your choice of shutter speed, aperature and choice of lighting,
either artifical or natural. A .jpg has already been adjusted by
the camera. You have next to nothing to say about it. My highly
experienced eye tells me the cameras .jpg processing is not
anywheres near accurate enough for getting the best results. You're
starting with a great deal of information that is lost because of
that processing. Now this is fine if you are very, very lucky. If,
however you want the best exposure results to work with, you don't
want some computer chip doing the job of your eyeball. Do you limit
yourself to autolevels and auto contrast and auto.....in Photoshop?
If so than I won't make any further points. If not and you want the
best results, use RAW. More precisely, START with RAW! It'll save
you far more work in the digital darkroom than starting with .jpg.
In summary. Getting the perfect exposure for each shot is an
impossibility. That's why the bracket function is built into the
better cameras. That's why pros who are expected to produce and get
paid for the best results don't settle for one shot hypothetical
non-existent perfect one shot exposures burn several rolls of film
in an effort to get that perfect result. Pros that use $1000 dollar
incident meters, grey cards, hired help to hold lighting control,
thousands of dollars more in lighting. The list is long. Few if any
at all use jpg. A level 6 compressed .jpg is not happening when
you're after the best as you claim you are.
Pardon the lecture but I've been doing this too many years. I've
forgotten more than most people will ever learn. I think I'll head
out into the garage and do some woodworking!

Click to expand...
 
Juli Valley said:
I shoot mainly fine jpg, but I'm very careful of white balance.
If you get that right, you don't need RAW IMO. However, if you are
in a tricky lighting situation or if it's a crucial shot, you might
be safer shooting RAW.
Click to expand...
--
Serge.

Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it.
 
IMHO, when you are not sure and want to have more forgiveness for your "mistake". you shoot RAW or negative in the old time. Shooting Jpeg is just like shooting slide, you willl have to be more precise, very little forgiveness here.
TomJ said:
Just wanting to see if I can get a better understanding of the
reasons why some 10D users are such big proponents of shooting RAW.
In my (admittedly limited) experience shooting RAW with the 10D and
with the Oly E-20 before it, I see very little actual benefit to
shootingn RAW as oppesed to Fine/JPEGs.

I'm not wanting to start anything here, but please educate me. I
understand all the theoretical reasons why RAW is supposed to be
better (limited exposure correction, white balance changes), but in
my own real life experience, I seem to keep coming back to the fact
that any real gains in image quality seem to be marginal at best.

Recently I have been using Photoshop CS to convert the 10D's RAW
files and after doing some side by side shots of the same subjects
using RAW and then Fine/JPEG I conclude that if I have gotten the
exposure and white balance down when shooting in JPEG, there is not
anything noticeably different (ie superior) about the RAW captures.
In fact, just the opposite.

By that I mean when I zoom in on an image, say of a person's face,
to maybe 300-400% to do some retouching of fine facial lines or
whatever, I can see what appear to be the same kind of "patchwork"
artifacts that one would normally expect to see in a JPEG file
that's been resaved multiple times and is beginning to show it. On
the other hand, with my Fine JPEG images I see much less of that
even when zoomed in to the same magnification. So it's easier to
use the healing brush tool on most shots because the JPEG file
itself seems to be "cleaner" if that makes sense. This goes against
all conventional wisdom on the subject, so I wonder if I'm doing
something wrong, or if others have noticed anything like what I am
describing. Is the Canon RAW really as lossless as it's touted to
be?

The bottom line being when viewed on screen at lesser
magnifications and in the resulting prints from either type of
capture they both look equally good even when printed to 24"x30" on
my Epson 7600 printer. I do not seem to be realizing any
quantifiable benefit to shooting RAW.

And in the occasional times when I do wish to alter the white
balance with a JPEG file (for instance to warm up a portrait shot
in the shade) I find that a simple adjustment of the Red and Blue
channel in Curves does the trick with no apparent ill effects to
the resultling file. They still print up beautifully.

Anyone care to shed some light as to why you prefer shooting RAW,
or how you see real benefits besides the theoretical?

I'm all for shoooting RAW, I just am curious what others have seen
to convince them to use it over Fine/JPEG. I'm still on the fence
myself.

Thanks,

TomJ
Click to expand...
--
baruth
 
My experience coming from the Oly E-20 to the Canon 10D---- the Oly seemed to do a much better job of fine jpgs right out of the camera- crisp and sharp. Most of my shooting with the E-20 was JPG and the various programs which did handle RAW conversions from the E-20 (including Olympus' Camedia) were no great shakes. The 10D seems to require a bit of post processing on out of camera JPG's- at least some USM in PS Elements 2. Since I got involved with post processing, I became a bit more conscious of the capabiities of RAW, although the Canon conversion program is crude at best. A few days using the Capture One LE demo program for Canon raw conversions and I was sold on both CE1 and shooting RAW with the 10D.
TomJ said:
Just wanting to see if I can get a better understanding of the
reasons why some 10D users are such big proponents of shooting RAW.
In my (admittedly limited) experience shooting RAW with the 10D and
with the Oly E-20 before it, I see very little actual benefit to
shootingn RAW as oppesed to Fine/JPEGs.

I'm not wanting to start anything here, but please educate me. I
Click to expand...
 
I found this article very informative. Short but straight to the point.
Hope this helps.

Bob

http://www.c1dslr.com/upload/shooting_in_the_raw_philip_andrews_001.pdf
TomJ said:
Just wanting to see if I can get a better understanding of the
reasons why some 10D users are such big proponents of shooting RAW.
In my (admittedly limited) experience shooting RAW with the 10D and
with the Oly E-20 before it, I see very little actual benefit to
shootingn RAW as oppesed to Fine/JPEGs.

I'm not wanting to start anything here, but please educate me. I
understand all the theoretical reasons why RAW is supposed to be
better (limited exposure correction, white balance changes), but in
my own real life experience, I seem to keep coming back to the fact
that any real gains in image quality seem to be marginal at best.

Recently I have been using Photoshop CS to convert the 10D's RAW
files and after doing some side by side shots of the same subjects
using RAW and then Fine/JPEG I conclude that if I have gotten the
exposure and white balance down when shooting in JPEG, there is not
anything noticeably different (ie superior) about the RAW captures.
In fact, just the opposite.

By that I mean when I zoom in on an image, say of a person's face,
to maybe 300-400% to do some retouching of fine facial lines or
whatever, I can see what appear to be the same kind of "patchwork"
artifacts that one would normally expect to see in a JPEG file
that's been resaved multiple times and is beginning to show it. On
the other hand, with my Fine JPEG images I see much less of that
even when zoomed in to the same magnification. So it's easier to
use the healing brush tool on most shots because the JPEG file
itself seems to be "cleaner" if that makes sense. This goes against
all conventional wisdom on the subject, so I wonder if I'm doing
something wrong, or if others have noticed anything like what I am
describing. Is the Canon RAW really as lossless as it's touted to
be?

The bottom line being when viewed on screen at lesser
magnifications and in the resulting prints from either type of
capture they both look equally good even when printed to 24"x30" on
my Epson 7600 printer. I do not seem to be realizing any
quantifiable benefit to shooting RAW.

And in the occasional times when I do wish to alter the white
balance with a JPEG file (for instance to warm up a portrait shot
in the shade) I find that a simple adjustment of the Red and Blue
channel in Curves does the trick with no apparent ill effects to
the resultling file. They still print up beautifully.

Anyone care to shed some light as to why you prefer shooting RAW,
or how you see real benefits besides the theoretical?

I'm all for shoooting RAW, I just am curious what others have seen
to convince them to use it over Fine/JPEG. I'm still on the fence
myself.

Thanks,

TomJ
Click to expand...
--
BobM
 
Rob Patterson said:
........and your not hearing the truth.
The desired exposure setting for any shot is nearly impossible. It
was even more impossible with film because with film we did not
have the instant histogram (learn to lean on this heavily) nor the
crude but highly informative playback.
Digital has greater dynamic range than film. This wasn't true in
the beginning but it is now.
My experience? I began shooting film as a kid in the 1950s. I
seriously pursued the trade professionally beginning in the late
1960s. I lived in the darkroom. I rolled 25 to 30 rolls of 40 shots
each each day! Came home and developed same.
You're talking to Rob here when you say that exposure should be
done correctly and that if done correctly there is no need for RAW.
I come from an era before meters were built into cameras. We
carried reflective and incident light meters. When I say we, I'm
refering to people such as Ansel Adams, Roman Vishniac, Margaret
Bourke-White, Winston Link, Weston, Yousuf Karsh and on and on and
on. These lightweights of photography spent more time striving for
the perfect exposure and never got it.
You do the best you can in the field and then the real work begins
in the darkroom. This is where a RAW file comes into it's own. It
is a negative. It has not been processed by the camera. It only has
the exposure information that you fed to the negative (RAW file)
via your choice of shutter speed, aperature and choice of lighting,
either artifical or natural. A .jpg has already been adjusted by
the camera. You have next to nothing to say about it. My highly
experienced eye tells me the cameras .jpg processing is not
anywheres near accurate enough for getting the best results. You're
starting with a great deal of information that is lost because of
that processing. Now this is fine if you are very, very lucky. If,
however you want the best exposure results to work with, you don't
want some computer chip doing the job of your eyeball. Do you limit
yourself to autolevels and auto contrast and auto.....in Photoshop?
If so than I won't make any further points. If not and you want the
best results, use RAW. More precisely, START with RAW! It'll save
you far more work in the digital darkroom than starting with .jpg.
In summary. Getting the perfect exposure for each shot is an
impossibility. That's why the bracket function is built into the
better cameras. That's why pros who are expected to produce and get
paid for the best results don't settle for one shot hypothetical
non-existent perfect one shot exposures burn several rolls of film
in an effort to get that perfect result. Pros that use $1000 dollar
incident meters, grey cards, hired help to hold lighting control,
thousands of dollars more in lighting. The list is long. Few if any
at all use jpg. A level 6 compressed .jpg is not happening when
you're after the best as you claim you are.
Pardon the lecture but I've been doing this too many years. I've
forgotten more than most people will ever learn. I think I'll head
out into the garage and do some woodworking!

Click to expand...
 
Thanks, guys.

Yeah, I use a Lexar Firewire reader on both my G5 DP and iBook. Much faster than the Lexar USB reader I used to use, though the Firewire reader is a little larger.

TomJ
 
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Leon. I appreciate it. Some very good suggestions there. I plan on doing a good more work with RAW and Fine/JPEG side by side and will most likely adopt a workflow as you suggested. For some clients/jobs, I'll continue to shoot JPEGs only, while for others I'll shoot RAW. As you said, it never hurts to ba able to work with either option depending on the project.

All the best,

TomJ
 
I used to post process every shot I ever took in JPG anyway. RAW now allows me to correct any errors in exposure and white balance without degrading my shot. I guess you can say I like the "safety net" as some would say, and I like the results I get from C1. Also, speaking of C1, I find I rarely even touch Photoshop anymore unless I'm working on something really special. The workflow is just outstanding, and FAST.

As a final note, I like the whole "digital negative" aspect of RAW, and even though they take up a bit more space than shooting straight JPG, storage is so cheap these days it really doesn't matter much.

I don't think I'll ever switch back to JPG after the success I have had with RAW.

Just my 2 nickels 8)
TomJ said:
Just wanting to see if I can get a better understanding of the
reasons why some 10D users are such big proponents of shooting RAW.
In my (admittedly limited) experience shooting RAW with the 10D and
with the Oly E-20 before it, I see very little actual benefit to
shootingn RAW as oppesed to Fine/JPEGs.

I'm not wanting to start anything here, but please educate me. I
understand all the theoretical reasons why RAW is supposed to be
better (limited exposure correction, white balance changes), but in
my own real life experience, I seem to keep coming back to the fact
that any real gains in image quality seem to be marginal at best.

Recently I have been using Photoshop CS to convert the 10D's RAW
files and after doing some side by side shots of the same subjects
using RAW and then Fine/JPEG I conclude that if I have gotten the
exposure and white balance down when shooting in JPEG, there is not
anything noticeably different (ie superior) about the RAW captures.
In fact, just the opposite.

By that I mean when I zoom in on an image, say of a person's face,
to maybe 300-400% to do some retouching of fine facial lines or
whatever, I can see what appear to be the same kind of "patchwork"
artifacts that one would normally expect to see in a JPEG file
that's been resaved multiple times and is beginning to show it. On
the other hand, with my Fine JPEG images I see much less of that
even when zoomed in to the same magnification. So it's easier to
use the healing brush tool on most shots because the JPEG file
itself seems to be "cleaner" if that makes sense. This goes against
all conventional wisdom on the subject, so I wonder if I'm doing
something wrong, or if others have noticed anything like what I am
describing. Is the Canon RAW really as lossless as it's touted to
be?

The bottom line being when viewed on screen at lesser
magnifications and in the resulting prints from either type of
capture they both look equally good even when printed to 24"x30" on
my Epson 7600 printer. I do not seem to be realizing any
quantifiable benefit to shooting RAW.

And in the occasional times when I do wish to alter the white
balance with a JPEG file (for instance to warm up a portrait shot
in the shade) I find that a simple adjustment of the Red and Blue
channel in Curves does the trick with no apparent ill effects to
the resultling file. They still print up beautifully.

Anyone care to shed some light as to why you prefer shooting RAW,
or how you see real benefits besides the theoretical?

I'm all for shoooting RAW, I just am curious what others have seen
to convince them to use it over Fine/JPEG. I'm still on the fence
myself.

Thanks,

TomJ
Click to expand...
--
Steve
 
To everyone that's replied, thank you very much. I value all your suggestions, thoughts, and referrals to articles, websites etc. It's all been very helpful and was exactly the kind of response I'd hoped for.

I'll continue doing some shoots with RAW, perhaps eventually all of them. It's been a great learing experience.

Thank you all,

TomJ
 
The 2 main reasons I shoot in RAW- to increase dynamic range, and more recently as a result of artifacts in post-processing colours or tones, through curves. There is nothing worse, than looking at a print, and being able to tell straight away that it has been "meddled with" in Photoshop. As an example, I increased the saturation greatly to the following 16-bit file, to get the electric blues I originally envisaged:



When applying saturation to the 8-bit equivalent, colour banding is much more apparent...and it is crucial the there is no banding in blue skies because this is where our eyes easily pick up any artefacts.

Steven
http://www.pbase.com/nodfather/
Julio Trujillo said:
JPGs have camera processing applied that can not be undone... if
you and the camera got the contrast, exposure, white balance, etc.
perfectly, then there is no advantage...but if you didn't, then RAW
files converted and processed in 16bits are much more editable
without introducing artifacts, banding, etc. than an 8bit JPG ever
could be.

Then there is also the possibility of future RAW converters that
will let you get even more/better information from the data -
particularly in the deep shadows and highlights.

RAW conversion and 16bit editing are both relatively "new" things
to Photoshop. The reason that they have been added is that they do
produce better results.

No offense intended, but to me this question is almost like asking
whether 6 megapixels really is better than 4 or whether DSLRS are
better than P&S. I bought my 10D because I answer yes to both of
those even though I know that in some cases the difference is
subtle and doesn't really jump out at you.

Same thing with RAW vs. JPG.

--
http://www.pbase.com/j_trujillo

Click to expand...
 
Rob, point well taken and a great picture.
Rob Patterson said:
........and your not hearing the truth.
The desired exposure setting for any shot is nearly impossible. It
was even more impossible with film because with film we did not
have the instant histogram (learn to lean on this heavily) nor the
crude but highly informative playback.
Digital has greater dynamic range than film. This wasn't true in
the beginning but it is now.
My experience? I began shooting film as a kid in the 1950s. I
seriously pursued the trade professionally beginning in the late
1960s. I lived in the darkroom. I rolled 25 to 30 rolls of 40 shots
each each day! Came home and developed same.
You're talking to Rob here when you say that exposure should be
done correctly and that if done correctly there is no need for RAW.
I come from an era before meters were built into cameras. We
carried reflective and incident light meters. When I say we, I'm
refering to people such as Ansel Adams, Roman Vishniac, Margaret
Bourke-White, Winston Link, Weston, Yousuf Karsh and on and on and
on. These lightweights of photography spent more time striving for
the perfect exposure and never got it.
You do the best you can in the field and then the real work begins
in the darkroom. This is where a RAW file comes into it's own. It
is a negative. It has not been processed by the camera. It only has
the exposure information that you fed to the negative (RAW file)
via your choice of shutter speed, aperature and choice of lighting,
either artifical or natural. A .jpg has already been adjusted by
the camera. You have next to nothing to say about it. My highly
experienced eye tells me the cameras .jpg processing is not
anywheres near accurate enough for getting the best results. You're
starting with a great deal of information that is lost because of
that processing. Now this is fine if you are very, very lucky. If,
however you want the best exposure results to work with, you don't
want some computer chip doing the job of your eyeball. Do you limit
yourself to autolevels and auto contrast and auto.....in Photoshop?
If so than I won't make any further points. If not and you want the
best results, use RAW. More precisely, START with RAW! It'll save
you far more work in the digital darkroom than starting with .jpg.
In summary. Getting the perfect exposure for each shot is an
impossibility. That's why the bracket function is built into the
better cameras. That's why pros who are expected to produce and get
paid for the best results don't settle for one shot hypothetical
non-existent perfect one shot exposures burn several rolls of film
in an effort to get that perfect result. Pros that use $1000 dollar
incident meters, grey cards, hired help to hold lighting control,
thousands of dollars more in lighting. The list is long. Few if any
at all use jpg. A level 6 compressed .jpg is not happening when
you're after the best as you claim you are.
Pardon the lecture but I've been doing this too many years. I've
forgotten more than most people will ever learn. I think I'll head
out into the garage and do some woodworking!

Click to expand...
--
This is to much fun!!
 
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