Do you think Raw is only for people with too much time on there hands

[Betarover]

Let's get real. On my computer screen the full image is 7.5 inches wide. The tiny patch he examins to prove which is the best RAW processor is 7/16" wide. Ratio this up to a big print. If you make an 11"x14" print (most camera owners do not even have this ability), the patch is only 0.81 inches wide. Even if you make a 16"x20" print this tiny patch is only 1.16 inches wide. I do not feel anyone would notice the slight increased detail in the grass or fence post in a patch the size of a postage stamp. Those of you who do not believe this, please print these little images at the postage stamp size described above and report back as to if you, your spouse, or your friends could see a difference when you hang it on a wall.

If in the FINAL PRODUCTS we make with our images (large prints?) we can't see the difference, why bother? To be concerned about something that does not show in our final product hanging on the wall is like putting print on the head of a pin and then worrying about what method makes the sharpest text.

 

[Lee Jay]

Dynamic range is the biggest ones. Shooting raw on a camera with significant raw headroom can mean the difference between wide swaths of pure white, or colored visible detail in those areas. And that is visible at any size.

The below image, while not a raw versus JPEG comparison, is a comparison of small dynamic range (on the left) to large dynamic range (on the right). Note the ceiling for an example of what I just described.



--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[Betarover]

The point of the article was to show how various RAW converters differ in their bringing out detail. My opinion is folks do too much pixel peeping at details that are too small to be noticed in even our large prints. This concern over the sharpness of detail on the head of a pin should be more realistic.

As for your image (looks like the Denver airport). This is very like taking a landscape with bright white clouds. If I was taking it with my Panasonic FZ50 or G10 I would take the image after having set the exposure by considering the histogram. I would then look at the review image for blinking highlights. If any, I would reduce the exposure and repeat until the blinking highlights are no more. That, for me, would be the perfect image (expose to the right, as they say). In a few cases the dark areas, or even the entire image, will be too dark. I bring them up with "lighten darks" or by moving the center slider in Photoshop. I do not tolerate either blown highlights or big black areas in any of my landscape prints (except for small areas of glare on rippling water). They would sell, but I am a perfectionist and do not want to "stick" anyone with a less than perfect print.

This sounds like a lot of effort, but it is just a matter of seconds. And the vast majority of landscape images do not present the potential to have blown highlights. It is only a few (bright clouds) that take this level of care.

Looking at the posted images on Steves for the G10 (the firehouse images), I see no advantage for his RAW image over his JPEG. Both are equally sharp and detailed in all areas. Look at the twigs. Look at the bricks. The RAW was taken on a sunny day giving it every advantage over the cloudy day JPEG image. And yet the JPEG cloudy day images matches the RAW in every respect.

Just my opinion.

 

[Lee Jay]

The trouble is, the plants in front of the fountain are driven almost to black, whereas they are actually green. Exposing darker to preserve the ceiling would make that problem worse. Attempting to boost the darks in post processing just made the plants noisy, not green, and not brighter or more detailed. So that's a lack of dynamic range issue - the brights are too bright and the darks are too dark, both at the same time. The only solutions are a wider dynamic range camera and processing system, or a multiple image blend which is a painful solution when there are moving subjects in the scene.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[gingerbaker]

Let's get real. On my computer screen the full image is 7.5 inches
wide. The tiny patch he examins to prove which is the best RAW
processor is 7/16" wide. Ratio this up to a big print. If you make
an 11"x14" print (most camera owners do not even have this ability),
the patch is only 0.81 inches wide. Even if you make a 16"x20" print
this tiny patch is only 1.16 inches wide. I do not feel anyone would
notice the slight increased detail in the grass or fence post in a
patch the size of a postage stamp. Those of you who do not believe
this, please print these little images at the postage stamp size
described above and report back as to if you, your spouse, or your
friends could see a difference when you hang it on a wall.

If in the FINAL PRODUCTS we make with our images (large prints?) we
can't see the difference, why bother? To be concerned about
something that does not show in our final product hanging on the wall
is like putting print on the head of a pin and then worrying about
what method makes the sharpest text.

The problem with your argument is that EVERY part of the photograph is smeared by the jpg engine, not just one small part. It WILL be visible on a decent and above sized print.

Maybe you can live with that, fine. But, using RAW is not much extra effort once you get used to it. Sometimes, it can take much less time to correct a white balance problem in RAW than in Levels, and I am good with Levels.

If one is going to take the trouble to put a print on the wall, doesn't one want to put up the best possible effort?

This is not to say that jpg doesn't have its place. If one is just going out taking snaps - whom cares? The problem is that sometimes, a great shot catches one unprepared.

--
Gingerbaker

http://www.pbase.com/gingerbaker/galleries

 

[S Hess]

Once the file is open how is it different than JPEG? You adjust them the same.

hehe ... OPEN is not all

--
Canon SX1 -

http://forums.steves-digicams.com/forums/view_topic.php?id=600047&forum_id=15&page=1

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

 

[Lee Jay]

Once the file is open how is it different than JPEG? You adjust them
the same.

In so many ways it's hard to believe!

The JPEG has already been demosaiced, thus a better demosaicing algorithm can't be used.
The JPEG is already sharpened, thus a better sharpening algorithm can't be used.
The JPEG is already in a limited color space, the raw is not so limited.
The JPEG already has WB burned in, thus it's much harder to alter.

The JPEG already has gamma applied, thus the tone curve can't be altered as easily.
The JPEG already has noise reduction applied, thus detail is already lost.

The JPEG already has a color profile applied, thus it's harder to alter (impossible if you shot in B&W).
etc.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[Mark B.]

Once the file is open how is it different than JPEG? You adjust them
the same.

Not really. White balance correction on jpg is destructive. Not so on raw; in fact, nothing you do to adjust a raw does anything to the original file - unlike jpg, it can't be saved back to the same file. You adjust the raw, then output to an editable file like jpg or tiff.

You can't open a jpg and get 16-bit images. You can with raw.

Mark

 

[karl boyle]

ljfinger wrote:
The trouble is, the plants in front of the fountain are driven almost
to black, whereas they are actually green. Exposing darker to
preserve the ceiling would make that problem worse. Attempting to
boost the darks in post processing just made the plants noisy, not
green, and not brighter or more detailed. So that's a lack of
dynamic range issue - the brights are too bright and the darks are
too dark, both at the same time. The only solutions are a wider
dynamic range camera and processing system, or a multiple image blend
which is a painful solution when there are moving subjects in the
scene.

Lee Jay is correct. Using a -EV does not increase DR. Most DSLR jpegs have about 8.5EV in DR. Most Raw files from the same DSLR has an increase of anything up to 1-2 stops of DR to give about 10EV. These figures really do not change. You may be able to protect your highlights using EV on the camera, but you push everything else towards the shadow areas (underexposing the shadow areas). Depending on the scene and amount of EV applied, any dark tones that are not pure black (like dark reds/greens/purple ect)....will appear black because you are now underexposing them.

And if you have to "pull" them out in PP, you will also open up more noise in the shadows and still never quite get back that original colour. But if you have to pull out those shadows and use post processing, you are defeating the purpose of using jpeg in the first place (no PP) and you might have shot raw.

Also with raw, you do not have to nail the exposure perfectly which saves time. It the highlight tools is only blinking slightly in areas, then you can move on to you next shot knowing that you can recover up to 1EV of highlight data overexposed on a DSLR. With Jpegs you have to shoot again, check again, and if you didn't get it right the second time, then go through the process for a third time. And I bet you have experienced doing that from time to time having to make 3 exposures for the one shot, because I have.

--
Regards,
Fatboy

 

[Betarover]

Dynamic range is easily increased by decreasing the contrast setting of the camera before taking the image. Then in Photoshop move the left and right sliders in Levels.

 

[Lee Jay]

Dynamic range is easily increased by decreasing the contrast setting
of the camera before taking the image. Then in Photoshop move the
left and right sliders in Levels.

The S3 image I showed was with contrast -2, sharpening -2, saturation -1 and green -1. I don't think there's any more dynamic range to be extracted from a JPEG from that camera.

--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

 

[cnlson]

I shoot JPG 99% of the time. When i attempt to work my my RAW shots it is indeed not a short process.

So why do it?

Raw gives me 8.3 MP vs 8.1 a small difference

Raw gives me unlimited non destructive editing JPG loses detail with each edit a big difference and this allows me to save directly to a TIFF or PNG and have lossless editing.

Raw gives me 10 bit color JPG 8 bit.

this is a HUGE difference.
2^10 is 1024 colors 2^8 is 256.

When you talk about a camera that was actually designed to shoot Raw as opposed to using CHDK they are running 12, 14 or 16 bit which is orders of magnitude more colors (2^12 = 4096, 2^14 = 16384, 2^16 is 65536) and while converting that to a jpg loses all those different shades, saving as Tiff or PNG does not. saving a JPG as a tiff or png does not add any more colors than the original 256 that the jpg holds.

In best case you might find a scene that does not have more than 256 shades but likely you will and if you want to see the difference switch your display properties back and forth between 256 color and 16 bit and see what looks better.

 

[matchsetgame]

but if I had to choose the better of the two than it would be the first one made with the S3.

Dynamic range is the biggest ones. Shooting raw on a camera with
significant raw headroom can mean the difference between wide swaths
of pure white, or colored visible detail in those areas. And that is
visible at any size.

The below image, while not a raw versus JPEG comparison, is a
comparison of small dynamic range (on the left) to large dynamic
range (on the right). Note the ceiling for an example of what I just
described.



--
Lee Jay
(see profile for equipment)

--
Brown Bag It

 

[karl boyle]

Betarover wrote:
Dynamic range is easily increased by decreasing the contrast setting
of the camera before taking the image. Then in Photoshop move the
left and right sliders in Levels.

Your correct.......it does increase the DR of a jpeg. But you haven't your listening ears on. What me and Lee jay are saying (from experience)..... is that when you back off all those settings in jpeg, a raw file has still more dynamic range....period. It might not be as apparent in a P&S, but most overwhelmingly with a DSLR. Only once ever have I found that this was not the case in a DSLR. And that was with the exceptional DR king....the S5pro.

Obviously you have not experienced this. You should try it, especially with a DSLR. Or if you aren't conviced by me or LeeJay.......have a good read on this website blog about it. Here's the link and here's the proof by professional reviewers:
http://blog.dpreview.com/editorial/2009/01/raw-headroom.html

--
Regards,
Fatboy