Why RAW?

[Mofongo]

lmpmd wrote:

If true, than why do so many here claim they see NEF as having more
resolution? I've been told resolution of NEF and highest JPEG are
identical. Is this not true?

Raw images will have the same resolution as a in camera jpg regardless of the arbitrary ppi tag associated with either (see my post below explaining why ppi does not matter)....

But...the Jpg from a converted NEF will be sharper and more detailed than a jpg out of the camera because your home computer is much more powefull than the cameras tiny processor (computer) and does a much better job creating a jpg....

They will both have the same number of pixels (2000x3008) and the ppi can be changed in either dependant on what print size you want...

Bob

--
'Photography is more about depth of feeling than depth of field'
http://www.pbase.com/mofongo

 

[Mike Noren]

It seems mmany people are shooting in RAW most or all of the time.
I was hoping someone might explain this as I perceive the highest
quality JPG to be very good.

The biggest thing is that it allows adjusting when you make a mistake. Here's an example: I shot a NEF, and when you do the camera automatically also saves a JPEG preview.
This is the preview jpeg:



As you can see the fish is completely overexposed, with the back of the fish solid white. This is what I'd have got if I'd shot JPEG.
However, I shot NEF, so I could adjust expsure one step down:



The picture went from being a complete failure to borderline acceptable.

Add to this that NEF allow more post-processing and capture more detail and a greater dynamic range, and that when you shoot NEF you get a free 'normal' quality preview JPEG (it's in the NEF file and can be extracted).

Me, I never shoot JPEG anymore.

--

All I write, no matter how silly, are my personal views, and in no way reflect those of my employer or the voices in my head. Honest.

 

[Mike Noren]

The reason I started looking into this is that I used data recovery
software to recover NEFs from a reformatted card and some programs
happily recovered perfectly fine jpeg copies of exactly the right
size. Then I asked on this forum why would that be and wouldn't you
know...

There is a normal quality full-size JPEG included in every NEF. That's the image you see on the camera LCD, and that's what Windows uses to make thumbnails for NEF images.
You can use a program called PreviewExtractor to extract these JPEGs.

It seems your data recovery software found these complete & embedded JPEGs as well.

It is however true that Nikon used lossy compression for the D70 (but not the D100) NEF mode. According to Nikon the loss is impossible to see, so they call it "perceptually lossless", although it is possible to measure the loss with software. There's some guy here who's posted lots of stuff on this, but his name escapes me at the moment

It is regrettable the Nikon NEF is lossy, but they did it this way to increase speed. If you've used D100 you know that the lossless RAW mode is unusably slow with that camera.

--

All I write, no matter how silly, are my personal views, and in no way reflect those of my employer or the voices in my head. Honest.

 

[CIASpook]

I use RAW for the reasons your describe. I have 2gb worth of memory so that when I do my model shoots, 350+ photos is more than enough for these girls (and myself) to be happy.

But, if I go on vacation, sporting event, or just general walk around stuff, I really don't want to fiddle too much later so I'll shoot in JPEG. Often this allows me to use only ONE card as I can get about 200 photos. That's plenty for walking around.

It seems mmany people are shooting in RAW most or all of the time.
I was hoping someone might explain this as I perceive the highest
quality JPG to be very good.

I am aware of the potential for more tweaking with RAW but
considering the large file sizes I would think that RAW would be
more efficiently used only for very fine shots. I usually know
when I'm shooting something that needs the ultimate quality (fine
art shots and portraits come to mind).

Any comments?

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

 

[CIASpook]

I don't know about all their events, but I read a story about how they cover the Super Bowl. They instruct their photographers to shoot RAW+JPEG. They'll review the photos by JPEG (cause it's faster) and if they like it enough to put in the magazine, they'll work from the RAW file.

are you looking for "fine art" or for snapshots?

While I agree with all of the posters above, consider this:

even some photogs for Sports Illustrated shoot JPEG. And they get
published right alongside the RAW shots (though not as the full
2-page spread shots).

My team shoots roughly a thousand shots a month, and we're probably
doing 70% RAW and 30% jpeg, and at standard print sizes (up to
8x10), shots taken in good light look just about the same
regardless of JPG or RAW.

--but I do agree with Thom Hogan, RAW teaches you how to get
everything in the camera right, so you can go out and shoot JPEGS
without worrying about whether your settings are correct.

--
scott b.
http://www.countryshots.com
'A good photograph is knowing where to stand.'
--Ansel Adams

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

 

[JulesJ]

I think Bob has answered that.

I think so many people question whether the Raw file is better than the Jpg that they should ask this question. Would Nikon have given us the Raw one if it wasn't better?

The answer is NO. They would have just given us the jpg.

So the answer is categorically YES the RAW file is better/has advantages/ can be utilised in more ways than ever the jpg can be!

................................................

OK, but I want to know if the JPEG truly has more ppi, and if this
is a potential advantage of JPEG. Do you know?

--
Should I buy the Nikon or the Canon??? ? Doh.

 

[maddog57]

Thanks to everyone, no doubt this thread has changed my
perspective. Specifically this last example (and the few others
thast used similar motives). For someone who was intimate with
film, this analogy is excellent

I should have grabbed a few more of the Ultra II 256 cards for $36.

B&H has the Ultra II 1gb for $89.

"Veterans" would tell you, that de-mosaicking algorithms were
greatly improved with each new Capture version. I was able to
render some photos with Capture 3 which I took 3 years before, and
they looked really bad in Capture 1. Even more, good pictures
became very good pictures. You see more and more converters on the
market, new digital development tools are emerging.

RAW is not a digital negative; it is an undeveloped digital
negative. You can develope it over and over, using better
developers, and developers with different properties; and even
blend the results!

--
no text

 

[niemand]

For the same reason you shoot in highest quality JPG. You must have some reasoning for not shooting in lowest quality JPG when you know that the picture is going to be used for the web and you are going to shrink to that size anyway. Maybe you firgured out that PS (or whatever your favorite picture manipulation software is) does a much better job at reducing it because you can crop and make lots of corrections prior to reducing it. Maybe you discovered that you use pictures for more than you originally intended when they are in highest quality. Point is, the exact reasoning does not matter other than they almost always boil down to saving the most pixel information now is better because I can reduce when I need to but I can never recreate what has already been lost.

Shooting RAW is the same except it is all relative to color information instead of pixel information. People keep talking about white balance and exposure which is to say that by shooting in RAW I retain the maximum color information and can do subtle shifts of the color space (including the origin) if I have more information than I need (lets just say that the RAW format has a lot more colors in it than you could ever hope to display). However, if that information has already been lost -- converted to JPG -- then it is not possible to recreate it and do those adjustments.

Yes, it can cost money, but I run Linux with GIMP 2.0 and I use ufraw ( http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/ ) to processes them. Maybe not as nice as NC 4, but it did not cost $100 either.

It seems mmany people are shooting in RAW most or all of the time.
I was hoping someone might explain this as I perceive the highest
quality JPG to be very good.

I am aware of the potential for more tweaking with RAW but
considering the large file sizes I would think that RAW would be
more efficiently used only for very fine shots. I usually know
when I'm shooting something that needs the ultimate quality (fine
art shots and portraits come to mind).

Any comments?

 

[klinikl]

Interesting. I wish Nikon was more forthcoming with information.

So far what I was able to find on the web was that a thumbnail image was embedded. It does make sense that a full jpeg is embedded as well sinse some software recovers both jpegs and small tiff thumbnails. Some even recover jpegs, tiffs, txt and corrupt nefs.

The other impression I got from online discussions is that in older cameras compressed NEF took longet than uncompressed, lossless compression being done by the main processor.