Why RAW?

[gary stepic]

shoot RAW for the many reasons given. The most important is too many things can happen to spoil a shot and I worry a lot less when I have my camera set on RAW. I would like to say I am so good I will always get it right the first time but that would be a huge fib. It does take more time afterward with post processing and I know my wife absolutley hates it when I turn on my computer but I think the flexability is worth her glares and door slams! By the way, for married folks with the same problem a laptop really helps. Now when my wife wants me to watch a Lifetime movie (which bores me to death) with her I work on my laptop while I pretent to be interested in the movie!

Sometimes smoke starts coming out of my ears when I read all the technical advice concerning curves and in camera adjustments. Maybe curves in the camera are the best option but I have a hard time thinking it is that much better than what you can do with a NEF file.

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?

 

[ginski]

the #1 cause of divorce in this country is marriage. wives can be replaced tomorrow, while the d-70 would take a couple of weeks

have fun with your d-70 anyway!

ginski

Sometimes smoke starts coming out of my ears when I read all the
technical advice concerning curves and in camera adjustments. Maybe
curves in the camera are the best option but I have a hard time
thinking it is that much better than what you can do with a NEF
file.

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?

 

[Thomas Nielsen]

The filesize using jpg+nef is a lot bigger and therefore you have less shots on your memory card. Right now this is really great for me, as I have started thinking much more about my motives. Back with my CP5700 I would simply shoot anything that looked remotely interesting, often I ended up with many really boring images, and I used my energy on that. Now with a limited 700'something mb I have started hunting more for motives. Often I see something I would normally take 10 shots of now, but now I think "hhhmmm not THAT interesting" and skip the shot. Seems like I get more keepers like that, but I could be wrong

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?

 

[Jrgen Eidt]

also, Phil pointed out in his review that jpeg HI and jpeg Med was
indistinguishable. it's my hunch that Hi and Med is using the same
compression ratio.

It is almost impossible to judge on the screen the difference of a compression of 80 or 95 (0 the worst, 100 the best) for JPEG.

The camera even has a color sub sampling (!) at these low compression levels so the quality is not at its highest.

But Hi and Med will have different compression ratio for sure, its just that you cannot tell the difference by simply looking at the whole picture.

--
Regards
Jürgen
http://cpicture.de/en

 

[PeterDove]

Nikon Capture.. which has an edge over other converters.. that's
$100 more u MUST invest to get the most out of your investment.

With the above statement, There are other converter which can get much better images than capture...

See the below thread

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1034&message=8607803

Peter

 

[dad_of_four]

" The next time I feel like getting re-married,
I will find a woman I hate and give her half of my stuff."

--Comedian unknown LOL

the #1 cause of divorce in this country is marriage. wives can be
replaced tomorrow, while the d-70 would take a couple of weeks

 

[Yves P.]

Better details, colors, less artifacts, more control and to my experience better DR ...

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?

--
Yves P.
PBASE Supporter

Some pictures I like:
http://www.pbase.com/yp8/root

 

[Chomper]

Reed Hoffman of Blue Pixel covers this topic in length.

http://www.bluepixel.net

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?

--
Just shoot! =)

 

[montecristo]

As a complete photography rookie, one of the amazing things about shooting in RAW is that it enables me to make major mistakes (wrong exposure, wrong WB, bad color saturation selections for a particular situation, etc.) and then address them in post-processing "losslessly". It enables me to look a LOT better than I am.

In fact, RAW is so good that I'm starting to wonder why Nikon incorporates so many different types of settings (e.g. white balance) in-camera at all, when I have complete power and total freedom editing RAW. With RAW, all I need to nail down when I shoot is focus, shutter speed, and aperture. Everything else can wait until post!

Montecristo

Having the raw file is insurance if you:
Messed up the exposure.
Messed up the white balance, color saturation or color space
Want to avoid blowing out the whites.
Want to provide the sharpest file you can obtain.
Want to provide a file with the most color depth you can obtain.
Want a 'digital negative' instead of a finished file to archive.
Make your client happier, by providing all of the above.
Make your photos appear to be better, because you did all of the
above.

Beat out the competition becase your photos are a notch above the
rest.
Maybe make more money- so you can buy more storage for those big
files.

-Mike

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?

 

[louis67]

If you read my post I gave a fairly solid example in terms of size of file which created with D70 vs CP5700.

You most definitly can tell the difference on the screen on JPEG med and JPEG HI in CP5700. When a 6mb file is saving in a file size of a 5mb file there's something wrong. When you open a CP5700 JPEG HI in photoshop and resave in maximum detail and the file size remains the same then one can deduce that the compression ratio used is the same. That is not the case with D70. Photoshop adds additional 300-400K to the file which means that the compression ratio used in D70 is higher.

also, Phil pointed out in his review that jpeg HI and jpeg Med was
indistinguishable. it's my hunch that Hi and Med is using the same
compression ratio.

It is almost impossible to judge on the screen the difference of a
compression of 80 or 95 (0 the worst, 100 the best) for JPEG.
The camera even has a color sub sampling (!) at these low
compression levels so the quality is not at its highest.

But Hi and Med will have different compression ratio for sure,
its just that you cannot tell the difference by simply looking at
the whole picture.

--
Regards
Jürgen
http://cpicture.de/en

 

[GREEN LATERN]

I was all for Raw until I started using my camera. My camera takes great shots in automatic. I only shoot in high jpeg at this point. One time my white balance was set wrong and was a little blue. The Nikon View was able to allow me to correct it with the green, and balance switches.

Just think in high jpeg, you can correct red eye, lighten or darken the picture, make it sharper on 3 levels and even change it to black and white. Not to mention the colors you can work with. We paid big money for our cameras, like the camera do it's job and you do yours.

Too much delay in taking Raw photos for me. 85% of the time, the pictures just need a little tweaking.

Someone chime in here though on the subjecrt of software. I looked
at images in both Nikon View and then PS7. I noticed a
considerably better image in NV. Smoother to be sure and cleaner.
Perhaps this is merely a display difference and not reality?
Anyone?

You should shoot RAW for all of the reasons Mike mentioned. You
paid $1000.00 pluse the cost of lenses etc... to improve the
quality of your photo's why not shhot in the highest quality
possible?

There's not much reasonto NOT shoot RAW. There are only a few
disadvantages that are far outwieghed by the benifits.

Disadvantages:

File size - Not much of a problem. Storage is cheap nowadays. DVD
burners and Compact flash cards are at an all time low.

Speed - You won't even notice a difference unless you need to shoot
3fps for an extended time.

Post Processing - Hardly worth mentioning, if you get the shot
right in-camera then shooting RAW only requires one extra step,
conversion to jpeg or tiff and with Nikon Capture you can do this
as a batch operation requiring only a few mouse clicks to do whole
directories of files.

If you don't get the shot right in-camera you'll be glad you shot
RAW as it's much easier to correct, and with better results!

New Software - You really should get Nikon Capture to get the most
out of RAW so that's another $100.00. But the way I see it, you
spent at least $1000 for the camera and who knows how much more on
lenses, Memory, filters, tripods, bags etc... Another $100 to get
the best quality you can out of the camera is a small price to pay.

 

[Steve Albrecht]

If you inspect the EXIF data for RAW and JPEG images, you will find that RAW images have a resolution of 240 ppi, while JPEG has a resolution of 300 ppi.

BTW, I agree with the idea that one should shoot in RAW untill one gets used to all the different settings. The JPEG format is intended to be a finished image, while RAW is more akin to a negative. That said, I have made some pretty extensive modifications to jpeg images with no discernable degradation in an 8.5x11 print.

Cheers
Steve Albrecht

I may be off-base here, but what if you want to further crop your
original image? Wouldn't it be better to have the full 6
mega-pixels (lossless, or nearly so), rather than a 4:1 compression?

Your raw cropped image is simply going to have more resolution than
your JPEG cropped image.

HTH,
DO4

 

[Bill Karadimos]

I was all for Raw until I started using my camera. My camera takes
great shots in automatic. I only shoot in high jpeg at this point.
One time my white balance was set wrong and was a little blue. The
Nikon View was able to allow me to correct it with the green, and
balance switches.

Question, Why would you spend 1000 plus for a wonderful camera and use it in auto mode, I know that the pictures can't compare when shot in A,S or M mode, I was just wondering.

Just think in high jpeg, you can correct red eye, lighten or darken
the picture, make it sharper on 3 levels and even change it to
black and white. Not to mention the colors you can work with. We
paid big money for our cameras, like the camera do it's job and you
do yours.

Too much delay in taking Raw photos for me. 85% of the time, the
pictures just need a little tweaking.

Someone chime in here though on the subjecrt of software. I looked
at images in both Nikon View and then PS7. I noticed a
considerably better image in NV. Smoother to be sure and cleaner.
Perhaps this is merely a display difference and not reality?
Anyone?

You should shoot RAW for all of the reasons Mike mentioned. You
paid $1000.00 pluse the cost of lenses etc... to improve the
quality of your photo's why not shhot in the highest quality
possible?

There's not much reasonto NOT shoot RAW. There are only a few
disadvantages that are far outwieghed by the benifits.

Disadvantages:

File size - Not much of a problem. Storage is cheap nowadays. DVD
burners and Compact flash cards are at an all time low.

Speed - You won't even notice a difference unless you need to shoot
3fps for an extended time.

Post Processing - Hardly worth mentioning, if you get the shot
right in-camera then shooting RAW only requires one extra step,
conversion to jpeg or tiff and with Nikon Capture you can do this
as a batch operation requiring only a few mouse clicks to do whole
directories of files.

If you don't get the shot right in-camera you'll be glad you shot
RAW as it's much easier to correct, and with better results!

New Software - You really should get Nikon Capture to get the most
out of RAW so that's another $100.00. But the way I see it, you
spent at least $1000 for the camera and who knows how much more on
lenses, Memory, filters, tripods, bags etc... Another $100 to get
the best quality you can out of the camera is a small price to pay.

--
Live like there is no tomorrow.

 

[lmpmd]

If you inspect the EXIF data for RAW and JPEG images, you will find
that RAW images have a resolution of 240 ppi, while JPEG has a
resolution of 300 ppi.

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?

 

[lmpmd]

You can set the camera to shoot in Raw/Jpeg giving you both files.
The Basic jpeg version is on the small side, but good enough for
'small file size use' applications.If you look at the NEF and jpeg
version side-by-side in a browser, you will see the difference.

Having the raw file is insurance if you:
Messed up the exposure.
Messed up the white balance, color saturation or color space
Want to avoid blowing out the whites.
Want to provide the sharpest file you can obtain.
Want to provide a file with the most color depth you can obtain.
Want a 'digital negative' instead of a finished file to archive.
Make your client happier, by providing all of the above.
Make your photos appear to be better, because you did all of the
above.

I am curious why there's no good way to make the NEF shot look like the accompanying JPEG. Don't you think the software should have a button to click that would just make the NEF shot look (in terms of color, exposure, etc.) like the JPEG you would have gotten if you had shot in JPEG mode. Or is there such a button? I think this would be a great feature. Once you viewed it that way, if you love it that way, you could just convert it to a high quality JPEG.

 

[JulesJ]

Pictures straight out ofthe camera don't have resolution. They just have pixels across and pixels up down the frame. Resolution is a print thing.
You are confused.
Read more, learn more. All will become clear!

Jules

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

BTW, I agree with the idea that one should shoot in RAW untill one
gets used to all the different settings. The JPEG format is
intended to be a finished image, while RAW is more akin to a
negative. That said, I have made some pretty extensive
modifications to jpeg images with no discernable degradation in an
8.5x11 print.

Cheers
Steve Albrecht

I may be off-base here, but what if you want to further crop your
original image? Wouldn't it be better to have the full 6
mega-pixels (lossless, or nearly so), rather than a 4:1 compression?

Your raw cropped image is simply going to have more resolution than
your JPEG cropped image.

HTH,
DO4

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

 

[klinikl]

jpg is lossy compression.
raw is lossless compression.

Unfortunately in the D70 case that is not correct. D70 NEF uses lossy compression, quite possibly using the same compression method as fine jpeg. If your statement was correct the desision to shoot NEF would be a no-brainer. I would very much prefer to shoot losslessly compressed .

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...
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&message=12681790

I wouldn't care much about RAW converter features cause I feel like you can do any corrections you want in Photoshop anyway. But I still shoot NEF just in case there are benefits I'm unaware about

 

[Robert Peters]

jpg is lossy compression.
raw is lossless compression.

Unfortunately in the D70 case that is not correct. D70 NEF uses
lossy compression, quite possibly using the same compression method
as fine jpeg. If your statement was correct the desision to shoot
NEF would be a no-brainer. I would very much prefer to shoot
losslessly compressed .

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...
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1007&message=12681790

I wouldn't care much about RAW converter features cause I feel like
you can do any corrections you want in Photoshop anyway. But I
still shoot NEF just in case there are benefits I'm unaware about

You can perform hilight recovery starting with the NEF format that is impossible in Photoshop. See if you can get your hands on Thom Hogan's book, for example, and arm yourself with a few more facts.

Bob Peters

 

[lmpmd]

Pictures straight out ofthe camera don't have resolution. They just
have pixels across and pixels up down the frame. Resolution is a
print thing.
You are confused.
Read more, learn more. All will become clear!

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?

 

[Mofongo]

lmpmd wrote:

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?

The bottom line is they both have the same number of pixels which is the resolution...

Take a 6mp image with 2000x3008 pixels...

One may have more ppi (pixels per inch) but ay a smaller size, example 300ppi at 6.667 inches width by 10.027 inches height...

The other may have 240ppi at 8.333 width and 12.533 height...

So you see the ppi is print size dependant...the number of pixels stays the same...

ppi is simply a arbitrary tagged number that varies with the selected print size...

If you change the ppi in photoshop to 72ppi it is now 27.778 width and 41.778 height...

You can change the ppi to whatever you want to...different cameras or file formats just apply different ppi "tags"..that's all...

As long as the number of pixels stays the same, that's all that matters and the resolution is the same...

Bob

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