Dropping RAW and going Jpeg

[watboy]

I stopped shooting RAW a while ago. If the shot isn't fairly presentable, right out of the camera, I have little use for it. To try to salvage bad work using technology, only serves to continue the sloppy work, IMO. I like the challenge of doing it right, the first time. Fine Jpeg makes life SO much easier.

The presumption is that RAW is only a tool use to salvage bad photos. That is not always the case. You can often times take a great picture, but the camera's own processing decisions resulted in a less than perfect JPEG, and sometimes even a bad JPEG. This is compounded by taking pictures underwater, a realm that most of the camera software engineers didn't take into account when developing their algorithms. Some camera's have underwater mode, but its very different taking pictures at different depths, different visibility and different lighting conditions, too many variables for auto settings to work well in.

For me, when i've invested the time and energy to go to some place special, and I get a once-in-my-life-time encounter with a beautiful creature, I am going to try to take the best pic I can.... and I most certainly am not going to leave it to chance that my camera doesn't do some whacky processing.

 

[Storker]

I stopped shooting RAW a while ago. If the shot isn't fairly presentable, right out of the camera, I have little use for it. To try to salvage bad work using technology, only serves to continue the sloppy work

This is a fairly common fallacy.

Even with great work behind the camera, some shot just aren't as 'presentable, right out of the camera' as they could be with minor PP'ing. It's not about 'sloppy work' it's about optics. You can't avoid backscatter from ambient light by 'doing it right, the first time'. Unless, of course, you have 30-50m viz and great ligthing. In poorer viz, the blacks in the background will be washed out and your contrast will suffer. Not necessarily very noticeable on macro shots, but definitely a factor to consider in WA shooting. If tweaking WB, pulling the blacks and upping the contrast to give the image the "punch" it deserves is 'sloppy work' and 'salvaging bad work using technology', I've been doing it wrong all the time and will most probably continue to do so.

I would once more recommend the books by Ansel Adams which I mentioned upthread. I've seen contact copies of Ansel Adams' negs, and I'll tell you, those contacts weren't remotely close to the pictures he produced. He put as much work into the printing process as into the recording process. If Ansel Adams did 'sloppy work' and 'salvaged bad work using technology', I guess I'm in good company. I can live with that...

I am going to try to take the best pic I can.... and I most certainly am not going to leave it to chance that my camera doesn't do some whacky processing.

^^^ This.

 

[James R]

The presumption is that RAW is only a tool use to salvage bad photos.

I completely disagree with this! RAW is simply more data to work with in post. A bad photo is still bad, no matter what.

 

[kelemvor]

I agree with the sentiment (which includes wine, eggnog, and movies), but I don't understand how RAW vs jpeg is relevant. A bad picture will be bad no matter which format you use, but it seems like the window is a bit more comfortably open with RAW. How does using jpeg correct focus, exposure, composition, subject matter?

JPG uses lossy compression, RAW is typically uncompressed or using lossless compression. You lose fidelity every time you edit a jpg. You don't lose anything when editing RAW.

Switch to Nikon and shoot RAW+JPG. You get both files on your storage media after each shot. Delete the raw if you're happy with what you shot. If not, you've got the raw to edit. It's the best of both worlds. Given the other costs of digital photography, especially underwater, 64GB ($10) or 128GB (~$20) or even 256GB (~$75) memory cards are insignificant. Those prices were from amazon, for class10 cards.

 

[Storker]

Switch to Nikon and shoot RAW+JPG.

Agree. Except you don't have to switch to Nikon. I've had Nikons, Canons and Olympuses, and they've all given me the option of raw+JPEG.

In the pre-digital days, we kept the negs even if we were showing our friends the prints. Those negs were pretty nice to have if you were lucky and wanted to make something more than a snapshot. Disk space is cheap these days, and the disk space cost per frame, even with humongous raw files like the 36 MPx ones from the Nikon D800, is negligible compared to the cost per frame when we recorded on analog media. Even with multiple, redundant backups.

 

[boletus1973]

lot of people think that their camera can do automatic PP better than them.... no problem for me... if you are happy...
but don't say that RAW is only for save bad photos.... because this is totally BS....:shocked2:
I start uw photography with jpgs..... but only because my first camera save only jpgs and heavy tiffs, the second one save also RAW, but you had to wait 15second before one single RAW was saved... After that i start using RAW, because i see the difference during the PP and because the biggest loss of time isn't the PP, but the choice of files to be processed...
i think that anyone with a decent monitor with a good gamut can not claim to see no difference between a jpg and a RAW file.... unless he is blind ...

 

[kelemvor]

Modern cameras should be writing a lot faster than 1 photo every 10 seconds! My nikon will write about 3 raw+jpg images a second.

If the olympus will do raw+jpg, then spend $10 on a 64gb card, shoot raw+jpg and call it a day! Actually, I do it with only a 32GB card. I can easily go a whole week with thousands of RAW+JPG shots with it (my camera is only 24Megapixel).

 

[James R]

My Nikon D810 will write ~75mb raw files to a CF card faster than my z-240 strobes can recycle.

 

[boletus1973]

Modern cameras should be writing a lot faster than 1 photo every 10 seconds! My nikon will write about 3 raw+jpg images a second.

.

I think I made some mistakes with my bad English .. I also save raw + jpg instantly with my em5!
I was referring to the past, when I started with underwater photography ... with the small canon a90 or my fuji e900 was convenient shoot jpgs .... but not now!

 

[Ardy]

I agree that this is up to the photographer, but it also depends on whether they are pro's or amateurs. I suspect the majority are amateurs and spending time in LR or any product is time that should be spent analysing your old RAW shots and seeing what you could do better. Then dumping RAW altogether.

I don't know about you but as an amateur with lots of average RAW files lying around, I suspect they will end up like most of my old slides - Dumped.

I personally think there is more of a challenge and possibly reward in getting my flash coverage correct and the shot right [especially on moving objects] than farting around in some Adobe software trying to fix it.

There are so many things that can and do go wrong in U/W photography and using RAW has meant I have not spent as much time getting my shots right and more time farting around with them...