RAW vs JPG

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  • #842
    swampa
    Participant

    I have been playing around with taking photos in RAW format the last month to see what it is like, and while I enjoy being able to make additional changes to the image in post-production (temperature and vignetting were nice finds), it just takes forever to process them.

    I’m using Adobe Lightroom (on a PC) to import and organise the photos (which seems to like taking all the resources and just hanging for a while while changing images but it is still works better than the Canon supplied software :?)

    Anyway, enough rambling. I was wondering what format people were shooting in and what software they were using to view the results? (I wish windows explorer could thumbnail RAW pics :()

    #7905
    monkeybort
    Participant

    i shoot jpg pretty much exclusively – they’re smaller, faster, and pretty editable. i know i won’t be able to recover things sometimes, and maybe i just can’t quite get that shadow to come up, but in questionable lighting situations i usually just bracket.

    i will shoot raw if i’m doing snowboarding or skiing stuff though. snow is a tricky beast and it’s hard to bracket action shots. 😛

    i look at everything in the CS2 bridge.

    #7906
    zeke
    Participant

    I shoot RAW+JPG. Once I’m done with a shoot, I preview the shots in JPG and pick a couple that I think are the best candidates. From there I use gimp/ufraw to start with the RAW image, get the white balance etc worked out, then pull the result into gimp for final crop/resize. If the JPG looks really good, I may start there, but 9 times out of 10, I can get better results doing some fine tuning in ufraw.

    #7907
    anneb
    Participant

    There’s not a poll option for “both,” unfortunately. I waffle.

    If I want 16-bit because of a lot of color gradation, or don’t want to lose fine detail, I’ll often use raw. Or, if I’m shooting in wonky lighting where I can’t win with the camera WB setting, and want to set it later at my monitor when I have time to think about it.

    If that’s not an issue, or if it’s family snapshots, or I’m shooting a gajillion pix for something and fancy portrait-type quality isn’t an issue, jpeg works great.

    And if I’m shooting for someone else, which ever of the two they’d rather get the pix in.

    #7908
    Elsinore
    Keymaster

    RAW +jpg for all the reasons anneb and Zeke said. I’ve also started dabbling with film, and I’ve submitted a couple film shots to Farktography. Where’s the “some of the above” option? lol 😀

    #7909
    swampa
    Participant

    Thanks for these responses 🙂

    I saw the option for RAW + JPG on the camera and wondered what good it would be (hence no option :P), I never thought of using it as Zeke suggests.

    #7910
    monkeybort
    Participant

    looks like i’m in the minority! 😛

    #7911
    staplermofo
    Participant

    looks like i’m in the minority! 😛

    I shoot jpg almost exclusively too.

    *puts his hair in dreadlocks*

    Cease and sekkle! No kya da bangarang. I and I no craven choke puppy an no buhtuh, nuh? Don let Babylon keep ya down.

    #7912
    zeke
    Participant

    Thanks for these responses 🙂

    I saw the option for RAW + JPG on the camera and wondered what good it would be (hence no option :P), I never thought of using it as Zeke suggests.

    The other reason to consider using RAW+JPG is as a safety net. One of the best features of shooting RAW is being able to twiddle the exposure later. You don’t necessarily have to be spot-on with your lighting; if it’s a little off, you can fix it in postproc. If you’re shooting JPG, and shooting things like candles or christmas tree lights, its real easy to overexpose the light source and/or underexpose the entire shot. If you shoot in RAW+JPG, you can crack open the RAW shot, twiddle the exposure, do some curves work, and salvage shots that might have otherwise been blown. Then you can use JPG for most things, but shots that are a bit off, go fix them using the RAW shot.

    Of course, the drawback is disk space and storing both limits the number of images you can shoot/cheap. But with storage getting cheaper almost daily, that tradeoff isnt so bad 🙂

    #7913
    Elsinore
    Keymaster

    Puff Puff Pass. Dats de rule, mon….

    /Pass the dutchie on the left hand side!

    #7914
    staplermofo
    Participant

    *Glares at mofo* You gonna pass that back Mon?

    Not even a full day into it and drugs have already torn this forum apart, turning galley against stapler, wench against mofo.
    Oh teh laments.

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