Beginner Finally Made the Jump to Raw

Forkbeard

Forkbeard

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Jim
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I've been shooting jpg since I started photography and stuck with it out of habit, as a kind of safety net and in the process settling for a safe standard of 'decent' quality. I have dabbled with raw but always given up after thinking it was too much work and that I'd end up with loads of unprocessed drab looking pictures.That was before I knew how to take decent photos - the first and most important thing I learned was you can't fix a bad picture in raw! I improved my techniques and had better files to start with. I don't know when it happened but it just 'clicked', I totally understand why people shoot raw and most of the arguments against it don't make sense if you want to have ultimate control over your processing. I'm now spending less time editing and processing my own raw files than i did messing around trying to 'fix' the baked in settings of jpgs i wasn't ultimately happy with. I've spent a lot of time getting to grips with raw but it's all been worth it.
 
I was horrified at how much detail was lost in the jpgs I was getting OOC compared to raw. Even after converting and resizing raw to jpgs there is still more detail. I was playing around with the quality settings and an 8mb jpg from my d7100's raw files is better than full size fine OOC. Not to mention a whole load of other benefits.
 
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Now, let's see / taste some of it! :cool:
 
I can upload you a picture later, but might be struggling doing that with the real thing hehe.
 
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It's a revelation isn't it! I was always nervous about my editing skills but I love shooting sunrises and sunsets so lost so much detail in jpeg, I was amazed the first time I lightened the shadows in raw and saw just how much detail there was.
 
its a process that a lot go through.
JPEG
JPEG + RAW
RAW

I find that it makes me look at het image more carefully and due to the file size I cull a lot more as well.

The processing thing is still Work in Progress, but my pasta now has some taste.....
 
Meeten said:
its a process that a lot go through.
JPEG
JPEG + RAW
RAW

I find that it makes me look at het image more carefully and due to the file size I cull a lot more as well.

The processing thing is still Work in Progress, but my pasta now has some taste.....
Click to expand...

I went through a brief stage of jpeg+raw and then ditched it for raw only. It makes me lazy knowing I have a backup and that I can revert to 'safe mode' and edit the jpg. I figure if I get really stuck with a raw file I can always find help to sort it out. The main problem I have is noise reduction on higher is images - it is definitely a fine art! I'm going to shoot some higher ISO images this week and do a print test, see how much noise I can leave in. I would rather have noise than (my) bad reduction.

Congratulations on the tasty pasta :D
 
Forkbeard said:
I went through a brief stage of jpeg+raw and then ditched it for raw only. It makes me lazy knowing I have a backup and that I can revert to 'safe mode' and edit the jpg. I figure if I get really stuck with a raw file I can always find help to sort it out. The main problem I have is noise reduction on higher is images - it is definitely a fine art! I'm going to shoot some higher ISO images this week and do a print test, see how much noise I can leave in. I would rather have noise than (my) bad reduction.

Congratulations on the tasty pasta :D
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It will help a lot with getting better results from using flash on macro btw
 
alfbranch said:
It will help a lot with getting better results from using flash on macro btw
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Yep, I definitely need to figure out flash for macro. It's hard enough keeping focus at proper shutter speeds, never mind when trying to keep the ISO down.
 
Esther said:
It's a revelation isn't it! I was always nervous about my editing skills but I love shooting sunrises and sunsets so lost so much detail in jpeg, I was amazed the first time I lightened the shadows in raw and saw just how much detail there was.
Click to expand...

Definitely. Not just shadows either, just general detail. Foliage especially is on a different level with raw.
 
Forkbeard said:
Yep, I definitely need to figure out flash for macro. It's hard enough keeping focus at proper shutter speeds, never mind when trying to keep the ISO down.
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Macro is not easy however you try it.
 
I guess everyone pretty much went through the struggle of transitioning to shooting RAW! Now that I got used to it and explored the perks of doing so, I almost always shoot in raw, developed a workflow for RAW photos. The benefits of shooting RAW become especially apparent when editing in Lightroom-- all the detials in the shadows, the colors etc... you just don't get it in a JPG file! Cheers :)
 
I'm the opposite I've finally ditched the raw! Well not quite but getting there :)
 
Before I got my D3300 I did so much research beforehand and when finally getting round to getting the camera I started shooting RAW straight away. It is amazing how much you can pull out of the image in RAW as opposed to JPEG.
 
Forkbeard said:
There is indeed that. There are definitely times when I don't need to shoot raw, but I'm an either or sorta guy :D
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And if you shoot raw and open your photo with Nikon Capture NX-D (or NX2 or View NX2) it will apply all your camera settings anyway. If you are happy with the result you can just save it, without any other editing. I find that ideal for holiday shots where I only need to tweak a few for display, the rest can be left as they are.
 
Suvv said:
And if you shoot raw and open your photo with Nikon Capture NX-D (or NX2 or View NX2) it will apply all your camera settings anyway. If you are happy with the result you can just save it, without any other editing. I find that ideal for holiday shots where I only need to tweak a few for display, the rest can be left as they are.
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Yes. Same applies to pretty much all post processing software AFAIK - it picks up the in-camera processing parameters from the Exif data and applies them automatically, so if you shoot both Raw and JPEG together, when you open them up in PP they both look exactly the same. In other words, if you don't want to fiddle about with the Raw, just leave it as it comes and you have the same result as an in-camera JPEG, but with the advantage of more processing flexibility with the Raw if/when you want it. Win-win :thumbs:

This thread reads a bit like shooting Raw is an advanced technique and a bit of a leap in the dark - but it's not, and nothing could be easier. There are some good reasons for shooting to JPEG, but unless they apply to you, Raw is the better choice.

Reasons to shoot JPEG:
- you need to 'wire' images immediately, say direct from a football match to a newspaper.
- you need finished images direct from the camera, without even going near a computer.
- you're running out of memory card, so switch to JPEG and you'll have space for at least four times as many more shots. In that situation, I often quickly delete a few Raws that are obviously duff and easily find space for a couple of dozen extra JPEGs. Then get some bigger cards, they're cheap ;)
- you're PC hard drive is almost full. Get a bigger hard drive - you'll need it sooner rather than later, and they're also cheap :thumbs:

JPEGs also have some scope for post processing, more than some people give them credit for, eg a tweak of colour balance and exposure adjustment is no problem at all. Worst thing I find is JPEGs chop off a least a stop of highlights, so if the blinkies are flashing on say a bright sky, that'll be blown and lost on the JPEG, but can quite likely be recovered from the Raw.
 
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