Why I love RAW!

Flashman

Flashman

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Keith
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Friday afternoon at the junior school sports day. I was snapping away in aperture priority auto then went to switch to shutter priority to capture my youngest taking the baton in the relay race. In a moment of brain freeze I selected manual by accident but, thinking I was in shutter priority, I only set the shutter speed and ignored the aperture expecting the camera to sort it out. The result popped up on the screen and I was mortified to see that it looked like this:


rawsave01.jpg




I thought there was no way I'd be able to recover any of the blown detail in that... but I got home, downloaded the images and lo and behold, with just a little tweaking I got this:


rawsave02.jpg


Not perfect I know but all the shadow detail on the shirts was still recorded in there and it seems to have come back pretty darn well... it's certainly good enough for Master F Junior's memory box anyway! Raw is a wonderful thing! :love:


His team won by the way!
 
Wow, what a recovery. Thanks for the comparison Flashman, and congrats to Master F and his team.
 
Good example of what can be pulled back there. As Arkady would say - "Shoot jpegs if someone holds a gun to your head" :D
 
Wow, I woudn't of said that would of been recoverable. Well done for trying, was well worth the effort as it's come out perfectly :thumbs:
 
I work with a guy who never shoots in RAW always in jpeg. I have tried to explain the error of his ways but to be honest he is stuck in his comfort zone. Examples like this are great to show the way that RAW can be the saviour of the moment.
 
The first one looks like some of mine :lol: If I had known how to recover them I would not have sent them to the great recycle bin in the sky!!

Thats a hell of a recovery though, turned it into a good picture.
 
aye, you can do ANYTHING with RAW :)
 
Brilliant stuff. I used jpg ONCE at an event as I needed to print out on the spot. But when I was home and did a little tweaking... any slightly blown whites were completely useless, they wouldnt come back and were left looking sort of "glowing".
RAW all the way for me. :thumbs:
 
d_pipa said:
aye, you can do ANYTHING with RAW :)
Click to expand...

So shooting in RAW will get me a double date with Carmen Electra and Sharon Stone?:p
 
EdinburghGary said:
Edit: Just seen your kit bag, wicked :D Enjoying it?
Click to expand...

Not arf! :D Played with the focus tracking on some of the races, amazing how accurately and quickly it recognizes and follows moving objects. Love the way you can crank up the ISO too!
 
Thanks for all the comments chaps and chapesses! :)
 
Flashman,

That is one excellent shot :thumbs:; I don't get it when you say "Not perfect ...", look at the expressions of the two boy's face and it is just perfect! It captures the stress of wanting to win so well :clap::clap::clap:

That aside, you're 100% right about the love of RAW ... I always shoot raw, and whenever I am about to shoot something critical I always, always, always bracket. The over-exposed shots can - more often than not - be pulled back to give amazing results, as is the case with your shot here.

Thanks for posting this :)
 
Yep great shot and a perfect example of why to shoot RAW, i started shooting in both RAW + JPEG some months ago, i then view the JPEG as it saves time, then if it's good i tweak it and save in TIFF, if the JPEG isn't so hot i open the RAW file and bring it back the way i want it, it does take up more space on the memory card but i don't find this a problem , and the process works for me, best of both worlds i reckon.
 
Bulletraptor said:
i started to shoot in RAW but the nikon program would'nt convert it!

Does PS convert RAW?
Click to expand...

Your version of Photoshop (CS2 according to your camera bag) does have Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and should work fine. If you can't work out how to open Raw files, type something like 'photoshop CS2 raw' into google and a whole host of tutorials will pop up. Hope that helps.

Flashy
 
EXACTLY why I love RAW, as well!!

It's a pain in the arse working on hundreds/thousands of motorsport photos (I can take a good thousand at the Nürburgring in one day!) but this is a perfect example of getting it wrong... then right! :D:D

Before:

pre_raw.jpg


After: (even the windscreen!)

post_raw.jpg


If I had taken that shot originally in JPG, this is the result of the RAW file converted to JPG, THEN adjusting the photo:

pre_raw_jpeg.jpg
 
I think I'm going to change the setting now on my camera to RAW+Jpeg...

I had to learn the hard way a week ago when I took some photos of Mum & Dad who live in the UK and then some nice ones of above the clouds in the plane. When I got home on the 'puter I realised I hadn't changed the WB from Tungsten to AUTO or other from the night previous :'(

All in Jpeg and impossible to rectify to how I'd like.
 
Thats another great recovery, silly question, but how easy/difficult is it to get detail back on that sort of thing? I'm only just starting on the book so my level of processing is very basic!
 
Actually, from what I can see on this screen, the original shot is slightly overexposed but by no more than a stop. Possibly more like a half stop.

If you follow the doctrine of "expose to the right" (and frankly why wouldn't you) then that's pretty much how you should approach any shot that fits into your cameras dynamic range with room to spare.

You have to admit, that apart from some very small areas that have lost texture on the T-shirts, that image is pretty perfect. :thumbs:
 
Wow, what a difference!
I'm only just starting to use RAW.
Bit of a pain converting etc, but once you get used to it, it's not so bad.

My copy of CS2 doesn't recognize Sony RAW files.
DOH!!
 
maybe you need download something from the internet for photoshop to recognize Sony RAW files?
 
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