BlueWolf Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 No, not the kind of raw dogs eat. The raw-functionality the DSLR cameras have! I'm just curious how you take pictures. Do you just take the jpegs out of the camera and go along whatever it creates. do you colour-correct and fix your images afterwards or do you go completely hardcore with raw-images? Since I used raw the first time I can't life without it any more. I don't have to think about colours, contrast and white balance while taking the pictures any more. I just need to take care of the lightening and I can do the rest afterwards on the computer. Sure, it takes a while to develop all the pictures but in the end it's worth it. No orange or blue-tinted images any more! How do you use your DSLR to produce images? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arooroomom Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I have been thinking about shooting in raw but i'm not really good at the Photoshop end of things so not sure how that would work for me! lol Normally I shoot and take them into Photoshop to bring up brightness a bit as the stupid weather here always makes for darker images. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elyse Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I just go with the JPG Fine (one step below RAW) I like to fiddle with my white balance/exposure. It makes me feel like a professional that way. Seriously, though, I tried shooting in RAW and I just don't like it. But each to his own, I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayt Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Raw, only. If you are modifying your WB, you should be shooting raw. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elyse Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 But then how would you edit it easily? I use Photoshop CS3 for my editings. And I took a photography class and he said if you take a picture correctly, you shouldn't have to do any post-processing (editing) at all. Is this true? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayt Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Adobe has Raw converters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format You really arent changing the WB in a JPEG, just the color cast. RAW allows you to modify the actual data coming right form the sensor, not images that are already processed and comressed. If you convert in camera, it optimizes the image how it sees fit, and then comresses it, losing quality. Granted, not much by todays compression and image sizes. I just prefer to handle all my files personally. And yes, the goal is to get everyhting correct 'in camera'. Editing is never NEEDED, but it can help, depending on your style. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayt Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 All that aside, if you are just a casual user, JPEG is fine. My view, however, is that if you have a DSLR, you are not casual Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aramek Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 As I am just starting out, I am not shooting RAW yet. I don't have anything that deserves that level of quality, haha. But, and this is funny to me, with my camera, the "Basic" (smallest) picture quality setting, to my eye, is utterly identical to the "Fine" (best) picture quality! And, they are about 1/4 of the size! Not that I'm ever going to need to hold 2000 images on my card at any given time, but, it does make me giggle. Once I start getting better, with much practice, there really is no question. I can clearly see the RAW vs .jpg difference from the same camera, and same shots side by side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayt Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 You'd begin to notice the image quality differences if you made larger prints. Its funny, because nowadays, we really don't need anyhting more than 8 megapixels. The 1DII/n uses an 8MP sensor, and is still one of the best sports cameras ever made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darc-Brittany Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Is this raw enough for you?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darc-Brittany Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 No, but in all seriousness, I shoot with jpg. Raw images are huge! Jpg does a nice job of it and I'm not editing my photos... If I wanted to edit, I'd change the file format before I started taking pics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aramek Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 Yeah, I never make prints. (Aren't they rediculously huge nowadays anyway? Like, at 15 MP you can make a 60 inch print?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elenamarie Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 But then how would you edit it easily? I use Photoshop CS3 for my editings. And I took a photography class and he said if you take a picture correctly, you shouldn't have to do any post-processing (editing) at all. Is this true? I guess if you're born under the right star and always have perfect lighting, subjects, etc. then it might be true. In the real world? Yeah, right. Whoever said this hasn't tried to photo dogs or children in regular life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueWolf Posted February 28, 2011 Author Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I have been thinking about shooting in raw but i'm not really good at the Photoshop end of things so not sure how that would work for me! lol Normally I shoot and take them into Photoshop to bring up brightness a bit as the stupid weather here always makes for darker images. It's definitely worth it. Suddenly you don't really have to think about white balance while make a quick shot of your dog suddenly sticking his tongue out (for example ). If you want to brighten up the image, raw is better than the jpeg! Raw preserves more data than a jpg, even more than you can normally see (at least, if you've turned on that option on your camera). I can brighten up my images without losing much quality. I just go with the JPG Fine (one step below RAW) I like to fiddle with my white balance/exposure. It makes me feel like a professional that way. Seriously, though, I tried shooting in RAW and I just don't like it. But each to his own, I guess. If you want to fiddle with the white balance, than raw is definitely where that should be done. You can do it in jpeg's but that is most of the time degreasing the quality. Raw's are created even before the white balance is applied. . But then how would you edit it easily? I use Photoshop CS3 for my editings. And I took a photography class and he said if you take a picture correctly, you shouldn't have to do any post-processing (editing) at all. Is this true? Well, only in a perfect world with a perfect camera it would create perfect pictures. Cameras do a pretty good job at guessing the needed exposure time and white balance, but sadly, are not always correct. Cameras rarely take images just the way as you see it with your own eyes. I don't use raw to add kind of all fancy effects, I use it to get the exact image as how I experienced it. I use UFRaw (Unidentified Flying Raw ) together with GIMP. It has a lot of options but I only use a few. But it definitely gives you great control over your images, much more than with jpeg's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayt Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 FWIW I use Lightroom 3 and CS5. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rathian Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 I use RAW. The control over your pictures is worth the size penalties any day of the week. JPG images you may have just deleted because of various deficiencies can possibly be saved. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Posted March 1, 2011 Report Share Posted March 1, 2011 I have a 4 year old Panasonic FZ50 10mp (bridge) I've never used raw. Just did a test and opened it in CS5 Wow so much more control and the camera also saved a perfectly good Jpeg of the same image. Which would be good enough to "throw" onto the forum. Got a meet on Saturday here in Oxford. I'll shoot everything in RAW (I've got a 16gb card in and even set to RAW I can take 676 pictures.) More than enough Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueWolf Posted March 1, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 1, 2011 Most of the time the pictures my camera takes are already good enough. I don't want to over-edit my pictures, I just want it to be as real as possible, as if you where there. In the beginning I had to need a lot of corrections but nowadays most of what I make looks already good straight out of the camera. However, there where a few situations where raw really helped me. Snowy landscapes for example. Because the light is always dim and the sky is always grey, almost all pictures ended up with a complete wrong white balance. Raw really helped me to get the pictures exactly as how I saw them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueWolf Posted March 1, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 1, 2011 Here is a good example Worst case scenario, your camera still thinks you're inside: If this where a jpeg, you may just throw this image away because it's a boring shot. But what if this is the only shot you have of your husky doing something absolutely awesome he has never done before and you can't replicate it any more? You'd either go along with this image or can try post-editing it. My GIMP made this: I has lost lots of colours and looks horrible under exposed. I didn't spent much time on it, because anything I would try to do would degrade its quality even more. Luckily, I also have the raw file! This is what it looks like when I manual changed the white balance, contrast and a bit of exposure in my raw editing program: And that's why I never want to go to jpeg any more Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Posted March 4, 2011 Report Share Posted March 4, 2011 Well I was gonna use RAW for my photo's at tomorrows meet. However playing around shows that I can't use RAW and burst mode at the same time. and. . . . I need burst mode to capture all the fast motion action. Sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TK_naya Posted March 4, 2011 Report Share Posted March 4, 2011 I use the option that allows me to shoot in JPEG and RAW at the same time. Love the RAW files, no idea what I'd do without them. Especially for editing a photo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Posted March 4, 2011 Report Share Posted March 4, 2011 Alas my Panasonic FZ50 is about 4 yers old and takes about 3 seconds to save each shot. So it won't let me use Burst mode, and when you have 20+ huskies running around I need burst mode to capture the action. And I have Photoshop CS5. aaaannnnndddd. . .(lol) I use curves not the blunt hue n sat So I've got a fair amount of control. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueWolf Posted March 4, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2011 Yeah, I used jpg and raw together too a while ago, but since them I totally moved to raw. Andy, too bad My SD-cart is 15MB/s but my camera usually uses it's memory to store the images in in burst mode. I'm not sure, but maybe a faster SD-cart can help when you camera doesn't uses its memory? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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