Photography crew: educate me on shooting RAW

[stimpy]

what are the benefits of shooting in RAW mode? what are the disadvantages?
what else do I need to know or have do shoot RAW??

:)

[skurge]

have always wondered the same thing actually, my camera can shoot in raw but I've never done it

[stimpy]

I tried it today took 12 pictures ... each picture came out ~10MB and with an extension of .CR2 ... only the cannon application can open and view the pics :o

[kendan]

it is mainly for post processing uses. If you want to edit your photos without losing quality like saving a jpeg as a jpeg again.

[stimpy]

it is mainly for post processing uses. If you want to edit your photos without losing quality like saving a jpeg as a jpeg again.
what's the point of the RAW + JPEG feature?

[kendan]

what's the point of the RAW + JPEG feature?
so you can have a file you can view on any computer (.jpeg) and a file you can only view in like photo editing programs (raw). Dunno, that's what I think at least.

[oh_lol]

^^ what he said. you really want to use raw if you want to edit it. but if you don't give a crap just shoot in jpeg.

shooting raw can also produce better pictures than jpeg as well. you can see some examples on the net if you searched it.

[stimpy]

^^ what he said. you really want to use raw if you want to edit it. but if you don't give a crap just shoot in jpeg.

shooting raw can also produce better pictures than jpeg as well. you can see some examples on the net if you searched it.
what do you mean by better pictures?

[oh_lol]

Check out this review I was looking at just then:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/pentaxk10d/page20.asp

It shows pictures of the K10D being taken in JPEG and RAW. You can clearly see the difference. But I'm not saying all cameras have this problem nor is it as noticable.

[kendan]

you can set contrast/saturation in camera, like you can up the saturation in the menu screen. I think with raw it's just a raw picture with no saturation added or anything.

[oh_lol]

hay kendan. can't wait till i come to your country to take pics of your stuffs

[stimpy]

Check out this review I was looking at just then:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/pentaxk10d/page20.asp

It shows pictures of the K10D being taken in JPEG and RAW. You can clearly see the difference. But I'm not saying all cameras have this problem nor is it as noticable.
Yea I saw that ...

[kendan]

hay kendan. can't wait till i come to your country to take pics of your stuffs
werd there's some pretty cool shit to shoot in texas right now, but you are coming in dec. right? I would definitely check out the smokies.

[CaseLogic]

I shoot in RAW as much as possible. It gives you much more post-processing options that it's worth it if you don't care about the space it takes up

[mike]

RAW stores much more data than your monitor can accurately produce. its closer to what your eye sees. if you're into "developing" your pictures, like bringing detail out of the shadows or adjusting the colors, then RAW is for you.

RAW+jpeg will store two different versions of the same picture. one as a RAW, one as a JPEG.

with a JPEG, what you see on the screen is basically what you have to work with. the resolution of colors is much higher on a RAW, but if youre posting the pictures to your facebook account youre wasting harddrive space.

[Spizarxxx]

RAW is what the camera sees, you can make better pictures... by that I mean better with alot more control of how the post processing turns out. you have ample ways of processing said raw image.
Jpeg is adding processing to the photo

OH and BTW if you have CS3 you can just import the cr2 images from memory card or after you have transferred the data to your hard drive

[stimpy]

I've been shooting in RAW ever since I started this thread ...

I also bought a 4GB CF card :run:

[Seluryar]

how big is the average raw file before editing?

[lay-z]

about 7-10mb

Like everyone has said, RAW holds much more data than JPEG, and you can post process without losing image quality after each save. The colours and shadows depict more real life details - IE what you see IRL.

My advice to almost lossless processing is to save the RAW file as a .TIF then do your post processing with the .TIF file, only after you're satisfied with your image then should you save in .JPEG for minimal loss in quality.

[Spizarxxx]

how big is the average raw file before editing?

depends on the shutter speed actually.

I have had some that are 6mb and others for a 30 second exp come out at about 15-19mb

[stimpy]

how big is the average raw file before editing?
7-15MB :run:

[DamonS]

RAW is, as a few others have said is pretty much a RAW pixel for pixel image of what the sensor sees. It is not impacted by white balance, or color gamut settings or any 'in camera' processing.. It closely mimics the old school processing of 35mm camera's allowing the photographer to apply whatever effect to the image during post processing.

Saving in JPEG mode also compresses the file and there is some loss to the quality by doing that and every save you make thereafter in your editing program will lose more image data.. Saving in TIFF if your camera supports that can somewhat overcome the compression and keep your images to a semi-reasonable size.

RAW+JPEG is just best of both worlds essentially and I never use it because it takes up just that much more space, and if I wanted a JPEG, I'd make one from my RAW image.

Typically if I am shooting for work I only shoot in RAW, so that the image technicians have the most data possible to process. Even if I am doing personal contracts (weddings, family shots, etc) I'll do RAW so that I can post process them.. If I am at a birthday party and "the photographer (being me) arrives", then I shoot in jpeg format as they'll likely just go to wal-mart and print them out, so i'm not going to waste time post processing them.

[Fuck]

I shoot raw and convert to DNG when exporting into lightroom.

[stimpy]

I shoot raw and convert to DNG when exporting into lightroom.
what's DNG fomat?

[DamonS]

DNG is kodak's Digital Negative Format, it's essentially another form of RAW but supposedly going to be more of the 'standard' that manufacturers will start to follow.

I'm not sure why you'd want to convert to DNG from RAW if nobody else will be post processing the photo. Sounds like an extra step to which I would avoid. PhotoShop can process RAW and other applications can process it as well, so converting it to another format in the exact same vein isn't registering for me.

[stimpy]

DNG is kodak's Digital Negative Format, it's essentially another form of RAW but supposedly going to be more of the 'standard' that manufacturers will start to follow.

I'm not sure why you'd want to convert to DNG from RAW if nobody else will be post processing the photo. Sounds like an extra step to which I would avoid. PhotoShop can process RAW and other applications can process it as well, so converting it to another format in the exact same vein isn't registering for me.
oh I see ...

[Fuck]

DNG is kodak's Digital Negative Format, it's essentially another form of RAW but supposedly going to be more of the 'standard' that manufacturers will start to follow.

I'm not sure why you'd want to convert to DNG from RAW if nobody else will be post processing the photo. Sounds like an extra step to which I would avoid. PhotoShop can process RAW and other applications can process it as well, so converting it to another format in the exact same vein isn't registering for me.
Its the format adobe is using and i <3 adobe.
The side card and all info is embeded into the file.
easier to organize.

[DamonS]

Its the format adobe is using and i <3 adobe.
The side card and all info is embeded into the file.
easier to organize.


If I may ask, what metadata are you saving within the sidecar?

My CR2 and CRW files contain everything I need to make judgements about the way I want to post process the file.


I'm only asking because I am curious what extra information you put into the file, not questioning your method :)

[ZCP M3]

Another RAW only shooter here. :wavey: I import the .CR2's from my 5D into Lightroom 2 and convert them into DNG's. Dunno why really, just seems easier to keep everything in an Adobe fileformat.