which should i be shooting with? would it be better to shoot in RAW?

im confused, educate me

 

Seriously though, "should be" is a relative term. It can never hurt to shoot in RAW, but depending on what you shoot, what your intended output is, what software you have avaialable, and how much ambition you have to do post processing work, then jpg may be "good enough."

That's my very short take on an answer.

 

You have more control with RAW, but it will require some addtional time and effort to process. I've been shooting RAW and find that I don't always get to processing the images. In some cases, shooting JPEG could actually be "better".

 

The only time JPEG is better is if:
1) You don't have the memory space to store RAW
2) You don't have a way to batch convert RAW to jpeg, which means tons of extra post processing time.
3) You just want a quickie pic that you don't really care too much about, quality wise.

Otherwise, you can always just autoconvert everything to jpeg and, if your pictures are shot well, you are done and no worse off.

RAW's biggest benefits:
1) Can post-correct color balance easily
2) Higher bit count, which means you can recover shadows & highlights better.
3) No compression on pictures, although it's probably not notabily better than low compression JPEG.
4) Higher bit count means you can mess around with colors with less artifacts.

Think of RAW as a little bit of photo insurance.

 

You can also do what I do, shoot raw + jpg, it fits like 250+ on my 2gb and thats plenty for most of anything I am doing

 

Biggest benefit of RAW to me: ability to correct white balance.

 

A RAW file isn't an image... It is merely data -- the raw data the sensor saw. Each camera manufacture has different forms of RAW capture, but they all remain the same in that it is a data file of a particular image.

JPEG is a processed image.

RAW files are nice, because they are non-destructive. When you edit a raw file, your finished product is a JPEG, but the RAW file exists forever as a RAW file.

I shoot an original Canon 1D. At 4.2 MP I always shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG because the files are so small. The 1D is prone to a greenish cast on JPEGs, so unless I am in a super big hurry I enjoy processing the RAW file.

just my .02

 

interesting

 

So if one shoots in RAW, the post processing includes what to get to where the JPEG is right out of the camera, but at lesser quality?

I have really been wanting to shoot RAW, but am intimidated by the post processing involved.

 

hmm... photoshop CS2 couldnt read my RAW files from my XTi

 

Could you maybe take a shot at rephrasing your question? I can't quite figure out what you're asking.

Don't be intimidated by anything in digital photography. There are no materials or film processing costs that you're wasting if the stuff turns out poorly. It's all just bits, experiment!

Miz, get the latest camera raw update from the Adobe web site.

 

upgrade the camera raw plugin

http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/...ra_Raw_3_7.zip


New cameras supported in this update:

Nikon D40, Pentax K10D, Canon EOS 400D / Rebel Xti , Fuji FinePix S6000fd , Fuji FinePix S9100/9600 , Leica D-LUX3 , Leica Digilux 3 , Leica V-LUX 1 , Nikon D80 , Olympus E400 , Olympus SP-510 UZ , Panasonic DMC-LX2 , Pentax K100D , Pentax K110D , Samsung GX 1L

 

^^^ or you could just get Lightroom. lol.

I used to shoot jpg when I bought the camera but then switched to RAW+jpg. I regret not shooting in RAW earlier. There were some photos I wish I had a RAW file of that could be greatly improved with some adjustments. RAW just gives you so much more control over your photos than jpg. There were some shots I took that just were way underexposed and it barely came out (to the point the picture is almost completely black) on the jpg file but to my surprise, I was able to salvage it from the RAW file. I usually ended up redoing all the jpg file from the RAW files because the RAW just gave me much better photos. So I stopped shooting RAW+jpg and now just exclusively shoot RAW. I never looked back.

That said, processing RAW files takes time. If you don't have the time to process the files, it's not gonna make a difference I guess. When I processed my photos with Photoshop CS2, it took me forever. While it was fun, it just started feeling like a chore. I would be so backed up. I didn't process Thanksgiving photos until it was Christmas. That all changed when I got Lightroom. Post Processing has never been so much easier. Now I can finish post processing my RAW files in the same day I shoot and upload those photos to a web gallery that same night. If you could shell out the cash for Lightroom it's highly worth it. Atleast give it a trial run. Since you already have CS2, it would complement it very well. Although, it seems CS3 have the same stuff carried over from Lightroom. I would be interesting how the two compares in making the workflow easier.

 

RAW+JPEG is a great way to make clients happy. JPEG files are significantly smaller than a RAW and thus I can zip off an entire JPEG CD in a matter of seconds.

I then keep the RAW files in order to edit later or keep.

Again, depending on the situation there are benefits to shooting both --- especially when you can create a great looking JPEGs

 

i think this is a huge advantage, it's nice not to have to worry too much about getting a good white balance inside, because you can just do it later.

and Lightroom makes it SO easy.

 

I confused myself also, but hoped someone would understand it.

Ok, let me try again... when the JPEG comes out of the camera, the camera has already done some editing to the picture (ie sharpening, saturation, noise) right? Now, the RAW file that comes out of the camera is just what the sensor saw and does no editing to it, right lol? To get the RAW file to look like the JPEG straight out of the camera, what post processing would need to be done?

I guess I am asking because I feel that unless the picture looks really blurry, noisy, desaturated, or the white balance is way off, I can't really tell. So while pp, I wouldn't know what needs to be "corrected".

Whew.

 

1) Yes
2) Yes

3) There is no definite answer to this. At a bare minimum, you'll need to set the white balance and do some sharpening.

The next items would be levels and/or curves adjustments. There's no real way of knowing if the camera is doing the equivalent of these adjustments in jpg mode, but you almost always end up doing them anyway when you manually PP. To make matters even more confusing, levels and curves can be done at RAW conversion, after conversion, or both.

Lastly, you have color enhancement such as color balance and hue/saturation adjustments. Until Lightroom came along, these adjustments were usually always made after RAW conversion. At least as far as Adobe software is concerned.

Of course, everyone works differently and no one person's advice/workflow/methodologies are guaranteed to be good for everyone.

 

RAW files are unprocessed files, but on the 20D, anyway, the raw file does seem to be aware of what your camera settings were. White balance, for example, is loaded with a default of 'As shot'

All you really need to do is load Adobe Camera, click on 'convert to jpeg' and that's that, if you have no interest in post-processing. Actually now Billiam has me doubting whether it's 100% the same or not, but I've done this a fair amount in the past and been happy with the results. It's not instantaneous, but it's not nearly as slow as guia x says, imho. YMMV.

RAW won't help blurriness, or noise (probably).
It will help with color adjustment (aka saturation & white balance).

If you don't know what you want corrected in your pictures, then RAW won't help you. There's nothing (?) you can do with RAWs that you can't do with jpegs. With RAWs, however, you suffer less quality loss during
adjustments, that's all. (although it can be extremely better for extreme adjustments!)

I could swear some program out there even lets you adjust white balance for jpegs, although I haven't looked that up.

 

Lightroom?

 

Here's my understanding of the white balance thing on RAW vs. JPG. In a RAW file there is no absolute color information stored for any of the pixels. There is only relative values. Pixel A is x amount redder than pixel B. Pixel C is x amount greener than pixel D. Etc... When you set or adjust the white balance in RAW conversion, you're setting the "baseline" off of which all these relative color values are calculated. In a JPG file, each pixel has absolute R,G,B color values defined. When you adjust the "white balance" on a JPG file what you're really doing is very similar (if not identical) the color balance adjustment in Photoshop. You're actually changing the R,G,B numbers of the pixels to shift their value more toward the red or blue ends of the spectrum.

Now that's my theoretical understanding of what's going on under the hood. Does it make a difference in the real world? Damn if I know. From the JPG work I've seen from Srika and others, I would have to say the difference is either non-existent, very small, or very dependant on what you're shooting. One thing I do know for sure though is that you're shuffling color values around inside a 12-bit space with a RAW file and an 8-bit space with a JPG.

 

That totally makes sense, the "White Balance" adjustment in Lightroom for JPG's is really only a pseudo-control designed to behave like the WB on a camera would...