A Repulsive Suggestion

[Rayt]

I am new to digital and only have about 3 months with Lightroom. I only spend on average 3 minutes on each Monochrom file. I export it in TIFF and then with Photoshop resize it and create a small JPEG file for my phone for uploading to Facebook or whatever. After a while I might want to go back and make some changes. I don’t see why I would reject such flexibility.

 

[Dogman]

Seems to me some folks have an impression that a JPEG takes control out of their hands. Gives the camera the choice, not the photographer. Doesn't have to be that way unless you want it that way. I shoot JPEGs but I also process them in Lightroom a lot like I did my Raw files. It's just that JPEGs are smaller and easier to handle for those of us with aging computers and not enough money to buy new stuff every 3-4 years.

Just go to the camera's settings and turn off stuff. Turn off or turn down the sharpening to a minimum, turn down the contrast a peg or ten, turn off noise reduction, tune back the saturation and contrast. Just let the camera do the lens corrections and nothing else. Or at least let the camera only do minor image tinkering. What you end up with is a flat JPEG file that takes post processing well. Don't let the camera do it all for you unless you want it to do it. You can still control your files. You still have all the control your software gives you. But it takes less time, less computing power and it works well. With a non-destructive program like Lightroom, once you've finished with the file just save a copy with all your edits and keep the original JPEG unmolested. That way you've got a file you can copy and play with later and you aren't reducing quality.

All this goes pretty fast as long as you know how to expose and you can read the light on the subject. If you can't get your exposures correct or you always shoot in challenging light conditions, Raw might be a better option for you. For how I work, simple methods work best. About 95% of what I shoot is B&W so I don't have to think about white balance like some of you. Plus I'm not working for clients so I don't have to please anyone but myself.

There's a gazillion ways to do everything. Only a few have right and wrong ways of doing them. Like cooking and baking--you gotta get the ingredients right. In mixing photo chemicals, you gotta get that right. Most things aren't like that. There is no right or wrong in how you shoot pictures. Really no right or wrong way in how pictures look--just points of view.

 

[andyturk]

Any restriction that gets you to pre-visualize an image before pressing the shutter button is good for training one's eye. Maybe it's shooting .jpg without blown highlights, using a light meter in the field, or dragging a view camera around. A pause between seeing something interesting and taking the shot may not make that particular image better, but is sort of an investment in future images that you haven't made yet.

 

[PRJ]

ALL PSEUDO INTELLECTUAL CRAP when One has to adhere totally
to one formula... one dogma, Now that is repulsive, giggles

Jpegs or Raw:
Both work and I do like jpeg quite often
depends on the variables, exposure, type of light, what type of 'look' You are trying to achieve
😉

Yup.

All the rest is egotistical tomfoolery.

The argument here reminds me of the people back in the day that espoused the zone system. All I ever learned from them back then was you could make a perfectly exposed, perfectly developed, perfectly printed image of the most boring subject in the world. And no one cares about your boring subject regardless of how technically well it is done.

A friend of mine has shot everything jpeg from day 1. That included all of the advertising campaigns he worked on. Made far more money as a photographer than anyone in this thread. Was he wrong? He certainly doesn't care. His clients didn't care. Maybe you shouldn't either if you are the one offended by others doing something different from you.

Bills original premise is valid. Shooting a jpeg will teach you something. Everything else in this thread is just noise...

 

[Jamie Pillers]

Oren Grad's comment

Oren Grad's comment

Like Bill, I'd very much like to read what Oren Grad means when he says there are differences in the way I should approach exposure when using jpeg vs RAW. I'm intrigued. Oren??

 

[Oren Grad]

Pressed for time, so just a few observations for now:

Using companion jpgs after the fact to try to learn about raw file exposure brings the same problems as trying to use the jpg-driven live histogram in real time to set optimal exposures for raw capture. Camera-makers’ default jpg settings are generally contrasty and highly saturated. If you use default jpgs to judge the maximum non-clipping exposure you will generally underexpose, often by a substantial amount, relative to what would have been optimal for the raw file.

In principle you can adjust the jpg parameters to make the jpg a somewhat less inaccurate guide to what the raw file needs. Many raw shooters do that with a one-size-for-all-situations compromise, turning down the contrast and saturation. A very few (not including me!) who are willing to fuss a lot more go the UniWB route to get a much closer match across a wider range of scene conditions.

Unfortunately, mirrorless cameras, even as they provide more convenient access to the live histogram, make these approaches more difficult. Because jpg parameters also control the live view rendering, extreme settings generate a view that is at best unpleasant and at worst impossible to use. An OVF in a DSLR or rangefinder camera allows the use of extreme jpg settings without disrupting the photographer’s view of the subject, but of course you lose the live histogram. The exception among mirrorless cameras would be the Fuji X100 and X-Pro series, which can be set to display a histogram in the viewfinder even in OVF mode.

 

[Darthfeeble]

I don't necessarily want to see the scene that the camera saw, I want the scene my mind saw.

 

[Bill Blackwell]

... Shoot jpegs. What? ... I’m suggesting you save a small jpeg along with your raw file. ...

I used to do exactly that, but I quit doing it because I never used the in-camera JPGs, which contain unadjusted horizons, sensor dust spots, etc. I still save small JPG files from RAW, but never unprocessed. I no longer (not that I ever did) see any reason to shoot (in camera) JPG files. IMHO, it's just a waste of perfectly good file space!

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Use raw if you can’t get image sooc. Just no reason for raw/jpeg1 monkey business.
If camera makes small dng, raw - jpeg1 is monkey business.
And where are great cameras with jpeg. FujiFilm. Raw is monkey business🙂

 

[hap]

I'm offended, outraged, repulsed. What are we talking about?

 

[Rayt]

I’m going to suggest something to serious and accomplished digital shooters that they will find repulsive. Shoot jpegs. What? Give up the ability that raw files give us to not only correct errors, but to apply our own brilliant creative interpretation to the images? Not exactly. I’m suggesting you save a small jpeg along with your raw file. Why? Because that relatively unalterable jpeg is a great lesson in exposure metering.

I take street portraits of random people and shoot pretty quickly and exposure errors were my downfall. When I shot with the M7 early on and relied completely on AE I would get a good percentage of underexposed due to back lighting. With film when the error was too much then oh well too bad. When I did street with the SWC and Rolleiflex and use my handheld incident meter my negs were always perfectly exposed.

Now I have had the M10M for 3 months and have used Lightroom daily for the duration I see the exposure laziness of relying on AE is back. While I do know how to read the light my shooting style with digital is to use a wide angle, get very close, shoot from a low angle to emulate a Rollei or SWC so often the sky is a quarter of the picture. While I can “fix” this one or two stop exposure error in Lightroom I find any manipulation causes the photo to look fake in my eye sort of a HDR. So I tend to give Lightroom very minimal work to keep it natural even if the subject isn’t completely lit rather than the artificial alternative. It’s a personal choice. Some people go for that look on purpose. I will start to meter manually when situations call for it.

 

[Evergreen States]

It's puzzling that some of you choose to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the finest Leica cameras and lenses only to turn around and shoot JPEGs. You do you.

 

[Evergreen States]

Over at The Online Photographer, Mike Johnston has written that the linear tone curve of digital sensors tends to depress midtones. While it's possible this may exist, I've never seen in-camera JPEG settings have a midtone adjustment and even if it did it would not be able to respond dynamically like black and white film does. Rich midtones vs a compressed high contrast tonal scale is a personal preference and I will choose one or the other depending on what's appropriate for the picture. But in-camera JPEG adjustments are crude tools to express one's vision. And you also run into banding when making adjustments beyond a certain point.

Here are two of Mike Johnston's essays on common (but not ubiquitous) trends in how people use digital black and white.

How To Cure the Digital B&W Nasties
https://theonlinephotographer.typep...17/07/how-to-cure-the-digital-bw-nasties.html

Look at Tone as Light
https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2017/07/look-at-tone-as-light.html

To be clear, I do on very rare occasions find the JPEGs from my Fuji X-Pro1 to be closer to my vision than I feel I'm capable of attaining with a RAW file in Capture One. One such occasions, I will use the camera's RAW processor to make a JPEG and then do some light curves and exposure adjustments when I bring it into Capture One.

 

[Oren Grad]

While it's possible this may exist, I've never seen in-camera JPEG settings have a midtone adjustment...

Nikons have a "brightness" adjustment. With many Nikon models you can also use the Picture Control Utility to adjust the tonal curve of any Picture Control to your liking and upload it to the camera.

With the Canon Picture Style Editor you can adjust the tonal curve of the color Picture Styles to your taste and upload to the camera. Although for some mysterious reason the Picture Style Editor does not allow editing the Monochrome Picture Style, it's possible to construct a monochrome style with a custom curve by starting with one of the color styles and desaturating.

Some Olympus models have a midtone adjustment.

Some Fuji models have a combination of highlight and shadow tone adjustments that can be used to accomplish something similar.

 

[agentlossing]

It's puzzling that some of you choose to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the finest Leica cameras and lenses only to turn around and shoot JPEGs. You do you.

Why wouldn't you think about it thus: you can spend more money to get a better JPEG engine? Seems to me that the higher quality the camera can spit out a finished file, the more I'd be willing to pay for it. And if you still distrust the JPEG capabilities of modern cameras, you need to use more modern cameras.

 

[raid]

I used to shoot in DNG+JPG(B&W), but I decided at some stage to drop the B&W JPG files and stick with DNG files. I do very little PP as I like shooting digital as if I was shooting chrome film. Get it right the first time.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Why wouldn't you think about it thus: you can spend more money to get a better JPEG engine? Seems to me that the higher quality the camera can spit out a finished file, the more I'd be willing to pay for it. And if you still distrust the JPEG capabilities of modern cameras, you need to use more modern cameras.

Where is new kid at YT block "teaching" how to be good photographer. Fast talking dude who looks like a rabbit from AiW.
He is tossing others photos where at least light was done in studio environment. Photos known to be 10% crop from original 100% photos. Photos with modifies colors and all kind of editing (removed elements).
He tells nothing about it. They just good photos according to him.

Some people have to buy Leica and edit photos to be behind original exposure.

I'm not into to. Not faking it. Camera takes exposure. And records it.
Capable person knows how to control exposure withing light limits. And tweak it, accept it on the spot. Then it doesn't matter JPEG1 or DNG. Image is taken, nothing else to do. If person also capable of framing.

What is the point of buying Leica if you can't handle exposures on the spot. This is part of Leica digital M legacy. Inaccurate metering and you have to figure it out at your own. On the spot. And so is WB sometimes.

My Canon 5D was superior to any digital M on metering and getting JEPG1 SOOC where even more easy. And so is 500D and RP.

Leica is not about been perfect tool, IMO.

 

[agentlossing]

Where is new kid at YT block "teaching" how to be good photographer. Fast talking dude who looks like a rabbit from AiW.
He is tossing others photos where at least light was done in studio environment. Photos known to be 10% crop from original 100% photos. Photos with modifies colors and all kind of editing (removed elements).
He tells nothing about it. They just good photos according to him.

Some people have to buy Leica and edit photos to be behind original exposure.

I'm not into to. Not faking it. Camera takes exposure. And records it.
Capable person knows how to control exposure withing light limits. And tweak it, accept it on the spot. Then it doesn't matter JPEG1 or DNG. Image is taken, nothing else to do. If person also capable of framing.

What is the point of buying Leica if you can't handle exposures on the spot. This is part of Leica digital M legacy. Inaccurate metering and you have to figure it out at your own. On the spot. And so is WB sometimes.

My Canon 5D was superior to any digital M on metering and getting JEPG1 SOOC where even more easy. And so is 500D and RP.

Leica is not about been perfect tool, IMO.

Leica doesn't have to be the perfect representative of what the modern M-mount ecosystem has to be... except that it is the ONLY representation of modern native M cameras. It would be nice to have fancy bells-and-whistles sensors, grungy sensors, Foveon sensors... you know, to be able to shoot modern digital rangefinders which aren't 100% Wetzlar.

 

[KM-25]

I guess I don't see what the big deal is, use what you are comfortable using and just make a good photo, you know, the one where image quality is measured in the talent used to see and make the photo and not the pixels?

I have one job in particular that is an annual thing that pays by far the highest out of all of them and because of the long hours and sheer volume of imagery, I do about 90% jpegs and get it right in camera.

Tools are not repulsive, just use them as one sees fit.

 

[Darthfeeble]

The original premise here was to use the jpeg as an exposure guide, but then the view you see on the back screen is doing that already, why waste space?