New RD-1s user: Jpeg or RAW?

[kermaier]

So far I am having a blast with this camera! I am starting to feel the urge of buying a faster glass, but I will explore the capabilities of my Rokkor 40mm before spending more money on glass.

Before you try faster, I'd suggest going wider -- get a 28mm or 25mm lens.

The 40/2 M-Rokkor is a fantastic lens, and was my first on the R-D1 as well. I've since bought a silly number of other lenses, but I'm not sure I've yet bested the 40/2. Also, f/2 is usually fast enough, particularly outdoors; and indoors, the ISO 1600 performance of the R-D1 is great, especially in B&W.

::Ari

 

[AhShun]

Good Shots!

One more vote to 40 Rokkor.
It's a prefect match in both form and function.
I was also one of the silly guys with 5x28mm+2x35mm+5x50mm, but the 40 Rokkor is the one if I have to make "only one lens" choice.
And YES to f/2, as the rangefinder is not so reliable with f/1.4

 

[Ezzie]

Nice pictures indeed. You´ve got the feel for Rangefinder street photography already.

As to capture format. I shoot RAW+JPG. The latter to be imported to iPhoto directly where I can´t be bothered to post-process. Post-processing of the RAW files is done in Aperture. I´ve no problems importing the Epson files directly as MacOS evidently keeps itself updated with the needed camera profiles automatically. On a PC, that might be another story.

 

[carlosecpf]

Guys,

First of all you all ROCK!
Thank you so much for the awesome inputs here. Really great stuff. The RFF is officially my new online home from now on.

I am shooting RAW only for this week and I am having no complaints so far in dealing with them in Aperture 3. Every thing is running really smoothly and I am liking the final results a lot. The camera meter seems to be pretty accurate but some times there are small parts of some pictures showing blown highlights or really dark shadows, which are pretty easy to recover in Aperture 3. Also I got pretty good results in reducing noise of ISO 1600 RAW files using Nik's Dfine 2 for Aperture. So far, so good!

I am LOVING the Rokkor 40mm f2. Did I already mentioned it? 🙂 So I decided it will become my primary lens. It is so small and sharp even at F2. Specially now that I see other more experienced RFF members feel the same way about it. However, I do feel the need to have a faster glass for the moments I want that creamy bokeh and that extra f-stop to avoid using shutter speed lower than 1/60s. I found that at 1/30s or under, there is an annoying amount of motion blur in several of my pics. I just cannot hold the camera steady enough... I might get better with more practice though. Nonetheless, with my Leica X1 this does not happen, so I believe it is a matter of getting used to R-D1s form factor and weight.

Here is a small R-D1s set I've created on Flickr with the pics I liked the most from my first week with this camera. Feel free to look at them and share any constructive piece of feedback you want.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krlinhoz/5095785208/in/set-72157625070302747/lightbox/

my best,
Carlos

 

[porktaco]

FIRST of all, the "promises promises" one is great, and the bicycle one has gorgeous bokeh

the best thing about RAW is going DNG with all the changes saved inside the actual files.

 

[hteasley]

I posted some photos on flickr for some friends who were wondering about why I was telling them to shoot RAW. It pretty clearly shows the advantages of having RAW versions of your shots.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/harryteasley/5032003654/in/set-72157625049575444/

 

[LCT]

...the best thing about RAW is going DNG with all the changes saved inside the actual files.

Depends on the software i guess? Capture One v4 does not recognise DNGs as Epson files and does not apply its almost perfect default settings. So DNG is a no no for me.

 

[Mister E]

JPG all the way.

 

[carlosecpf]

Guys, after trying out Jpeg Only, RAW+Jpeg and RAW only, I've set my R-D1s to RAW only mode permanently. I could see clear benefits in IQ when converting RAW files via Aperture 3, specially at 100% crop. So this will be my setup from now! Thanks for all you great inputs!