R-D1: Do you shoot RAW or JPEG?

R-D1: Do you shoot RAW or JPEG?

  • I shoot exclusively JPEG.

    Votes: 15 10.3%

  • I shoot exclusively RAW.

    Votes: 66 45.5%

  • I shoot both, but tend to use the RAW file.

    Votes: 39 26.9%

  • I shoot both, but tend to use the JPEG file.

    Votes: 20 13.8%

  • I shoot JPEG for monochrome images.

    Votes: 6 4.1%

  • I shoot JPEGs for "less serious" photographs and RAW for special stuff.

    Votes: 4 2.8%

  • I choose depending on space left on my card(s).

    Votes: 3 2.1%

  • I shoot RAW when the exposure is tricky, and JPEG most other times.

    Votes: 4 2.8%
  • Total voters
    145
I'm only shot jpeg.
I’d like the B&W and especially the (vivid) colour straight from the camera, much more than the processed raw with LR or similar. And the other hand, I have an iMac with a LED screen and I haven’t been able to see differences between the jpegs and raws of this camera, even at high iso, but surely there will be.
 
No, you will have no problems. I have LR convert my erf's to dng's to save disk space (and hopefully allow legacy processing in the years to come) when imported.
 
100% jpeg all the time. My NikonView software works great on the output from any camera I may own. Years from now, after proprietary raw files can no longer be opened with then-current software, my jpegs will be just fine. My copy of CS5, along with all its companion software, will open the raw files from my cameras but why bother? Several iterations of PS changes are well tolerated — no artifacts, completely acceptable for commercial or personal use. I started out in my conversion to digital many years ago believing all the "experts" who said you weren't a real photographer unless you shot raw or, at least, tiff.

After many years I asked myself what I was gaining by shooting raw and what was I losing (besides disc space). My personal answer was "nothing".

So now I skip through life, stupidly trashing my images by shooting jpeg, but happy to do so.
 
RAW, AH why?

RAW, AH why?

I archive in TIFF from film scans. I won't get into the madness of correction algorithms available for just that. And, there's WAY too much post production that must be done for whatever format the image is to be viewed at in the end (ink jet, laser, monitor, DVD...) to waste time messing with RAW. The 'perfect correction' that you agonized over just isn't; I'm sorry.

As far a digital cameras go, from my experience, the curves provided by the manufacturer are always the best compromise of speed and file size. If the shot is properly exposed in the first place who needs RAW? I shoot primarily rangefinder cameras and I use digital cameras for sports (at least 6 shots a second) and lenses that don't adapt to rangefinder use very well (copy work, long lenses).

RAW is a non starter for action photography. I could see it's usefulness for copy work, but face it, the color from most digital cameras and what is seen from digital monitors is an abstraction (and that is being kind).

Why do you think I still shoot film? I want the palette to meet my needs and situation. RAW is an attempt to correct not only the shortfalls of the photographer, but the compromises made for, and built into, every design of every digital camera and scanner.
 
Great to hear dissenting opinions on RAW. I don't feel so crazy now shooting JPEG, though on my GXR I'm still shooting Raw because I'm not as happy with the JPEG engine as I was with the R-D1 or an Olympus digital I ever shot. I might try an X100, it's supposed to have very good JPEG output, too.
 
I've tried many times since 2004 but i found absolutely no way to get jpegs as clean and sharp as raws developed in C1 so far. In spite of the age of the beast, 1600 iso pics are really usable in B&W and color this way.
 
to me, shooting jpegs is like shooting cheap drugstore film.

processing a raw file can be quick and painless and it produces a much superior iimage in the end.
 
Dektol Dan said:
I archive in TIFF from film scans. I won't get into the madness of correction algorithms available for just that. And, there's WAY too much post production that must be done for whatever format the image is to be viewed at in the end (ink jet, laser, monitor, DVD...) to waste time messing with RAW. The 'perfect correction' that you agonized over just isn't; I'm sorry.

As far a digital cameras go, from my experience, the curves provided by the manufacturer are always the best compromise of speed and file size. If the shot is properly exposed in the first place who needs RAW? I shoot primarily rangefinder cameras and I use digital cameras for sports (at least 6 shots a second) and lenses that don't adapt to rangefinder use very well (copy work, long lenses).

RAW is a non starter for action photography. I could see it's usefulness for copy work, but face it, the color from most digital cameras and what is seen from digital monitors is an abstraction (and that is being kind).

Why do you think I still shoot film? I want the palette to meet my needs and situation. RAW is an attempt to correct not only the shortfalls of the photographer, but the compromises made for, and built into, every design of every digital camera and scanner.
Click to expand...

Some good points and well made but I'm not so sure I follow on your last point.

I shoot film and digital too and when i shoot film it's generally b&w film that I dev and print at home and when i shoot digital I shoot in RAW.

If I want to digitise my film images I scan a print, partly because my scanner does a far better job of full platen scans than it does of negs but mostly because I see making the print as part of the film process.

For me shooting jpeg would be like shooting a roll of film and handing it to someone else to develop for me then trying to make prints the way I want them, I'd far rather retain the control over the process myself.
 
andephotographic said:
For me shooting jpeg would be like shooting a roll of film and handing it to someone else to develop for me then trying to make prints the way I want them, I'd far rather retain the control over the process myself.
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I get this. But coming from chromes, there was NO control. Shoot it, drop it in a bag, and wait for the results. My Nikon FM2's stupid center-weighted metering was prodigious at exposing slides...only needed occasional exposure compensation. You learn the characteristics of the slide film and work within them. Far as I know National Geographic photographers shot mostly chromes, and millions of them. Post-processing (whether wet darkroom or computer processing/printing) is to me just a different vocation.

I've never worked with color print film, except for some scanning...is there the same level of tweakability and control with color print that there is with black and white developing and printing?
 
OK but there is no digital noise in tranies. As good as it may be otherwise the R-D1 has one of the noisiest jpeg engine ever made. It was yet more noisy than my D70 when i bought both in 2004.
 
I started with b&w film, moved to digital when I could afford it, started shooting RAW as soon as I realised it was nothing to be scared of and have only gone back to jpeg when shooting for press etc.

Not tried the jpegs out of the R-D so can't really comment on them and I've never done any jpeg v RAW tests with any of my cameras. I do remember the RAW files from my Nikon D50 seeming to have a lot more detail in the highlights and shadows than was in the jpegs though. Possibly the D50 had a rubbish jpeg engine but it's probably stuck with me and is why I think that shooting RAW retains more information and more info = good thing.

I think another thing to discourage me from using jpeg is learning in college about lossy v lossless file types. if I still had kit that would shoot in TIFF then I might be doing that but I don't, so RAW it is.

Anyway, disk/card space is cheap so why throw away information at the point of capture that can easily be retained? Even if you expose perfectly for the visualisation you have for an image today, who is to say you won't have a slightly different visualisation tomorrow and if shooting RAW means you have the latitude to realise that new visualisation from the existing file rather than reshooting then some people might call it lazy but I say it's sensible use of available technology.
 
Speaking of LR and raw+jpeg, is there some way to get to the jpeg files that LR treats as a 'sidecar'? I now know I can import such that the jpeg is treated as a separate photo, but I don't want to do that with ALL my images, just the ones that were shot B&W ... I suppose I could try to remember to toggle the "treat jpeg files next to raw as separate photos" when importing B&W jpeg, but it would be nice if I could review my existing library with jpeg & raw side-by-side and select which jpegs to 'treat as separate photos' ...
 
I shoot both with the camera set to BW. I like that if there's a shot that I would like in color, I have that available. Best of both worlds. I'm not a machine gunner so the limit of the card is rarely reached.
 
lofi said:
I'm only shot jpeg.
I’d like the B&W and especially the (vivid) colour straight from the camera, much more than the processed raw with LR or similar. And the other hand, I have an iMac with a LED screen and I haven’t been able to see differences between the jpegs and raws of this camera, even at high iso, but surely there will be.
Click to expand...

Yes, the jpeg's color are very good with RD1, and LR is really not the best at it.

But I use ACDSEE Pro, to achieve the same color performance as the jpeg engine, with lot's off more information in the raw.

Bought it for 25€ as update of a very very old version of ACDSEE (non pro) I had, and it worth it ! :)
 
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