RAW....is it really worth the hassle?

[NickTrop]

Great thread, great question. Absolutely not. No - it's not worth the hassle. The only time it might be worth it is if you scew up. There's plenty of corrections and manipulation you can do at the JPEG level. Most jpeg processors do a fine job. Bigger files, more time per image - and if you're lucky you end up with a file that's almost as good as the in-camera jpeg would have been. Totally silly. They're not "digital negatives" the whole notion of a digital negative is absurd. I didn't read the whole thread, so pardon of this was already posted. Here's Rockewell on the silliness of RAW. Like him or not, he's often spot-on. He's spot-on here:

"I almost never shoot anything in raw, and when I do I never see any difference for all the effort I wasted anyway. (I can see differences if I blow things up to 100% or bigger on my computer, but not in prints.) That's about all there is to it. It's sad that some people actually get so excited by all this that they put up hate sites..."
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

Wacky photographers - so incredibly silly, they put up hate sites for this bloke's honest, educated, and accurate opinion... I expect similar. RAW exists because photographers are the most anal of pseudo-artists. C'mon - lets zoom in 1600% and look at the pixels. Nonsense. RAW has been a windfall for comps like Nikon that charge hundreds for their "Capture One" sw that does the same thing that their cameras do in-camera, automatically. They're laughing at the silly photographers - thanking them for that unexxpected additional rev. stream.

 

[Mister E]

RAW is a complete waste of time on cameras like the 5D and D700 which have spectacular in camera processing, but I'm sure I'd be disappointed with the M9 JPGs.

 

[newsgrunt]

for jpeg shooters.... use SAVE AS. this does not overwrite the original file and leaves it intact so no further degradation of that file.

 

[ederek]

I shoot RAW because "every bit counts".

I shoot RAW because Highlight preservation and shadow details have become increasingly important.

Lightroom +1, RAW is no extra effort.

I also shoot JPEG (RAW + JPEG). As a reference. LR handles both files allowing various sort options for viewing.

There's a great example of using JPEG profiles in the "M9: Tool or Toy" article referenced in another THREAD. Here are the author's JPEG profiles provided in his REVIEW ARTICLE.

The M9 has 4 custom user profiles that you can set with various settings. A great feature in my books. The user profiles are easily retrieved via the info button.
In case you were curious, my user profiles are:
1) COLOR Low:
Compression – DNG & JPG Fine
Color Saturation – Low
Contrast – Medium low
Sharpening – Standard
Shutter Advance – Standard
ISO – 160.
2) BW LowCon:
Compression - DNG & JPG Fine
Color Saturation – Black & White
Contrast – Low
Sharpening – Low
Shutter Advance – Standard
ISO – 400.
3) BWLowLight:
Compression - DNG & JPG Fine
Color Saturation – Black & White
Contrast – Low
Sharpening – Low
Shutter Advance – Soft
ISO – Auto ISO 1/8s – 1/1250
4) BW Street:
Compression - DNG & JPG Fine
Color Saturation – Black & White
Contrast – Low
Sharpening – Low
Shutter Advance – Discreet
ISO – Auto ISO 1/30s – 1/1250.

and if you're lucky you end up with a file that's almost as good as the in-camera jpeg would have been. Totally silly. They're not "digital negatives" the whole notion of a digital negative is absurd.

Correct, they are in fact "Digital Positives". Also, it's silly not to learn how to properly use curves and the tools in modern image processing applications.

I like learning about actual color temperatures provided by RAW files.

I often shoot a color reference standard (X-Rite Passport, etc.).

RAW is "Future Ready" for improved algorithms. It was nice upgrading to LR3, and then allowing the software to re-process my entire raw library of thousands of photos - took the computer about 40 minutes to complete the entire library. See Steve's post, quoted below:

Well, speed aside (yes it could possibly take all of two seconds to press the right buttons to process a RAW file), you spend a shed load of money on a posh camera, you spend a whole load of time driving to and fro to make some photographs, you spend endless hours on the internet pontificating about photography, and then you let the camera do all the processing work to come up with a JPEG that is fixed for ever just the way Canon (et al) says it should be.

And yet all around software is moving on, its getting more out of the available data, but now and for ever more you can do sod all with your JPEG because thats that, the end. But with a RAW file the information is waiting to be processed with different RAW converters, it can take advantage of improvements in software we haven't yet seen, its all the data that the camera could get at the time with nothing thrown away in processing the JPEG. A case in point would be the new version of ACR that comes with CS5 or soon Lightroom 3. Its new algorithms reduce previous noise by maybe more than a stop, so a RAW image shot at 1600 ISO now looks like it was shot at 800 ISO or less. But a JPEG shot at 1600 ISO will still look like it was shot at 1600 ISO till the end of time. Of course there is nothing wrong with noisy high ISO images, but at least you can have more choice with RAW.

So RAW is a waste of time? It strikes me JPEG is the waste of time, effort, and money and you are kidding yourself into thinking its difficult or time consuming.

Steve

 

[Damaso]

Don't forget every time you open and save and close a jpeg it is recompressed. Do that enough and you will start to notice...

 

[user237428934]

RAW is "Future Ready" for improved algorithms. It was nice upgrading to LR3, and then allowing the software to re-process my entire raw library of thousands of photos - took the computer about 40 minutes to complete the entire library. See Steve's post, quoted below:

LR3 + M8 DNGs looks so much better in my eyes than previous versions.

 

[OurManInTangier]

I tend to shoot RAW all the time unless there is a very tight deadline on getting the pictures sent out, but this is simply because I can convert them quickly and with little feeling of being hassled - it also means that you have some leeway in pulling a rescue job if you really have to. However, I recently had this same discussion some colleagues, one of whom simply couldn't see the point; to him it seems like alot of extra work for no benefit...especially when you should be getting the exposure bang on anyway.

Our discussion ended with pretty much everyone involved deciding that its more or case of how you work or what the potential uses are for the files. What impressed me most was that everyone wanted to gauge how well the various processes worked for each individual and whether we could each learn and take something from the others approach.

I'll be intrigued to see the overall verdict here too

 

[sper]

If you're not shooting raw you don't understand what a digital image is.

It would be like a musician recording straight to MP3.

 

[StaaleS]

Horses for courses. JPG is not, and was never meant to be, an image capture format. It was designed as a highly-compressed yet high visual quality distribution format for finished pictures, and as such it throws away vast amounts of data that was present in the image on the assumption that that particular information is irrelevant to how the human eye perceives the image. For finished images, this assumption holds true and a good JPG file can be a beauty to behold.

However, the assumption breaks down whenever you load a JPG into an image processing software and do, well, just about anything to it. White balance, exposure, contrast, brightness and shadow adjustments, sharpening - you name it. Information that was discarded as irrelevant when the image was originally saved suddenly becomes very nice to have indeed - but you no longer do. And even if you do routinely nail exposure and composition to perfection in camera, white balance at least is going to bite you under any kind of artificial lighting, all digital cameras I have used vary in their precise degree of AWB suckiness but they do all suck!

RAW converters being what they are these days, I personally can see absolutely no reason not to shoot RAW, except for the reporter on a tight deadline where minutes do matter.

 

[gavinlg]

RAW is "Future Ready" for improved algorithms. It was nice upgrading to LR3, and then allowing the software to re-process my entire raw library of thousands of photos - took the computer about 40 minutes to complete the entire library.

Yep, I was astonished at how much the upgrade from lightroom 2 to lightroom 3 improved my raw files, especially the high ISO ones. I got about 1-2 stops of better noise performance from my 5d - was like having a new camera! With the next version of lightroom I'm sure I'll have similar gains.

Unfortunately for the JPEG shooters, this doesn't apply for them. Their file was already 'baked' when it came out of the camera.

 

[ederek]

fdigital, I was pleased with the result as well as how hassle-free the update was. 🙂

I upgraded to LR3, then went to a high-iso file I knew had some noise in the night sky (even with my best raw editing). There was a box that indicated a new raw processor was available for this file, and did I want to reprocess the file? I answered Yes and LR then asked if I wanted to do this for all files. Yes again and 40 min later 10's of thousands of files were updated. 😎

PRINTING is the other side of RAW => Future Ready.

Wouldn't we want to print the best in 10 or 20 years when we bring up the file for a nice wall hanging or wall-screen display?

Wouldn't you want to leave your children the RAW files of their precious first moments? Of Rover playing with his ball? Is JPEG good enough for your children? 😀

 

[RFH]

RAW for me in 95% of all my digital photo situations. Why? JPGs are very limited as far as postprocessing goes. And with the current and future photo managing software, it's becoming easier to make adjustments without going into Photoshop or other editing programs. The adjustment brush and ND filters etc. in Bridge work very well and are easy to use.
My general philosophy is that it's better to have a need-not than to need a have-not. Hence RAW.

 

[not_in_good_order]

If you're not shooting raw you don't understand what a digital image is.

It would be like a musician recording straight to MP3.

This is a good analogy.

 

[Pablito]

RAW is a complete waste of time on cameras like the 5D and D700 which have spectacular in camera processing, but I'm sure I'd be disappointed with the M9 JPGs.

Now, we're not particularly opinionated, are we?
😀

 

[wgerrard]

Everything begins as a RAW file, i.e., a bunch of data. The guys who wrote the software that does the in-camera processing to create JPEG files from that data probably assumed a correct exposure. After all, it wouldn't be practical to assume a myriad of incorrect exposures.

 

[wgerrard]

RAW for me in 95% of all my digital photo situations. Why? JPGs are very limited as far as postprocessing goes. .

Data is data, and a picture is a picture. By the time you see a RAW file displayed in Photoshop. the data has already been significantly massaged.

 

[DNG]

NO hassle at all.....
Exactly the same tools and work-flow as JPG.....Literally !!!!

I use ACDSee Pro 3 as Main editor, and Coral PSP X3 for layers and other stuff.

 

[cliffpov]

Shooting a JPG from a Foveon sensor is a Cardinal Sin.😱

 

[ebino]

Photography itself is a hassle. Sitting in front of a monitor drinking coffee while clicking a mouse is just lazy fun.

Unless of course my understanding of whats hard work and whats just plain laziness is totally out of tune.

 

[NickTrop]

Another non-silly, pragmatic pro-photog, non "RAW snob" to join Ken Rockwell in telling it like it is about RAW:


The bottom line in this approach is... hardly worth the hassle. On the plus side, if you are unhappy with the default conversion, you may change the parameters and get things done your way, which may (but does not have to) bring better results than adjusting images already converted... While I believe that 95% of photographers will be perfectly happy storing their images as low-compression (1:4 or better) JPEGs, you may belong to the remaining 5%... As for myself, most of the time I convert my pictures to RGB in-camera, saving them as 1:2.7 or 1:4 JPEGs. While I do postprocess all my images, I find that even when starting from RGB I still have enough room left for the adjustments I need... Only in rare cases I do switch to the raw format; this usually happens in trickier WB situations.

http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/tech/raw.html

Hardly worth the hassle...