RAW or JPEG

RAW is also useful if you need to alter the white balance, or do tonal correction (like for problem exposures).

I always shoot RAW.

Daryl,

Thanks for your wisdom. May I contact you offline with more questions?

Tony

In my view, shooting in RAW is an even bigger advantage for us serious non-professionals. You get far more of a chance to save a marginal image working from RAW. Since I take a lot more marginal images than a pro, I almost always shoot RAW. One exception is that my camera does not shoot quicly in RAW mode so if rapid shooting is a consideration, highest quality JPEG is my choice.

Gary

Gary,

Good observations.

Thanks,

Tony

Tony,

You’re welcome to e-mail me if you like, using my home e-mail address of daryl AT jazzdiver DOT com (undo the anti-spam format). I’m no expert though…just another non-professional digital camera user. My cameras thus far have been a Casio QV3000 and now an Olympus C5050.

Gary does have good points indeed. I’ve not worked with RAW images quite enough yet to be too well versed in their advantages.

Daryl

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 15:43:01 -0800, wrote:

Is the RAW option worth it for a serious non professional photographer using PS CS?

Yes. Consider RAW your negative and any JPEG (in-camera or not) as classical print.

Apart from having the chance to widely manipulate an image in the quiet working room at home instead of doing everything right during a hectic shot. One example is the ease to merge two differently exposed photos to get one good looking one – you just expose a RAW after the fact towards the shadows, safe it as or PSD, then expose it towards the highlights and save it. You can then merge those into an image with detail in both shadow and highlights. Very useful for sunsets.

—

Dierk

You can shoot a lot faster when shooting RAW; You have no need to set all the in camera settings prior to shooting. You can set them all later.

Mathias, when I mentioned that RAW was slower for my camera, I was referring to the write-to-card delay, about 8-10 seconds. You are correct that there is less fiddling around in the field with settings when shooting RAW.

Gary

Depending though on what Canon you are referring to you also have a built in cache the camera writes to prior to writing data to the card. In the case of the 10D you can actually shoot close to 6-7 Raws in burst mode before the camera starts writing data to the CF card. If you are referring to the 300D then you can shoot up to 4 frames before the data is written to the card.

The above also depends on what motor drive setting you have selected, in the case of the 10D I have noticed that if I shoot in single frame, after shooting the first image the camera starts writing data right away to the CF card and I cannot shoot another image until the write to the CF card finishes. I always shoot in continuous mode.

Scott

I agree with Chris. I shoot 100% RAW files.

You have two options with RAW files. Linear and nonlinear TIFFs.

Linear RAW files require a little more effort, but they reward you with no adjustments except for white balance and a little more dynamic range in your images. If you just convert your RAW to a TIFF, you are probably getting a nonlinear TIFF. It can have camera setings for contrast, sharpening, saturation, etc. applied.

You can tell the two apart at a glance when you convert them in a RAW converter. A linear TIFF will be *VERY* dark. It has a gamma of 1.0. People who work with linear TIFFs usually use a profile to compensate.

The big benefits of using RAW files are (1) the ability to change the white balance setting when you convert and (2) the ability to work with more than 8-bits per channel.

I recently shot a whole batch of images with the wrong WB setting and because I shot RAW, I could alter the WB setting during conversion and not degrade the image. If you shoot a JPEG or convert WB later, you will increase the risk of posterization in your images as you are making nonlinear changes through Levels/Curves/Color Balance, etc.

With Canon RAW files, the resulting TIFFs are 12-bits per channel. That gives you 4096 distinct values for each channel as opposed to 256 distinct values for a JPEG. That gives you a lot more continuous tones to work with and reduces the likelihood and the effect of posterization in your images as you edit them in PS. If you are new to PS, then you are fortunate. The latest version of PS now supports 16-bits per channel for all of the selection tools, layers, etc. Working with 16-bit images from source to output used to require some tricks and workarounds. Now, the only difference you will probably notice is that your RAW files are larger than corresponding JPEGs.

If you are using a Canon DSLR, another benefit of RAW is the ability to use the AdobeRGB color space. If your images are intended for the printer rather than the Web, the much larger gamut of AdobeRGB is a big advantage. You can convert a JPEG to the AdobeRGB color space. JPEG is not inherently limited to sRGB, but that transformation can affect your image and Canon gives you no option with JPEGs. They automatically use the sRGB color space.

If you want the very best image possible, there really is no choice. You want to shoot in RAW. The only advantage of JPEG now is storage space. With the prices for CF cards, microdrives, and hard drives dropping, why limit your options?

BTW, if you need a quick JPEG for something, the Canon Raw files incorporate a JPEG. With a Canon 10D, you can even control the size and compression of that JPEG. (Those of us who shoot RAW 100% usually set it to small and coarse in order to save a little space on our RAW files.)

Enjoy your new camera.

Cheers,

Mitch

This thread just convinced me to try the RAW patch to my Nikon 990.

Thank you!

Bill