[Todd Adamson]

There will probably never be an end to threads like this, not matter how tiresome they become. They're typically framed in terms of "I am surprised by this" or "I don't understand this trend," when in reality what the OP is saying-but-not-saying is "I am annoyed by all these n00bs who are out there doing photography without putting in all the time and effort I have personally put into not being a n00b."

What is surprising or hard to understand? Technological advances in hardware and software have substantially lowered the barrier to participation in this craft/hobby/profession. When that happens, more people get involved. Lots of people are careless, impatient, sloppy, etc. Lots of people look for the easy way out by default. It's human nature. Everyone starts with no experience, and gains it as they go. What they do with their experience varies. Some will hone their craft, and easily see the advantages to "getting it right in camera" (and still shoot RAW, btw, if they're smart), and improve in all facets. Others will continue to be lazy and sloppy and use every tool necessary to gain advantage over their shortcomings.

This is true everywhere, not just in photography. The world goes on, unchanged.

[adwb]

I am reading more and more threads lately where the first response to any difficult lighting situation is shoot RAW and fix it later.

As I said, did I mis something here?

Lowell,
I love the irony, and no one picked it up, after all the posts you have done you would have thought someone [apart from me ] would have seen it.
Alistair

[ASa]

A word from a n00b.. I started out shooting jpeg as I just wanted to concentrate on getting things right and getting used to my camera. I also thought I didn't have the need to be able to post process my pics in a serious manner, not to mention about the time I thought it'd take.

Just recently I started shooting JPG+PEF, and I've realized the versatility of the RAW format. I still think that it was essential for me to start with mere JPG to get in to this wonderful art!

[pingflood]

There will probably never be an end to threads like this, not matter how tiresome they become. They're typically framed in terms of "I am surprised by this" or "I don't understand this trend," when in reality what the OP is saying-but-not-saying is "I am annoyed by all these n00bs who are out there doing photography without putting in all the time and effort I have personally put into not being a n00b."

I am surprised at how people have gone away from shooting wet plates to this "film" contraption. Am I missing something?

And yeah, people like to place their nose skywards while complaining about people relying on the crutches of processing instead of "getting it right in camera". Well, think of the raw file as a negative and the post processing as development and printing. You can "get it right" in camera and STILL do post processing to get the results you want. Heck, that is what Ansel Adams was all about; getting the negative to be the best possible raw material for the final print. Of course, if you would rather have the camera think for you and judge how you want your print to come out, well, then feel free, but you really will have a hard time justifying being all high and mighty when you leave half the real work to some preset algorithms.

[RioRico]

Sure, let's do it again.

1) "Getting it right in the camera" often means letting the camera's tiny CPU decide how to render an image. I am hopefully smarter than the camera, but not always; and even my oldest dumbest laptop is smarter than the camera and allows more careful rendering.

2) The camera does not no-way no-how make an 'objective' rendering of a scene. Sensors and films ain't human eyes, and all human eyes are not created equal, and spectra filtered through optics and electronics do not have flat transmission. Everything varies.

3) What we think we see when we capture an image is not what the sensor sees, so we can choose which rules: the sensor, or my on-the-spot vision, or my creative vision, or audience standards. Forensics, snapshooting, publications, portraiture, art, all have different standards. RAW editing or any other PP lets us match the desired standards.

4) I hate RAW files. I hate BIG images. They take so long to edit. When I shot only 5mpg JPGs, I could do nice PP cleanups in under 1 minute per picture. I could edit 1mpx images in under 15 seconds. These 14.6mpx RAW files often take a minute or two of RAW processing, then another few couple minutes of shooping. But they look much better. Damn.

5) And yeah, RAW saves my butt.

[TaoMaas]

1) "Getting it right in the camera" often means letting the camera's tiny CPU decide how to render an image. I am hopefully smarter than the camera, but not always; and even my oldest dumbest laptop is smarter than the camera and allows more careful rendering.

So...are you advocating "getting it wrong in camera"? Please explain how that is more desirable.

[Ash]

So...are you advocating "getting it wrong in camera"? Please explain how that is more desirable.

Not sure if that's the message of Rio's post - sounds more like RAW forms more of a love-hate relationship. On one hand it permits keeping some images that would otherwise have had to be discarded for detail loss, and on the other hand they imply more computer work to make those images up to standard.

I think it goes beyond this: I shot mostly JPEG at first also, and dabbled in RAW at times just to learn about it. While my RAW editing skills were very rudimentary, the results I'd get from editing RAW files weren't much better than those of my JPEGs. Then again, when I started out, RAW editors hadn't even offered highlight and shadow recovery tools, and Photoshop didn't have a dedicated Black & White or Highlight/Shadows treatment function. I found it hard to learn to manipulate these from first principles. So I stuck with JPEG and didn't know what I was missing.

Now that these features are available on ACR and PS, there's a world of latitude that has opened up to *non-destructively* edit images and retain more detail as well as create even more impacting imagery from the *same* RAW files I captured years ago. I'm glad I kept them - at the time, I didn't think they'd be of much use, but I read very early on in the piece that RAW editing software continually gets better with time, and as it does, there is more and more that can be done to those old RAW files to produce better and different styles of imagery. The scope for doing this on JPEGs is limited.

And so the virtue of RAW grows with time.

[Ed n Georgia]

I shoot in raw because.....


I'm not smart enough to shoot in jpeg.

Rarely, if ever, do I get every shot just right. Raw allows me to correct errors that can't be edited in jpeg.

[dadipentak]

You missed one possible reason to shoot RAW, one which most certainly applies to me:

I SUCK. I blow exposures all the time. I forget what I have WB set to. I switch modes and don't realize I had different ISO settings. Pretty much a disaster behind a camera.

Why should I be relegated to my screwed-up JPG output when I have the opportunity to try to salvage it by changing settings in the RAW file? I'm trying to get better, trying to remember just WTF it is that I'm doing out there, but I don't always get it right.

1

+1 Couldn't have said it better.

[timh]

Raw (why do we capitalise it? It's like some people capitalise "Mac") lets me take a good photo and turn it into something I want to put on my wall. In other words, it lets me make the images that are the reason I carry the camera around in the first place!

I was talking to a friend last night, one of those blokes who's sickeningly good at everything. Back when he used to take photos, the image that won him the most competitions (3, I think) was a very small crop of a snapshot that he managed to create after a good 2 days of experimenting in the darkroom, ending up with the enlarger on a stepladder and the trays on the floor. And people think post-processing is something that came along with digital!

Anyway, we probably can't do quite as much with a raw file as some people used to do with negatives - but it's no reason to throw them away and trust the camera to decide how the photos look. That'd be like sending off your film to be put through a machine and printed - sure, people with cameras did that but photographers often did not.

[RioRico]

So...are you advocating "getting it wrong in camera"? Please explain how that is more desirable.

My CV: I've been shooting film since 1955 (I was started young), electro-video and digital since 1995, and photography was one of my US Army jobs in the '70s.

I'm now working on photos I shot at my daughter's home -- a rave baby shower for her second, with her 1.75-year-old first running around relentlessly. One side of her living room has big windows filled with San Francisco clouds. On my K20D are variously a Zenitar 16/2.8, Soligor-Cimko 24/2.8, FA50/1.4, and Nikkor 85/2. (My F35-70 arrived too late -- it'd be perfect here.) I set exposure and other controls as best I can, depending on where Hellkitten is dashing and dribbling at the moment.

Wide lenses like the 16 and 24 pick up light from many angles, so I mostly meter in M(anual) mode. The FA50 is all auto; the manual Nikkor has its own quirks, but usually works well in Av. But not all exposures are perfect. Bother. I roam into the kitchen to shoot Hellkitten boldly interacting with the caterers. (Caterers, ha! My son-in-law was a celebrity chef, and his catering crew have their own TV show.) The kitchen is small and dark, a real challenge for any non-flash shooting, and I'm an available-light kind of guy. Again, not all exposures are perfect. So sue me.

I *could* shoot JPG only. And then I'd shitcan many shots as unfixable. In this situation, "getting it right in the camera" is not a realistic option. Indoors and mixed light and moving figures are like that. Guests out back in the garden hula-hooping and headstanding are easier, depending on the clouds. But I'm not shooting static subjects in fixed light. I don't have the luxury of chimping every shot and adjusting for the next one. Reality intrudes. Sometimes it's right in the camera, sometimes it's wrong in the camera. C'est la vie, dewd.

So RAW editing lets me optimize many shots. And the food was *real* good!

[Lowell Goudge]

guys

a lot of you missed the point

this is not a raw vs jepg discussion. Todd Adamson hit the nail on the head

this discussion is about what I see as a growing trend to not even bother thinking about the shot, the lighting , and the conditions and just assuming that photoshop and raw processing will fix everything

why not just shoot at IS) 100 and F8 and pull everything out of the mud

[jolepp]

...
why not just shoot at IS) 100 and F8 and pull everything out of the mud

The mud will stick? :-)

[grainbelt]

this discussion is about what I see as a growing trend to not even bother thinking about the shot, the lighting , and the conditions and just assuming that photoshop and raw processing will fix everything.

I'm not seeing that from professionals.

A lot of hack amateurs like me out there, and the ready availability of flickr, photobucket and this site's own gallery means there are more shots out there to be seen. People are sharing more, and not all of it is good. Hopefully they are taking advice and learning - unfortunately, the advice they are getting is sometimes PP related rather than 'why the hell did you shoot that person backlit with no fill flash'. That's on us as a community.

[TaoMaas]

guys

a lot of you missed the point

this is not a raw vs jepg discussion. Todd Adamson hit the nail on the head

this discussion is about what I see as a growing trend to not even bother thinking about the shot, the lighting , and the conditions and just assuming that photoshop and raw processing will fix everything

why not just shoot at IS) 100 and F8 and pull everything out of the mud

For my part, I'm not arguing jpeg vs raw because I don't see "getting it right in the camera" to be something that only needs to be done when shooting jpegs. It helps a great deal more with jpegs, but the closer to right you can get it in the first place, the better your pics will be, regardless of whether you're shooting jpeg or raw. I think there's another part of this discussion and that is, the allure of clean high ASA. It's great to have a camera with that ability, but it's not a substitute for shooting at ASA 100 and using a tripod. So, basically I agree with you, Lowell.