[simico]

If you don't get better results recovering shadows and highlights from Raw than you do from JPEG, then you've got something wrong in your workflow.

If you have to tweak/recover shadows and highlights that much then something is wrong with your exposure You know, quite a lot of people can take properly exposed photos

[zxaar]

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I can do the math quite well - my point is this: why would you save all those raw files? Do you really intend to go through them - or even a fraction of them - and tweak them in PP to get an extra 5% IQ? 5% invisible outside of pixel peeping?

I'm saying I've come to the conclusion that, no, I'm not going to be doing that, and I don't have to do that, now that jpeg engines are so good. (and jpegs themselves are quite tweakable too - it's a fallacy that they're not.)

Like I said - 10% of the time, I shoot raw, when I really need to. The rest of the time it's unnecessary. That 'raw' button is ingenious!

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my thinking is exactly what you say, i shoot 90% of time in jpegs. And for my requirements jpegs were good enough.

For example this photo, shot in jpeg and processed:



No regrets whatso ever. It is the subject that counts in the end.

[knoxploration]

I just submitted an image to PPG which was eventually accepted. It was an image I took 3 years ago, shot on the K110D in RAW (PEF). Back then, it was interesting. As time went by, my skills in PP changed (for the better, one might hope) and I went back to the RAW file from 2006. The resulting image was totally different from the initial JPEG I generated 3 years ago.

It's not only the camera, guys: it is yourself and a time machine - allowing you to come back to the same image a few years down the line and, with the much-improved future software, have a second try.

That's why I shoot RAW+ with the K20D, not because the JPEGs are bad - they're not, they are more than excellent! The RAWs are my time machine and allow for exposure-blending/HDR techniques that the JPEGs will not.

Yup, that's a very good point. Noise processing is a great example of this... It's just one more added benefit of Raw, and one which I forgot to mention myself previously.

The algorithms available are coming on by leaps and bounds (and are a major focus at the moment, with Adobe touting their new noise reduction in Lightroom 3 beta, and DxO just releasing their latest version with radically overhauled noise processing). Shooting in JPEG makes things much more limited as to what you can do to reduce noise after the fact. I have images shot with cameras from eight or nine years ago which, because I saved them in Raw at the time, I now have a better shot at cleaning up with today's technology.

[knoxploration]

If you have to tweak/recover shadows and highlights that much then something is wrong with your exposure You know, quite a lot of people can take properly exposed photos

If you only shoot in conditions where the available dynamic range of your camera matches the entire dynamic range of the scene, then perhaps you're missing a lot of photos. It's perfectly possible that the best exposure involves sacrifices made at the time which can be corrected for in post processing, rather than irretrievably sacrificing shadow detail to save blowing highlights in JPEG. ;-)

[Marc Sabatella]

If you only shoot in conditions where the available dynamic range of your camera matches the entire dynamic range of the scene, then perhaps you're missing a lot of photos.

Not just "perhaps". The idea that a "proper" exposure makes it possible to someone have complete detail in both shadows and highlights all the time is just ludicrous. The dynamic range of the real world far exceeds that of any camera, film, print, or monitor that has ever been invented. In the real world, sacrifices have to be made in capturing any image tha exceeds the DR of your particular capture device and display method, but with RAW, you don't have to sacrifice as much as you do with JPEG.

[Marc Sabatella]

In 90% of my shooting, my raw workflow (which can be intense when I'm recovering shadows/highlights or something like that) doesn't end up giving me any better results than the straight jpegs - and I know what I'm doing in PP.

The other 10% of the time, it does - but I'm just not going to fashion my entire workflow and swallow the time/throughput/maintenance overhead just to cater to that 10% of images.

And again, I'd summarize the difference in thinking by observing that for me, RAW takes *no more of my time time* than JPEG. And indeed, I can't understand why it ever would. If you're *not* doing PP, RAW is just as fast as JPEG, and if you *are* doing PP, RAW is just as fast as JPEG. Similarly, threre is no difference whatsoever in maintenance. Not sure what you mean by "throughput" in this context, but I'm having trouble imagining any meaning for that term that would mean a win for JPEG. The *only* advantage of JPEG is in disk space, and even that is not a very big difference if you much PP at all, since JPEG generally requires to make a copy of the file if you don't want to overwrite your original, thus eating up much of the savings you might otherwise see (this depends, of cours,e on what software you use and how you use it). But considering tha for $100 I can buy a drive that will hold all the RAW images I shoot for the next 5 years, I just am not that concerned about disk space.

Now, *if* your workflow is such that RAW actually *does* take more time or effort or whatever than JPEG, then there might be incentive to shoot JPEG. In my case, though, the effort it takes to press the RAW button to switch to JPEG means that shooting JPEG is actually *more* work than RA -W - by exactly the amount of effort it took to press the RAW button, since that would be the only difference for me.

So what this leads to is, if you currently have a workflow that makes RAW seem difficult, what's the incentive to change your workflow (and probably software) to one that makes RAW easier? If you're basically happy with the results from JPEG *and* don't often do the kind of PP for which RAW provides a significant win, the answer is, there is no incentive. If on the other hand, you are unhappy with the JPEG output *or* you often do the type of PP for which RAW provides a significant win, then perhaps that would be the incentive one would need to improve one's RAW workflow.

But note that if you often do the type of PP for which RAW provides a significant win - large scale WB changes, curves adjustments, local contrast enhancement, and perhaps NR - than it doesn't *matter* how good the JPEG is. If your world is such that you need to do these sort of adjustments, RAW will still win. If on the other hand you only shoot in controlled lighting situations and thus don't need to alter WB, or seldom wish to exercise your own creative control over curves or local contrast, or rarely shoot in low light situations where you might want control over NR, then JPEG quality would indeed be the determining factor.

[knoxploration]

Not just "perhaps". The idea that a "proper" exposure makes it possible to someone have complete detail in both shadows and highlights all the time is just ludicrous.

Yep, I know. I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek.

[conroy11]

My experience with the K7 is that it has the worst jpg images of any camera that I have ever owned, and I have owned quite a lot - Nikon, Canon and Pentax. You would have to be mad to use jpg when the noise level is so high and the raw images are almost the same size as full size jpgs.
Adobe Light Room will give spectacular results (far superior compared to the Pentax software). It is based on the previously worlds best raw editing software "Raw Shooter Pro" which Adobe took over and shut down.

[jsherman999]

And again, I'd summarize the difference in thinking by observing that for me, RAW takes *no more of my time time* than JPEG. And indeed, I can't understand why it ever would. If you're *not* doing PP, RAW is just as fast as JPEG, and if you *are* doing PP, RAW is just as fast as JPEG. Similarly, threre is no difference whatsoever in maintenance. Not sure what you mean by "throughput" in this context, but I'm having trouble imagining any meaning for that term that would mean a win for JPEG. The *only* advantage of JPEG is in disk space, and even that is not a very big difference if you much PP at all, since JPEG generally requires to make a copy of the file if you don't want to overwrite your original, thus eating up much of the savings you might otherwise see (this depends, of cours,e on what software you use and how you use it). But considering tha for $100 I can buy a drive that will hold all the RAW images I shoot for the next 5 years, I just am not that concerned about disk space.

Now, *if* your workflow is such that RAW actually *does* take more time or effort or whatever than JPEG, then there might be incentive to shoot JPEG. In my case, though, the effort it takes to press the RAW button to switch to JPEG means that shooting JPEG is actually *more* work than RA -W - by exactly the amount of effort it took to press the RAW button, since that would be the only difference for me.

So what this leads to is, if you currently have a workflow that makes RAW seem difficult, what's the incentive to change your workflow (and probably software) to one that makes RAW easier? If you're basically happy with the results from JPEG *and* don't often do the kind of PP for which RAW provides a significant win, the answer is, there is no incentive. If on the other hand, you are unhappy with the JPEG output *or* you often do the type of PP for which RAW provides a significant win, then perhaps that would be the incentive one would need to improve one's RAW workflow.

But note that if you often do the type of PP for which RAW provides a significant win - large scale WB changes, curves adjustments, local contrast enhancement, and perhaps NR - than it doesn't *matter* how good the JPEG is. If your world is such that you need to do these sort of adjustments, RAW will still win. If on the other hand you only shoot in controlled lighting situations and thus don't need to alter WB, or seldom wish to exercise your own creative control over curves or local contrast, or rarely shoot in low light situations where you might want control over NR, then JPEG quality would indeed be the determining factor.

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Marc, the type of shooting you usually do - dim concert settings with multicolored stage lighting mixed with tungsten - cries out for raw.

Whenever I'm shooting in situations like that - or really weird/bad lighting in general, I usually shoot raw+. And that adds up to about 10% of the time, as I said. For you, I'm guessing that's probably as much as 50% of the time, in which case perfecting a raw workflow makes good sense.

Maybe you have a very good raw workflow that guarantees that in good lighting, your workflow provides output as good as in-camera jpegs on the K20D (or K-7.) I was never able to come up with a workflow that guaranteed that - my jpegs always matched or were noticeably better than the results of my raw workflow in anything but really bad lighting or strange lighting situations. I suspect that most people would actually find the same thing if they compared.

It just doesn't bring any advantage to shoot raw at a 500-shot softball game in brought daylight - but it does for 10 shots at 9pm in a single-lamp lit room.

Here's my jpeg workflow:

Shoot. Download. Fire up picasa. Any image that looks keeper, contrast adjustment and sharpness is one click each (maybe). Save (non-destructively.)

I hope you'd agree that my results are not horrid - everything I've ever linked here (I think) has been in-camera jpegs.

My main concern here is not to get raw-exclusive shooters to change, it's to stop them from giving this advice to people: unless you shoot raw all the time, you're not going to get very good results, or if you do, it's just by accident.

Here's the advice I'd give to the same people:

If you do shoot raw all the time, make very sure that your batch conversions are optimal - that takes work - because if they're not, you're going to get worse results than if you just shot jpeg to start with. (And consider shooting jpeg/bright/fine sharpness +2)


PS: By the way - you know who has a sub-optimal raw workflow? Ned Bunnell. His blogged images almost always look drab, unsharp, unsatisfying. I want to email him, "Ned! Please! Do you want to sell that DA 15mm Limited or not? PLEASE, PLEASE shoot jpeg just once! Just try it."




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[snostorm]

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Marc, the type of shooting you usually do - dim concert settings with multicolored stage lighting mixed with tungsten - cries out for raw.

Whenever I'm shooting in situations like that - or really weird/bad lighting in general, I usually shoot raw+. And that adds up to about 10% of the time, as I said. For you, I'm guessing that's probably as much as 50% of the time, in which case perfecting a raw workflow makes good sense.

Maybe you have a very good raw workflow that guarantees that in good lighting, your workflow provides output as good as in-camera jpegs on the K20D (or K-7.) I was never able to come up with a workflow that guaranteed that - my jpegs always matched or were noticeably better than the results of my raw workflow in anything but really bad lighting or strange lighting situations. I suspect that most people would actually find the same thing if they compared.

It just doesn't bring any advantage to shoot raw at a 500-shot softball game in brought daylight - but it does for 10 shots at 9pm in a single-lamp lit room.

Here's my jpeg workflow:

Shoot. Download. Fire up picasa. Any image that looks keeper, contrast adjustment and sharpness is one click each (maybe). Save (non-destructively.)

I hope you'd agree that my results are not horrid - everything I've ever linked here (I think) has been in-camera jpegs.

My main concern here is not to get raw-exclusive shooters to change, it's to stop them from giving this advice to people: unless you shoot raw all the time, you're not going to get very good results, or if you do, it's just by accident.

Here's the advice I'd give to the same people:

If you do shoot raw all the time, make very sure that your batch conversions are optimal - that takes work - because if they're not, you're going to get worse results than if you just shot jpeg to start with. (And consider shooting jpeg/bright/fine sharpness +2)

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Hi jsherman,

Nicely said!

My thoughts almost exactly -- you've save me quite a bit of typing

Scott

[jacksonpritt]

What do you people think folks did before there was photo editing and exposure adjustment software?

It makes me sad that so many photographers nowadays have never done darkroom work and think that sitting in front of a computer screen screwing around with levels adjustments is what photography is all about.

The biggest problem with photography right now is too much goddamn post-processing work.

[knoxploration]

My experience with the K7 is that it has the worst jpg images of any camera that I have ever owned, and I have owned quite a lot - Nikon, Canon and Pentax. You would have to be mad to use jpg when the noise level is so high and the raw images are almost the same size as full size jpgs.

Seems to me you're not talking about the same Pentax K-7 as the rest of us - either that, or you've never used a camera with remotely similar resolution. Either that, or you're comparing the K-7 with maximum sharpening and minimum noise reductioon against other cameras with their optimal settings, or something. Your assertion flies in the face of just about every review out there, and most user experiences. The K-7 isn't the best camera out there for low light / low noise JPEGs on default settings, but it is far, FAR from the worst.

Adobe Light Room will give spectacular results (far superior compared to the Pentax software).

An equally interesting assertion, given that Adobe themselves have as much as admitted that Lightroom 1.x and 2.x lag behind their competition for noise performance, which is why they're addressing this in the Lightroom 3 beta. The beta can't be said to thrash rivals yet either, because it only allows processing of chroma noise currently. There's no way to process luminance noise at all in the beta that's available at the moment.

None of this is a slight on Lightroom, incidentally. It's my personal choice and what I use on a daily basis.

[benjikan]

One thing keeping me from from shooting raw are the 14megapixel raw files.

The difference between shooting RAW and JPEG are quite frankly, flagrant. I would only shoot JPEG if the output of my images were for full verticle page magazine stuff. Never landscape format. The artifacts in JPEG are much more apparent than RAW. With the K10D, K20D and K7 you have the option of a so so average camera or a serious photography tool. If you want to shoot JPEG, you are not allowing yourself the possibility of seeing what a really great image output can look like. I keep using Pentax for one reason and one reason only. The RAW output at 100-400 iso. At 100 iso, the 14.6 mega pixel resolution rivals all of the competition out there. I am shooting for ELLE magazine in two weeks and have decided to use my Pentax stuff for that shoot, as I am confident that it will do the job. But I will be shooting in RAW to extract all of the unprocessed information available.

[jsherman999]

The difference between shooting RAW and JPEG are quite frankly, flagrant. I would only shoot JPEG if the output of my images were for full verticle page magazine stuff. Never landscape format. The artifacts in JPEG are much more apparent than RAW. With the K10D, K20D and K7 you have the option of a so so average camera or a serious photography tool. If you want to shoot JPEG, you are not allowing yourself the possibility of seeing what a really great image output can look like. I keep using Pentax for one reason and one reason only. The RAW output at 100-400 iso. At 100 iso, the 14.6 mega pixel resolution rivals all of the competition out there. I am shooting for ELLE magazine in two weeks and have decided to use my Pentax stuff for that shoot, as I am confident that it will do the job. But I will be shooting in RAW to extract all of the unprocessed information available.

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Ben, If my income depended on it, I'd probably be shooting raw 100% of the time also, if no other reason than to be safe! Fine arts and fashion shooting are two areas where there's no real question about what to do.

But with me, and probably 95% of the people who own DSLRs, the difference between raw and well-tweaked jpegs is much less than the difference between a poorly and properly taken shot, and it's much more effective to work on technique than PP workflows. Once we all reach your talent level, maybe moving to a raw-only approach would give us that final 5% IQ.

And I stand by my assertion that a sub-optimal raw workflow gives generally worse results than modern jpeg engines - I think I see the evidence of that all the time.


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[cbaytan]

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But with me, and probably 95% of the people who own DSLRs, the difference between raw and well-tweaked jpegs is much less than the difference between a poorly and properly taken shot, and it's much more effective to work on technique than PP workflows. Once we all reach your talent level, maybe moving to a raw-only approach would give us that final 5% IQ.

And I stand by my assertion that a sub-optimal raw workflow gives generally worse results than modern jpeg engines - I think I see the evidence of that all the time.


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Workflow, workflow. You sound like a product photographer of amazon.com, Wondering how many photos are you taking and processing in a month buddy, Thousands ? Or are we dealing with mother of all lazyness here?