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Anybody shooting Raw?


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I thought I'd start a thread about the joy of shooting in the raw digital format. I stopped shooting jpegs three years ago and haven't looked back! Any RAW lovers out there besides me? smiley25.gif

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Dennis,

I thought RAW was only for Video? Everyone I talked to says that if I shoot the Kodak in RAW I better have at least a 16GB card. Never thought about it past that.

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I switched to Raw about 3 years ago myself, and shoot it almost exclusively. Unless the original image is really a mess (and it's something I really want to try to save...) it doesn't take me any longer to process Raw files. I download off my cards using Adobe Bridge, and use Bridge to tag the photos I want to process. Next I use Adobe Camera Raw to make most of my adjustments (leveling, cropping, exposure) then open them in Photoshop for final processing - cloning out dust spots, sharpening - then save as a JPEG.

 

Shooting aircraft on the ramp at night, with all kinds of ugly lights, it's a snap to adjust white balance, and I find I have much more control over other adjustments as well.

 

Mark, on a DSLR, your sensor size makes a big difference in file size, as well as subject and ISO. I'm working with a Canon 40D, at 10.1MP. For photos with a ton of detail, file size is around 10MB, but if I'm shooting an aircraft against a uniformly blue sky, it may be 6 - 8MB. I use 4GB cards, and can get 300+ Raw images on a card.

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Dennis,

 

The professional photographer in our club convinced me to shoot in RAW. I got Photoshop Elements to process the shots. There is so much that can be done with a RAW photo.

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Dennis,

 

The professional photographer in our club convinced me to shoot in RAW. I got Photoshop Elements to process the shots. There is so much that can be done with a RAW photo.

 

I would shoot RAW if my little pocket camera would support it and if any of my photos actually deserved to be RAW. Thousands of 40 meg images will start to add up.

 

The Adobe RAW dialog is pretty awesome but you can use it on your jpgs too.

 

John

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If we did, would it be allowed? (per your tag line!)

 

I do ocassionally shoot in RAW format, but just about only when Chris has asked me to do so for the Journal. I know it is more data intensive and yields a better photo (in theory) but how much better is it really over the usual megapixel rez?

 

Never gave it much thought really.

 

 

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RAW files are essentially the entire data dump from the sensor to the memory card. No compressing (the process that makes an image a JPEG or TIFF image file) is done and the person doing the post processing has full control over image contrast, color and exposure. Processing a raw image allows for the photographer to do non-destructive modifications to the image and then export the image in any image format they please. I normally process my RAW images and save them as TIFFs (if a gallery print is in the future), JPEGs (if it's for publication) or .PSD (for use in other Adobe imaging products).

 

The thing I like best is having the ability to tweak color balance after the fact. Most shows are lit by a variety of different lighting sources and the raw format allows me to set the color balance after the shoot. You don't need expensive software to use raw since most camera manufacturers give away their own versions of raw processing software. Adobe also offers their raw format processor free (it's called Adobe Camera Raw, ACR for short).

 

I use DSLRs for my work and have a digital point-and-shoot that shoots raw too...the Canon S90.

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One thing nice about my Nikon D7000 is dual SD card slots, so I can shoot and save all of my images to JPEG on one card along with the RAW version on the secondary card. The JPEGs are nice if I need to quickly get an image to someone via email or my website without having to process, but I like having the RAW images so I can go back at a later time if I really want to manipulate te images.

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  • 2 months later...

With today's prices in hard disk and memory card, there really isn't any reason not to shoot in RAW if you have a digital camera that supports it. You can always shoot RAW+JPEG if you need the convenience of having a JPEG file ready in camera. Dennis is so right about color balance. I was just recently at a show and shot using a white balance calibration card. It's absolutely amazing how the lighting came out with white balance post processing. Another area where RAW is really good is with the blacks and shadow details. Digital cameras have problems with that, when you can see black areas that just don't look right and very artificial when compared to film. There's not much you can do to fix these problems in JPEG. There is a downside of having to spend some time post processing to get images that pop out, but most RAW processing software have some auto adjustment mode that does a fairly decent job. Without some post processing the RAW images are kind of bland. By the way, there are RAW formats that are compressed too, some even using lossy compression in which case your RAW file no longer contain all the information captured by the sensor anymore.

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  • 4 weeks later...
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