How many shoot and save in RAW format?

spartanmanor

spartanmanor

Lunatic Member
I finally just tried a shot in RAW and brought it into Photoshop. Wow! Why have I not been dong this from day one? I am amazed at the amount of control you have over your images. It is so much easier to correct problems than what I had been messing with before. I just set my camera to save RAW and the largest jpeg format simultaneously. This way I have both if I am on the go and cannot process the RAW.

I now have to sit down with a few photos and see what new powers I have tapped into.
 
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I shoot RAW + JPEG (largest) on all of my cameras except on my Canon 5D Mk.II which i shoot only in RAW.


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It's JPEG for casual stuff and RAW for jobs and serious hobby work. I usually use DPP but sometimes will go to Adobe RAW or DxO Optics Pro for tweaks & conversion.
 
I shoot raw with JPEG med on my D200. The RAW files do really give you room to work. If I need to send one off quickly I use the JPEGs that are produced. All prints and shared for important purposes are RAW.


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Why would one want to start off handicapped? Any camera that has RAW capability will also have companion software which will enable you to convert to jpeg if you want to. Many, such as the Nikon D600 have two memory cards which allow you to save in RAW to one and jpeg to the other. Shooting in RAW allows you access to all the information captured in the immage. This can be very helpful when zooming and cropping as you have access to the full resolution your sensor is capable of recording. Less pixelation and more control when post processing.
I have been shooting digital for about 12 years now and when I compare the quality of my earlier jpeg only pics to those shot later in RAW, the difference is night and day. In photography, as in music, uncompressed is always better than compressed.
 
Only shoot raw on my 7D and then save as DNG, don't want to throw information away, and a raw or DNG file is much better to work with in Lightroom
 
RAW for family, and travel pics. JPEG for craigslist photo, and any similar applications. You can always go RAW --> JPEG, but you cannot go JPEG --/> RAW. Well, at least the last time I checked. Storage is so cheap these days, why not use RAW.
 
I never use RAW with my D200. As long as the JPEGs aren't clipped on any channel, they're perfectly adequate for any reproduction work. Where you get into trouble is if a channel gets overexposed, then processing is a PITA. Now, if I were shooting images that would be printed on high quality paper and with a decent printer, RAW might make some sense, though in my tests it wasn't obvious. A newer camera might also make a difference, as things have advanced a ways beyond the 200.
 
I shoot in RAW + Fine. It makes skipping through the shots for others to see at the shoot/event quicker. When I get home, I copy JPEGs and RAWs to my hard drive and after working on whichever I feel are keepers, I'll delete all the RAWs I didn't use and burn a DVD of everything (except bad shots) in JPEG and the originals and the tweaked version of the RAWs.

I have a bit different process if it's a paid shoot and I'll keep all JPEGs and and RAWs and burn everything to DVD.

I will say that having 64Gb memory cards and 2TB hard drives as made things a lot easier. I have two D90s and a D600 so I'm definitely not quite state of the art so those hard drives take a long time to fill up and I don't have to move to burning DVDs on as tight of a schedule as when 320 GB hard drives were the upper end of what was available.
 
ConradH said:
I never use RAW with my D200. As long as the JPEGs aren't clipped on any channel, they're perfectly adequate for any reproduction work. Where you get into trouble is if a channel gets overexposed, then processing is a PITA. Now, if I were shooting images that would be printed on high quality paper and with a decent printer, RAW might make some sense, though in my tests it wasn't obvious. A newer camera might also make a difference, as things have advanced a ways beyond the 200.
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I was a bit slow to start to shoot in RAW. The biggest thing for me is, if the environment is changing - indoor or outdoor weddings and wedding receptions and other indoor events where some shots might be in primarily natural light and some might be in incandescent or florescent light, with or without flash - RAW definitely can save your ass.

For hobby shots, it's not as important AND it's less likely you'll run off 20 or 50 shots with the completely wrong white balance.

That was my experience anyway.

I know YOU know that, I was just mentioning it for other folks that might stumble into the thread.
 
I have been shooting DLSR for about 2 years and only shooting in high res jpeg it has been good practice correcting these files but working with RAW makes things so much easier. Correcting white balance and exposure is so easy now. I can't wait till my next photo outing to have a new batch of photos to work with.
 
cratz2 said:
I will say that having 64Gb memory cards and 2TB hard drives as made things a lot easier. I have two D90s and a D600 so I'm definitely not quite state of the art so those hard drives take a long time to fill up and I don't have to move to burning DVDs on as tight of a schedule as when 320 GB hard drives were the upper end of what was available.
Click to expand...

I actually like the smaller 16Gb cards as I don't have to dig through as many photos when I am trying to find something. I usually shoot them mark what is on them and go to a new card. I have yet to erase anything from the cards and reuse them. That being said There is a large computer store that sells the cards for next to nothing not to far from where I work.
 
Welcome to the cognoscenti!

I always shoot both jpg (highest quality mode) and raw.
No matter how good the metering is, the camera doesn't know how I wanted the shot to look, so nearly every shot can be improved by processing the raw file.

The first few stages of processing raw files for me (mostly in Lightroom):
1) Lens compensation (distortion and chromatic aberration [color fringes] removal) (Lightroom has a lens data base for popular cameras and lenses, so it can correct barrel/pincushion distortion automatically.)
2) White balance (set to a fixed value, like daylight) [note that Lightroom has an auto white balance that gives a different result from the auto white balance in the camera - the in-camera balance will be listed as "as shot"]
3) Exposure
4) Highlights and shadows adjustments if desired
5) White balance modification from the fixed setting if needed
... straightening ... perspective correction ... cropping ... presence(maybe) ... sharpening(maybe) ... noise reduction (maybe) ...
... Export into Photoshop if needed for major retouching like removing objects, filling lost corners ...
... artistic manipulation ...


Not everyone agrees with the following: I almost always set my camera white balance to auto. This way, the in-camera jpgs (usually) come out reasonable for quick sharing, but I can always do a touch up (or rescue) from the raw file.
 
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RAW. Always. I like to have the knowledge that I have "headroom" on the file. And sometimes Raw and jpg, but never jpg only, unless I have made a setting mistake.

With film, well, that's another story.
 
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