Question for those who take photos in RAW...

[Meta4]

In any pursuit professional or leisure, there are experts who look with disdain on the curious who want to join in on advanced aspects of the pursuit.

I swim against the current here.
I have been engaged in serious photography for many years and taught photography.
I'm a professional and I shoot jpg.

I don't look on beginners with disdain and want to exclude them from discovering more.
But I think there are plenty more important things for beginners to work on before they need to confuse themselves they aren't ready for and don't need.
If they really need to shoot dng, the time for that is when they understand that.
Not when with very limited understanding of more basic concepts, they are being influenced to do things they don't understand because of forum posts that tell them they should.

 

[Droning on and on...]

I swim against the current here.
I have been engaged in serious photography for many years and taught photography.
I'm a professional and I shoot jpg.

I sincerely admire you for that. Really. I'm quite a fan of the many ship pictures you've posted here, and have learned a lot from your posts.

I don't look on beginners with disdain and want to exclude them from discovering more.
But I think there are plenty more important things for beginners to work on before they need to confuse themselves they aren't ready for and don't need.
If they really need to shoot dng, the time for that is when they understand that.
Not when with very limited understanding of more basic concepts, they are being influenced to do things they don't understand because of forum posts that tell them they should.

I just don't understand this. I'm not a professional photographer. The only reason I use DNGs and apply some pretty good skills at post is because I wanted to, wanted to achieve better results that so many talk about, wanted more flexibility and control over the image. I don't need to learn all the technical aspects of professional photography to want to and understand DNGs and how to use them.

I would not be someone you would judge needs to use raw images. You would have discouraged me from learning about it, just as you are for the OP.

 

[Dr. Sybren]

When I teach beginners how to use a camera, I always recommend JPEG. Not because "raw is hard", but to take away the flexibility of correcting mistakes after the fact. It forces them to get the photo right in-camera, and that in turn makes it easier to learn what the different controls do, and how they affect the final result.

And once you know how to get the best result (i.e. the photo you wanted) in-camera, then you can really benefit from the flexibility and increased bit depth of raw files.

That's my personal view on this, anyway.

 

[Robert Prior]

Raw images need processing. In Affinity Photo this happens in two stages: first you develop the image, then you edit it.

When developing the image it really helps to use the correct profile for your camera rather than the default. This will apply corrections for things like lens distortion and vignetting.

List of Supported Raw Formats (Cameras) for & Lens Correction list in Affinity 2.x

Here is the supported RAW camera list, as of 2.5.x retail builds using SerifLabs RAW engine: If you are looking for the list supported by Affinity Version 1 you will find it posted here Note: This list is for the native SerifLabs RAW engine only (this is the default when you open a raw file). On ...

forum.affinity.serif.com

After the image is developed you will still have to edit it — the key thing is that the raw image gives you more flexibility to make the edits you want. If you don't like editing, or don't have the skills, then this will be frustrating and the results may well be worse than the JPEG image.

Think of it as getting a prepared meal as opposed to cooking one yourself. The prepared meal is faster and may taste better, but if you have the skill then getting the raw ingredients means you can cook exactly the meal you want rather than trying to adjust the taste of something someone else has cooked for you.

 

[Blexius]

Hi folks,
I think the point is to consider the purpose... where/how we will use the pics…

If it’s for professional work (serious, at least), we will know what to do with any editor using the RAW files.
If not, the JPGs (with some minor changes) will serve as well.

In any case, we can save both formats and decide later what to do. It’s true that RAW files are bigger, but it’s nothing considering that we mostly record videos (which are much larger).

Best regards,

 

[sbunting]

Just remember that raw images have an embedded JPG thumbnail that is used by many viewers, file explorers, etc to give the user a quick and dirty view of the contents of the raw file. So your results can vary depending on whether any particular tool or viewer is showing the raw data or just the JPG thumbnail.

If you are shooting a high contrast scene, i.e. an HDR shot and quite typical of drone photography, you have bright highlights and deep shadows, which is a range beyond the capability of most camera systems, but not the human eye of course. If you expose normally, scene averaging, then you will usually get blown out highlights. Once blown out, forget it, even with RAW. But if you expose to the left to avoid blown-out highlights, then you'll need to bring out shadow detail, as it will be in the dark. Typically a raw image has plenty of details in the shadows, whereas a JPG has far less to offer, as those choices have already been decided for you by the algorithm used to create the JPG. So if quick and dirty JPG's suit your purposes, and they often do,, why bother with RAW. If you want details and top shelf images from the more 'complex' scenes, RAW is the ticket. RAW is going to take more time and effort (both in acquiring the skills to do so and the time to carry out the task), but that's the price of quality. Everything is subject to a cost benefit analysis. What do you want and at what cost? Time is a valuable commodity, so choose wisely.

And the choice doesn't have to be one or the other. Sometimes a JPG works and sometimes RAW does it better, so if you have the option to create both, by all means do so. Take the time to learn as you go. Maybe you have JPG you aren't happy with and you can take its RAW counterpart and work with it, learning as you go. Editing skills continually grow and improve. Once you get it down, you will have a workflow and things move quickly. You can put those workflows into shortcuts and automate them. You can create your own presets to speed things along. I've been shooting RAW for so long, I feel short changed when I have to work with a JPG. I started out in a liquid darkroom fifty years ago when everything was rather raw, so working to create a quality image seems rather natural.

Everyone is different, thankfully, and everyone has options. Learn from as many as you can and always be willing to adapt and change as needed.

 

[sawman]

Time is a valuable commodity, so choose wisely.

Truer words never spoken!

 

[photoshop67]

I'm a retired pro photographer. RAW vs JPG? Still can't pick which I like the best for my hobby (non-client related) images .

When shooting those lovely large RAW files, I've found it's sound practice to hard-cull the images and send 95% of them digital image heaven (trash) saving tons of disk space and making if more fun to look back on them and see just the very best.

 

[ryguy80]

I started photography shooting JPG but switched over to RAW for the flexibility in editing since there is more data to work with, and I can save higher quality JPGs in Lightroom than straight out of the camera JPGs. Editing software has gotten so much better now at cleaning up noise at higher ISOs with RAW that I don't really worry about ISO settings so much anymore.

With drones, shooting RAW has its benefits, but on the smaller image sensors, there's only so much that software can do with the image. You'll get better results from the 1-inch and 4/3 Hasselblad sensors.

 

[hank970]

When I posted on this topic in late July, I stated that I was perfectly happy with the JPGs rendered by my Air 3. Since then, I've had an epiphany, mostly because my son, also an Air 3 owner, talked me into again trying RAW. His main selling point? Bit depth. Compressed JPGs are rendered in 8-bit and can display about 16 million distinct shades of color, whereas a 10-bit RAW file has the potential to display over one billion distinct shades of color. Subtle differences in color can create the illusion of enhanced detail in complex subjects -- a tree's foliage, for example. Instead of a tree being rendered as a rather uniform blobs of green in JPG, the differences in color in an edited RAW image may allow a viewer to distinguish individual leaves. In any event, I've switched to shooting in RAW, which I what I've been using with my Nikons for ages.

Yes, the files are significantly larger, but as has been pointed out by others, it's a simple matter to resign all but the best images to the trash bin.

 

[eEridani]

[snip] However, when I open a RAW image in my photo editing software (I use Affinity Photo) the image is washed out, dull and a lifeless. When I open the JPG version of the image it looks totally fine [snip]

Welcome to the world of RAW images. Lots of tutorials out there on dealing with RAW images. But one you might like to explore is the preprocessing tools in Affinity. Look up the Develop tools, and see if you can save a "default" for them. Then your raw images may look better when you open them initially.

In Photoshop, there are ways to set and save the preferred RAW conversion defaults for your various cameras. EOS 1x, EOS M6II, Mavic Air 7, iPhone 18, etc.

At the end of the day, RAW gives you latitude to fix mistakes that JPG saves embed forever. So I save both RAW and JPG. JPG for the daily use and convenience; RAW, just in case.

 

[Felix le Chat]

When I posted on this topic in late July, I stated that I was perfectly happy with the JPGs rendered by my Air 3. Since then, I've had an epiphany, mostly because my son, also an Air 3 owner, talked me into again trying RAW. His main selling point? Bit depth. Compressed JPGs are rendered in 8-bit and can display about 16 million distinct shades of color, whereas a 10-bit RAW file has the potential to display over one billion distinct shades of color. Subtle differences in color can create the illusion of enhanced detail in complex subjects -- a tree's foliage, for example. Instead of a tree being rendered as a rather uniform blobs of green in JPG, the differences in color in an edited RAW image may allow a viewer to distinguish individual leaves. In any event, I've switched to shooting in RAW, which I what I've been using with my Nikons for ages.

Yes, the files are significantly larger, but as has been pointed out by others, it's a simple matter to resign all but the best images to the trash bin.

What sold me on shooting and editing RAW was that you also have the benefit of non-destructive editing: the original can be returned to its virgin OOC (Out Of Camera) state at any point in a workflow if you botch it up.