The Power of RAW in The Hands of The Unskilled ;)

A lot of people think that RAW is for advanced photogs. I personally came to realize that RAW is actually for half-assed hacks like me.

Here's the photo from a kids' b'day that I completely messed up, and what I was able to do because I had RAW. While the resulting photo is nothing special it is decent enough to send to parents (our close relatives).

There's no way I'd pull it off in JPEG.

The original file (screenshot from ZoomBrowser)

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That's a nice conversion there!

I'm not sure of the hot pixels you're referring to -- are you saying there are spots that are "misbehaving" when you post here but are not in the image itself?

At any rate, nice job! This would be a great candidate for our RAW Conversion Thread -- read the intro thread for guidelines!

Yeah, great job. You managed to raw process the file into a very natural photographic image rather than some overblown impressionist painting.

Good job! You still have plenty of latitude to open up some shadows and sharpen some features. Take the photo into Photoshop as a 16 bit Tif and work in adjustment layers.

Thanks !

Good save!

I keep telling people that!
My experience of a bad exposure in the other direction: Why I love RAW - '53 Ford Sunliner

Unless you used a light meter, gray card, had multiple lights set up and chimped until you were sure of the result, then you sir are a half-assed hack... athough considering the effort it would take to do all that, and that no normal photog would, then you were merely using raw the way it was meant to be used.

PhotosGuy wrote in post #12011300
Good save! I keep telling people that!
My experience of a bad exposure in the other direction: Why I love RAW - '53 Ford Sunliner

This is why you should shoot in RAW and not delete "bad" photos

Cool work on the car. Woodward Cruize photo ?

(the other link is just beyond cool... wow.)

Kolor-Pikker wrote in post #12011354
Unless you used a light meter, gray card, had multiple lights set up and chimped until you were sure of the result, then you sir are a half-assed hack... athough considering the effort it would take to do all that, and that no normal photog would, then you were merely using raw the way it was meant to be used.

I do have a gray card. Somewhere...

You developed it very well, however Canon colors of portraits are not my cup of tea...
I prefer using Leica or Nikon colors on my Canon shot portraits

tal_ninio wrote in post #12011532
You developed it very well, however Canon colors of portraits are not my cup of tea...
I prefer using Leica or Nikon colors on my Canon shot portraits

Could you explain how you do that to a neophyte such as myself? Is this something you do in full PS (I only have Elements9)?
Diane

DianeK wrote in post #12012652
Could you explain how you do that to a neophyte such as myself? Is this something you do in full PS (I only have Elements9)?
Diane

I'm thinking that was some kind of a joke!

tal_ninio wrote in post #12011532
You developed it very well, however Canon colors of portraits are not my cup of tea...
I prefer using Leica or Nikon colors on my Canon shot portraits

Which model?

I wouldn't mind having a Leica S2, but I'll pass on the Nikons.

Amamba wrote in post #12011500
Cool work on the car. Woodward Cruize photo ?

No, just an everyday evening meet in the burbs.

Acturally it is the experts who should be using JPEGs. After all, compared to a 14 bit raw file, there is much less data to work with on compress 8 bit JPEGs. Much harder to get it looking good with less data as a starting point.

DianeK wrote in post #12012652
Could you explain how you do that to a neophyte such as myself? Is this something you do in full PS (I only have Elements9)?
Diane

The last tab the ACR window of Elements, is called "Camera Calibration".
There you usually find the color profiles (DNG profiles) of the camera that was used for the Camera Raw file that was opened.
This is a very powerful color editing tool because it changes the very basic color table used for developing the Raw file.

Unfortunately, we still don't have a Leica S2 profile. Only M8 and M9