Does anyone NOT shoot RAW???

I shoot raw about 5% of the time, and so far nobody has ever said "Those photos weren't shot in raw.". Nobody has ever looked at my photos and said, "You didn't shoot raw."...or "Your photo quality would be much better if you shot raw.".

This is mainly because most of the time you don't need that tiny little extra processing ability that raw gives you. If you can't get it right in camera and with proper technique and lighting, shooting raw or jpg won't help you much.

I defy anyone to look at a photo and determine if it was shot in jpg or raw.

katodog wrote in post #18460363
I shoot raw about 5% of the time, and so far nobody has ever said "Those photos weren't shot in raw.". Nobody has ever looked at my photos and said, "You didn't shoot raw."...or "Your photo quality would be much better if you shot raw.".

This is mainly because most of the time you don't need that tiny little extra processing ability that raw gives you. If you can't get it right in camera and with proper technique and lighting, shooting raw or jpg won't help you much.

I defy anyone to look at a photo and determine if it was shot in jpg or raw.

I think the issue comes down to what you shoot and how you shoot. When I shoot landscape shots I shoot specifically for the histogram. I'm not trying to get a finished image out of the camera, I'm trying to get an image with all the detail I can.

For example, this image could have been shot in jpeg and saved me the time of converting the raw file:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/WTn4​GT

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/XKhD​dR

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/NfRL​vu

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Tkaa​EU

katodog wrote in post #18460363
I shoot raw about 5% of the time, and so far nobody has ever said "Those photos weren't shot in raw.". Nobody has ever looked at my photos and said, "You didn't shoot raw."...or "Your photo quality would be much better if you shot raw.".

This is mainly because most of the time you don't need that tiny little extra processing ability that raw gives you. If you can't get it right in camera and with proper technique and lighting, shooting raw or jpg won't help you much.

I defy anyone to look at a photo and determine if it was shot in jpg or raw.

Shooting raw vs JPG has nothing to do with the recipients of the delivered goods. It is a tool by which you can recover a missed shot, or pull up shadows better in raw than with a JPG, or fix up white balance more accurately than JPG. Shooting raw is like shooting film to get a negative, and shooting JPG is using a polaroid to get an instant shot. One has more flexibility in a final print than the other. Raw also gets you more highlight headroom.

My point is that for what I shoot, I spend about 20 minutes nailing down the settings and testing the scene so that I don't spend hours after the shoot messing with raw. I have the raw should I need it though. Like the wedding I shot Saturday, there were a few places where the lighting messed with my metering and flash, and I had to use the raw to salvage parts of images. The JPG was too unforgiving to fix up.

For example, the OOC JPG was a mess, and I had to go back to the raw, probably about 1 of 5 out of 225 shots that I had to use the raw. The 2nd shot was OOC jpg and had sufficient material to work with wjthout having to go back to the raw. Of course the day was sun overhead without a cloud in the sky, and I hate working in those conditions.

Bassat wrote in post #18460346
I get it. But, what's the point? Any embedded JPG would be an 8-bit file with the parameters imposed by the Picture Style settings, WB settings, and other settings at the time the shutter was released. If you want JPG, shoot JPG. You already have the raw file, work with that. If you don't want to edit, shoot JPG. This may work, but it is way to cumbersome to be very useful.

The point is, if you shoot raw, there is likely a JPEG, should you want it - just test your files to see what's what. The idea of shooting raw+JPEG is therefore redundant, unless you want a small JPEG or some other variation that is not, by default, the JPEG embedded in the raw file.

Some people want the JPEG (for speed, easy access to a finished image, whatever). If you want the leverage of raw but need JPEGs too, you can have both, if your camera embeds the JPEG in the raw file. Extracting the JPEGs from a directory of raw files raws takes seconds (I just tested a directory of 150 5DIV CR2's - extracting their full res jpegs took 2 seconds on my MacBook Pro).

I find no need for JPEGs about 100% of the time I shoot.

kirk

John from PA wrote in post #18460336
DCRAW is not part of Windows but is downloadable. The person that compiled the original code did not support it beyond Windows 2000 but others have picked up and compiled it for later versions.

Quesion: If I shoot with the best RAW resolution, does DCRAW have the ability to extract a high resolution JPEG as Canon defines it, in other words the "Large with Fine" with dimensions 5472 x 3648 pixels?

That's what gets extracted from my 5DIV. Best to test it yourself on your raws to see what's living in your files.

kirk

katodog wrote in post #18460363
I shoot raw about 5% of the time, and so far nobody has ever said "Those photos weren't shot in raw.". Nobody has ever looked at my photos and said, "You didn't shoot raw."...or "Your photo quality would be much better if you shot raw.".

This is mainly because most of the time you don't need that tiny little extra processing ability that raw gives you. If you can't get it right in camera and with proper technique and lighting, shooting raw or jpg won't help you much.

I defy anyone to look at a photo and determine if it was shot in jpg or raw.

It's pretty easy - JPEG encoding is fairly straightforward to spot. Clipped highlights and blocked shadows are too. There are scenes that you or anyone cannot get "right" in camera for an 8bit JPEG. If you personally shoot scenes and images that fit into the dynamic range and exposure window of 8bit JPEG, terrific. If white balance is pretty straightforward for what you shoot, that's good too. If noise is not a big deal when you expose your scene, again- good.

Many people here would disagree with your assessment; however, if raw gives you, personally, very little extra control over your images compared to JPEG, then JPEG is probably best for you.

kirk

Jpg is not a crippled format, there is a HUGE range of ability in processing. I prove it every time I shoot, every time I process, every time I print. Your methods will never be the same as mine, we're two totally difference humans. What works for me works for me, what works for you works for you. We can have differing opinions, there's nothing wrong with that.

However, I don't care how powerful the force is with you, there's no way on God's Earth that you could ever tell the difference between a raw and a jpg by looking at the final result. Nobody has that kind of power. Unless there are errors in the photo, like blown highlights or deep shadows, that the photographer couldn't or didn't fix, there's no way you'd be able to tell the difference in the file formats. If a photo has errors, it could very well be the inability of the photographer to get it right or close to right when they shot, or maybe they did't have the processing knowledge to "fix" the problems. Blown highlights are blown highlights, white is white. Raw is only going to give you so much before it can't do anything. The same with shadows...black is black. You can't get something out of nothing. If you shoot against a blown-out sky, even raw won't add something that isn't there. If you shoot in a black room, raw isn't going to find something that isn't there.


The question was "Does anybody not shoot raw?" and my reply was simple...I do not shoot raw very often, I have no necessity for it most of the time. When I do choose to use it, most of that time I see little to no difference in processing ability.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18460439

I'd like to see the original of the first photo, I'm curious how it was shot. It's in photos like this where you have to consider changing your shooting style to get the best from the photo. I'm curious if your shooting style or technique might not have been well-suited for that type of environment.


Depending on how you shot, it could make shooting raw or jpg inconsequential.

katodog wrote in post #18460472
I'd like to see the original of the first photo, I'm curious how it was shot. It's in photos like this where you have to consider changing your shooting style to get the best from the photo. I'm curious if your shooting style or technique might not have been well-suited for that type of environment.

Depending on how you shot, it could make shooting raw or jpg inconsequential.

It was nearly 100 deg, and the lady's feet already were hurting, so I didn't mess with metering or settings to adjust for the sky in the background, or flash, I just made sure they walked down the path, and I took several shots as they approached, knowing that I would need to go to the raw. This isn't my first rodeo. I use raw as a tool, sometimes it's faster just to know I can rely on the raw instead of adjusting my settings, especially since it was a long hot day, and we needed to get inside. Again, I ALWAYS shoot both, so that I have the raw to fall back on, especially if I have high DR scenes and am pushing up against the right side as it is.

I certainly see no reason to run a tool on my raw files to extract JPGs out, I fail to see why I should introduce such an arbitrary step in my processing. There is no advantage for me to do so. I am still trying to figure that one out. I suppose if I was on a long trip and didn't have the ability to pull files off onto a laptop, then I would shoot just raw to save space. However, I would probably bring about 20 cards with me as well, so I am back to square one on that topic.

Here is the JPG from the camera settings, and then some quick tweaks in DPP on the raw. It took less time to run a few sliders and a curve on about 4 images from that part of the venue, then it would have to try to nail it exactly right in the camera. I always juggle whether I want to play with settings during the shoot or whether I want to fix up things in post, as I shoot. That works for me, may not for others. I could have fixed the left JPG in post, but it is faster and I seem to get better results fixing things in raw, then slight modifications in JPG/post. I wanted to keep the blue sky, and I actually plan on going back to the raw later tonight to do a bit more tweaking.

Was only curious, I'm always interested, in discusions like this, in the ability and skill of the people I'm talking to. Everyone is different, everyone has different gear and different skills. When people post examples I find myself thinking about how I would have approached the same situations.

Most of the time my thoughts go towards shooting technique rather than file format. My preference is to use the abilities of myself and the camera first, and my skills with the computer second. Of course sometimes there's nothing you can do but punt, nobody is perfect and everyone gets a crappy environment sooner or later.

This was a hurried setting, the ceremony was over, everyone was inside, and the couple had to walk pretty far to this scenic area away from the ceremony location. It was very sunny, but as they walked they went through shaded areas, and I know it is very easy to edit the raw to clean up the situation more than trying to change settings. Also, when shooting NBA ball, there are many times I shoot a wide range of lit or unlit situations, and I use the raw to fix some of the shots. Post processing is very easy for me, and again, the raw and any post processing is just another tool for me, like a lens or body is.

katodog wrote in post #18460469
Jpg is not a crippled format, there is a HUGE range of ability in processing.

No one said it was a crippled format.

True. What you prove is fine for you, i think we all can agree with that. I'm not sure what your point is here, I was not criticizing what you do. I simply stated that it is possible to recognize a JPEG file for what it is.

But you do seem to care. A raw file has to be converted to something one can view, a JPEG is one example of a file format that contains the RGB info a raw file can create. The force is not powerful with me, it's just a fact.

It's not some power, it's just a consequence of the file format. Take a look at a JPEG with deep shadows - boost the shadows and note the JPEG compression blocking artifacts that appear. This is one way to differentiate a JPEG, due to its compression scheme.

I think you will find that one has far more latitude in making the corrections you are describing with a raw file, all else being equal. With a JPEG, the blown highlights are gone, with the raw data, those highlights are probably there or can be reconstructed. Etc. The "in-camera" JPEG on your camera card comes from the "raw file." It is a raw conversion made by the engineers of your camera, according to the picture style or whatever other in-camera settings you apply. So, JPEG is simply a rendered subset of all of the raw data. If the tone curve, or the white balance, or whatever else you might set up causes highlights that are intact in the raw file to blow out in the JPEG rendering, then this is one example of the JPEG being inferior to the raw file (unless you wanted those highlights to blow out). You cannot retrieve the highlights from the JPEG, but they are there, intact in the raw data. In fact, if you rely upon this JPEG rendering to guide your exposure choices, you could end up underexposing your scene to preserve JPEG highlights - this could lead to blocked or noisy shadows, unnecessarily. These are the kind of things that folks who shoot raw rely upon to conjure as much dynamic range from their camera as they can. If you don't need it, then JPEG may be a perfectly viable option for your images. It is not a critique of you and your work, it is just a fact of the differences between the raw data and the JPEG rendering. Some folks like the rendering their camera produces and renders to a JPEG; some folks like all of the raw data at their disposal to make their own rendering.

There is nothing wrong with JPEG data, unless the scene or the need of the photographer, artist or client supersedes the JPEG rendering.

Actually, what you said was:

This implies that you know what everyone here shoots and that shooting raw is essentially a crutch for poor photographic chops. Ouch!

As I said before, if you shoot subjects that are well exposed and white balanced with a JPEG rendering, then, of course you will see little need for shooting raw. Sounds like that is what works for you; however, there are differences between JPEG renderings and other renderings from raw data that some folks find worthwhile.

That's all I was saying.

kirk

You shoot raw, I'll shoot jpg. I could give photo examples all day long and you couldn't tell if they came from raw or jpg, that's the only thing I'm gonna say. Most of the time you don't need raw. I'll agree that certain times and certain situations, you might...might...get something out of a raw where you can't from a jpg. However, the majority of the time if you use proper technique, proper method, and the ability of the camera, you won't find any issues when shooting jpg. Giving extreme examples where highlights are blown or there are deep shadows, how many times do you actually face those situations. And, if you face those situations often then you should have the skill or the equipment to overcome them. Also, when you make claims about the ability of raw to recover highlights or shadows...do you have the skill to do it in jpg? Maybe not, and that's what you need raw. The ability to recover shadows and highlights in jpg is not as disabled as you think. Of course there's a limit to the range, but it's not as small of a limit as people think.


Every time I've been paid to shoot, every time my photos have been published, every time someone has purchased photos...not one single time has anybody said anything about raw or jpg. That's one of the points I'm trying to make...that the end result is the only thing that matters. Most people don't know the difference between raw or jpg anyway.

I'm not picking on anybody, I don't care who shoots what. What works for me works, and that's why I do it. You do what you do, I'm just merely engaging in conversation.

kirkt wrote in post #18460515
This implies that you know what everyone here shoots and that shooting raw is essentially a crutch for poor photographic chops. Ouch!

kirk

I wasn't implying anything, I was simply saying that maybe it's not the file format you use, it's your ability, your method, etc. It wasn't a pointed "you" at anybody, it was a blanket "you" to cover anyone who doesn't use themselves, their gear, etc., to the best or their abilities. I do what I can in-camera, in technique, etc., when I shoot so I won't have to sit at the computer trying to get a good photo.

You cannot always get the shot correct out of camera, because a) cameras still cannot shoot a wide DR scene cleanly and b) sometimes conditions and timing don't allow for perfect settings, both in picture styles and exposure. I am a huge proponent of shooting out of camera JPG with the latest bodies, but even I know that raw provides a very good backup when things happen. If someone thinks that each shot could be managed with the proper picture styles, WB, and DR/exposure, then I would counter back saying that person doesn't shoot enough variety or time-sensitive material in changing conditions, or that person isn't getting the best shots possible of scene because they are changing settings and miss opportunities.

When I shoot sports for instance, the lighting and color is different all over the venue, and I don't have time to constantly tweak settings to get a great JPG. I set up my settings so that a majority come out great, and other cases, I need the raw to change some things, especially in a mixed lighting venue with high power LEDs, some colored filters, and old gas lights.

Also, with the older bodies, the JPG engine was TERRIBLE. So one has to temper their comments in relation to the cameras being used. Until the past few years, all of Canon's models produced subpar JPG results. One could ALWAYS take the raw file and produce a better result in the end than anything out of camera. That gap has narrowed substantially since.

Again NOBODY is saying that the recipients are the ones that notice raw vs JPG results being handed them, rather that raw provides a good elemental backup should you need to change things after the fact, and that raw might fit somebody's workflow better than JPG for efficiency or storage or processing needs. One or two here say they can look at JPG and know whether it came out of camera or from a raw, and that I quite honestly disbelieve because I can produce an inferior JPG from a raw just as well as a camera might.