on camera sharpening of pictures

joegolf68 wrote in post #2292826
I would love to see a test where RAW shooters had to view and edit RAW and JPEG, same image, w/o knowledge if it is RAW or JPEG and see if they could really tell the difference on the majority of pictures. Hard test to design, for sure, but it would be fascinating to test it out. Both pictures would have to be pretty good to start with some processing done to the RAW in advance. Oh well, silly thing, but I just personally believe that some of the RAW fever is peer driven. NOT all, but maybe with a few folks. As a rookie, I simply don't know, I just throw it out as an hypothesis. No flames please, pretty please. This is not directed at anyone here or any poster in this thread.

The way to do this would be to take a properly exposed photo that was shot in RAW + jpeg and let the RAW folks at the RAW file and the jpeg folks at the jpeg and then see if people can tell the difference between the FINAL product in quality when printed.

My guess is that there wouldnt be many, if any, that would be able to tell which one came from RAW and which ones came from jpeg.

vwpilot wrote in post #2294826
The way to do this would be to take a properly exposed photo that was shot in RAW + jpeg and let the RAW folks at the RAW file and the jpeg folks at the jpeg and then see if people can tell the difference between the FINAL product in quality when printed.

My guess is that there wouldnt be many, if any, that would be able to tell which one came from RAW and which ones came from jpeg.

I think if the shot is correctly exposed, of modest contrast and not needed significant changes in WB or local luminosity masking there is not much or any issue.

Of course changes can still be made to a JPG although the scope for significant luminosity adjustment to deal with high contrast will be limited due to the bit width, WB can still be adjusted although not as direct as with RAW.

The main risks are banding for significant changes of luminosity and WB due to the bit width, increased quantisation noise if the user tries to recover shadow detail too close to the lower end of the DR again due to the bit width and increased JPG artefacts from (at minimum) two JPG saves, one by the camera and one by the editor.

If these risk become significant depends on the subject and the amount of work needed.

If I was shooting several weddings a week with many hundred shots each I would not be wanting to run them all through a RAW converter even if they did not need changes, but I would use RAW + JPG to make sure if there was an unexpected problem with a key shot I could recover things with maximum IQ for the client.

If I was shooting many different and varying shots then I would choose RAW to give me maximum control.

The whole issue is rather like the old slide film vs. negative film debate with a snob’s view that you "really" had to know what you were doing to use slide film due to the limited dynamic range.

I think there were a number of good reasons to shoot slide, a major one for me was retaining control over the process. Yes you could do cibachrome prints from slide, you could also develop and print your own colour negative film, but without lots of expensive kit it was expensive and time consuming, I tried it (I did love cibachrome prints colour saturation).

This was not an issue for B&W where you could shoot negative film and do your own developing and printing. This gave you the opportunity to dodge and shade etc just like one can with PP in Photoshop. But now the photographer can have complete creative control over the process and RAW allows maximum capture of information for this.

So like most things its a question of using the right tool for the job, JPG and RAW each have their strengths and weaknesses, there is no one right answer for everyone and every situation.

vwpilot wrote in post #2294826
The way to do this would be to take a properly exposed photo that was shot in RAW + jpeg and let the RAW folks at the RAW file and the jpeg folks at the jpeg and then see if people can tell the difference between the FINAL product in quality when printed.

My guess is that there wouldnt be many, if any, that would be able to tell which one came from RAW and which ones came from jpeg.

The RAW people would have more experience with PP so I guess the RAW image would be better because of that too. But just for fun:

Here's a picture I took on my geography trip (not my best, a general snapshot).

RAW:

http://myweb.tiscali.c​o.uk/ilia2u/IMG_8748.C​R2

Jpeg:

http://myweb.tiscali.c​o.uk/ilia2u/IMG_8748.j​pg

Make the final image 600 by 900, 95% compression and a 100% crop would be nice of an area.

Heres my go with the RAW

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

Lester Wareham wrote in post #2295159
If I was shooting several weddings a week with many hundred shots each I would not be wanting to run them all through a RAW converter even if they did not need changes, but I would use RAW + JPG to make sure if there was an unexpected problem with a key shot I could recover things with maximum IQ for the client.

Wouldn't it depend on how quick a turn around time you needed? You could just batch process them overnight

e-k

If i do weddings for another studio, then i shoot whatever they want. For ex: most studios just want large JPG's to streamline there workflow. However, i have had requests for RAW only. I personally prefer shooting both as a "what if" factor.

It was more a comment on being able to get the JPEG from the RAW by doing a batch conversion in say DPP where you use the "as shot" settings (i.e. why shoot RAW+JPEG if you have the time to do a batch overnight). If you're not keeping anything and just handing the film over, so to speak, then it makes sense to give them whatever they ask for.