on camera sharpening of pictures

Titus213 wrote in post #2279179
So knowing how to use a tool means you can't get by without it? Not so! Do you use the meter in the camera or do you use the sunny-16 rule for exposure?

sorry to jump back here a little bit. what is the sunny-16 rule?

bphillips330 wrote in post #2288817
sorry to jump back here a little bit. what is the sunny-16 rule?

When it is sunny outside, set your aperture to f/16 and your shutter speed to match you film speed. This results in a pretty close proper exposure.

rabidcow wrote in post #2288886
When it is sunny outside, set your aperture to f/16 and your shutter speed to match you film speed. This results in a pretty close proper exposure.

And I think you also have to shoot with the sun at your back

rabidcow wrote in post #2288886
When it is sunny outside, set your aperture to f/16 and your shutter speed to match you film speed. This results in a pretty close proper exposure.

Phew! that reminds me of when I was a kid! With the "box brownie" type camera - sans meter of course, the recommendation for "bright sunshine" with 100 ASA film was 1/25 at f11!

Rumrunner wrote in post #2287976
Well said, but with all due respect, I don't agree with you 100%. I know whenever I ask for advice like this, I love to see strong opinions and diversity so I can gather the experience of many people, and make my own descision. If I want a list of pros and cons, I can find that on Google.

Thats fine, a strong opinion is fine, just make sure folks know that is what it is. Telling someone else they are wrong is not an opinion, you are stating something as fact.

A lot of folks asking these questions are new to the site or new to photography in general and when someone that has 3000 or 5000 posts and a 15 line sig of equipment comes on and says that "this is the way you must do it because its the best way" then those folks will tend to take that as fact due to the posters seniority or apparent knowledge because of the way its stated.

The issue is that they are not always speaking the truth.

Then someone that might only have 100 posts and no equipment or websites in his sig comes on and rebutts the senior poster and the noob (for lack of better word) will tend to still believe the senior member even if the second poster has been working professionally for 30 years and shooting digital since the days of slinging a hdd over your shoulder for a 1mp $30,000 camera and be making $300,000/year from his photography.

Telling someone they are wrong is just not the right way to do it. You can feel strong about what you do and what you use, but just because someoene else does it differently doesnt mean they're wrong.

I have had measurebator hobbyists on the internet tell me I'm wrong for shooting jpegs and would do better shooting RAW. Well, I have ten$ of thou$sand$ of reasons to tell them that I'm not wrong, I'm just different. I also take more photos in a weekend than they do in a year and have shot more RAW images in my life than they have taken photos, so dont tell me I'm wrong and just because they have 5000 posts doesnt mean they know more than me, it just means they spend more time talking about how much they think they know.

People just need to realize that there are not things that are absolutes and they need to state their opinions as opinion and not fact. They can do it strongly and fight till the end to try to prove something they believe, but dont tell people they're wrong.

Heck, even facts arent necessarily going to lead to absolutes. Yes, RAW captures more data (12 bit vs. 8 bit), yes RAW allows for more lattitude in the adjustments later in the computer, and yes RAW is technically a better image to start with.

Does that mean the final image will always be better? No.

Yes its a fact that RAW is "better," will it always make a difference though, NO.

A good thing for many to read is the "Misinformation" section of Digital Photo Pro magazine. In each issue they have this column that goes over just these kinds of things. I have three sitting here and here are the titles:

Myth: A full frame camera is better than a small frame one
Myth: JPEG images cant be changed other than in small adjustments (shows how to change WB and other significant things on a jpeg)
Myth: Color space has the most important effect on color (talks about sRGB vs Adobe RGB)

Its usually the last page of the mag and one page. Even if you dont get the mag (which is excellent btw), go in and read it each month in the bookstore. It breaks down a lot of these myths that get perpetuated like aRGB always better than sRGB, jpeg vs. RAW, FF vs. cropped sensors, Nikon vs. Canon (JK) .

Seriously, we need to stop the absolutes and know there is always other ways to do the job just cause you believe something doesnt mean it will work for all and it doesnt mean that they are any less of a photographer than you...sometimes they may just be more.

And as a disclaimer, this kind of sounds like its personal with me for being called out on shooting jpegs, that is not the case at all, I couldnt care less what people think other than my clients. What it is about is making sure that posters get the proper information to base their decisions on and I usually take the role of devil's advocate in many of these debates of "what is better." I'm a Canon user that strongly defends Nikon when the FACTS support it. I'm a Mac user that strongly defends PCs when the facts support it. I'm a strong believer in doing thins in post production (even on jpegs), but will defend those that want it straight from the camera when there is reason. There are legit reasons for everything and I like to make sure that folks asking questions get them all, not just the popular ones.

vwpilot wrote in post #2289696
Thats fine, a strong opinion is fine, just make sure folks know that is what it is. Telling someone else they are wrong is not an opinion, you are stating something as fact.

And as a disclaimer, this kind of sounds like its personal with me for being called out on shooting jpegs, that is not the case at all, I couldnt care less what people think other than my clients. What it is about is making sure that posters get the proper information to base their decisions on and I usually take the role of devil's advocate in many of these debates of "what is better." I'm a Canon user that strongly defends Nikon when the FACTS support it. I'm a Mac user that strongly defends PCs when the facts support it. I'm a strong believer in doing thins in post production (even on jpegs), but will defend those that want it straight from the camera when there is reason. There are legit reasons for everything and I like to make sure that folks asking questions get them all, not just the popular ones.

I cropped that quote down, but, that speaks perfectly about how I look at things. There is never an absolute to anything, well within reason. It is all opinion, and I knew I was opening a can of worms when I asked the question way in the beginning of this post. I am into photography and home theater and I am so happy I found this website along with hometheaterspot.com (great spot for home theater, set up just like this site) and people are just as passionate about there views.

This is all art to a degree. I take all the advice I can get and use it to better my photography and get different points of views on how to do different things. It is not everyday you can "sit down" with professionals and amateurs at the same time and get unbiased opinions, well I guess biased could fit in there also , on people with tons of experience.

Thanks again. I have enjoyed reading the banter going back and forth and learning a lot.

bphillips330 wrote in post #2288817
sorry to jump back here a little bit. what is the sunny-16 rule?

Also, here is a link that explains it in detail..

http://en.wikipedia.or​g/wiki/Sunny_16

Yep ,the important thing to remember is it works only in bright, direct sunlight .Not for early morning or twilight or hazy overcast days .It is for for subjects with average tonality that are not closeups.
Not my words but in my John Shaw book Nature Photography Field Guide.
Regards
Don

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.

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.

If you are talking about normalising the raw image to an 8-bit JPEG before hand then I don't see how that is really a fair test. Could you expand a little more on what you mean?

e-k

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. .

That would kind of defeat the reason to shoot RAW IMHO.
I use RAW in high contrast situations for instance, so I can develop a CR2 twice (or thrice). Once for shadows, once for highlights, and blend exposures. I can then also FI use a bit more NR on the 'shadow' exposure. If you just batch convert a RAW to jpg, you might as well start off with a jpg. Maybe I just don't understand what you mean however...

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.

Not exactly the test you were looking for, but I did some comparisons last year. Here's the original proper exposure:

ok i have taken a bunch of raw files and converted them to tif. Noticed they were HUGE files. 26 + megs where the raw is 10 megs. so i tried the 8 bit tif i think it is. or the one that is compressed, still roughly the same size. converted it to jpg and it was 4 megs or so like a camera would be. Is there a way to convert raw to tiff without the file doubling in size?? that will fill a dvd in no time, or is that the main dillema of converting to tiff.

bphillips330 wrote in post #2294193
ok i have taken a bunch of raw files and converted them to tif. Noticed they were HUGE files. 26 + megs where the raw is 10 megs. so i tried the 8 bit tif i think it is. or the one that is compressed, still roughly the same size. converted it to jpg and it was 4 megs or so like a camera would be. Is there a way to convert raw to tiff without the file doubling in size?? that will fill a dvd in no time, or is that the main dillema of converting to tiff.

Short answer is yes (to making the TIFF smaller). TIFF supports various kinds of compression, it's a question of whether the application you are trying to use to edit them supports the same compression method.

Is there a reason you want to keep the TIFF? Why not just keep the RAW file with the embedded (or as a separate file) adjustments? You can recreate the TIFF at will in that case.

e-k

bphillips330 wrote in post #2294193
ok i have taken a bunch of raw files and converted them to tif. Noticed they were HUGE files. 26 + megs where the raw is 10 megs. so i tried the 8 bit tif i think it is. or the one that is compressed, still roughly the same size. converted it to jpg and it was 4 megs or so like a camera would be. Is there a way to convert raw to tiff without the file doubling in size?? that will fill a dvd in no time, or is that the main dillema of converting to tiff.

You'r stuck with this.

The RAW file data is organised as 12-bits per pixel plus some meta data and a low resolution jpg for the camera to generate screen images and histograms from. There is some lossless compression possibly of the most significat 8-bits. The sizes range from 6-12Mb depending of complexity of detail in the image.

TIFs or PSDs are 16 or 8 bit per pixel per colour, so for a 20D they are 24Mb or 48Mb, I have never found compression helps much so I don't bother with it.

JPG is a lossy compression and can be typically a few Mb but are only 8-bit width and will have some artifacts due to the lossy nature of the compression.

Those are the tradeoffs.

I keep all my shots in RAW unless I need to do something with it I can't in my RAW converter. That includes most global adjustments to contrast, curves, exposure, brightness, colour temperature, shadow point and saturation as well as cropping, straightening and lens corrections.

If that's all I need to do I just store the RAW file and sidecar file that contains the adjustment metadata. I run of web or print versions from these using standadized sharpening routines as needed.

Using ACR what I can't do is mostly:-

- Clone Stamp Work
- Localised luminosity adjustments like brightness and contrast using masks and masked adjusment layers
- Overlay of several differnt exposures, perhaps from different frames or different RAW conversions of the same frame.
- Focus Stacking
- Non-standard sharpening and noise reduction

So for this I store 16-bit PSDs and normally preserve all the additional layers.

I then spin off web and print versions of these as needed.

So just storing the RAW is not too bad as only a small number of images need to fiddled with to a greater extent. (It's a damm shame ACR does not store clon stamp operations like DPP does.)

Storage is so cheap these days, a 320Gb internal harddrive costs £100 and a 500Gb firewire drive £240 and getting cheaper all the time. That's on average about 0.35p per RAW and about 5p per PSD assuming I have 3 full layers in it.

I know some people just do their processing and store the JPG deleting the RAW and intermediate PSD files. To me that is like keeping your prints but throwing away the negatives.