Raw or JPeg 2nd shooter Wedding Recp.

go raw the power of raw is great and can save some shots.
The workflow can be a pain but i like the processing power it provides.
Once you go raw you will not go back

Wow .... thanks for all the great feedback !

I am now on a quest to work with RAW, perhaps my question may have been a bit silly as I will do what the boss wants me to do ( primary shooter ) but on a personal level for other shoots on my own, I have always shot jpeg. I think the reason why is back then my computer was not all that fast and it really could not handle raw processing.

But I have since upgraded and I am in hopes of using the extra power I have to try out some raw processing.

I have 2 programs I use most often and that is ACDSee Pro and DXO Pro - so I will see how those work out for Raw Processing.

Have a great new year all !

Dave

Think of it like this, If you wanted a B&W photo what would you do? If you are like 99% of the digital shooters you will shoot in color and convert to B&W because you can control the image. That is what shooting RAW does, It allows you to correct the image before sending to photoshop to be tweeked. JPG is nice for size and speed but for quality go for RAW.

I forgot the other reason why I shoot small JPEG, people always want copies of the pictures in JPEG. I don't give out RAW because they don't know how to use it and I can put a lot more small JPEG files on a CD than with the RAW files included. It saves me a lot of time just saving the JPEG files and I still have the rights to the RAW files if people want them. I don't ever give those out for free, the data is sacred in my hard drive.

rhys wrote in post #2475536
I found that RAW allows me to balance the highlights and shadows better. Having said that, the Fuji S3 Pro balances them for you and saves as JPEG too which saves a ton of hassle.

Does this mean you shoot with an S3Pro?

same sentiments as above...shoot in the preferences of the prime. I enjoy shooting raw because it gives me the piece of mind knowing that if I over/under expose, am a bit off with color balance, then I know I can correct it with the raw file. I know this can be done with the jpegs, but in my experience, the results correcting with raw vs. jpeg are much better. When correcting exposure in jpeg sometimes it just looks too "fake" to me. It's all personal preference I guess, but I suggest following the prime's lead.

It was suggested that you have a laptop or something to download the cards to during the wedding. Personally I do not reuse a card during a job. If you make a mistake you are in big trouble. I make a point of having my work backed up on CD/DVDs (as well as the hard disk) before I reformat the cards.

ModernPics wrote in post #2485321
I have 2 programs I use most often and that is ACDSee Pro and DXO Pro - so I will see how those work out for Raw Processing.

ACDSee is a pretty decent organizer and a program do some some quick down and dirty post processing, but in terms of raw conversion, I think it limits you a bit. I've never been satisfied with the results. I like using Adobe Camera Raw for my conversions. I can't put my finger on it, but when I convert with ACDSee, the shots seem dull to me. Could be all in my head though!

Absolutely shoot in RAW. Shooting in JPG only on a camera capable of RAW is like buying a Corvette and only using 4 cylinders of the engine.

True, there may be many times where you can't see a difference, or very little. Then there are other times when you can get so much better an image with RAW. My goal is to give the client the best quality I can and RAW helps me do that. JPG is 8 bit color which means 255 shades of each Red, Green, and Blue. RAW will get you 4096 shades of each. Now one thing very important to know is that a monitor will not show you as many colors as RAW can capture, which is why sometimes you can not see a difference between 16 and 8 bit. So why does it matter? Because even though you can not see it, it will allows you to adjust levels, saturation, contrast, etc. without losing/damaging any data. If you slide the highlight or shadow slider in Levels in Photoshop with an 8 bit image you will damage/lose data (and you are starting with less data right off). This can cause visual posterization, I see it all the time with images people edit in 8 bit. You slide these sliders with 16 bit and chances are it will be pulling all the 'extra' data into play to help fill in all the would be gaps an 8 bit image would have. Many times I have pulled data in from 'blown' highlights on a 16 bit image that would have been lost in an 8 bit.

I attended a seminar that Kevin Ames taught on digital imaging and he showed us something amazing. Back in the early days of digital SLR Kodak gave Kevin their highest end camera and sent him to Africa to capture some images to help them market the camera. He showed us some of those images as they used them back then. They were great shots, impressive stuff. Kevin shot is RAW on that assignment so he showed us something interesting. He brought these RAW files into Photoshop and re-processed them with today's latest version of the software and guess what... the images now blew away the original ones used a few years back. Because the software gets better the images can get better. But you must use RAW, this is all the original data. Jpg will throw away 7/8ths of the data captured! 7/8ths! So really it would be like running a Corvette on one cylinder, not 4.

Dermit wrote in post #2492628
Absolutely shoot in RAW. Shooting in JPG only on a camera capable of RAW is like buying a Corvette and only using 4 cylinders of the engine.

fantastic analogy.

I shoot everything in RAW even my fun shots, I then dump it into bridge add +9 to saturation and auto the rest and let her run, have a nice coffee or glass of wine come back in half hour or so check the pictures, some will need a bit of extra work but usually they are good to show people.

The ones I want will then go to cs2 for any extra work.

beats the hell out of jpeg if your a little out then bridge will fix for you just look at dj's videos to see that.

Martin.

I always shoot in RAW. Since it has a bit more latitude than Jpeg, it becomes easier to correct the mistakes in exposure. Also you can fine tune the white balance and colour temperature. With 1GB RAM, my computer handles RAW as fast as any Jpeg.

I would also assume since you are the second shooter that you won't be processing the images anyhow. Most of the time, the second surrenders the CF cards to the primary photographer for processing. This lends to greater continuity for the album.