RAW is for lousy photographers (but good computer nerds)

I fear I may have expressed myself badly. Like mbellot, I enjoy stage photography, and without RAW I would not have results that I like - see http://www.stagepics.c​o.uk for what I do.

Instead, my concern is that (in other scenarios) I am coming to rely on RAW too much because of what it lets me recover, and that I don't spend enough effort on getting it right first time. I was wondering if anyone else found that happening to them, too.

regards,
/alan

I am finding myself getting a little lazier after I started shooting RAW.

Alan, photographers for years developed their own film for the ability to obtain the images as they saw them in their mind (not always what was there).

I certainly didnt get lazier shooting raw- if anything i became more aware of what i needed to try to get right. There are times (esp when time is pressing) that you simply dont have the time to adjust all the settings you need to to get the perfect image.

My final thought is why let an algorithim (Jpeg) that someone dreamed up years ago (10+ IIRC) make the decisions of how my images are gonna look? I want that control.

Shooting Raw allows me to capture images the way I want, and do some things I couldn't have done on jpg (or slide film for that matter).
I used to shoot slide film and cross process, then have a hand print made, with dodgeing and burning... That's about the same as editing a raw, only done by me instead of someone else...

alan_potter wrote in post #5730563
I fear I may have expressed myself badly. Like mbellot, I enjoy stage photography, and without RAW I would not have results that I like - see http://www.stagepics.c​o.uk for what I do.

Very nice, some of the shots in "STF Productions - We Will Rock You" are precisely why I would only shoot RAW in a theater.

My latest endeavor can be found here.

alan_potter wrote in post #5730563
Instead, my concern is that (in other scenarios) I am coming to rely on RAW too much because of what it lets me recover, and that I don't spend enough effort on getting it right first time. I was wondering if anyone else found that happening to them, too.

Look at it this way, you spend the time fixing everything before it gets into the camera or after in PP.

Either way you have spent the time to "get it right", you're just time shifting the point when it happens.

Shooting RAW shouldn't be an excuse for being lazy about proper exposure. Even RAW can't rescue some badly exposed shots -- blown highlights can still be blown, and underexposed shots can still be too noisy. But, still, if we get out exposure messed up we do have more latitude to try to fix it.

Plus, in high contrast scenes, the "right exposure" will tend to be a compromise between, say, a dimly lit subject in the foreground and a bright sky in the background. You take your best shot, and if you're shooting RAW you have more of a capability to then get highlights and shadows evened out.

But the other elements that the camera does with in-camera jpeg processing are very real considerations: contrast, saturation, sharpening and white balance are "hard coded" into the jpeg, according to your picture styles and your WB setting. You can try to fine tune these things in a photo editor but you have given up a lot of creative control to the camera's simple settings. The camera applies all of these things then shrinks the original data down so you have less to work with.

There are good reasons that many photogs shoot jpegs, mainly speed and volume in shooting, speed and convenience in getting a shot from the camera to be viewed and used right away, and then economy in disk drive space. Some jpeg shooters have even found programs such as Lightroom good for quick editing of their images since Lightroom can do non-destructive editing of jpegs, which is cool.

But, all that doesn't negate the very substantial benefits of shooting RAW. It's just that for some, they are happy without RAW and prefer the convenience of jpeg. Different strokes...

For me, RAW was one of the compelling reasons for me to start with DSLRs, and I haven't looked back.

I shoot jpeg because I'm too lazy to learn how to shoot using RAW. Oh well, at least my 2GB CF card can hold about 450 jpeg shots.

One of the worst nomenclatural mishaps in the digital photography sector was the pairing of 'RAW' and 'recovery.' RAW is not a magical potion that reconstructs detail that disappeared due to user error. It simply extracts more information from the sensor---which the user correctly captured--than does lossy JPEG.

The red blinking on the back of the camera's LCD might in fact be a result of improper exposure, but it is also a reflection of JPEG's deficiencies. RAW typically gives the user an extra stop in dynamic range, as people have analogously noted by citing the difference between color slides and negatives. This is not a "crutch," but merely a technical differentiation that may or may not benefit the user.

As I have noted in other threads, if you use JPEG and set parameters in camera, you are still relying on a form of post processing; that is not debatable.

For optimal results, you need to expose correctly whether you are using JPEG or RAW.

PacAce wrote in post #5729994
During the film days, all decent photographers were using the Land Polaroid cameras. They got the image coming straight out of the camera and didn't mess with any of that post processing stuff like developing the films and prints.

Those of us shooting slides generally didn't mess with any of that post-processing stuff, either. Those who shot Kodachrome couldn't mess with post-processing.

All of this "I'm better than you" stuff that goes on in these threads is a waste of time. Everyone has different likes, different needs, different styles, different visions, different equipment, etc. And different techniques.

There's room for everybody, and good photographs can be produced using just about any tools and techniques. And for some of us, it isn't even about the photographs anyway…

I shot RAW because blah, blah, BLAH, Blah, BlAh, blaH.......oh never mind. It really doesn't matter.

stathunter wrote in post #5730088
Shoot RAW & JPEG and you will have the best of bother worlds.

I started doing that as well. Since sometimes Its nice to be able to have something I can quickly hand off to a family member rather than have to pp and convert everything. That way the few keepers straight from the camera can be used right away and the ones with potential will have a raw to PP.


Sucks for the buffer tho, I find myself filling mine up very fast using this combo.

Doug Pardee wrote in post #5732905
Those of us shooting slides generally didn't mess with any of that post-processing stuff, either. Those who shot Kodachrome couldn't mess with post-processing.

All of this "I'm better than you" stuff that goes on in these threads is a waste of time. Everyone has different likes, different needs, different styles, different visions, different equipment, etc. And different techniques.

There's room for everybody, and good photographs can be produced using just about any tools and techniques. And for some of us, it isn't even about the photographs anyway…

Yes, I agree with you 100%.

(In case it wasn't very obvious, my post was a tongue-in-cheek reply to the OP. I don't bother trying to justify my using RAW anymore.)

qtaran111 wrote in post #5730174
Developing your own film negatives was lousy for photographers (but good for chemists)

I like that

Doug Pardee wrote in post #5732905
Those of us shooting slides generally didn't mess with any of that post-processing stuff, either. Those who shot Kodachrome couldn't mess with post-processing.

Sure we could. Ever hear of Cibachrome?

Thanks everyone. As I have said before, I'm not attacking RAW or asking anyone to justify its use. I use it for show photos and without it I wouldn't have photos worth looking at. I just wonder whether using it makes it too easy to "just shoot" and worry about the technicalities - especially colour balance - later.

Cheers for now,

regards,
/alan

PS mbellot - lovely dance shots. It disappoints me that my daughter has no interest in ballet, and so I have no opportunity to shoot the local dance schools' recitals