Why shoot in RAW?

dugcross wrote in post #9626453
No, you're misunderstanding what I said. If you open the same jpg file over and over again it will start to degrade. Granted this is something that most people wont be able to see but over time it shows up in the histogram. There is no miss-truth here. What you are talking about is copying a file off a disc and re-saving it, that is not at all what I'm talking about. But once you save the file to your hard drive and over time keep opening and re-saving that exact file it will happen.

The two statements in red are contradictory. If you just OPEN a JPG file, there is NO degradation WHATSOEVER! How could there be? You're not modifying the file at all.

Obviously, IF you re-save it, you're basically doing another round of lossy compression and writing out the newly compressed data to a file (which might happen to have the same filename as the original) But why would you re-compress/save if you're just viewing the file?

The "mis-truth" is often quoted as something along the lines of "Everytime you view a JPG in MS-Windows Picture Viewer, it degrades"

egordon99 wrote in post #9626491
The two statements in red are contradictory. If you just OPEN a JPG file, there is NO degradation WHATSOEVER! How could there be? You're not modifying the file at all.

Obviously, IF you re-save it, you're basically doing another round of lossy compression and writing out the newly compressed data to a file (which might happen to have the same filename as the original) But why would you re-compress/save if you're just viewing the file?

The "mis-truth" is often quoted as something along the lines of "Everytime you view a JPG in MS-Windows Picture Viewer, it degrades"

No, you're right, if you're just viewing a JPEG without re-saving, there is no data loss. I'm talking about when you do open it and do whatever or nothing and resaving, in the re-writing of the file there is some fractional data loss.Here I got this directly off of Adobe's web site

"The way that the JPEG format compresses files is quite complicated, but all you need to worry about is the fact that you trade off image quality for smaller file sizes. The JPEG format is a "lossy" format, which means that some image quality is always lost in the process of compressing the image's file size."

YankeeMom wrote in post #9626487
I understand. I was referring to times when you nail it. I am new at RAW (just learning processing), so I have had to learn to nail the WB and exposure on jpegs for a long time. Most of the time, I get it right (or I try enough variations to get ONE of them right.)

Think of an example in a gym with your son/daughter about to score a goal to win a championship. You know that the photo you take will be hung on walls for years and friends and family will all want copies.
Do you
A) Shoot Jpeg and hope that your WB and exposure is perfect?
OR
B) shoot in RAW and know that even if the lighting has cycled, you can alter the WB and also recover that 1 stop of exposure because it was a dark section of the gym?

I know I can pretty much nail it 90% of the time, but I sure as heck want that comfort zone allowed by RAW just in case I didnt!

dugcross wrote in post #9626453
No, you're misunderstanding what I said. If you open the same jpg file over and over again it will start to degrade. Granted this is something that most people wont be able to see but over time it shows up in the histogram. There is no miss-truth here. What you are talking about is copying a file off a disc and re-saving it, that is not at all what I'm talking about. But once you save the file to your hard drive and over time keep opening and re-saving that exact file it will happen.

The part in bold and underlined in your quote is the un-truth.
The part about re-saving is important to the statement.

When new to digital people read this statement as fact, they could misunderstand because the"save over file" isn't mentioned. Any computer file will ask if you want to re-place the original file with the changed(degraded) file.
If they think that opening and viewing the file, closing could be considered re-saving.


Why would anyone save over a original file?

You can't save over a RAW file, only save the changes to a different file type. I've learned that you can save over an original jpeg, it's not idiot proof (personal experience:o).


I don't mean to nit picks, but simply opening and closing the file doesn't degrade it.


Doug,
1 minute passes by, and I find I'm already behind on this thread.
I should have read the last posts before continuing with my re-buttal.
I'll de-lete this if you want.
Save the changes as a different file and the original jpeg isn't degraded when it's closed.

DAMphyne wrote in post #9627417
The part in bold and underlined in your quote is the un-truth.
The part about re-saving is important to the statement.

When new to digital people read this statement as fact, they could misunderstand because the"save over file" isn't mentioned. Any computer file will ask if you want to re-place the original file with the changed(degraded) file.
If they think that opening and viewing the file, closing could be considered re-saving.


Why would anyone save over a original file?

You can't save over a RAW file, only save the changes to a different file type. I've learned that you can save over an original jpeg, it's not idiot proof (personal experience:o).

I don't mean to nit picks, but simply opening and closing the file doesn't degrade it.


Doug,
1 minute passes by, and I find I'm already behind on this thread.
I should have read the last posts before continuing with my re-buttal.
I'll de-lete this if you want.
Save the changes as a different file and the original jpeg isn't degraded when it's closed.

lol, no that quite alright. I typed that out in haste and didn't re-read before I posted it and didn't realized that I left out the part about resaving it. But working in the Graphic Design field I've seen people pull an image off a disc to use for a project, in the process changing the jpeg of few times, that's when you get the degradation. Yes you still have the original on the disc but it's what happens to it after that.

neilwood32 wrote in post #9627337
Think of an example in a gym with your son/daughter about to score a goal to win a championship. You know that the photo you take will be hung on walls for years and friends and family will all want copies.
Do you
A) Shoot Jpeg and hope that your WB and exposure is perfect?
OR
B) shoot in RAW and know that even if the lighting has cycled, you can alter the WB and also recover that 1 stop of exposure because it was a dark section of the gym?

I know I can pretty much nail it 90% of the time, but I sure as heck want that comfort zone allowed by RAW just in case I didnt!

Well, it's not really relevant to my OP, but I'd shoot RAW in that case. I was just questioning the fact that the camera is controlling the situation when you input the settings. IOW, whether I choose "sunny" WB in DPP or in my camera the results are the same -- I'm still in control.

(Again, I understand the benefit if I want to change the WB.)

YankeeMom wrote in post #9627612
Well, it's not really relevant to my OP, but I'd shoot RAW in that case. I was just questioning the fact that the camera is controlling the situation when you input the settings. IOW, whether I choose "sunny" WB in DPP or in my camera the results are the same -- I'm still in control.

(Again, I understand the benefit if I want to change the WB.)

I think you're missing the point. Yes you are in control on how you set your camera but that's not the issue. What we're talking about is after you set your camera to however you want it, then take the photo, it's the processing that's going on inside the camera is what we're talking about. After you set the camera, if you shoot JPEG, the camera is controlling the situation in processing the JPEG and the results it gives you, you're stuck with. You really won't be able to change it too much at all. Now if you shot RAW, then the camera does NO processing to the file and the result is a RAW file that you will have control in the processing to get the result you want. Basically if you shoot JPEG the camera processes the image, if you shoot RAW then you process the image. That's the camera control we're talking about.

Wait a minute, doesn't the computer process the RAW image?
If you know what the processor does and how to control it, who's in charge now?

DAMphyne wrote in post #9627935
Wait a minute, doesn't the computer process the RAW image?
If you know what the processor does and how to control it, who's in charge now?

My PC is MUCH more powerful than the little Digic processors in my Xsi/40D. Plus Lightroom gives you MUCH more control over the demosaicing process. DPP (and the JPG processor in the camera) only gives you ~5 "steps" for contrast/saturation/et​c...Plus can you even set the black point in-camera? You really do give up QUITE a bit of control when you shoot JPG.

Well, I'm not a pixel peeper and I think photography is a visual and tactile art.
As far as making my computer do all those things that I have no interest in, I'm busy shooting good pictures.
I'm sure they didn't spend any time or money developing the little processor in my camera, and some don't want to learn all the neat things the computer can do, just take pictures.

Having said that, I'm not a Pro that depends on photography for a living and if I were, I'd probably go the extra mile and learn this processing magic termed RAW.

After I sold my darkroom and film equipment, I decided I just want to have fun taking pictures without all the drudgery.

^ Fair enough

I actually enjoy post-processing! I put some good music on my iTunes (piped through a nice sound system), grab some coffee in the evening, and open up Lightroom. A typical "informal shoot around the house/field trip somewhere" might yield me ~200 pictures. In about 30 minutes, I can cull them down to 50-100 shots, process the "keepers" and have them up on my website to share with our family and friends. I currently have a wedding in my "Job Jar", which started out as 1300 images. I culled them down to ~700 (using Lightroom on my laptop while watching the Olympics), and I figure it will take no more than a couple of nights (~1-2 hours each night) to "tweak" them all and get them to the client.

As for "fun taking pictures", I have fun doing that too, AND I don't have to worry about White balance, contrast, Picture Styles...Allows me to focus more on the lighting/composition/e​xposure (stuff you CAN'T change with your raw processor)

DAMphyne wrote in post #9627935
Wait a minute, doesn't the computer process the RAW image?
If you know what the processor does and how to control it, who's in charge now?

No, you process in it Lightroom, Aperture or whatever program you use.

dugcross wrote in post #9628300
No, you process in it Lightroom, Aperture or whatever program you use.

Now who's nit-picking?
Try running Lightroom without a computer.
Myself, I use the program on the processor in my camera.

DAMphyne wrote in post #9628491
Now who's nit-picking?
Try running Lightroom without a computer.
Myself, I use the program on the processor in my camera.

lol, true but you're making the choice and adjusting the settings to your liking and then yes the computer does the work.

I wouldn't tell anyone to avoid using RAW, and the benefits are probably substantial.
For me, the camera does just fine.