RAW photography

andy owen

andy owen

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Name
Andy
Edit My Images
Yes
I need some advice....

Before I buy my first SLR in June (D90 or D300) I need to learn all about RAW and what it is. My current camera (Fuji s100fs) shoots in Raw but until recently I couldnt open the images because I had CS3 which doesnt support my camera. But now Ive got a CS4 which does. However, Ive taken photos in RAW and looked at them and dont really know what Im looking for. When I switch to RAW format the amount of pics I can take on my SD card greatly reduces so Im guesing the file sizes are bigger.
Could somebody please give me some advice on this or even point me in the direction of a good tutorial?
 
I guess the easiest way to understand it is to think about what you're getting from your current jpeg files first.
The camera sensor detects the light falling on it then the internal electronics apply an automatic white balance to ensure that the whites in the photo are actually saved as white in the file (your eye does this automatically but lots of different 'white' light is actually different colours). Then they apply a bunch of sharpening, saturation and contrast filters to create what the manufacturers think is a good looking photo.
Jpegs also have inbuilt compression which reduces the amount of storage space they use, at the expense of resolution or quality.

RAW files store all of the information from your camera's sensor in a pretty uncompressed format which is why they take up so much space. The camera doesn't apply all of those automatic settings so what you end up with often doesn't actually look very good when you open them up on the computer. They're larger, look worse and take longer to write to the memory card.

So why use them? Because they store the basic information from the sensor without worrying about size or filters you have the ability to apply your own changes in something like CS4 or Lightroom. These settings are hopefully going to allow you to be more creative in your final treatment than if you where relying on the automatic settings from your camera.
 
Hi Andy,

Here goes, I'm not the best at explaining this but:

RAW is often referred to as a digital negative and is a bigger format because it holds much more information than your standard JPEG or TIFF.

A JPEG is processed to a degree and also compressed in camera, such as sharpening, contrast and saturation adjustments etc, whereas a RAW will require post processing with image editing software afterward.

Another benefit with shooting in RAW is the potential recovery or range of adjustments, for example, highlights and shadow detail.

If you happen to have a areas of your image with blown highlights then it's possible to recover the detail to a certain degree, JPEG is much more limited in this respect.
White balance can be drastically altered and has much larger range of adjustment in comparison to JPEG.

Much more can be achieved with RAW format, it's a much more versatile and flexible when it comes to post processing.
 
Tomas Whitehouse said:
Another benefit with shooting in RAW is the potential recovery or range of adjustments, for example, highlights and shadow detail.
Click to expand...

Oh goody an argument :D
Tomas, I have preferences set on CS3 to "prefer camera raw" and as such Jpegs
open with that giving me a pretty good range of " tweaks"
The shadows highlight function is also pretty damned good in CS3 for Jpegs

I do shoot in RAW sometimes but really for me are are no real benefits.

Andy what I would say to you is that there is no real reason to shoot RAW
"straight away" with your new set up. Try both and see which you prefer

Also as you have guess the file sizes are a lot bigger
on my 40D its more than double its something like ( Max quality) 5 or 6 Mb Jpeg
 
Thanks for the advice and comments. I will have a play when i get said SLR. One more question...........
Ive been told that the colours in RAW file are a lot 'richer' than in JPEG. Even 'Digital Photo' magazine say the same. However, is the richness and detail dependant on print finishing? I'll tell you why I ask, Ive taken pics with my current camera in RAW of flowers in bloom and taken the same images in Jpeg. Then ive looked at both formats on my laptop and I seriously dont see the difference. Is it because my laptop limits the resolution? would I see any differences with printed images?
 
Personally I have never noticed a difference
That, I would imagine would be down to processing and the camera sensor and lens combination,
but I will wait and see what others have to say
 
I doubt with the technology in those two cameras there can possibly be a difference, they are both amazing bits of technology :D
 
andy owen said:
... Ive been told that the colours in RAW file are a lot 'richer' than in JPEG. Even 'Digital Photo' magazine say the same. .... Ive taken pics with my current camera in RAW of flowers in bloom and taken the same images in Jpeg. Then ive looked at both formats on my laptop and I seriously dont see the difference.
Click to expand...
I'd say that the colours are potentially a lot richer in RAW than in JPEG.

With RAW you have to boost them yourself in Photoshop (or Lightroom or whatever), and more influence on the final image is left to the photographer (whereas in JPEG it's done automagically).

I'm surprised you can't see any difference, but it may depend on your camera. I thought that (mostly?) JPEGs had some boost / saturation / sharpening applied automatically, and to get the same image with RAW you had to apply the same adjustments by hand.

What's valuable about RAW, IMO, is the possibility to fix images that I've fouled up a little bit. An image that has been underexposed, or if the lighting's simply poor, you may be able to correct that in RAW, whereas the JPEG file will not contain enough information to do that well. I've seen several images posted this week that needed colour correction, but when I apply that to the low-res JPEG the results are less than satisfying (and the levels tool clearly shows the missing information). I'm not sure if hi-res straight-from-camera JPEG may give better colour-correction results, but it's certainly less than optimal, and all the guides (the WhiBal™ website, for example) recommend shooting in RAW.

I definitely think it's worth shooting in RAW and I also think it's worth embracing to some degree the post-processing (Photoshop &c) process. I like to play around with the "levels" adjustments - you can usually see the difference (and improvements) made by cutting off the "dead" unused parts at either end of the histogram.

Stroller.
 
To clarify, it's not RAW, it's raw. It's not a file format in the way JPEG is, a raw file is just that, raw, unprocessed data.

Think of a raw file as an undeveloped negative, where as a JPEG is more like a Polaroid print that has been processed in-camera.
 
I hope it might be helpful to describe it like this.

All images start off as Raw files, and they all have to be processed into a JPEG for final output regardless. You can either do that processing in-camera, or later on the PC.

The difference is that in-camera, you have to decide which processing parameters you want before you take the picture. There are lots of options available through the Picture Styles pre-sets and other camera settings, and if you are confident you know what you want, then there is honestly no point in shooting Raw.

However, you are often not 100% confident of optimum exposure and white balance, and you might well want to do more than just basic processing of the image. In that case, there is more headroom in the Raw file, and you can tweak and re-tweak it again and again as much as you like.

The simple solution is to shoot both Raw and JPEG, and all DSLRs allow you to do this. The only penalty is memory, but that is cheap. (You will also run out of memory buffer much sooner, and if you rattle off a lot of pictures with the motordrive flat out, this could be a problem. The handbook will have details.)

If you are seeing your Raws and they look just like your JPEGs, this is quite likely because often the camera will tag your JPEG camera settings to the Raw file, to give you a basic starting point for post processing. Without this, Raws look very flat and dull. If you do nothing to the Raw, then these pre-sets will be applied by default to the final image, but you can always remove them or modify them to your heart's content.
 
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