RAW with the S5pro, is it worth it?

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Dave Pickett

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Dave Pickett
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As an experiment I switched to RAW today and took a few pics and then processed them in lightroom.

My initial impression is that the jpgs out of the camera produce a better more detailed image. Am I doing something wrong or do most S5 users use jpgs?
 
It'll take some work to make RAW shots looks better, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't get more detail by shooting RAW.

Perhaps the S5 is just quite aggressive with in camera sharpening, so you have to be more liberal with the sharpening to show the advantages of RAW?

By definition you should be able to make RAW files look at least as good as the jpeg's, since every jpeg comes from a RAW file.
 
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The S5is a strange beast, jpgs can be interpolated to 12mp by the camera, whilst RAW comes out at the sensors native 6mp.....
 
If you can, shoot Raw + jpeg, gives you a benchmark to work from, if you can't do any better and you are happy with your shots, stay with jpeg.
 
My brother shoots his S5 in RAW and jpeg. I've seen him do some amazing recoveries with his RAW files, the dynamic range head room is huuuuge. He demonstrated it to me once by shooting with bright light coming in through the window and blowing the highlights. Doing the same with my camera (Back then, the Nikon D700) in both RAW and jpeg, I could not recover the blown highlights whatsoever. With the RAW file from his S5, I was gobsmacked as he dragged on the slider and from what I could only describe as a huge white patch, the window brackets reappeared, and then the patterns on the lace privacy blinds. Even some of the scenery outside the window came back. So in my opinion, as suggested above, shoot RAW+jpeg. Maybe have the jpegs as your main files, but at least you have a RAW back-up too in case you get in to one of those situations where you want to retrieve the details in blown highlights/shadows etc. :)
 
What are your JPEG settings, Dave? There shouldn't be any in-camera sharpening or noise reduction applied to a RAW file (though I believe it can't be escaped with some cameras) and the S5 has a strong anti-alias filter to avoid interference patterns when photographing fabrics etc.

There'll be advice on RAW converters in the Fujifilm SLR forum at dpreview.
 
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R.Y.K. LEE said:
My brother shoots his S5 in RAW and jpeg. I've seen him do some amazing recoveries with his RAW files, the dynamic range head room is huuuuge. He demonstrated it to me once by shooting with bright light coming in through the window and blowing the highlights. Doing the same with my camera (Back then, the Nikon D700) in both RAW and jpeg, I could not recover the blown highlights whatsoever. With the RAW file from his S5, I was gobsmacked as he dragged on the slider and from what I could only describe as a huge white patch, the window brackets reappeared, and then the patterns on the lace privacy blinds. Even some of the scenery outside the window came back. So in my opinion, as suggested above, shoot RAW+jpeg. Maybe have the jpegs as your main files, but at least you have a RAW back-up too in case you get in to one of those situations where you want to retrieve the details in blown highlights/shadows etc. :)
Click to expand...

I'd love to know how so much dynamic range was squeezed into a crop sensor.
 
trencheel303 said:
I'd love to know how so much dynamic range was squeezed into a crop sensor.
Click to expand...

The Fuji S5 Pro has a different sensor design. It has 2 types of pixels, R and S. One for bright light, one for normal light. Not seen this type of design for other DSLRs other than maybe the Sigma Foveon, except split twice for light/dynamic range rather than like the Sigma's 3x split for RGB.
 
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