Raw v Jpeg

I can't agree with this enough!!!

Been reading this one carefully and with much interest, my own take on this as follows -
RAW has 12 bits of data per colour channel(or 14 on the K5), JPEG has 8. Much more detail to retrieve in shadow areas, more chances with blown highlights. If you do need to any serious Postprocessing on a JPEG you soon run out of road.
Good as the Pentax in camera PRIME engines are, virtually every review confirms ACR or equivalent is better - and infinitely more flexible.
I get to refine my creative intent on a big screen not a small one - and don't have to keep taking my reading glasses on and off.
I agree with John on getting the exposure and creative intent as right as possible at the time of shooting, but for me that's still a start not an end.
Mixed lighting - grad filters and the paintbrush effects, together with HSL tweaks, do allow you to do quite a lot here in postprocessing. Although it's not a problem I often have as a landscape photographer.
I don't actually make many changes in postprocessing to many of my images - but I like to know I can if I need to!
Just my opinion...

Paul

What's interesting is that a lot of discussion tends to be about the theory, often from those who have already made up their minds. The practice is what it is and as digital photography changes at a fantastic pace I would keep trying alternative techniques. What is thought impossible becomes possible.

I entirely agree with what you say.
The start of the creative image is perhaps the choice of Lens, then the choice of aperture. Only then is consideration given to the other necessary settings.
Dear Oh dear, it was so much easier with film!
I also, rarely have much work to do when editing the images I've taken, attention to WB & shooting Manual Mode see's to that.
Lightroom helps me out with straightening the verticals etc of my architecture shots. When Lightroom is unable to cope, DxO Optics Pro is usually able to sort things out. Some of the crooked old churches here in the Dales are a real challenge to photograph and really need the use of a shift Lens.
A big screen certainly helps, I recently traded my 24" Apple iMac for the latest 27" model, 2.93 GHz loaded with the maximum memory of 16 GB. I much prefer the Apple iMac's as they run silently.

What must be appreciated is that the K-5 and I have only just met. At the present time I'm only playing with the camera, exploring all of the K-5's numerous fantastic functions.
I am impressed with the Premium Jpeg's but they are definitely not as good as DNG.
No amount of editing will make the Jpeg equal to a Raw shot, it is work in vain.
Serious work will begin as soon as I'm able to walk properly, I'm making progress and I no longer need a wheelchair.
Best I can do at present is shoot out of a window or through an open doorway.
I'll get there, meantime I'm having a ball playing with the K-5.

Regards,

Well Pentaxophile posted a fine example in his series of photo on the previous page.
With raw you get more to play with in post if you need to or want to.
The irony here is this, I'm a RAW shooter, JR is a jpeg shooter, and neither one of us would have likely pressed the shutter on that shot.

I have my ways... I likely would have passed and looked for a better shot if I was in a hurry, or simply moved the subject a bit to get a better lit shot. or dialed down my manual exposure reading to underexpose and cranked up my flash a bit... If doing a formal portrait, I would have used a handheld meter and metered the highlights and used flash or reflector to fill in the shadows...

Jr, would have spotted the blown highlight, and I'm sure he would have ways in his repertoire to deal with it as well...

Not putting Pentaxophile down here, his point is valid it does show what he means about raw having more data...

But I think the reason that you'll never get 100% agreement on RAW VS Jpeg.... is this:

ALL THREE of us in my example would have walked away with a usable shot.... JR would not have needed to repair a shot taken under those conditions, I likely would not need to repair it, but the guy who might need to repair it gets a better second chance if he shot raw.

The irony here is the guy who is LIKELY to need to repair it do to a photographic error, is also likely the guy that doesn't have the skills to "Save it in post" anyways.... So both arguments for and against RAW shooting are valid. Pick your poison, and have fun!


I will add one more little note though..
Over the past seven years most of the images I have had to fix in post were Gerri's. (Gerri went to college to learn photography, but before digital, and she was relying on a good lab, and print film latitude way more than she knew). As she has learned the mac and software she has gotten better and better at using software to edit images, I've noticed she started taking fewer and fewer shots at weddings and they are really good, fewer and fewer mistakes... so maybe being forced to "Fix it in post" has forced her to take more care at the image taking phase.....

The first time I compared JPEG and raw would have been in 2003, I think. When I edited photos I saw no difference in the results between the two. Two factors to consider. The cameras I was using were P&S so all the photos were taken in basically decent lighting.

In 2005, I compared against, after moving to a DSLR and switched to shooting raw only. First, shots inside old churches, inside public markets and other shots with less than decent lighting did much better with editing in raw. Also, even between 2003 and 2005 the capabilities of the software changed significantly and have continued to change. I will ofter go back and rework a batch of raw files from 2005 when I get new editing software.

No offence taken!

I had just switched from video mode into Av, but accidentally went into TaV. Other times I have had similar results when forgetting to cancel EV compensation... But what if that part of the image was overexposed deliberately, because I had wanted some darker area in the foreground to be correctly exposed? RAW gives you more latitude to deal with situations like that.

Why are we still using JPG btw?

Why haven't they move on to JPG2000 or better yet JPG XR.
Also Pentax has the HDR function build in.... why don't they save that in JPG HDR?

Yep. and with the k5 you got the dynamic range to that if you need to.... so now exposing for the highlights and pulling the shadows up in post is even better with RAW....
yep. sometimes I shoot an image with INTENT to do some serious photoshopping to it as well....

How very true



Best regards John, I do enjoy your posts!

I hope I can speak for Don here... as pros neither of us can afford the time to fix things in post!

Do pro's never ever screw up the settings on their camera when taking 'snapshots'?

Or are the pros just less willing to share their screw-ups?

I've been taking snaps for a living since 1976, its just so much easier to get it right at the time! A great training ground was as a camerman on BBC News, you saw your results, good or bad, broadcast to the nation's waiting millions at six o'clock every night.

Shooting reversal 16mm movie film was a great discipline because you had to get your exposure bang on every time and quite often without time to take a meter reading - no modes or even a built in meter in the camera, just practise and experience.

I was assistant for a while to a guy who in all sorts of non-filming circumstances would look at you and ask "What's the f stop?" and then get out his meter to see how close you were. Oh happy days.

My screw ups include:

forgetting the batteries - once

not having a motion picture camera 'wintered' (all the lubricants changed) because I didn't expect -20C in Scotland - once

dropping a 10:1 Carl Zeiss lens because I didn't fully understand how the same bayonet mount differed between Arriflex and Aaton cameras and didn't ask - once

Picking up a lens case without checking that my assistant had fastened the latches and seeing four f1 Distagons hit the pavement - once

Doing a job for another photographer and being talked/forced into using one of his cameras - once

Screwing up focus or exposure - not yet.

EDIT: I see pentaxophlie has just edited his post removing all the heinous photographic crimes he admitted to...

It's not as straightforward as that
JPG does a colour transformation into YCbCr space that effectively involves throwing away some of the colour information. (It's essentially the mix you get when you use the Lab mode)
About 30% Red, 59% Green, 11% Blue.

See: YCbCr Wikipedia and JPG Wikipedia

Once you start trying to shift the colour around in PS or LR from a JPG you can run into problems if there's any blue (serious posterization effects, colour transformations etc).

Not that JPG is bad...

The RAW files from the K-5 are getting seriously big!
But, I do love the latitude from the RAW - being able to shoot in extremely contrasty situations without necessarily using fill-in flash and making good use of LR's controls

It's when I'm under pressure that I make the most mistakes (but even then I get a 3-out-of-4 keeper ratio).


I still tend to take photos as if I was using Fuji Provia
That discipline certainly makes you sort it out first, rather than waiting for PP!!

Matt

I've said it before, but shooting at least one slide film is an excellent learning tool for any photographer. You then see exactly what you've shot and all the defects in composition and exposure are laid bare.

If a photographer can get a good success rate with colour slides, then digital is no problem.