Shooting in RAW

Do many folks shoot in RAW or is it just used for certain occassions. I've only ever taken about 20 shots in RAW from about the total 4000 odd shots I've taken. I'm guessing it's probably best for those who know what they are doing in a photo editing suite (which I am really bad at) or am I mistaken? I think my 4GB card will take about 300 or so RAW shots on my K100D, but I'd normally shoot more than 500 at a sporting event so I will either have to buy another card, or just keep shooting at 6MP.

Are there any drawbacks of shooting in RAW as well? Does it slow processing time or anything like that? Thanks in advance for your help, Gareth,

RAW files take a little longer to write to the SD card because they are larger.
Processing time on the computer is longer yes, but the results can be a lot better.

Surely changing cards once in the course of 500 shots isn't too onerous?

If it is, you can get 8Gb cards.

The drawback, of course, that if an appreciable proportion of those 500 shots are worth keeping, there's a lot of RAW-JPEG conversion needed for whatever you do with them afterwards.

If you're going to do this, you'll need a decent batch converter.

I use RAW for almost everything as I find it so easy to convert with Silkypix. There is more scope for post-processing with RAW, and the results can be finer, especially when it comes to sharpening, noise reduction, and highlight control.

Shooting RAW instead of JPEG will only slow your camera down when shooting in Continuous mode (with finger held down on the button), and then only when the buffer is full. I don't know how many RAW shots it takes to fill the buffer on a K100D - I guess about 8.

But not everyone likes to bother with the extra process, and there's not a huge amount to be gained if you tend to get exposures right in camera at the time of taking the shot. There are some great photographers on this forum who prefer JPEG.

The biggest downside to RAW for me is the extra amount of storage space required on my computer hard drive and backups. Otherwise I enjoy it and don't mind buying extra SD cards for it. It is great if you are a tinkerer by nature!

Get yer Sandisc cards from www.play.com

I shoot RAW all the time now though I shot JPEG for a very long time. I also use PSE Camera RAW to convert them - PSE6 Camera RAW is a huge improvement on PSE4 btw. If I do go for a separate converter it will probably be Bibble.
Main pain to shooting RAW for me, apart from the size/speed of the files is converting them when you have a couple of hundred "keepers" in one go.
If you are happy shooting jpegs and are getting the sort of results you want then don't feel pressured into shooting RAW. Experiment a bit more with RAW and a good conversion program - you can download a trial version of most of them - and see how you feel after giving it a bit more of a go. Nothing wrong with sticking to JPEG if it suits you best.

I shoot raw for everything except holiday snaps on the p&s

Whats the big deal about changing cards, I change their equivalent after every 15 shots on the 645

Just saw Gwynn's post - file sizes from the 645 are 80Mb jpegs.!!!

I didn't know there was a digital 645!

Can I have one, please?

I used to be a die hard fervent jpeg evangelist "Life's too short for raw, why do I want to spend ages processing each picture I take, etc....." Then, I had a revelation. I found that I could shoot a whole card full of raw files, import them into Pentax Photo Lab (supplied free with your camera), select all files and with just one click process them all as though they'd been shot as in-camera jpegs with no messing about. Shoot raw, import, select all, process. Bingo! Done!

I'd got a whole bunch of files just like I used to have but I also had the raw files to process individually those that I felt merited the extra attention, giving me the best of both worlds. Initially this was the approach I adopted, run the whole lot through PPL as though they were in-cam jpegs, and just mess about with a few raw files later. Over the last couple of years I've become far more proficient at raw processing, and went through a very steep learning curve with Capture One 3.7 (I now use 4.1). These days I never touch PPL and am ruthless with my culling of duds. If it's not good enough to warrant individual attention it gets deleted.

So, my advice is to shoot raw. If you're not sure about the finer details of processing them, stick it through PPL and you'll get the same output as if you'd shot jpeg. You've still got the raw file to go back to later once you've learned the finer points of your chosen raw processing package.

I was kicking myself because my "Ghent Fish Market" shot for last week's comp was shot as in camera jpeg and I know I'd have been able to do a much better processing job if I'd had the raw file available.

Duncan

aperture makes a RAW workflow, as seemless, and fast as shooting jpegs.
for a wedding job, I'd give up photoshop before aperture, if I was forced to choose.

I use RAW 100% of the time, just gives you that "safety net" if you don't quite nail the shot

simon

Initially shot in JPEG and tried RAW a few times but never liked it and kept going back to JPG. Granted unbeknownst to me, my camera was out of wack and the images were never as sharp as they should be. (meanwhile wondering why I can't get nice images)...

Anyway, got my camera repaired and RAW finally made a nice difference.
Got the K10D and some nicer lenses, and WOW...
Been shooting RAW+JPG for the a good part of the past year and finally realized that I simply never use the JPG files any more. I now shoot in RAW only.

I'll download the images, peruse through SilkyPix, tag the keepers and process those. While they convert, I'll usually go off and do something else like keywording the RAW files in ACDSee. In the end, not much of my time is really lost on processing, even large sets of files.


FYI, I look back at some of the vacation photos I shot a few years ago and there are some where the color and tonal range is noticeably poor. I wish I had RAW files to go back to now and bring out that extra data for enlargements.
Although honestly, to fit the same number of RAW files as I took JPEGs, I'd need another $400 in memory cards (memory was not so cheap four years ago ) So I'm still glad I have the shots and didn't have to concern myself with how many photos I took.

It is even better than digital and the recent RAW + JPEG option, it shoots on an extremely thin flexible plastic sheet covered with recyclable paper on a reusable plasic media holder (some people call this a spool) which you send to a lab for processing. They pour various chemicals (again these are recovered for reuse) over the media and, in less than the time it would take to import these into PS, give you see-through little pictures and a shiny CDROM with enormous 80mb high quality images. Absolutely amazing really. On the down side if you want to shoot 500 pics at a concert you'll need an assistant to unload/reload the 'media card adapters'. On the plus side, you wont dare shoot 500 pictures because it will bankrupt you and you wont have to buy yet another hard drive to put them on. Perfect really.

And... in a shoot where there are other shooters (particlurly C&N ones) they will think YOU are a serious photographer

Marvelous! I look forward to the manufacturers bringing out more compact cameras as well that take these amazing thin flexible plastic sheet things

So, from reading what you are saying I have basically 2 options. Get another 4GB card and always shoot in RAW so that when I do figure out how to use CS2 I can 'mend' some dodgy shots,

or keep shooting in .jpeg until I understand how to use CS2 then look into shooting in RAW.

I guess option 1 is the better of the 2, but for the next short while, I'll continue to shoot in .jpeg format as my results seem to be OK (not good, just OK) but I think I need more practise at riffling off more shots in different scenarios (and not just panning motorsport shots).

Thank you all for your help.

Yes, I'm currently lodging a patent to develop a camera system which utilises that thin pastic stuff. I'm looking to utilise the ends of rolls of film which cinematographers usually throw away. 100 feet of their 35mm wide perforated film might give around 300 exposures if a recording media slightly larger than the APS-C could be developed and somehow fixed in the public imagination.

Oscar Barnack