RAW vs tif vs jpg (was Double Exposure)

In article ,
"babaloo" wrote:

Although this will likely not be read:

Yes why read the babblings of a utter moron.

No one who knows what they are doing fools themselves into thinking they do
it all "in the camera" unless their end purpose is a directly viewed
negative or positive transparency.

How urbane.

If you make a print you have not done it
all "in the camera." Whoever made the print has made all kinds of decisions
for you that were not made "in the camera."

twit.

Familarize yourself with Ansel Adams' techniques.

OK-some stuff of his works even now.

Once you understand what you are doing you will shoot exclusively in raw
format if your purpose is to create an image that is technically optimal and
suits your aesthetic purposes.
Digital is not film: repeat this to yourself until you understand that
digital is a different medium than film. If you shoot jpeg you are deferring
to a rigid in-camera program algorithm that has been crafted with arbitrary
and immutable decisions about the end image. I suppose this is "in the
camera" but it is like having the kid who runs the drugstore film processor
make all your aesthetic decisions.

Who made your decision to post this drivel.....please say this
will never happen again.
--
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a dragon, eating rat? The answer of: I am somewhere
in the middle. "Me who is part taoist and part Christian".

In article ,
Robert Peirce wrote:

My serious work is done on a 4x5 view camera.

"Serious" work from photographers stand point can be done with any type
camera. Although I like 4x5
--
"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely,
the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great
and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire
at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
- H. L. Mencken, in the Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.


Reality-Is finding that perfect picture
and never looking back.

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On Feb 26, 5:46 am, Robert Peirce
wrote:
In article ,



"babaloo" wrote:
Although this will likely not be read:
No one who knows what they are doing fools themselves into thinking they do
it all "in the camera" unless their end purpose is a directly viewed
negative or positive transparency. If you make a print you have not done it
all "in the camera." Whoever made the print has made all kinds of decisions
for you that were not made "in the camera."
Familarize yourself with Ansel Adams' techniques.
Once you understand what you are doing you will shoot exclusively in raw
format if your purpose is to create an image that is technically optimal and
suits your aesthetic purposes.
Digital is not film: repeat this to yourself until you understand that
digital is a different medium than film. If you shoot jpeg you are deferring
to a rigid in-camera program algorithm that has been crafted with arbitrary
and immutable decisions about the end image. I suppose this is "in the
camera" but it is like having the kid who runs the drugstore film processor
make all your aesthetic decisions.

I think I may have given the impression that I make an image and send it
out to be printed. That is not the case.

My serious work is done on a 4x5 view camera. I did read this and
Adams' books. When I shot negative film I processed my own negatives
and prints. When I took the shot I recorded what film processing was
required and what zones various parts of the image were to fall on.
This information allowed me to develop a printable negative and a
correspondingly good print. That is what I mean by doing it in the
camera.

Hi. I think the idea here is that this sort of thing is easier if one
starts from a raw file than a jpeg, to which this has already been
done (not that it's impossible). If this isn't what you want to do
with digital, there's not much advantage to raw.

Regarding your tests. Suppose I told you that I shot two rolls of
film. I sent one to an automatic lab (I mean not some guy printing
them with an enlarger but these 1h things) and got back prints. I
developed and printed the other myself (and it is the 3rd film I have
developed in my life). The lab prints were better, or at least now
worse. Would you conclude from this that there is no advantage for one
to develop and print his own film?

The advantages and disadvantages of raw are much the same, althought
the disadvantages are less (not as messy as a darkroom, not all that
hard to work out how to do it well, ie how to use your particular
program), and quickly it becomes easy enough to do. For example, I
tried using jpeg+raw and found that half the time the jpegs were
almost unprintable (too high contrast etc). Yes you can tune this in
camera, but then it's not faster than doing it on a computer.


Now, transparencies are the only way to go because I don't have a
darkroom and I don't want to trust my work to commercial labs unless all
the work is carefully controlled, as E-6 is. I can scan these into my
computer which allows me to still print them the way I think they should
be printed.

I don't use my digital camera for this kind of work. I edit the image,
and I still do my own printing. I want good quality, but these shots
are more action oriented. So far I have had no problem in compressing
or expanding the scale to get a full range print. That's the nice thing
about digital. It is actually easier to do this than it was with film.


In some cases, raw really does give you more dynamic range; it really
does have more information in it, but whether it's useful or not
depends. For example, these two shots were shot with exactly the same
settings except that one was at 1s and the other at 1/3200s (ie almost
12 stops below):
http://www.pbase.com/al599/image/74720053
http://www.pbase.com/al599/image/74719850
Now I am not saying that the 12 stop underexposed one is useable, but
as you can see there is indeed information there, and therefore by
interpolation there would have been information in the lighter zones
too. Whether it is useful or not depends.

Anyway, since you say you don't plan to use the digital camera for
anything serious, I don't think there is much advatage to using raw.

"Little Green Eyed Dragon" wrote in
message
...
In article ,
"babaloo" wrote:

Although this will likely not be read:

Yes why read the babblings of a utter moron.

No one who knows what they are doing fools themselves into thinking they
do
it all "in the camera" unless their end purpose is a directly viewed
negative or positive transparency.

How urbane.

If you make a print you have not done it
all "in the camera." Whoever made the print has made all kinds of
decisions
for you that were not made "in the camera."

twit.

Familarize yourself with Ansel Adams' techniques.

OK-some stuff of his works even now.

Once you understand what you are doing you will shoot exclusively in raw
format if your purpose is to create an image that is technically optimal
and
suits your aesthetic purposes.
Digital is not film: repeat this to yourself until you understand that
digital is a different medium than film. If you shoot jpeg you are
deferring
to a rigid in-camera program algorithm that has been crafted with
arbitrary
and immutable decisions about the end image. I suppose this is "in the
camera" but it is like having the kid who runs the drugstore film
processor
make all your aesthetic decisions.

Who made your decision to post this drivel.....please say this
will never happen again.

Why did you decide to label his post 'drivel'?
I thought it was a well reasoned argument for considering the use of RAW as
a starting point.
It was in no way dogmatic or judgemental and seemed intended to provoke
positive thinking on the subject.

Ken.

babaloo wrote:
Although this will likely not be read:
No one who knows what they are doing fools themselves into thinking they do
it all "in the camera" unless their end purpose is a directly viewed
negative or positive transparency. If you make a print you have not done it
all "in the camera." Whoever made the print has made all kinds of decisions
for you that were not made "in the camera."
Familarize yourself with Ansel Adams' techniques.
Once you understand what you are doing you will shoot exclusively in raw
format if your purpose is to create an image that is technically optimal and
suits your aesthetic purposes.
Digital is not film: repeat this to yourself until you understand that
digital is a different medium than film. If you shoot jpeg you are deferring
to a rigid in-camera program algorithm that has been crafted with arbitrary
and immutable decisions about the end image. I suppose this is "in the
camera" but it is like having the kid who runs the drugstore film processor
make all your aesthetic decisions.

It's read and reasonably right if overstated and very much a repeat of
what various people have been saying here since the NG was created.

The only comment I would make is that slide film exposure is just about
right for digital except that you end up with more shaddow detail, esp.
if you shoot RAW. (Unless it's a FujiFilm S1, S2, S3, S5 which have
another ~2 stops on the highlight side).

Cheers,
Alan.

--
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-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.

On 25 Feb, 22:58, Robert Peirce
wrote:
Okay, I think I have this figured out. It seems to boil down to a
difference in approach. At least some of us who come from film,
especially large format, follow the approach of getting everything right
in the camera. At least some of those who grew up with (or were early
adapters of) digital and Photoshop seem to follow the approach of
getting the shot and cleaning it up later. I can accept that.

I think you flatter yourself a bit with that description. While RAW
shooting certainly makes it more possible to follow the "shoot first,
bother later" approach that you outline as a contrast to your own, it
also makes it possible to do things that simply cannot be done in-
camera.

It makes it possible to tweak the exposured down to (with my
converter) 0.05 of a stop, instead of a third of a stop, as my camera
does. And it makes it possible to lighten the shades of subjects that
are too contrasty also when they are out of reach for reflectors or
fill flash, with a considerably better result than what can be done on
a single jpeg.

These are things that you abstain from unconditionally if you don't
shoot RAW, no matter how good you are att getting things absolutely
right in the camera.

Jan Böhme

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:58:34 GMT, Robert Peirce
wrote:

Okay, I think I have this figured out. It seems to boil down to a
difference in approach. At least some of us who come from film,
especially large format, follow the approach of getting everything right
in the camera. At least some of those who grew up with (or were early
adapters of) digital and Photoshop seem to follow the approach of
getting the shot and cleaning it up later. I can accept that.

If potentially there is a lot to fix in an image then you are going to
need all the help you can get. RAW makes a lot of sense.

OTOH, if you have taken the time, assuming you have the time (!), to set
up your shot, it should only require the minimum of post-processing.

For me, post-processing is almost always no more than correcting white
and black points, cropping to fit the desired paper size and doing some
corner burning, pretty much the same thing I used to do in the darkroom.
Sometimes I have to adjust the contrast or the color balance a little,
ditto. That is probably why I like LightZone and can't stand Photoshop.

So far I have been doing this, non-destructively in LightZone, in tif
and jpg without any problems, and that is why I have been wondering what
RAW is good for. Now I know. Those who need it, need it. For those
who don't, it may be nice to have, but the world will not come to an end
if it isn't used.

Did I get that right or am I still missing something?


Yes you certainly are missing something.

Why would you take all the time to set up your shot, making sure the
focus, the light , everything was spot on perfect and then allow the
camera to second guess the whole thing to save as a .jpg. That makes
no sense at all. When you shoot film, do you buy the cheapest roll of
Kodak whatever from the corner store, take the results down to the 1-
hour mini lab, throw away the negative and keep a really nice 6 x 4 in
case you might need to scan it one day?

By all means, take the time to set up for perfection. then save the
results in the best, least modified, most original format at hand.

Your comments on post processing make no sense at all. The idea of non
destructive editing of .jpg files really shows a lack of
understanding.

In article Robert Peirce writes:
$For me, post-processing is almost always no more than correcting white
$and black points, cropping to fit the desired paper size and doing some
$corner burning, pretty much the same thing I used to do in the darkroom.
$Sometimes I have to adjust the contrast or the color balance a little,
$ditto. That is probably why I like LightZone and can't stand Photoshop.

All but one of those things involve tonal changes. If you start
out with a JPEG from the camera, you're starting with an 8-bit image;
it has only 256 levels per channel. Once you adjust the black and
white points, you have fewer than 256 levels remaining. Most
cameras with RAW modes give you 12 bits, or 4096 levels per channel.

Let's say you make some of the adjustments you mention, and
say you lose 1/8 of the file's existing levels over the course of
this editing. With the JPEG, you now have 224 levels per channel.
With the RAW file, you have 3584 levels per channel.

Which do you think will produce smoother tonal transitions in your
final file?
--
Stephen M. Dunn
---------------- http://www.stevedunn.ca/ ----------------
------------------------------------------------------------------
Say hi to my cat -- http://www.stevedunn.ca/photos/toby/

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:58:34 -0800, Robert Peirce wrote
(in article ):

Okay, I think I have this figured out. It seems to boil down to a
difference in approach. At least some of us who come from film,
especially large format, follow the approach of getting everything right
in the camera. At least some of those who grew up with (or were early
adapters of) digital and Photoshop seem to follow the approach of
getting the shot and cleaning it up later. I can accept that.

That has nothing to do with shooting RAW or JPG. You shoot RAW if you are
trying to get as much detail as possible out of a picture. You shoot JPG if
'good enough' is good enough.

I think it is better to say that you would shoot RAW in high contrast
situations. This allows you to recover more information than would be found
in film. If you were a pro shooting a wedding or something, you probably
would shoot JPG. RAW is fine art. JPG is mass production.

--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor

"C J Campbell" wrote in message
e.com...
On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 13:58:34 -0800, Robert Peirce wrote
(in article ):

Okay, I think I have this figured out. It seems to boil down to a
difference in approach. At least some of us who come from film,
especially large format, follow the approach of getting everything right
in the camera. At least some of those who grew up with (or were early
adapters of) digital and Photoshop seem to follow the approach of
getting the shot and cleaning it up later. I can accept that.

That has nothing to do with shooting RAW or JPG. You shoot RAW if you are
trying to get as much detail as possible out of a picture. You shoot JPG
if
'good enough' is good enough.

I think it is better to say that you would shoot RAW in high contrast
situations. This allows you to recover more information than would be
found
in film. If you were a pro shooting a wedding or something, you probably
would shoot JPG. RAW is fine art. JPG is mass production.


No, the wedding photographer shoots RAW so if he blows a shot he can recover
it. I've heard of some who shoot both and give the bride and groom a set of
the JPEGs right after the wedding.

--
www.mattclara.com