The virtual of RAW

People ask why use RAW format. I use it often for EC compensation and
color balance. Here is another reason. I always complains that many
photos I take in the day time with the sky way overblown and asked about
advice for a gradual filter.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/article_2/

I found out the article above and picked one of my photos as an
experiment. Using normal exposure curve, the photo looks good except the
clouds which are just a big white overblown mass. I used linear exposure
curve and underexposed 1.5 and recovered the details of the clouds.

I don't even need to take two pictures using a tripod. Hallelujah ...

l e o wrote:
People ask why use RAW format. I use it often for EC compensation and
color balance. Here is another reason. I always complains that many
photos I take in the day time with the sky way overblown and asked about
advice for a gradual filter.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/article_2/

I found out the article above and picked one of my photos as an
experiment. Using normal exposure curve, the photo looks good except the
clouds which are just a big white overblown mass. I used linear exposure
curve and underexposed 1.5 and recovered the details of the clouds.

I don't even need to take two pictures using a tripod. Hallelujah ...


BTW, the camera is a 20D. I think doug should try to do some tests with
his favorite Panasonic FZ20.

leo,
You also could learn how to take the
photo correctly in the first place, then
you don't need raw.

But good for you, you can correct your
mistakes.

"l e o" wrote in
message

..earthlink.net...
People ask why use RAW format. I use
it often for EC compensation and
color balance. Here is another reason.
I always complains that many
photos I take in the day time with the
sky way overblown and asked about
advice for a gradual filter.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/article_2/

I found out the article above and
picked one of my photos as an
experiment. Using normal exposure
curve, the photo looks good except the
clouds which are just a big white
overblown mass. I used linear exposure
curve and underexposed 1.5 and
recovered the details of the clouds.

I don't even need to take two pictures
using a tripod. Hallelujah ...



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On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:17:17 -0400, "John_B"
photography.firstchurchofthestreets.com wrote:

leo,
You also could learn how to take the photo correctly in the first place, then
you don't need raw.

Rubbish. Are you seriously claiming that your color-balance is spot-on
for every shot you take. Think first: There are 50,000 different color
temperature settings, and 300 different tint adjustments - the
combination of which gives 15 million different possibilities of which
your dSLR may offer around 6 different ones to choose from for any
given situation.

But good for you, you can correct your mistakes.

Twaddle. The vast majority of RAW adjustments are not done to fix
mistakes.

--
Owamanga!
http://www.pbase.com/owamanga

Owamanga you ever shoot with film?
Did you change your rolls every time for diffrent light
levels?



"Owamanga" wrote in
message ...
On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 13:17:17 -0400, "John_B"
photography.firstchurchofthestreets.com wrote:

leo,
You also could learn how to take the photo correctly in
the first place, then
you don't need raw.

Rubbish. Are you seriously claiming that your
color-balance is spot-on
for every shot you take. Think first: There are 50,000
different color
temperature settings, and 300 different tint adjustments -
the
combination of which gives 15 million different
possibilities of which
your dSLR may offer around 6 different ones to choose from
for any
given situation.

But good for you, you can correct your mistakes.

Twaddle. The vast majority of RAW adjustments are not done
to fix
mistakes.

--
Owamanga!
http://www.pbase.com/owamanga




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John_B wrote:
Owamanga you ever shoot with film?
Did you change your rolls every time for diffrent light
levels?

You didn't get it, so you should just use a film camera.

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:14:55 -0400, "John_B"
photography.firstchurchofthestreets.com wrote:

Owamanga you ever shoot with film?

Of course, I started with film, then moved to slide, since I've had
the D70 (6mo) I've taken 1 MF photo with a hasselblad and the rest
is pure digital baby!

Did you change your rolls every time for diffrent light
levels?

You can't, it's impractical (unless you are doing commercial work,
maybe). Just like you still can't really do it with any significant
level of control on a dSLR today. People used to put up with yellow
tungsten photos, blue people standing in the shade and even took great
glee in cross-processing the negs to widen the gap between the result
and reality even further.

Not me, not now. I check and adjust color balance to taste on every
photo that's destined to become a print. The only way I could do this
before was to scan the negative/slide and work on the RAW file it gave
me.

But color temperature controls are just two of the 21 sliders on the
RAW importer dialog. Here are some other major ones:

Exposure. This usually needs a tweak. Often less than 1/3 stop which
is beyond my ability to control the camera at shoot time, but
sometimes more - especially if only one channel is close to clipping.

Anti-vignetting is nearly always employed to provide an evenly lit
image, esp. if you are shooting at a zoom's wider side. This helps
later with any off-center cropping you might do, preventing a dark
corner that you'd get if you didn't do this correction. Minor, subtle
yes but I know it's there.

Occasionally you want to increase the vignetting due to it's
compositional enhancement qualities. This slider does a much better
job than I've seen Photoshop do. Keeps it subtle.

Sharpening. I detest that happening in-camera as it does with a JPEG.
This should *always* be the final thing that happens to an image, not
the first. Sharpening has to be applied with output size in mind, and
no camera allows you to tell it that the destination print is 8x10 vs
6x4 vs a 600x400dpi email so it can modify the JPEG sharpening
accordingly.

De-noise filters. Applied automatically when you save as a JPEG, but
in reality the quantity of this effect you need changes with each
image and the ISO you shot it at.

Shadows. The JPEG gets a 'levels' cut at around 5%, anything below
rapidly being pushed to black. This helps cut down shadow noise and
gives the image some punch, but often this default is not suitable,
especially in high dynamic-range scenes.

Saturation. Again, each image is different. Portraits need less than a
landscape of Cinderella's Castle, Magic Kingdom. How can the camera
know what you are looking at? It doesn't.

On very rare occasions some of the other sliders get a twiddle:
Chromatic Aberration for example.

RAW isn't for everyone, just like doing your own film darkroom work
isn't for everyone, but to assume people do either just to fix
mistakes is way off the mark.

I believe that the vast majority who use RAW do so to maintain control
of the whole workflow, and not just let the camera make up some
bull**** defaults and be happy with that. The quality argument is a
secondary issue for me, I'm not anti-JPEG, just pro-RAW.

--
Owamanga!
http://www.pbase.com/owamanga

In message ,
"John_B" photography.firstchurchofthestreets.com wrote:

You also could learn how to take the
photo correctly in the first place, then
you don't need raw.

No matter how many uninformed people make this statement, it is still
incorrect. RAW is like "better film". Are you against better film?

Real photographers only use low-latitude slide film?
--


John P Sheehy

Well some photographers can get there equipment to work the
way they want, and not need editing like RAW to correct
there errors. Some don't.

Raw is not like better film, infact print a correct photo in
raw (if you have the talent and software to do so) and print
the same correct photo in jpeg and you can't tell the
diffrence.

Raw vs. jpeg is more like negative film vs. slide film
With negative film there is more room to correct errors.
With slide film you get what you took.

I don't need Raw, do you?



wrote in message
...
In message ,
"John_B" photography.firstchurchofthestreets.com wrote:

You also could learn how to take the
photo correctly in the first place, then
you don't need raw.

No matter how many uninformed people make this statement,
it is still
incorrect. RAW is like "better film". Are you against
better film?

Real photographers only use low-latitude slide film?
--


John P Sheehy




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In message ,
Owamanga wrote:

I'm not anti-JPEG, just pro-RAW.

JPEG is a dandy display medium; just not the optimal processing source.
--


John P Sheehy