Should I shoot in RAW

[ramon_albanese]

Amy, Amy, Amy. I feel for you. ?...You are not ready to shoot weddings. So shoot portraits or cars...? Can you imagine that?

 

?...Truth is all digital shooters shoot RAW...? What! That is absolutely false!

 

Amy, as I mentioned to someone else on another thread a while ago, don?t let a bunch of pompous wind-bags on this forum get you down. You have weddings to shoot: Good! Go ahead and shoot them! Book?... and shoot... as many as you can. You will only get better and better.

 

?Levity?? ?Let me inject a bit of levity? too. ?Here are a few to think about?:

 

What kind of a person goes to the chiropractor complaining of a stiff neck every Monday morning? Ans: A ?professional? wedding photographer who is always bending down looking at his/her LCD screen after every single shot in order to see how the results are.

 

What do you call a professional wedding photographer who earns a six figure income, but whose photos look like they were taken by an 8 year old with a an ?instamatic??

Ans: a professional s-a-l-e-s-m-a-n!

 

What do you call a photographer who always shoots in RAW; but since he/she shoots in RAW, always takes 8-10 shots of the exact same subject and of the exact same pose; thinking to themselves: ?well, since I?m shooting in RAW, hopefully, at least 1 out of the 8 or 10 shots of this pose that I just took, I will be able to salvage in PP. Ans:

A ?professional? photographer ???????????????????????????????????????????????

[michelle jones]

I shoot in Raw but I only have 3 cards, two 2GB and one 1GB. I rotate them whist downloading them to my Epson P2000 an external hard-drive that stores up to 40GB of photographs. I didn't want to sped hundreds on cards that are easily lost so I spent ?300 on the Epson. I'm very pleased with the spped and capacity of this gadget.

[robbie_caswell]

IMHO... RAW is one of those no-brainer technological advantages that no photographer should be without.

 

Memory is cheap. RAW gives you latitude. There are no excuses.

 

I carry roughly 25gigs and deep in the bag for emergency use are 8 more gigs that are microdrives.

[William Michael]

Q > Since I got my digital I have been shooting in jpeg fine, should I be shooting in Raw if I plan on doing weddings? <

 

A: Yes, getting experience shooting RAW [and post processing RAW] would be very advantageous, if you plan to shoot weddings.

 

Regards

 

WW

[lou korell]

RAW is great. Absolutely essential - no. But remember, cameras don't take pictures, photographers do. Any tool which will help you learn about exposing properly and processing images is a valuable tool. Try RAW and see if you can do something with it.

 

CF cards are cheap today. You can buy a Ridata 4gb 150x card from Newegg for $62. If you can't afford that, you can't afford to be a professional in photography. Buy a few.

 

I think the Epson storage devices are remarkable. Would I trust my once in a lifetime images to a portable hard drive and format the original card before uploading to my computer - AND - burning a dvd? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

Technology is awesome today but it does fail and it does have glitches. If you believe in backup gear (which you should) you would need to load your cards into at least two seperate devices before you erase a card. Those cards are your best insurance that you have wedding images to deliver.

 

If you have shot weddings with film you can shoot weddings with digital, but there is a huge learning curve with being flexible in settings for exposure. Once you practice a bunch it will get easier.

A person who is new to any photography will still have to pay some dues and learn to use the digital tools. Cameras don't take the pictures. They only perform according to how you set and use them.

 

If you have some experience as a photographer and are just starting out in weddings, you can learn faster but there is still a whole world out there to learn about. Weddings are tricky.

 

Have fun! Shoot RAW! :)

Lou

[gopi_rajaseharan]

I like Conrad's advice on shooting two weddings in JPG and two weddings in RAW to determine for oneself whether he or she prefers JPG or RAW.

 

I shot my first wedding in JPG as there was consistent lighting in both venues. The reception for my second wedding was outdoors in the late evening and the Church earlier in the day had not been lighted well. So I ended up using RAW throughout the day for that one. I had 10 gigs on hand and used most of them up! Need to get more.