RAW vs. JPEG opinion on my photo

[jim_rais]

<p align="justify">Manuel Barrera:<br />No offense intended here. I just commented on Richard's images you uploaded on another site than this one which had no notification of the original maker or whatsoever. I'm not insinuating anything, but people outside this forum who don't know about the discussion raw-jpg which going on here, might find the uploaded photographs by chance on your site (googling "race cars" or so) and think they are yours, or worse, replace them on their individual sites. And so is the original maker of those images lost, while here - on this forum - the owner is clearly the OP.<br /><br />We are (almost all) experienced photographs here who have seen the photography transition from film to digital. I think we all should be very careful and conscious of copyright stuff as not to be part of those careless people who don't care or respect other's copyright. I'm sorry if you feel offended, but that's not the case at all. </p>

[keith reeder]

<blockquote>

<p>JPG limits you to the in-camera: white balance</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm 100% a RAW user, but I'm utterly baffled by these repeated claims that if you shoot jpeg you can't adjust the WB - <em>of course you can,</em> and very effectively too!</p>

[manuel barrera houston,]

<p>Bridge gives you the ability open to open jpeg similar as if it was a raw image, while all the information is not there it does allow you to change light temperature and tint plus a few other things. Not true when information is saved as tiff or psd. From the beginning I stated that I was working with jpeg and was always referred to the light which was the point I was making as that can still be manipulated and the only thing that could be compared apples to apples as Richard did not post both a raw and jpeg image to work with. I do use jpeg on occasion and find the ability to correct the light temperature a plus.</p>

[manuel barrera houston,]

<p>Jeff, thanks, I try hard not insult people and I certainly do not take credit for others work. In fact I just got back from doing several thousand piece mailer for that I did and have to start on another to get it ready for next week. Pbase is normally a place where people do not look unless one participates in the voting for images so it never crossed my mind that people other than people linking from here would see the images. My point to Richard is that raw is not time consuming.</p>

[cyanatic]

<p>Richard --<br>

I can't add very much to what has already been said, but I can offer personal experience.<br>

I started out shooting only jpeg....swore I did not see any big difference. Then, started taking occasional RAW+Jpeg for selected shots. Started culling through older photos a few months ago...came across some I had previously looked over and wanted to fine tune them. They were all jpegs. What I could draw out of shadows, highlights, etc. was limited compared to what I could do with more recent RAW files. Of course, I had read that as being the case many, many times, but personal experience remains, as in most things in life, the most effective teacher. I now shoot in RAW only. Only exception is sports (local ice skaters, tennis players, etc.) when I need to fire off a burst and don't want to wait for the catch up time to write to RAW.<br>

As for the specifics of your images (which seem to have been addressed by others pretty thoroughly) it remains true that without a RAW, we cannot know what could be done. As a general gut reaction, they look crisp to me, if just a trifle oversaturated...an adjustment that can be made with the jpeg anyway to suit personal taste. <br>

On another note...I have been practicing panning moving cars in anticipation of taking some racing pictures this season. FWIW, I admire what you've caught in your images.<br>

@Doug Santo: Ha! So true.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"In the case of photography, if you ask 3 photographers thier opinion you will get 10 different responses, and these will be full of caveats, what-if's, but's, etc."</p>

</blockquote>

[oistrakh]

<p>I'm surprised that no one has yet asked you how you expect to use these images. If you are selling them to car magazines that are going to print little 2"x3" versions of them as part of their race coverage, I'd say the benefits of multi-burst jpeg far outweigh the hassle of using RAW and wasting time fine-tuning them when you have a deadline to meet and the images are already of such a high quality. On the other hand, if you are working with Acura to create promotional materials as part of their ALMS program, then there is a very good chance that someone (might not be you) will need to make significant tweaks to the image to fit the overall marketing campaign. And in that case, shooting RAW would be very important. I'm sure you're already aware of all this, from your photographs it looks like you are a professional sports photographer. But the point is, the answer varies depending on whether you are simply asking for personal aesthetic and satisfaction reasons, versus professional reasons.</p>

[richard_martin10]

<p>(Q: If you don't know how to resize and post properly how could one possibly understand the Raw v. JPG discussion? A: you can't, so come back in a year or so.)<br />Gee Ken, I'm sorry I don't know what I'm doing, and I'm sorry I'm so dense that I can't understand anyones explainations.<br />Manuel, I stepped out for a few hours and am now checking back, seems like some controversy about posting the images elsewhere.....I wouldn't have given it a thought, I posted the images without any ID on them, there was no need to take them down so quickly.<br />I also appreciate the compliments on the pics from those that gave them....Thanks!<br>

Chris: They are mostly for personal use but I do have some website connections that I contribute to. Some of my work is on a vintage Corvette racing site. Thanks for the best compliment here when you said you thought I was a pro sports photographer! </p>

[richard_martin10]

<p>P.S. Chris makes a good point about the volume of photos, I like the way the JPEGs are coming out of the camera which I have tinkered with and gotten settings I'm happy with, and in the course of a race weekend taking upwards of 1000 photos makes it easy to cull out 200 really nice ones which is still a big volume considering most events have 25-35 cars entered.</p>

[manuel barrera houston,]

<p>Richard I do a quite a few events 1000 images is typical for a day all in raw. I won't be using them all so what I do is view them all in Bridge and pick the ones that I may use and use the same setting for all of them, assuming that the light is similar. If there is a special one then I may spend more time with that one, as a few people suggested you may try raw and see how you like it. I tried it a few years ago and never left it. I save all my work on external hard drives and when they get to 80% full, I replace them and use the hard drive as the storage, beats the heck out of saving to disk. I also have Lightroom but prefer Bridge. Raw does require more storage then jpeg, raw also is accepted in court similar to Polaroid as what you see is what the camera saw at the time the image was taken. </p>

[stevenseelig]

<p>I shoot RAW for a couple of reasons...<br>

1. In case I have a great shot, but it needs a bit of rescuing to get it where I would like to have it (like a little bit of extra security<br>

2. Post-processing WB <br>

3. Work flow through Aperture allows one to shoot RAW with very little downside. Same is true of Lightroom.<br>

Steven</p>

[anders_andersson2]

<p>I still do not feel Richard got a clearly convincing answer to his question, and I am unable to come up with one either.<br>

I took a raw night photo of an open church door, where there is some soft light on the outside and some different kind of light on the altar and persons inside, and a lot of shadows and darkness. The picture is not very good, and if one wanted to rescue it, some postprocessing would be needed.<br>

Before trying to do anything with the file, I saved a copy of the raw file as a jpeg as an experiment. I then opened both the jpeg and the raw nef file in Capture NX (yes, I'm a Nikon user). No matter what I tried to do to improve the raw file, I was able to do almost as well in the jpeg using the same manipulations.<br>

My conclusion from this single experiment is that it is very rare that there is any significant difference between raw and jpeg. I will still continue shooting raw exclusively, as the result may be slightly better, even though for most images it probably is of no importance.<br>

But I would like to repeat Richard's question: is there anyone who has an image where manipulations to a RAW version of the file give a significantly better result than manipulating a jpeg version of the same image?</p>

[glenn_c1]

<p>I agree Magnus, and I'm baffled by some of the answers to the question here, including at least one genuinely rude one. I converted to digital only about six months ago but have not yet started using RAW except as occasional experimentation, and until I've learned a bit more about what sort of workflow to go with I'm happy with my JPEG results. I'm also interested in more specific answers to this question. I know the theoretical answers, what I'm not fully aware of is the degree to which they have practical implications. Sounds like the OP more than knows what he's doing and is ready to consider a switch to RAW when and if appropriate for his needs - same here. If I'm not mistaken it's the "if" part that he's not sure about yet.</p>

<p> </p>

[richard_martin10]

<p>Magnus & Glenn, I agree! Seems like most people missed the point. The original question was not to get technical help or arguments for or against RAW or JPEG. The question is to look at the pictures and give an opinion. It seems to me that most people look down on JPEG as inferior, and yes someone was even insulting.......all I was looking for was experienced photo people to look at what I shot in JPEG and tell me if the product is indeed inferior and what RAW may have offered to make them better pics.......is the result not good? Can someone point out specific problems with the pics that would not exist had they been shot in RAW? </p>

[pete_harlan1]

<blockquote>

<p> Can someone point out specific problems with the pics that would not exist had they been shot in RAW?</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>In this case; no. And w/o EXIF, definitly no.<br>

Perhaps to satisfy your own curiosity, you might consider shooting these images in *.jpg AND RAW next time; then make your own determination.</p>

<p>I hope my answer was short enough w/o eliciting further debate. Your question OTOH Richard, begs debate.</p>

<p>I will only add this to all the above, I shoot professionally, I shoot RAW and I shoot *.jpg...Just depends on the situation which I choose.</p>

<p>all the best,</p>

<p>Pete</p>

[DickArnold]

<p>There was some apparent high end clipping on the fenders of one of the cars you photographed. You can you can see and take care of most clipping by using the recovery slider if not too severe in Adobe Camera RAW. Likewise you can see into blocked up shadows in ACR and by using the Fill light slider to restore hidden shadow details. ACR has a function that identifies where your image has washed out or your shadows have no detail. It looks like there is both in some of those pictures. I identified this in my earlier post. I actually pulled your third image into ACR and there is high end clipping shown in ACR by turning burnt out areas red. I eliminated it by using the recovery slider, adjusting the exposure which was slightly over causing the clipping and also exposed some additional wheel detail by using the fill light slider. So yes, in my humble opinion you can improve your pictures by properly processing RAW images. I could use your jpeg in ACR because there is an option to do this but most ACR options are not available to good effect on jpegs.There are many other things you can do by processing RAW images in Photoshop. These images are in effect equivilent to the negatives or slides that I used to process in my darkroom. I think clipping and blocked up shadows have a negative effect on my images particularly in going to prints like 13x19 or larger. Also if I start with a portrait and want to smooth skin without affecting details there are ways to make such an image look quite professional. It is not possible to do this near as effectively with jpegs because Adobe conversion software has much more effective tools for working on RAW images. Whether you need to do this or not is up to you. You need to figure this out for yourself by taking and processing a few RAW images yourself. That is what I did. I convinced myself. I have tried to be helpful and frankly thought of not posting this because of the tone of the thread on both sides. Hovever, Richard, you asked the question and I have done my best to answer it. It's hard to tell whether the sharpness of your pictures could be improved judging from what is posted low resolution here but with my 5D and L lenses and proper post processing sharpening in PS I think I could do better than what I see. I have not seen any EXIF or what camera and lenses you used so it's hard to tell. </p>

[stevenseelig]

<p>RAW vs JPEG.... I think it is not a question of whether one can obtain great JPEG images, because certainly you can and you have. One can also great images from RAW. The difference is if you miss the shot by a little bit and would like to 'fix' it, RAW is great and I suspect superior to post process imaging than JPEG files. <br>

So at least from my point of view it is not whether you can get great images from JPEG, but whether you want the opportunity to 'fix' the near misses by shooting in RAW.<br>

So the best point of comparison is not a great JPEG, but a lousy JPEG vs RAW. I believe and in my experience RAW provides for great flexibility post shoot.<br>

If you are 100% on with JPEG, then don't change.<br>

Hope this perspective helps. Steven</p>

[stevenseelig]

<p>RAW vs JPEG.... I think it is not a question of whether one can obtain great JPEG images, because certainly you can and you have. One can also great images from RAW. The difference is if you miss the shot by a little bit and would like to 'fix' it, RAW is great and I suspect superior to post process imaging than JPEG files. <br>

So at least from my point of view it is not whether you can get great images from JPEG, but whether you want the opportunity to 'fix' the near misses by shooting in RAW.<br>

So the best point of comparison is not a great JPEG, but a lousy JPEG vs RAW. I believe and in my experience RAW provides for great flexibility post shoot.<br>

If you are 100% on with JPEG, then don't change.<br>

Hope this perspective helps. Steven</p>

[stevenseelig]

<p>sorry it got submitted twice.. not quite sure how....</p>

[richard_martin10]

<p>Dick: Thanks for your thorough answer. The Camera is a 40D for all, lens for the first shot is 400mm 5.6L, second & third shot is 70-200 F4L, the fourth shot is 70-200 2.8L. Which car # has the clipping you described? PS....no hostility on my part but this subject seems to bring it out in some people!</p>

[chrisjb]

<p>Richard, the pics are fine, I try not to judge others work, you have demonstrated excellent control of your photo skills and show what can be done. I did horse racing pro pics years ago and some moto gp. and appreciate the practise needed to achieve the results. So far many are saying that Raw is better, but none showing why and your jpegs manipulated and improved upon, (to them)<br>

I did one as well. Jpegs can be manipulated quite a lot, don`t understand those who say they can`t. And this huge loss of info? So you have a red car, take 1 pixel of red, discard a couple of red around it, put em back in when reopened. I look at my Raw files in store 12meg, same file Jpeg 7 meg. the Jpeg opened in PS is 28meg. In the good light the jpegs as you show are good. where you may find some advantage is in situations where there is a large difference in light to dark, many stops from highlight to shadow. Yes you can loose data each time you save a jpeg, means get ot right 1st time. And certainly a Raw converted to Tiff allows far more manipulation and saves. Bur unless one is doing what you are doing, abd as well as. we can only wait for the results you come up with, to see if the pics improve. I find Jpeg works fine in my biz but will use Raw when necessary :)</p>

<p>Good luck</p>

[alan_cox3]

<p>Like Steven, I personally look at it as an opportunity to improve something that I didn't have time to fully consider at the time. You may not need/want such an opportunity, because conditions are always perfect and all your shots are already outstanding when you hit the button, (or they turn out well enough to impress your friends and relatives anyway). </p>

<p>I would say this Richard, many find it an valuable technique. So it has the potential to be useful enough that you should learn to shoot and process raw for yourself. Then you can decide if its worth the extra few seconds it takes to select all your images in DPP and have it make JPEGs. Then if you never need to adjust the raw before having it process them, those few seconds are the only down side. If you're smart enough to ask the question, then I think you should give it a try. </p>

[john_mallery]

<p>RAW gives a little more flexibility. When I look at photos I took in Europe six years<br>

ago I so wish I had shot RAW and not JPG. Lots of them could be tweaked a bit<br>

to improve the color, white balance, exposure. I love RAW. Haven't shot a JPG in two years.<br>

Even at bike races where I'm shooting 3,000 images in a day, I do all RAW.<br>

Give yourself an opportunity to be the best photographer you can be. Keep the door open for a little more adjustment<br>

headroom, perhaps more dynamic range, better color balance. Aperture or Lightroom really make it easy to<br>

work in RAW.</p>

[axel-cordes]

<p>One more on what is RAW: <br>

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/RAW-file-format.htm<br>

Regards Axel</p>

 

[DickArnold]

<p>Richard. Acura at mid Ohio. The clipping was above the right headlight, across the hood logo and on the spoiler. You have the same problem I have with swimming pictures. High contrast. I was able to also pick up some wheel detail with fill light. I did not pursue this further with your picture but one way to get rid of clipping is to process in Prophoto RGB. If you use the pictures on the web, however, you have to go back to sRGB. Prophoto has a much wider gamut than sRGB and does not cut off some of the highlights captured by the camera and thereby increases the effective dynamic range of what you process. I can take an unmodified RAW image that has the full gamut taken by the camera and assign the prophoto colorspace in the transfer from ACR to CS3. However, managing colorspace is an entire nother subject. I think your pictures are all right the way they are. But, these are ways I use to improve my product by reducing burned out highlights and exposing shadow detail.</p>

[richard_martin10]

<p>Dick, Thanks much for your input, all good things I'll keep in mind. Rich</p>