RAW?

[nom]

If you are going to shoot 300-400 photos in a week's vacation, would

you still do it in the RAW format or you would shoot at the best JPG

mode available to make your life easier?

 

What about shooting color in RAW and B+W in JPG? Sounds like a good

idea to you?

[bobatkins]

How much storage do you have? If you have enough, why not shoot RAW?

[brian_diaz]

If you intend to use them for anything more than family snapshots, I would shoot everything RAW, and never use the in-camera B&W feature. Once you have saved something as a jpg, it has been compressed, and you lose a lot of freedom to adjust the image. It's like shooting film, making prints (even pretty good prints), and throwing away the negatives. You can see the pictures, but you don't have the originals.<p>

 

This may require investing in a portable hard drive or CD writer (or bringing your laptop), but if you're serious about your shots, it's worth it.<p>

 

As for the B&W issue, <a href="http://www.photo.net/digital/editing/bwconvert/">this article</a> gives a good basic way to get good results. Hope this helps!

[bobatkins]

I wouldn't say JPEGs are all that bad. I typically tend to save images as JPEGs, but with minimum compression. The quality difference (EOS 10D) between the highest quality JPEG and RAW is very slight indeed. If you get the exposure and color balnce correct at the time of exposure, the advantage of a RAW file is minimal. If you make errors at at the time of exposure, RAW file give you a better chance of post-exposure correction.

 

You can edit JPEGs, color and density correct and do pretty much anything else that you can with RAW files - except RAW files give you MORE room to edit, so you can make greater degrees of correction than with JPEGs before running into quality issues.

 

However to give the impression that a JPEG is like a negative and can't be adjusted is, I think, wrong.

[simon_hughes1]

Jordan,

 

This is the same question I'm struggling with. I will be going to Europe for 3 weeks with my D1 or D100 (and Digital Wallet) and I'm having the same dilemma.

 

I typically do shoot mostly RAW but I've been reading Moose Peterson's D1/D100 Generation book (excellent, by the way) and he makes a compelling arguement for shooting Fine JPEG. There are certainly some differences in RAW capture (such altering as white balance etc) that make it attractive but I'm not really sure that I see a huge difference in quality, even with 13X19" blow-ups.

 

Reasons to shoot JPEG over RAW (for me) would be:

 

1) Smaller file size, so less storage requirements, more captures

 

2) Better burst performance: more shots, faster write speeds (due to file size)

 

I'm still wrestling with the decision, so I'm interested in further thoughts in this thread.

 

Ciao,

 

Simon

[nom]

Thank you for your answers. I absolutely agree, but here is why I asked:

 

I just tried to convert RAWs for the first time to test the procedure. I used Canon's free software (ZoomBrowser) and a evaluation copy of BreezeBrowser (which btw adds a watermark unless you buy it). The convert is slow, especially with a slower computer. It would be fine for 10-15 photos or so, but what about 300? I will need days to convert them. This is the reason that I asked. There is no storage limitation btw.

 

Especially about the B+W photos (and I mean the photos that will be finally converted to B+W in PS), they will not benefit from the White Balance flexibility, so, how bad the initial exposure can be after all, since we can check the histogram and probably shoot it again?

 

Should I try a different conversion software too? Which one?

[bobatkins]

Can't you batch process the RAW files? Just stack them up and let the computer crank on them overnight. It won't get tired. You only have to do it once.

 

With the 10D you can save images as BOTH RAW and JPEG at the same time (though obviously it takes up more space). Extracting the JPEGs is very fast so you can just do that, then go back and extract only the RAW files for which the JPEGs have problems.

[nom]

Bob,<br>both Raw and Jpeg would be perfect (if I only had a 10D :O)<br>But if I batch process all the Raws then I loose the advantage of differential processing each photo separetely, so what's the advantage over jpegs after all? Am I wrong?

[mishka]

<br>

You can individually process only those files that really need it.

<br>

JPEG gives you 8 bits per color. RAW -- 10 or 12. That is a lot of extra lattitude. On top of that, unlike JPEG, RAW keeps all the information that the camera has AND NO MORE! E.g. if you have 12 bits for red pixel, raw would be just that. In comparison, JPEG would clip these 12 bits down to 8, and add interpolated 8 bits for blue and green (24 bits altogether -- twice as much!). And then loose most of it in a lossy compression.

[pete_su]

I tend to shoot RAW files if I think the picture is really important or if I'm in wierd

lighting that will be hard to adjust in JPEG mode, and if I'm close to my laptop and I

have time to flush the files.

 

The main advantage of RAW is that in post processing you have a lot of flexibility. It's

not clear to me that it offers a huge advantage in overall image quality, assuming

decent light.

[beauh44]

Shoot RAW - storage is cheap. If Canon's software is too slow, there's others. Best wishes . . .

[mark pav]

<i>Photoshop</i> has a plug-in called <a href="http://www.adobe.com/store/products/plugIn.jhtml?id=catPlugins_Adobe_CameraRaw" >Camera Raw</a>.

[bob_morten]

The only other thing I would add is to be careful with JPG files.

If you resave them on your PC after opening them, each time you save them they are recompressed and some data gets lost.

Try doing this a few times and the image begins to noticably deteriorate.

[jonathan_bautista]

After going through a lot of visual comparison between a RAW and Large/Fine JPG on my 10D, printed at 4x6 or 5x7... I don't see much of a difference. I guess it all boils down on how you intend to use your images. If it's a weeks worth of vacation... that you'd have printed (4x6), used on your personal webpage or stored in your PC, I would go for Large/Fine JPG. For some shots that you are planning to take along the way (i.e. sceneries, landmarks, etc)... images that you may want to do extra post processing or want to get blown up to 8x10, I would shoot them in RAW. Fortunately, 10D has a function that allows you to switch between JPG and RAW on a flick of a switch.

 

I would be more worried about coming back with 400 images on my CF card that won't upload to my Computer (touch wood).

 

I'm going on a trip myself. I am shooting Large JPG for all family shots and RAW for my hobby shots.

 

Good Luck!

[nom]

Well, I am back now... I shot RAW and finest JPEGs and my first impression is that I can't find any difference in quality.

 

When I want to convert a RAW that I am very happy with it, then I just use the "shot settings" so I get no alterations at all before I put it in PS , is it right?