RAW file format

[Lizziejane]

my theory has always been to shoot at the highest quality. If storage isn't an issue, I wouldn't even consider reducing the quality. Just makes no sense. True, you may not need that quality for the vast majority of your shots. But wouldn't you kick yourself later if the ONE shot you wanted to blow up to the size of a house, you couldn't, because the file was too small?

I always shot raw and jpeg until I got really comfortable with raw. Now I shoot only raw. Again, if storage isn't an issue, go with both. The jpeg is your "security" until you feel confident with raw only. It doesn't take long to appreciate the benefits of raw - you'll soon be shooting nothing but!

 

[YesDear]

I used to shoot jpg only until I had a camera that would shoot in RAW. Then I shot in RAW and Jpg to give me what I thought was flexibility. That I learned for me was wasted space. I now shoot exclusively in lossless RAW which in my camera creates a 14-15mp image. The camera is rated at 12.3. Storage is not a problem for me.

Now, I have gotten pretty aggressive in editing what I shoot. I may take 300 shots a day but only keep 50 unless it is someplace I will never be again and then that may be more of a record of what I did rather than something I would process to printing stage.

I have a 24 X 36 inch print on my wall in my office that was taken from a 6.2mp RAW image so I would agree you can get acceptable stuff from less mp, but that is not the only reason to shoot RAW. I have never seen any one be able to add information to an image, so I want as much information in that image as possible so I can select what information I do not need or want!

If you only post an image on a web page or only print 4x6 prints, a 12mp image is overkill technically. But if I want a to crop a particular image 70% then that image if it starts at 6mp will not end up as a 6mp image.

This is what makes America great. We all have choices we can freely make everyday!

 

[ssanders79]

I've been shooting RAW+JPG for a few months. I have no complaints. I would suggest shooting at you highest MP setting invade you want to crop an image. I also feel that if you have a camera that shoots 10mp then why not shoot at 10mp and get what you paid for out of your camera.

 

[boBQuincy]

I have been reading a few places that it is not beneficial to shoot in 10 mega pixels...

Been reading Ken Rockhead again?

The best is just that, and I can't imagine spending what we do and carrying all that we carry only to settle for an image that is less than we could have easily gotten. I say use all the pixels we have and use RAW, it's only memory cards and they are very inexpensive compared to almost everything else we buy.

That once in a lifetime photo only comes along... well, not often, and it sure would be a shame to think we had the quality backed off to save a few megabytes.

Fwiw RAW also embeds a small JPG for no extra memory cost, but it is small (check your manual for details).

 

[Quicklabs]

At first, I was "afraid" to go to RAW, thinking that it would be too much trouble (and thinking I'd never be able to figure it out), but now I'll never shoot anything else. The flexibility is just amazing and since I make a LOT of mistakes, I need it. I have some many JPEG pics that I wish I could now fix, but there are limits to what I can do with those. For awhile, I did what John did, and shot RAW and JPEG. Just wasted space. My thought now is to use my equipment to the max of its potential.

 

[GrillMouster]

I can understand the argument for shooting in either RAW or JPG, but not both. In no time at all the manufacturer's proprietary software can batch generate jpgs from RAW files that will look exactly like what the camera would have created. It can do this in the background while you work on the RAW files for those images that you do want to enhance in post-production. Therefore, I think it's a waste of memory card space to shoot RAW + JPG.

 

[jann1033]

i have been wondering as well what the benefit to the small raw files is...unless you know you are taking junk and won't ever need the extra info you threw away. i never shoot jpg and raw either. it's not like you can't see the raw file so how long does it take to work on how ever many you want to display( or whatever you are doing with it). most aren't using them for weddings or something where they might have a bunch of shots they know they'll have to convert. otherwise just how many castle photos do you need converted to show the folks at home

i don't understand the not shooting in 10mp either...does that mean 12+ is ok? just not 10?and i have heard stock won't even look at anything under 10.
i have read a number of times that the "average" person won't really notice a huge difference once it gets above 8-10 or so for even larger common sized ( ie 8x10+) prints but why buy the camera then not use the features? the only other reason i could think of is maybe it's a p&S with a bunch of mp crammed into it, then i'm sure it could make the photos worse( probably if that was the case with a dslr as well if the sensor can't really support 500mp or whatever the next crazy mp number will be)

 

[jfinke]

I shoot RAW solely. In fact, when I bought my PnS, one of my requirements was RAW.

I would shoot with as many MP as possible, unless you have a camera where it slows down the pics/second and you need the speed. Like anything else, you will have to decide on the tradeoff.

 

[MICKEY88]

i can understand the argument for shooting in either raw or jpg, but not both. In no time at all the manufacturer's proprietary software can batch generate jpgs from raw files that will look exactly like what the camera would have created. It can do this in the background while you work on the raw files for those images that you do want to enhance in post-production. Therefore, i think it's a waste of memory card space to shoot raw + jpg.

+1

 

[oregondaddyof2]

Thanks everyone for the responses... It sounds like my instinct was right... I have been shooting at full quality since I bought the camera, and I have no intention of turning down the settings... As far as RAW goes, I will have to test to see if it affects my speed at all, but i have a feeling, by the time we leave for WDW in another 88 days, I will be shooting in only RAW also... I have a couple of trips coming up to practice it on (NHRA Drags in Seattle Wa in july and Las Vegas in August)... I will really get to work on my night shots in Vegas with all the lights... I hope to get better pics this year, and now that I kinda understand RAW and adjusting the image in PS, I think that will be easily possible...

Thanks again for al the help ... I love this place!

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I can understand the argument for shooting in either RAW or JPG, but not both. In no time at all the manufacturer's proprietary software can batch generate jpgs from RAW files that will look exactly like what the camera would have created. It can do this in the background while you work on the RAW files for those images that you do want to enhance in post-production. Therefore, I think it's a waste of memory card space to shoot RAW + JPG.

I can think of a couple of scenarios. On my trip, I was dumping my RAW files to a pair of slow external drives for backup. It would have been nice to also have JPG files that I could dump to the laptops internal drive for review. I considered it, but didn't bother.

Another example would be someone shooting with an extremely tight deadline. A lot of news/sports shooters shoot in JPG because they need to wire their photos back ASAP. I could see someone wanting to keep RAW versions for later use but still have the JPG versions.

Both of these are pretty extreme examples. For the most part, I agree that it makes more sense to just shoot RAW and generate JPGs as needed.


As for whether to use sRAW, I don't think that is as useless as people make it out to be. My camera has 10 and 5 MP sRAW modes. If I'm shooting something that I know I'll never want to make large prints of, shooting 21 megapixel shots is a waste of disk space and processing time. I still like to have the RAW files for greater PP adjustments, but I don't always need the extra megapixels. I shoot full RAW whenever the pictures are important to me, but if I just want a few decent snapshots, I sometimes switch to sRAW. I can also see doing so if I was running out of space on my memory card. I'd rather have a 10 mp sRAW file than a 21 mp JPG in most circumstances. Finally, if I needed higher throughput, I might use an sRAW mode. Once my buffer is full, I can get almost twice the fps in sRAW than I can in RAW.

 

[Groucho]

One thing to note - if you're shooting Raw, you don't have a choice of resolution/quality - those are used for the JPG conversion only.

It's pretty silly IMHO to shoot at anything but the highest quality. Especially resolution-wise - that would mean that every photo you take has already been resized, which is never good for quality.

I shoot Raw only - again, I don't see the appeal of Raw+Jpeg. If you do need JPGs, more and more cameras can do in-camera jpg processing of Raws.

 

[WDWFigment]

It seems the emphasis in the MP debate is erroneously put on what size prints you're making. Unless you shot everything perfect the first time, the real importance of higher MP is how much you can crop. There have been countless images that I have cropped significantly, and shooting at 6 MP would not have allowed that. If space is no issue, shoot at the highest MP possible. You can always reduce the file size later, you cannot increase it.

 

[GrillMouster]

I can think of a couple of scenarios. On my trip, I was dumping my RAW files to a pair of slow external drives for backup. It would have been nice to also have JPG files that I could dump to the laptops internal drive for review. I considered it, but didn't bother.

Another example would be someone shooting with an extremely tight deadline. A lot of news/sports shooters shoot in JPG because they need to wire their photos back ASAP. I could see someone wanting to keep RAW versions for later use but still have the JPG versions.

Both of these are pretty extreme examples. For the most part, I agree that it makes more sense to just shoot RAW and generate JPGs as needed.

I know a professional photographer who swears that shooting RAW + JPG helps her workflow. She says she uses the jpgs to immediately post to her blog. Personally, I don't see it as a big time-saver in this regard, but it works for her, so that's all that really matters.

As for sports shooters, you're right. They've got runners grabbing CF cards from all the wire 'togs to the trailer for immediate upload; no time for processing RAW. Heck, now they're using wirless and ultraportable palmtops to send the jpgs to the trailers or HQ hundreds of miles away. It's amazing. This is where the pro bodies that accept dual cards can come in handy. Dump the JPGs to one card for the wires and dump the RAW files to another card for your own portfolio.

 

[oregondaddyof2]

Good points everyone... I think I will shoot in both, just so that i can have the immediate satisfaction of seeing the photo's I take very night while we are there, and then be able to choose which ones I want to do some tweaks on when I get home and have the RAW file for that... My camera gives me the options of JPEG Basic, JPEG Fine, and RAW + JPEG Basic... I don't mind getting a JPEG Basic image if I can have a RAW image to back it up

 

[BeautyluvsBeast]

Hi Everyone.

First I just want to say that I enjoy looking at your photos and learning a lot from all of you.

We just came back from Paris and it seems that my camera - Nikon D80 - was set to raw for one day of pictures. I know many of you perfer to shoot in raw but I'm still learning how to use my settings in jpeg. I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and it won't let me see them. I did a search here to find out which software to use to see the pictures. And I saw Lightroom several times. Just wondering if that is by Adobe Lightroom 2. Again I'm still learning

Thank you!!!

 

[RBennett]

Hi Everyone.

First I just want to say that I enjoy looking at your photos and learning a lot from all of you.

We just came back from Paris and it seems that my camera - Nikon D80 - was set to raw for one day of pictures. I know many of you perfer to shoot in raw but I'm still learning how to use my settings in jpeg. I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and it won't let me see them. I did a search here to find out which software to use to see the pictures. And I saw Lightroom several times. Just wondering if that is by Adobe Lightroom 2. Again I'm still learning

Thank you!!!

That's really odd. I have PS Elements 5 as well and all I shoot is RAW. My recommendation (take it for what it's worth) would be to open Elements Organizer, and then there is an icon at the top left that lets you retrieve your pictures from a folder/camera/memory card whatever. Just retrieve the photos from wherever you saved your pictures and you should be able to see the RAW files in Photoshop. Now then, you have to go into each picture and save it as a jpg before you can see the pictures in your folder (like if you went into My Computer.) Does that help/make sense?

 

[GrillMouster]

Your version of Photoshop Elements (PSE) likely pre-dates the D80. Check the Adobe website for updates to your version of PSE. On the PSE updates page you'll want to look for an update to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). If after you install the update you still can't view the RAW files from your D80, you can just download the standalone DNG converter program from Adobe. You can use the converter to change the ".NEF" RAW files to the ".DNG" RAW format, which you can then view and edit in your version of PSE/ACR.

By the way, Adobe eventually stops releasing new camera updates to the RAW engine for older versions of all its software (Photoshop, PSE, ACR, Lightroom). When this happens and you're trying to open a RAW file from a newer model camera, you'll need to use the DNG converter, as I explained above, or upgrade your software to a more current version.

 

[BeautyluvsBeast]

Thank you RBennent and GrillMouster!!! I'll will try those and hopefully I can do it.

 

[networktek]

hi there i would like to know how many people shot in raw mode i have a canon XSI 12mp and wanted to know if people perfer shoting in raw or just large photo mode and what the pro and cons to shoting raw are thank you