What camera settings in RAW?

[Mike Buckley]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that edits made when 'editing' the raw file, or rather editing the viewable file that the raw translator shows actually don't change the raw file but are generally carried along as a 'sidecar' file.

That's true so long as the word, generally, is recognized. Some raw converters, though probably relatively few, store the edits in the raw file rather than the sidecar file.

[george013]

I've shown this diagram several times now without any reaction.



George

[Mike Buckley]

I've shown this diagram several times now without any reaction.

That might be because too many people may be like me in that we don't have the technical background to understand it or its practical implications.

[proseak]

It depends - how are you processing the raw files? If you use Canon's own SW, "picture styles" will be applied. If you use third-party SW, they won't even be detected.

"Highlight Tone Priority" does affect the base exposure.

As to LENR, it refers to dark-frame subtraction; you can do this in post, but doing it in camera is easier for occasional use.

[DanK]

It doesn't happen often, but I disagree with Donald on one point.

As he wrote, long-exposure noise reduction is one of the few settings that actually changes the content of the raw file--as opposed to simply adding metadata that may or may not tell your software what initial rendering to use. I use it often. It is a completely different process than either the other in-camera noise reduction or software noise reduction. It's sometimes called "subtractive" noise reduction. The camera takes a second exposure of the same length as the real one, but with the shutter closed. This image will be completely black except for the specific pixels that emit noise after a very long exposure. It then subtracts the second from the first. Unlike noise reduction in software, subtractive noise reduction for the most part does not damage image detail at all.

Whether you would ever use it is another matter. It only matters with fairly long exposures--longer with some bodies than others. Unless you are doing things like night photography, you can just leave it off or set it to auto, which iwill amount to the same thing unless you do long exposures.

[george013]

That might be because too many people may be like me in that we don't have the technical background to understand it or its practical implications.

Strange answer. I ask when I don't understand something I want to know. The more as these verbal discussions about the RAW- files are much more difficult to understand.


George

[MichaelC]

Thanks for all the replies everyone. All this has been going on while I slept (different time zone to you all) so I was a little stunned to see the number and quality of replies this morning. Donald, the impression I get is that this site is one of the better photographic sites available regarding information, variation of topics and civility.

When I read about the Highlight Tone Priority in the camera manual I thought that I might have found a way to get around the blown out highlights I get from time to time by extending the range in camera, but it appears not to be. However I take it that it is beneficial to set Long Exposure Noise Reduction to “Auto” rather than to “On” ?

[Didace]

Really?
To people on a photo web site where they are trying to get c/c?
To encourage do one's best is being harsh?

I'm all for encouraging people to do their best. Telling them that if they aren't trying to "create art" then they are just "copying" isn't the way I'd go about it.

There is a vast array of photographers reading here who have skills and goals that very widely. No one should be diminished because they aren't living up to some arbitrary standard.

[DanK]

Thanks for all the replies everyone. All this has been going on while I slept (different time zone to you all) so I was a little stunned to see the number and quality of replies this morning. Donald, the impression I get is that this site is one of the better photographic sites available regarding information, variation of topics and civility.

When I read about the Highlight Tone Priority in the camera manual I thought that I might have found a way to get around the blown out highlights I get from time to time by extending the range in camera, but it appears not to be. However I take it that it is beneficial to set Long Exposure Noise Reduction to “Auto” rather than to “On” ?

That's right. Leave it on off or auto unless you know you need it.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalkt

[Mike Buckley]

I'm all for encouraging people to do their best. Telling them that if they aren't trying to "create art" then they are just "copying" isn't the way I'd go about it.

Completely agreed.

The irony is that copying a scene is a very important part of photography that requires specialized skills and equipment that relatively few photographers have. I know for a fact that I don't have them; I only know the primary issues to contend with. My hat is off to anyone who can make a photograph that effectively copies a scene to include accurate replication of color, texture, shape and, when appropriate, size.

[thetraveler]

I have a different outlook and prefer to encourage creativity rather than repetition.


. creativity scores had been steadily rising. . .until 1990. Since then,
creativity scores have consistently inched downward."

Newsweek, July 10, 2010, retrieved July 27, 2010
from http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/10/t...ty-crisis.html


Eleven Classroom
Creativity Killers
Marvin Bartel - © 2001, updated April 24, 2016

https://www.goshen.edu/art/ed/creativitykillers.html


1. I Kill Creativity when I encourage Renting (borrowing) instead of Owning ideas.

Real artwork is based on the child'sown experience, memory, observation, and/or imagination. Realartwork is not borrowed from other children or other artists. Thedefinition of borrowing is "use it and give it back".

Even thieves take ownership--they do not borrow. They do not intend toreturn what they take.

Ideas cannot be patented or copyrighted. They are free in the vapor of our lives. I stole this idea from Nick Lindsay, a good friend and poet (I assume that Nick stole it also). He is the son of poet Vachel Lindsay.

When I asked him if he was ever tempted to borrow from other poets, he said, "Steal it--Don't borrow it. Make it your own."

Making an idea my own means I do not intend to return it. I choose it, improve it, shake it, pound it,deconstruct it, reengineer it, materialize it, test it, internalizeit, and so on. I cannot simply copy it or rent it.


In working on skills or learning technique, one sometimes repeats but that should never be the end point in art. Repetition kills creativity.

[DanK]

This below is one of my best images, I think, taken from a moving train on a dusty, misty morning. Do you care about lens, f stop, shutter speed, iso - any of that? No, you look at the image, pass into the frame and ignore everything else (I hope).

If one wants just to enjoy and appreciate the image, no. If one wants to learn from others, quite often yes. For example, I often want to know the aperture used because it helps me develop a better intuitive sense of DOF under different circumstances. Every artist I have ever known, in any medium, whether it be photography or jazz, talks about and practices technique, not as an end in itself, but to be able to do their work better. We trade information like this all the time, to help each other learn. If you don't want to exchange information of that sort here, that's fine, but many of us do.

One of the nice things about this forum is that the participants help each other reach their own goals in photography.

[Manfred M]

Lew - I really had to laugh quite hard when I read the snippet of the article that you posted.

If you borrow something, you give it back. I have no idea how to give a borrowed idea back to the originator (who likely "borrowed" or "stole" some of the underlying concepts from someone else. Peel back what is being written and it doesn't take a genius to figure out both concepts are essentially identical, with "borrow" being a euphemism for "stealing". Stealing is such a bad thing though, as we are taught as children.

The creative process in humans is incremental and iterative. We get an idea, push it in one way or another, sometimes we are inspired by something related someone else has done, but more often the idea can come from a totally unrelated field. We take that a few steps one way, don't like where it is going, go back a few steps and try something else. This is the iteration component of creativity.

So call it what you want, the idea is still that we need to see what others have done and draw our inspiration from them. Call it stealing, borrowing or inspiration. It's all the same thing.

The only time we get into trouble here is when somebody feels that you stole from them and gets the lawyers, accountants and the courts involved. You can't copyright ideas, but you can certainly get into trouble if you use those ideas to create something tangible. Look at the recent court cases involving artists allegedly stealing a few notes used in a score.

Photography is different, right?

Remember the case of the prints of the red London buses in a desaturated background.

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/116...copyright-case

So go ahead and steal shamelessly! Just don't get caught by the system.

[James G]

We seem to have wandered very far from the actual question raised by Michael!

I have only ever aspired to take photographs that please me. When others are pleased by my images that pleases me even more.

As an ex-scientist the concept of 'a creativity score' is reminiscent of arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!

While I'm thinking about that, I'm just off to photograph some insect macro's before the weather changes again!

[mikesan]

Great question, Mike!

To be as precise as I know how to be, all in-camera settings affect the raw file but only to the extent that all in-camera settings are permanently embedded in it. Depending on the raw converter that you use and how you decide to use it, the converter will completely ignore those settings, emulate them or use them. .

Thanks for the clarification. I have never used any camera-maker's proprietary software for converting my raw files, so I was unaware of this possibility.

[george013]

Thanks for the clarification. I have never used any camera-maker's proprietary software for converting my raw files, so I was unaware of this possibility.

Mike is making it to difficult. The camera settings are stored seperate in the raw file. The conversion exists out of two parts: the conversion to a rgb raster image and some post processing on it, either from the camera settings or the editor settings. Just as in my diagram is drawn.
The raw image is basicly what the sensor records: mainly influenced by shutterspeed and diafragm, filters in front of the lens. And even isso setting, though that might become another discussion. The long exposure noise correction is correcting that raw image afterwards. New for me too, I never used it.

If you want to play with a Canon converter, it's free for download. https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/p...ersAndSoftware. Under software.

It is a very simple diagram.

George

[Black Pearl]

Lew - if you take any of your images and run a Google image search on them it throws out countless others that are visually similar.

Did you take yours first and are all the others copies?
Have you seen the others and so have they influence you when you made yours?
Is every single one of your shots completely unrelated to any other shot you have ever seen in your entire life?

Step outside now - this very instant - take a shot.

The chances of it being completely original are a million to one. It is far more likely it will be a copy, be influenced by something you have seen in your life, be an adaptation of an idea you had when you saw something or simply be inspired by another persons work that you have witnessed on your journey through the great medium that we call photography.

Don't be ashamed by this - please don't don't try to shame others by this - embrace it, embrace work by others, be inspired, be yourself but don't be so presumptuous as to think every click of your shutter is a first.

[xpatUSA]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that edits made when 'editing' the raw file, or rather editing the viewable file that the raw translator shows actually don't change the raw file but are generally carried along as a 'sidecar' file. With LR or Adobe Camera Raw the sidecar has the same name as the image file but a suffix of xmp.

The xmp file is merely a list, in standard text, of the changes to be applied to the raw file when it is opened the next time.

If you look at a folder with several raw files, you will note that they are of different sizes according to numbers of changes made. Each time you open the raw file, you are opening the same raw file and the look is different according to the changes recorded in the xmp and applied to the raw file when it is opened.

x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="Adobe XMP Core 5.6-c011 79.156380, 2014/05/21-23:38:37 ">
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"> etc etc

</x:xmpmeta>

Just so we realize that this is not an "Adobe-only" thread:

RawTherapee creates .pp3 sidecar files and Sigma Photo Pro embeds adjustments in the raw X3F itself, if you select it so to do.