Heard at the PhotoPlus Expo in NYC today….

[Harpo]

First, the expo was great! Should have brought some bottled water as I was losing liquids drooling over equipment. Anyways, at the Canon live demo area, Pro Photographer Sandra Puc was doing live studio shots on stage with babies and kids posing, and pics showing up on the big screen wirelessly SOOC. She was using the Canon 7D, not one of the Full Frames nor the new top of the line FF toy Dx.

The presenter said that due to how good the processor is in the 7D, they were taking all those incredibly good quality pictures in jpeg, not Raw. Said there might only need a very few tweaks in post on some of the images, but not enough to need to take it in RAW.

That caught my attention because what I usually see on the forums gives the impression that "all good photographers shoot in RAW, so if you want to get better, you should too!"

Given the Expo setting and that alot of marketing is going on… I took it with a grain of salt wondering if they were overhyping it… but couldnt help wonder if the adage holds true here as well… its not the camera or lens, its the person behind it that makes it good… A real good & talented photographer is capable of creating excellent pics without having to go to RAW or use much PP???

Any thoughts on that?

[Shadowman]

That caught my attention because what I usually see on the forums gives the impression that "all good photographers shoot in RAW, so if you want to get better, you should too!"

Any thoughts on that?

Mike,

What I think you have heard on this and other forums is "if you are going to do any PP, you better shoot RAW". Shooting jpeg is fine if you don't need to PP and plan to print off one shot, but what happens every time you re-open the file digitally is the concern. What did Sandra Puc, if she said anything at all, about how she normally views her images? Are the images so small that data loss is not noticeable? Is she only viewing these electronic images on the Internet?

[shreds]

For a demo in expo situation producing images to view on the fly, I too would probably choose jpeg. Some wedding photographers do this too, to allow rapid turnround. So I can see the reasons. You can also shoot faster in Jpeg so many sports photographers will do likewise. However, in all other circumstances I would always shoot RAW or as my D3 allows it, dual RAW and jpeg frames together. RAW nearly always exceeds what the jpeg produces because you are not just applying standard defaults to a shot as the in camera software does. The RAW file also contains much more information than a compressed jpeg, so inevitably there is much more information to play with when post processing (which I generally keep to a mimimum, as creating 'a silk purse from a sows ear' is generally not possible.

Would you shoot on green square auto when you have the choice of aperture, shutter speed or manual modes?

[Dave Humphries]

With good (controlled dynamic range) studio lighting and yes crucially, a good photographer to get correct framing, exposure and so on in camera, it will be no hassle to present them as truly impressive shots as 'no PP' jpgs at the lowly 2MP required to satisfy the HD screens in use.

However, for anything shot at a distance >5m where 'atmospherics' conributes, and outdoors with less control of dynamic range, PP will be needed and that is far better done from RAW than jpg.

[Harpo]

Yeah, thats what I thought too… Actually, Sandra Puc was doing the shoot while a spokesperson was talking through the whole thing. I did not stay for the presentation so I did not see all that was shared. But they did say that portrait prints from a shoot like that, they are able to print on the fly like Ian said. It makes sense in a controlled situation like a shoot that JPEG would work if you have everything else tweaked right and can see (even from my limited experience) that shooting landscapes, etc like Dave said, you definitely have no control what nature throws at you and need PP.

I guess it just broadened my knowledge of what these cameras can do in good, talented hands. And how much further I need to go and learn to get anywhere near half the level of the photos in the gallery! Amazing shots.

[Donald]

Then other thing to remember is that they're trying to sell cameras to people who might not necessarily want to be excited by the wonders of PP - "Hey, you with more money than sense. Buy this, stick it onto 'Auto', point it something and get a picture .... And we'll sell you lots of nice white coloured lenses to go with it."

Am I getting too cynical in my old age? Discuss.