Another good reason to shoot in raw

[Brownbear]

It seems like a good opportunity for me to ask yet another silly question (while I have all the expertise handy right here), so here goes.

If a photo actually looks better in the raw format (richer colour and better light) than the jpeg, it surely means that I somehow flubbed my camera settings for that particular shot?

[Mike Buckley]

If a photo actually looks better in the raw format (richer colour and better light) than the jpeg

That's really not an accurate premise, at least not with your explicit reference to "richer color and better light." Considering the level that you and almost all of us are at, including me, I wouldn't be concerned about it. If you feel comfortable converting RAW images and have no particular need for JPEGs generated by the camera, shoot RAW and never look back.

[xpatUSA]

Hi Dan,

All I said was that I was disturbed by the implication in previous posts that all JPEGs are of insufficient quality. Myself, I can't shoot JPEG - my Sigma SD10 output files are RAW only. In your comment below, I must therefore assume that "you" was used in the general rather than the personal sense, so as to educate folks other than my good self ;-)

That is not the point. A jpeg with low compression can be high quality. After all, that is what many good printing labs ask for. The question is how you get to the jpeg. if you shoot jpeg, you are trusting a fixed postprocessing algorithm to get it right, and you have somewhat limited ability to correct after the fact. If you shoot raw, the camera gives you all the detail it has, and you can play with processing as much or as little as you want. Shooting jpeg is like shooting slide film if you didn't develop it: you gave up control after pushing the shutter button. So the jpeg will be low quality if the camera's algorithm turns out not to be ideal.

[Glenn NK]

A JPEG is something I send via e-mail where quality isn't important.

I'll try again.

I often send twenty or thirty images to a colleague in my business. Printing quality is not required. Their purpose is to transmit some information about a project - which doesn't require a high quality image as it's for viewing on the screen only.

In this situation, JPEGs are the best choice; most obviously because a RAW file is not an image file - it must be converted to an image file before it can be viewed (such as: DNG, TIFF, JPEG, PSD, etc.)

Sending multiple files by e-mail has definite limitations as to file size. JPEGs are the best solution in this situation as the others can be very large.

In this case, quality is not important.

Most of the images I receive from my colleagues are from cell phones - they aren't great but they transmit the information that's needed.

Glenn

PS - and I would humbly suggest (in my opinion) that the post by Dan K is probably one of the best I've read on a forum in regard to JPEG images.

[drjuice]

...
If a photo actually looks better in the raw format (richer colour and better light) than the jpeg, it surely means that I somehow flubbed my camera settings for that particular shot?

Hi, again, Christina -

Somewhere in one of these forums, I think in this thread, is a pretty lengthy explanation of why JPEGs often look like garbage and processed RAW images can look reallllllly outstanding, so I won't repeat the whole deal here. I will comment that one of the reasons I moved to a DSLR was because the color on JPEGs produced by my P&S camera was abysmal! I took some pictures of Texas bluebonnets that looked like whitebonnets! I was more than just irritated!

That's when I found out that camera vendors have a small program in each camera that processes the RAW image (with our DSLRs, whether you save it or not is your business. But, even a P&S camera has RAW images internally, the vendors just won't let us use the RAW images). The problem comes that they set that internal program with a bunch of defaults that conform to their experts' ideas about how color temperature, ISO, the lens, f-stop, exposure time, white balance, etc. should impact the picture. And, as religious as I was about following the exact steps to take pictures of the bluebonnets, that program was what garbaged the color!

Hope this helps.

virginia

[Brownbear]

Thank you Virginia for your detailed reply. Yes, helpful, as I still have a lot to learn.

[Dave Humphries]

I shoot Nikon and as far as I am concerned, a RAW file is a RAW file, it comes in one file size, at the maximum resolution.

Additionally, I think I have seen options related here at CiC about some camera's having options of shooting 12 bit or 14 bit RAW, this will affect the dynamic range recorded and ultimately, the image quality in certain situations.

I gather some Canon's have a compressed RAW option too, this allows them save file space.

Compression comes in two varieties;
Lossy e.g. jpg
Lossless e.g. like I believe Canon use on their RAW files

So you cannot generalise too much, because in some contexts, using a compressed image format may not affect the quality at all.

To my mind, these days, image processor speeds are so fast, and memory so cheap (PLEASE someone tell Apple this ), that to not shoot at maximum quality and image pixel size in jpg and the maximum bit resolution of RAW, is a false saving*. Using a Lossless compressed RAW format shouldn't theoretically, make any difference; a bit longer to open a file maybe.

* Of course, in certain situations, exceptions will arise; running out of space on the memory card is the obvious one = when you left the spares at home

jpg is designed to not waste data bits on stuff the human eye won't see (so it throws a lot away), but if you intend to process all your shots (and time isn't an issue), you really should make the change and shoot RAW. My experience is like others, I tried both for a while, then gave up jpg.

Lossless compression doesn't throw away any image data, it just stores it in smaller file space by being a bit clever, to give a very simple example; if there are ten consecutive pixels at a certain value, say 128, instead of saving 128,128,128 ..., it saves an instruction like "10 x 128", which uses less space.

Cheers,

[xpatUSA]

Back when I was an Engineer, the most common Industrial definition of Quality was the degree of an item's "fitness for it's purpose". While the term generally has a different meaning to most photographic cognoscenti, many of our disagreements and, dare I say, misconceptions would be eased if we thought a little more about the purpose of an image in the context of it's quality.

As a bit of a bottom-feeder, I regard my nice sharp JPEG images (640px wide, JPEG quality 3, cropped from low resolution originals) posted on eBay as extremely fit for their purpose and therefore of very high quality!



And now for some clarification of "RAW". Not everyone seems to know that a "RAW image" itself is a horrible, very dark image with virtually no information above 3 or 4 stops. It takes on no merit until it has been decoded and the dreaded "gamma correction" applied. Further, to see it on your screen, it gets converted into an sRGB image.

Some cameras can produce different size RAW files via an in-camera process called pixel "binning". The RAW file (Sigma X3F) for the above image was about 1.7MB - 1134x756px.

[Mike Buckley]

I regard my nice sharp JPEG images (640px wide, JPEG quality 3, cropped from low resolution originals) posted on eBay as extremely fit for their purpose and therefore of very high quality!

If you can reasonably determine that your images help sell your product at higher prices and/or in shorter periods of time, it would be very difficult to dispute you. Point well made!

[Diane]

All this information is so helpful. Thank you everyone! I'm still trying to fiqure out just how Raw benefits me & my photos & now I see it is related more to file size rather than pixel size. & now trying to learn how to do all these adjustments with the camera. (Panasonic FZ100) .Along with all the information buzz, I need to step back a little & catch my breath.

I've st the camera somewhere to take raw, now am having difficulty using other programs to accept the pictures so I can play with them.

diane

[Diane]

Re: Different RAW files.
This must be why my camera has several RAW types to choose from. Still learning about the camera's capabilities. I finally took a decent moon shot, & now can't fiqure out how to process it.
On I go.
diane

[Dave Humphries]

All this information is so helpful. Thank you everyone! I'm still trying to fiqure out just how Raw benefits me & my photos & now I see it is related more to file size rather than pixel size. & now trying to learn how to do all these adjustments with the camera. (Panasonic FZ100) .Along with all the information buzz, I need to step back a little & catch my breath.

I've st the camera somewhere to take raw, now am having difficulty using other programs to accept the pictures so I can play with them.

diane

Yes you might, what software do you have Diane?

Can the FZ100 shoot "RAW+jpg" to give access to both types?

[Manfred M]

All this information is so helpful. Thank you everyone! I'm still trying to fiqure out just how Raw benefits me & my photos & now I see it is related more to file size rather than pixel size. & now trying to learn how to do all these adjustments with the camera. (Panasonic FZ100) .Along with all the information buzz, I need to step back a little & catch my breath.

I've st the camera somewhere to take raw, now am having difficulty using other programs to accept the pictures so I can play with them.

diane

Diane - RAW files cannot be opened by every program; camera vendor supplied software and PP (Photoshop, Lightroom) software does have this capability. An important distinction between RAW and formats like jpg or tiff is that a RAW file is NOT an image file and cannot be viewed directly. Even the RAW files that you look at using your camera's display have been converted to jpgs so you can see them.

My Nikon D90 has only a single 12-bit RAW mode, while my D800 has four RAW modes; 12-bit, 14-bit, 14-bit lossless compressed and 14-bit lossy compressed. Both the 12-bit and 14-bit lossy will theoretically end up with a smaller, but less accurate RAW file, versus the best image that your camera produces. Both 14-bit and 14-bit lossless compressed will give you maximum image quality, but the standard 14-bit will have a larger file size, while in theory, the compressed file may take slightly longer to load. I haven't done any in-depth testing yet to see what the quality impact is for the two lower quality options, so I tend to use 14-bit lossless compressed all the time.

[Letrow]

On my D7000 I shoot JPEG only. I use JPEG fine, medium size at optimal quality (the latter means that the JPEG file size will vary with the scene you are recording).
Afterwards I work on the images in Gimp and that gives me more than enough flexibility to get the images I want. I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding about what is possible in JPEGs, but actually a lot can still be changed before you get to the final result.

RAW will have more flexibility, but so far I have not needed it.
I do make sure that I know the settings of my camera before I start shooting , so I don't need all the correction options. I make sure my white balance is set for the scene (in most cases automatic works fine, but I always carry a white paper marked with day and night on opposite sides, so that I can put a new white balance in one of the four memory banks and then use it for the appropriate scene).

In most cases I shoot the camera on manual settings (with flexible ISO), and if I have doubts about the lighting I can use bracketing (I rarely need this though).

So, why not RAW? I easily shoot a hundred photos when I go after e.g. macro subject like insects. Back at home I just don't have the time to work on them all, so only the real sharp shots are kept. I then do some PP (levels; hue-saturation; crop; layers) and finish up. The results look good to me, so I don't really see the point of RAW.
It is very, very rarely that I need to change WB or lighting, unlesss intentionally.
And to be honest, most of my photos will stay on my computer and will be seen by the family mainly, so I don't need the super quality that RAW would give me.
And then, how many photos do I PP after the initial PP? Not many I can tell you.

So, that is why I am a happy JPEG shooter.

[Diane]

Aww, so that is why I'm having difficultly. Thanks , so much to learn & practise... Still not at the 10000 mark...
diane

[FrankMi]

Hi Diane,

I shoot RAW whenever I can and for my DSLR that is ALL the time. In the case of my Canon SX40 I can only get JPG images and most of the time they work well for me.

I've had situations where JPG images had issues because I can't control the processing that is done 'in camera' to produce the JPG and it isn't necessarily what is best for the image. For example, I can't turn off JPG sharpening in any camera I've owned.

Here is one example. When I took this image of Niagara Falls, every drop of water has an ugly black 'over-sharpened' halo around it which is almost impossible in post processing to remove.



This kind of JPG specific issue doesn't occur with every image but because I would have dearly loved to have this image correct and there is no way in-camera to get it right using JPG, without the RAW image, I'm stuck.

So for me I will always shoot RAW if the camera supports it. I am also seriously considering selling my SX40 and getting the SX50 because the SX50 can shoot RAW and the SX40 cannot.

[Glenn NK]

Diane (and Frank):

An easy article to read by a knowledgeable person:

http://schewephoto.com/ETTR/index.html

And for those who don't know who Jeff Schewe is:

http://www.schewephoto.com/resume.html

Glenn

[FrankMi]

Diane (and Frank):

An easy article to read by a knowledgeable person:

http://schewephoto.com/ETTR/index.html

And for those who don't know who Jeff Schewe is:

http://www.schewephoto.com/resume.html

Glenn

Thank you Glenn. That article clearly demonstrates that where appropriate (typically low contrast images), ETTR can help control noise in an image. It is one of the best graphic comparisons I’ve seen for ETTR. The water drops in my image that are being over-sharpened in-camera aren't the result of sensor noise but rather in-camera JPG processing settings.

In some cameras the sharpening settings can be changed from mild to aggressive but you don't always know in advance that you will face a particular in-camera processing issue until you can see the full size image. I now set the camera's JPG option for sharpening to minimum wherever I can but I can't eliminate the in-camera sharpening if I shoot JPG.

I would much rather use my PC with its massive memory, processing power and sophisticated processing software to take as much time as it needs to properly process the RAW image data rather than use the comparatively miniscule processing capabilities of my camera to achieve the final result.

[Manfred M]

The one thing that does strike me about Jeff Schewe's shot of Niagara Falls in his article is that the colours look wrong. I don't know if this the result of the long exposure he used or if it is due to the extreme use of ETTR (the actual image is jammed extremely far to the right of the histogram). I suspect that the ETTR may be the culprit, but on the other hand, the shot is quite effective, regardless of the colour shifts.