Raw vs jpeg. I know this has been brought up before but amuse me if you will

[brian.austin]

Originally Posted by hotrod4x5

Mr Pickles, did you ever shoot film? Shooting RAW is like shooting negative film. Exposures are seldom perfect, but with film, the lab took care of any exposure errors. Do you think there were far too many people shooting negative film?

Shooting JPEG is like shooting slides, what you see is what you get for the most part. Hardly anyone in the amateur world shot slides.

In a way, shooting jpeg is like taking your negative film to a mini lab, sometimes they did a good job, and you got good prints, sometimes they did a bad job, and you didn't. Most people who had bad looking prints figured it was their fault, when often times if they took back their negatives, they could get better prints if the technician made a manual adjustment. The only difference, I guess, is that with JPEG, it is like throwing away the negatives.

If you're going to use a true analogy, JPGs are like Polaroids: instant "develop" within the camera or film itself. There is no lab for the film. RAW requires a "lab" ie a RAW processor and needs help outside the camera.

That said, Mr. Pickles knows the differences well. But, like me, I suspect he's tired of everyone trying to find some film equivalent to everything digital. It's not the same. Film is film. Digital is digital.

[Mr. Pickles]

Yeah, I shot film. What does it matter?

When you shot film and took it to the developer, they made their "tweaks" and give you the prints, right? The camera is the developer in the JPEG world.

What percentage of people back in the days developed their own film and made their own teaks in the darkroom?

When you shoot slide film, you can still take it to a developer and have them do whatever and mount your slide. I don't see that much of a difference. The only difference in the film vs slide debate is in the latitude of the medium. Slide has a smaller range. You need to be more accurate.

When you took your film back after getting bad prints, the next technician made better prints after making a manual adjustment...but he knew what he was doing. The first guy was the guy who didn't know how to adjust the original image. Same is true in the RAW world. Give a rookie and a pro developer the same RAW image, one is gonna get you a better print. Odds are, the camera converted JPEG would be in between them and sometimes be preferred over the best RAW conversion.

[ohenry]

I've shot film, slide, polaroid, jpg, and RAW. I used to develop b/w film, did a lot of slide E6 developing and Cibachrome printing and I can assure you that the professional labs (and most auto labs) did much better than I ever did (although I got pretty darn good with Cibachrome). In the digital world, I generally get improved results in post processing than I get direct from the camera.

I shoot RAW now because I really like to work in the digital workshop. Whether I'm shooting jpg or RAW, I always try to get the very best exposure setting in my camera. Why? Because GIGO. If one wants the best possible image, then they don't take shortcuts and rely on "fixing it in post". That's just sloppy workmanship. Like Mr. Pickles, I hate seeing people rely on RAW as an excuse not to exercise good technique with their camera.

[jfrancho]

Originally Posted by PetersenPhotography

Doesn't the logo at the top of every page say "We Are Your Friendly Photo Community"?

Yep, and this is NEVER a friendly discussion.

My only advice here is try raw. It may or may not be for you. If you have specific questions about the process, post those. But a discussion of raw to "amuse" the original poster is a waste of energy. The search feature will point anyone interested in raw or jpeg processing to lots of good info.

[jnsuffolk]

Sorry I asked don't worry it wont happen again

[hotrod4x5]

Good analogy about jpegs being like polaroids.

I shoot RAW because rarely is the exposure perfect, and RAW allows exposure adjustments easier and with less file degradation than JPEG. Sometimes I am doing very small changes, less than a 1/3 of a stop, but it is nice to have the control.

[Mechoption]

More of a technical question, but don't JPG and RAW cover the same total range, with RAW breaking that range into substantially more graduations?

If JPG is 8-bit (256) and RAW 16-bit (65536) then each shade of the JPG is represented by 256 shades in RAW - but is the brightest JPG bit equivilent to the brightest RAW bit, or the 256/2 brightest RAW BIT? Eihterway, you don't gain much exposure control from shooting RAW (Is my logic correct?). BUT, you obviously gain more graduation between your levels, and you don't mess up your shot from incorrect camera settings (contrast, saturation, white balance) from when the camera processes your RAW to JPG onboard.

[PrestonSmith]

Originally Posted by jnsuffolk

I started out shooting jpegs with my 300d. Then when I got my 40d I went to raw. I heard all these phenomenal things about how much better the pp is.

2 things. ive noticed first when I load a raw or a jpeg the raw converter comes on for both of them. This never used to happen. I don't know why but this is how it is for me. So with that I have the same process for both. second thing is that I don't see any difference in changing the exposure in a raw file compared to lightening up a jpeg. or changing the contrast between the two. I really don't see any difference at all between the two types of pp

Am I missing something

Try the opposite and you'll see the difference. Overexpose by a stop and then try to get your blown highlights back in JPG. You can do it in RAW. Also, go out and shoot a few shots with the white balance set in the wrong setting, then see how much time it takes to get the color right in JPG vs the two seconds it take in RAW. Also keep in mind that every JPG you get out of RAW is first generation, everytime you edit your out of camera JPG it is at least second generation...edit that JPG enough times and you will see a difference.

[jfrancho]

everytime you edit your out of camera JPG it is at least second generation...edit that JPG enough times and you will see a difference

Very little difference if you save a working copy as a psd right off the bat. But yes, outputting your raw conversions to 16 bit/channel psd files will give you the most editing lattitude and best quality in the end. The difference is very minimal, though provided you use a quality workflow. Its just as easy to thrash a raw file with too much editing as it is a jpeg.

[jfrancho]

Originally Posted by Mechoption

More of a technical question, but don't JPG and RAW cover the same total range, with RAW breaking that range into substantially more graduations?

If JPG is 8-bit (256) and RAW 16-bit (65536) then each shade of the JPG is represented by 256 shades in RAW - but is the brightest JPG bit equivilent to the brightest RAW bit, or the 256/2 brightest RAW BIT? Eihterway, you don't gain much exposure control from shooting RAW (Is my logic correct?). BUT, you obviously gain more graduation between your levels, and you don't mess up your shot from incorrect camera settings (contrast, saturation, white balance) from when the camera processes your RAW to JPG onboard.

I think we've already explained this above. A jpeg is 8 bits/channel and a raw can outputted to whatever bit depth (16 bpc or 8 bpc). The brightest white in an RGB image 255, 255, 255 and the darkest black is 0, 0, 0 regardless of bit depth.

The most oft mentioned advantage of a raw work flow is that intermediate step: converting to a 16 bpc file in a large gamut working color space of your preference. You exert the least amount of damage editing this image since there much more data to work with.

Personally, the differences are minimal in print. And since prints are my usual output, that is king for me. the big advantage in shooting raw is in the raw converter itself. There you can assign a look and feel to the photograph long after pressing the shutter.

There are also ways to extract the most detail from your camera by exposing just under overexposure, "Expose To The Right" or ETTL. Later you can bring the exposure down to taste, while reducing noise and adding detail in the shadow regions of you image. Another big advantage of shooting raw.

[Mechoption]

Originally Posted by PrestonSmith

Overexpose by a stop and then try to get your blown highlights back in JPG. You can do it in RAW.

Not necessarily. If you blow out exactly the top 256 shades of your raw image, then that's equivalent to one shade in JPG. Eitherway, you've blown out the identical areas in both pictures and will not be able to get either of them back

BUT, I realise this is somewhat pedantic, as you're correct as most likely you blow out less then 256 shades, and therefore with the raw can pull back some of that, where as with a JPG that detail is lost forever.

[jfrancho]

One stop over, and you can "fix" the image in a good raw converter, using the detail recovery features, but yes, if its blown the detail is gone. I find it easiest to set my in camera processing parameters to sRGB color space, low contrast, slightly undersaturated, and get the WB reasonably close. This way, the in camera preview that is built by these instructions will be very close to to what I have in the raw file, and the histogram based on that in camera thumbnail can be counted on to check exposure.

[aam1234]

Few weeks ago and by accident I stumbled on a shoot I did 3 years ago. To my surprise they all had a blue color cast on them, even though they were all shot outdoors. Since they were taken in Raw it was easy to process them again (200-300 pics). I would imagine it will take a lot of time and effort to do the same to jpegs.

[jfrancho]

To my surprise, you had 200-300 usable images.