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Mulling over raw rather than jpeg

Bananahead said:
Point missed. The discussion is about having the choice between jpeg and RAW and choosing jpeg.
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Huh? You made an analogy, I made one back in the vein of. I'm saying you don't need to shoot raw to make a great picture. Putting forward a defence of the lowly jpeg, which I feel can be likened to a film transparency.

What do you think?
 
I understand what you mean and you are right that there are some fantastic pictures captured as jpegs and some boring pictures captured as RAW. But this conversation is about what is the best format to capture pictures in.

Back in the day I used to shoot gigs with transparencies and get the lab to push them at least two stops. And Radio Luxembourg used to disturb my homework.
 
Bananahead said:
Back in the day I used to shoot gigs with transparencies and get the lab to push them at least two stops.
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Now there's an expression I rarely hear these days. I must brush up on my digital literacy as concepts such as curves, CA fringing, dynamic range and countless other manipulations are rather foreign to me.
 
I found this little video quite interesting - he talks about RAW editors being just too complex

 
For a standard print up to A2 ish, I think that either is fine, but IF you want to do much post processing, JPEGs will quickly fall apart, lose detail etc, wheras a RAW file will allow almost infinite fiddling about with no degredation. It's amazing how much shadow detail, for example, lurks in a raw file.
One small fact tho. Neither will recover a burnt highlight.
 
So if I understand the basics of exposure then there is no chance of recovering blown highlights from a RAW.

So much to learn I have.
 
Bananahead said:
So if I understand the basics of exposure then there is no chance of recovering blown highlights from a RAW.

So much to learn I have.
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Que?
What I said was that no-one can regain a blown highlight. There is NO info on the file to retrieve. None. It's just gone to pure white.
You said 'And at the other end a jpeg will crush (??) to white detail that might be recoverable with a RAW'. I am pointing out that the only way to get detail in a highlit area is to expose correctly (for highlights) in the first place.
Ergo, IF you understand those basic exposure rules, there will be no blown highlights in the first place. RAW or JPEG, the discussion does not happen.
 
and what I said was that a jpeg would display a blown highlight as pure white when it might not really be blown and if captured as a RAW then there might be some detail there.
 
There clearly will be a border area, where a RAW file will have some highlight detail if the exposure did not in fact blow the detail totally...maybe if you were a half stop out, yes.
 
RAW all the way. Why buy quality camera & lenses & then throw away a load of the information you've captured?
 
canonman said:
Many pro sports photographers use jpeg as a default as the results from the latest Canikon bodies are more than good enough for publication. Sports desk editors need images yesterday. I'm lucky enough to use a body where buffering isn't a problem. Over 200 RAW burst without filling the buffer, jpegs just go on until the card is full but I appreciate that's not the case for everyone. You can always use SRAW or MRAW.
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I preferred the RAWs from the 5Dmk2 but been blown away with JPEGs from the 1Dx to the point where even use JPEGS for slower feature or portrait shoots.
 
Bananahead said:
For those that shoot jpeg

https://witharsenal.com/
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It works with RAW as well

eternumviti said:
That looks awful. It appears to set out to remove all the creativity, thought and reflection that goes, or should go, into taking a photograph, and handing the entire responsibility to an app. One named after a football team, ffs. No.
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Focus stacking & exposure bracketing are both techniques that I use quite frequently. Far from taking away the creativity, they open up new possibilities but one does have to have the vision, creativity & imagination to take advantage of those possibilities. The software just facilitates what can be done in Lightroom or Photoshop. As for what it's called, a) who cares & b) I suspect its about having more tools in one's arsenal, not football!
 
gidders said:
Focus stacking & exposure bracketing are both techniques that I use quite frequently. Far from taking away the creativity, they open up new possibilities but one does have to have the vision, creativity & imagination to take advantage of those possibilities. The software just facilitates what can be done in Lightroom or Photoshop. As for what it's called, a) who cares & b) I suspect its about having more tools in one's arsenal, not football!
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Imagination and creativity nothwishstanding, I suspect that you and I will have to agree to disagree on this one.
 
A lot of people learning photography I see on photogroups shoot in RAW, because that is the advice the more experienced group members give out.
The results I see are unfortunately flat, dull and boring, because the Raw images require further editing. Shooting in RAW in my opinion is for those of us who like to play around in editing software.
JPEG is more than good enough for everything else.
 
If the cameras picture setting are set how you like them, and your skill lets you get the shot correct in camera, then JPEG is perfect.
 
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