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Mulling over raw rather than jpeg

Maybe its a basic misconception about the discussion. Any photo can be great Art, if the photographer gets it right in the moment. Not all the great images were manipulated by lab techs at processing time.
It's simply that JPEGs are like lossy digital sound files. They don't contain ALL the detail captured by the camera. It's enough IF the pic works straight from the file, but if you need to alter it (or just like to muck about) then RAW files allow far more manipulation before the image shows signs of corruption.
Take an image of a blue sky in raw and JPEG. Stick them in an editor and paly with exposure and saturation. The JPEG file will quickly succumb to banding, where the tones and shades are seperated with a clear edge. The Raw file retains the subtle gradation and just changes tone and shade overall, because the JPEG is missing subtle tone and shade info in the crossover areas. Nor can you retrieve it.
 
I shoot RAW only.

The thing is the original NEF files are never altered by editing - NX-D keeps and updates a separate 'sidecar' file with all the alterations so the process is completely reversible. The original NEFs just sit there on disc as the source for all. Is that how other RAW editors work? I've never used anything else than NX-D which as Pete says is brilliant. I now just create JPEGS of the best ones I want to share / print etc.

Anyway this makes for a very simple a manageable workflow which even I can keep track of. I used to shoot RAW+JPEG and it drove me nuts keeping two versions of everything.
 
My Nikon has 2 card slots. On holiday, or where I am doing a proper 'shoot' like a wedding, I shoot raw and allocate card 2 as overflow. Normally I allocate card 2 as JPEG but I have no idea why:) I never use them.
I download everything to iPhoto...it's useless as an editor but great at simple filing. I export from there to Photoshop or Lightroom for processing and save the result to Flikr as a best Q JPEG. iPhoto keeps the original RAW file safe. I back up the lot once a month.
 
My Nikon has 2 card slots. On holiday, or where I am doing a proper 'shoot' like a wedding, I shoot raw and allocate card 2 as overflow. Normally I allocate card 2 as JPEG but I have no idea why:) I never use them.
I download everything to iPhoto...it's useless as an editor but great at simple filing. I export from there to Photoshop or Lightroom for processing and save the result to Flikr as a best Q JPEG. iPhoto keeps the original RAW file safe. I back up the lot once a month.

I would have thought the second card as a backup for weddings would be best.

Pete
 
I configure the cards as backup, so RAW+JPG are written to both, I'm not a machine gun shooter to write times are not essential, and my view is if I have two card slots I might as well use them!
 
interesting some of you talk about 'having to use a RAW editor' or 'RAW files are dull'. This may have been true in the days of Photoshop 2.0. For the last ten years we've had Aperture, and Lightroom - both geared to actual photographers, rather than graphic designers. They have standard views of your camera's settings, and rarely look dull on screen - unless you've taken a crap shot. There's no need to use the antiquated and redundant ACR converter or Bridge.

For the poster mentioning 'I'll have to learn Lightroom', suggest you take a look at the free videos and workflows on www.markgaler.com. As a former Aperture user, I didn't find Lightroom intuitive either. I'll note that with some training, and perseverence, you can get a good workflow happening. I talked a friend 19 timezones away through it on the phone, a couple of weeks back. It was encouraging to hear "wow!" for many of the standard editing steps... he'd not realised there was so much lurking in his 5D mk1 images.
 
interesting some of you talk about 'having to use a RAW editor' or 'RAW files are dull'. This may have been true in the days of Photoshop 2.0. For the last ten years we've had Aperture, and Lightroom - both geared to actual photographers, rather than graphic designers. They have standard views of your camera's settings, and rarely look dull on screen - unless you've taken a crap shot. There's no need to use the antiquated and redundant ACR converter or Bridge.

For the poster mentioning 'I'll have to learn Lightroom', suggest you take a look at the free videos and workflows on www.markgaler.com. As a former Aperture user, I didn't find Lightroom intuitive either. I'll note that with some training, and perseverence, you can get a good workflow happening. I talked a friend 19 timezones away through it on the phone, a couple of weeks back. It was encouraging to hear "wow!" for many of the standard editing steps... he'd not realised there was so much lurking in his 5D mk1 images.

I thought what the OP meant was that RAW images (in LR, PS etc.) don't have the 'pop' that an out of camera Jpeg has. That's not surprising given that the Jpeg has had adjustment made.
 


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