What's the point of RAW?

ZombieCake

Well-known member
Can't see the need myself. Last time I used RAW was for a wedding and the client (my brother, a professional photographer, so no pressure there!!!) said the JPEGs were great (Pentax K3 with RAW and JPEG on separate cards. Got 'free' Lightroom with the Leica D-Lux 109 but never used it, as it just gives nice piccies. Oh well. All I do is a few tweaks if that. All the stuff submitted for this years Mendip Photo thingy is straight out of camera taken with no tweaks on a Pentax K30. Am I missing something? Here's a view:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYLSOp48oLQ
 

NewStuff

New member
Dynamic range. JPEG's have less of it. Darks and Highlights are treated as extremes, in-camera conversion software is used for the middle ground. It's certainly not optimised for underground. Some add sharpening. The RAW>JPEG process algorithm is usually pretty pants in-camera in comparison to what you can do with a computer.

Shoot and process in RAW/TIFF etc, publish in JPEG. It's not as if space is a huge concern like it was 15 years ago, 32GB cards are cheap enough. On the other hand, processing power for in-camera conversion is also much further advanced now, but not a patch on what can be done with software because it's still a middle of the road affair.
 

mrodoc

Well-known member
I use RAW regularly for highlights and shadows, colour temperature, exposure etc.  It also helps with haze. I have also found I can get better colour correction of old scanned transparencies using the RAW filter setting in Photoshop.
 

Graigwen

Active member
Following on from what the doc said. All processing of image data involves permanent loss of information. RAW is what was captured in the first place, including some acquisition information as well as the image data. Retain the RAW image file and archive it. Then you can always go back to it. Even TIFF files made with lossless compression (such as LZW) may lose some data.


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yrammy

Member
In addition to what has been said before, some photo competitions (wildlife ones anyway) require a RAW (or equivalent)  file to be sent if you are selected as a winner, I guess to make your you did not over tweak your entry. 
 

Rob

Well-known member
I used to bother with RAW, now i don't. For what i do with cave photos, the difference is negligible, but the hassle is greater.
 

pwhole

Well-known member
I still use it, though as Rob mentions, it's probably less critical underground - although bringing down blown-out flash or bringing up black shadows to reveal some detail can still be useful. Generally my TIFF files are larger than the RAW that created it, so I tend to save the RAW generally, unless some fiendish post-production work had to be done on the TIFF to make it usable, in which case I keep both. Images are the only large files I save, so storage space is not that big an issue, and I have large pruning sessions every few months to get rid of stuff I definitely won't need again.
 

TheBitterEnd

Well-known member
Cave_Troll said:
I sometimes think this is the digital equivalent of the old slide / print film argument

more like the digital equivalent of sending your film to a lab for develop/print versus developing and printing your own where you get to control the variables.
 

ZombieCake

Well-known member
Back in time there were the 'preliminary sketches'... Bang off a copy for the Queen & Archbishop. Probably quite raw at the time... an early Boots or Jessops if you will  ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OedG-8OUpQ
 

The Old Ruminator

Well-known member
Mr O'Doc keeps telling me to shoot in RAW. Of course he is correct in some ways but that is not the sort of photography I do. My stuff is more " journalistic " capturing a moment or a character unexpectedly. Hence I rarely do the complicated set ups or long term post editing. I dont expect to win any competitions or have my photos published as I do it for a record of our digs and for fun. Have a look at my big collage at the Mendip exhibition. Acceptable I think but of course individually in small format. The tendency in photography is to go for effect rather than composition. Rather than telling a visual story. Some programmes like Aurora go way beyond reality with garish effects. Sadly some cave images may look fantastic but are far beyond the realm of reality also.
 
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