I’ve been trying to get some of my stuff organized lately. One of the boxes I’ve been dreading is the “miscellaneous computer ‘stuff'” box. All kinds of odds and ends from cables to old hard drives to memory chips to scores of old CDs/DVDs (most unlabeled). It’s always been a bit too daunting to go through. However, it was about time to rectify that.
Lo and behold! I found some old files from my Canon D60 days that I thought were lost (and honestly, some that I had completely forgotten about). I was even less organized with handling my digital files than I am today, so this was a nice little surprise. I’m honestly kind of looking forward to going through the rest now (though, I’ll admit that it’s still a daunting proposition).
I do have to admit a bit of regret that I don’t seem to have been keen on shooting in RAW in this era. I think I had been on a big Ken Rockwell kick and remember him talking about shooting in JPG because that’s what pros did. Little did I understand that those pros worked for newspapers and workflow speed trumped absolute image quality. So JPGs were good enough for them. Alas, how I wish I had dug into the subject a little more. Some of these files have blown highlights or shadows that simply aren’t recoverable from a JPG. Alas, alas.
Anyways, enough babblying. Here’s a shot of a squirrel enjoying a pine cone snack as seen on the Little Yellowstone trail in Rocky Mountain National park, taken on September 4th, 2005:
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I keep waffling on RAW. I shot it on my main digital camera for a few years and grew weary of all the post processing. I found some custom settings that deliver pleasing jpgs 80% of the time. On my secondary digicam I haven’t found those settings yet and do more RAW – and rue the post processing. It’s a lot more work for me to process a RAW file than to touch up a jpeg that isn’t fundamentally flawed. Maybe I haven’t figured out RAW yet.
I think there are six things that really drive me to shoot RAW over JPG.
The first is that I kind of like post processing. I’ve only had limited experiences working in darkrooms but I’ve always loved the St. Ansel idea of “The negative is the score and the print is the performance.” Working with digital post processing tools is as close to that experience as I’ve been get while living in the small apartments that I’ve called home for most of my adult life. While it’s not quite the same there’s still that idea of the RAW image being the score and the file, especially the print, being the performance which calls to me.
The second is that I like the idea of having lots of data available when I’m doing that post processing work. It’s always easy to throw surplus data away but it’s impossible to create data that isn’t there (although post processing tools like Topaz Lab’s Gigapixel AI are challenging that theory a little bit). I will grant you the fact that this does mean more post processing work but the added flexibility of the files is worth it for me.
The third is that when shooting JPG, you’re at the mercy of the camera’s JPG engine. Some of these are a lot better than others. For instance, Fuji’s JPG files in their mirrorless cameras are so good that a lot of photographers shooting Fuji just use JPG. Other manufacturers vary quite a bit. The cameras I have used range from dreadful to very good, but none have pleased me enough to abandon RAW yet.
The fourth kind of relates to the above. When you’re trusting the camera to do the work, you’ll want to get it dialed in for the look that you’re going for. And that look may vary from one shot to the next. Take white balance for instance. When I’m shooting RAW, I usually just keep it on auto and figure that I’ll adjust any white balance misses during the RAW conversion. I’ve noticed that extreme lighting conditions can really mess up JPG files if your camera isn’t dialed in for the proper light source. Something like sodium vapor lighting (extremely orange) is usually beyond what the auto white balance can reliably accommodate and sometimes it’s hard to adjust for even with custom white balance settings. Situations like that mean that I’m even more at the mercy of what the camera is cooking in the JPG. Additionally, it means that I’m spending more time in the field trying to adjust the camera to the correct setting since I know that I’m limited. I’d rather spend that time shooting rather than adjusting.
The fifth is related to the previous two points. When I shoot in RAW, I have a host of tools available to me for RAW conversion. I do most of my RAW processing in Lightroom since that’s also my cataloguing tool. But I’ve never really liked how Lightroom converts Nikon files (though I do like how they handle my Canon files). They’ve gotten better over the years but I still find that I struggle sometimes, even when using tools like my ColorChecker Passport to get accurate colors. Nikon’s own Capture NX-D offers much better looking RAW conversions (though it’s a maddening piece of software to use). I’ve played with Capture One a couple of times over the years and have thought about investing in it as another alternative but have resisted that because of the workflow considerations. As bad as Lightroom’s RAW is and as much as I dislike Adobe’s recent business decisions, it’s nice that most of what I do can all be done right there with non-destructive edits. I’m starting to think about modifying this approach though as I seek better image quality and also contemplate what I’ll do if Adobe requires Lightroom users to switch to the cloud based app — not something I’m willing to do.
The final reason that I like RAW is that I find that how I process pictures has changed substantially over the years. Part of this is newer, better tools to use. Part of this is the fact that I known a lot more about image processing than I did when I first started shooting digital in 2004. And part of it is the fact that my tastes in what I want the end photo to look like have changed quite a bit over the years. I look back at some of my early stuff and I can’t believe some of the aesthetic decisions I made at the time! It’s nice to be able to go back to the original RAW file with a fresh look at the data just as it was at the moment of capture. With that complete data set, I have the most tools available to me which gives me the most adjustability for all of the reasons listed above.
As with everything, though, we all operate a little differently. If shooting JPG works for you, I completely understand the time savings benefits when processing images! I imagine that sitting in front of the computer is probably the last thing you want to do as part of your free time when you sit in front of a computer all day for work!
Jim, I’m not surprised by your comment. To me, SOOC JPEG is equivalent to sending shot film off to a lab for developing and scanning. This is something I know you do a lot. I do it as well because I’m not serious about film. But I am serious about my digital photography and I don’t want the camera manufacturers in-camera lab finalising my images. I guess I am the digital equivalent of those serious film photographers who have a darkroom at home.