I just bought Lightroom and decided that starting in May I was going to shoot in RAW. Since I'm a newbie for both, is there anything I need to know about shooting/processing before I switch formats?
The files are a lot bigger -- you may need to buy additional memory cards and/or a bigger hard disc. You will also have less burst capacity -- the camera won't be able to take as many photos in a row at full-speed. This is especially the case if you don't have a fast memory card.
RAW files will come out of the camera looking very 'flat'. With a RAW file you need to make adjustments to contrast, saturation, sharpness and noise reduction that you are used to letting the camera do for you.
Other than that, it's certainly a learning curve, and it will take some getting used to, but there's not really anything you can do wrong that will result in irrecoverably bad shots (any more so than when shooting JPEG, at least!)
@abirkill Thanks Alexis. I'm presently using a 32 GB SD card with a speed class of 10 and a UHS speed class of 1. Will that suffice, or should I get a different SD card? My friend is also helping me build a computer with 1TB of HD space, so I'm set there.
When processing, do you go through the same steps all the time, or does each picture differ?
@paulie Give the card a try and see how you fare -- I certainly wouldn't buy a new one straight away. Will you be shooting with your G12? If so I suspect the card will be fine, as that camera doesn't have a very high speed burst mode.
RAW files will almost certainly be processed differently every time, although if you are shooting a series of images in the same location under similar lighting, then you would probably apply many of the same changes to multiple images.
One of the biggest benefits of RAW file shooting is that you can effectively do the 'post-processing' of the image in the computer later, rather than having the camera do it. In JPEG mode the camera will typically try and make a nice, saturated, contrasty image, but in doing so it makes many assumptions, which might not be what you want. With a RAW file you can correct exposure errors, you can recover detail from the shadows or limit overexposed highlights, you can alter the white balance, and so on and so on.
As such, applying a 'standard' adjustment to every image regardless of the content somewhat defeats the purpose of shooting in RAW. Yes, for most images, you will apply contrast adjustments, saturation adjustments, noise reduction and sharpening (and often much more), but the amount you apply will be determined on the effect you want in your final photograph and based on how the camera has recorded the data.
Shooting in RAW can be considered in many ways a paradigm shift. When you shoot in JPEG, you are creating a photograph there and then -- you can make minor adjustments after the fact, but many of the decisions were made when you pressed the shutter button.
When you shoot in RAW, it can be helpful to think of the camera as a data capture device -- you want to use it to capture the best data possible, which you will then turn into the photograph you want using your RAW processing software (Lightroom, in your case). You are using the camera to capture as much data as possible, even though you may throw some of it away when processing the file. It alters how you think of photography from being just something you do when holding a camera to a two-part process that gives you huge flexibility when 'developing' the image, be it an hour or a decade later.
In film terms, JPEG is roughly equivalent to taking your film to the local drugstore to get it developed, whereas RAW is equivalent to doing your own developing in a darkroom. The drugstore produces perfectly good snapshots without any effort from you, but in the darkroom you can create something far more special given a bit of work.
@dtigani that's exactly the model I use: the RAW file is the negative. I use Apple Aperture and it refers to a set of adjustments to a RAW file as a "version". In the same way that a negative can be printed many different ways to achieve different end results you can have multiple versions of a given RAW file.
@abirkhill I don't find that my RAW files look flat at all, quite the opposite: I'm often impressed with how good they look without doing anything to them. I mostly shoot with prime lenses so I will usually apply a crop to get the composition I was after then set the white balance and maybe adjust the levels.
@paulie@abirkill@smalbon@dtigani Alexis, nice summary for sure. I've been shooting raw with Nikon D7000 and more recently with a D600 for 3+ years. You certainly benefit from shooting raw with white balance adjustment and processing HDR. The files are bigger and a Class 10 speed is well worth it. As for workflow, I think you'll find Lightroom a big plus. I've been using Lightroom for several years, with plug-ins for Photoshop and OnOne Perfect Suite.
Paul, realliy nothing you HAVE to do differently. I find it allows for much more leeway in so many places. For instance...
...getting the "right" exposure. The trick with RAW shooting for me is to expose so as not to lose any detail in the highlights or the shadows, allowing all the wonderful controls of Lightroom to recover those you want at the level you want. It, and the equivalent ACR 7.0 in Photoshop, are so good at this that it will be the rare case that you have to go the HDR route unless you get to a scene that is 7 or more stops wide in tone. Of course you can do this to some extent with JPEGs, even white balance mistakes, but not so freely; you don't lose information and you don't have to worry about posterization and other nasty arfifacts creeping in.
As Alexis said above, with JPEG you are actually commiting yourself to almost every aspect of final presentation there and then at the moment of shooting, hardcoding much of the detail that can be awkward if not impossible to undo. With RAW you are not, delaying, actually even postponing, many (most?) crucial decisions to the leisure of an editing session. Provided you have all the information available in recoverable form. There is no such thing as SOOC in this worldview.
@smalbon I agree, Aperture does in fact do a bit of magic when importing the raw file based on camera specific "calibration" data when decoding the raw data into what you see. This includes a bit of contrast and sharpening. This "RAW Fine Tuning" might be tuned to personal preference.
@primitiveprobe yes, in fact I think the "RAW Fine Tuning can" be tuned to the extent of being turned off, if you wish. I'm generally quite happy with what it does so I've left it at the default settings.
Thanks, everyone, for your reply. Just out of curiousity, do you shoot in RAW, or RAW+JPEG? Does shooting in RAW+JPEG save two separate files, and if so, is that the only difference?
@paulie I shoot in RAW + small JPEG. The small JPEG version allows me to very quickly flick through images on the computer (RAW files can take a second or two to display because of the larger size) and makes the task of deciding which RAW files I want to process quicker. I'm not sure if the G12 has the option to shoot a full-res RAW and a small JPEG file though.
@paulie Probably not then. If you want the ability to fall back on the JPEG version then shoot in RAW+JPEG. If you want to force yourself to use RAW then shoot in RAW only. Once you start using it you may find you decide which option is best for you.
RAW+JPEG will create two files. The JPEG will be the same as if you just had JPEG mode enabled (so it will have had the camera's noise reduction, contrast, sharpening, etc. applied), the RAW will be the same as if you just had RAW mode enabled.
@paulie I shoot in RAW only on a Nikon D300 set to use 14-bit NEF and lossless compression. I can fit rougly 590 shots onto an 8Gb card with those settings, RAW+JPG takes that down to < 400. Not a problem most of the time but at airshows where I tend to use continous mode a lot I've ended up filling the memory card and this always happens at the worst possible moment! RAW only makes better use of the memory card, for me. I also then don't have to remember to ignore the JPG files when I import into Aperture.
@paulie Like others, I shoot primarily RAW. However, the scenario where I shoot RAW+JPG is usually when I'm immediately sharing the files with others that can't process or view RAW files easily. When shooting continuous high speed and focus the camera will need all the processing power it has to capture and store a pic so you'll want to keep to RAW when you're in that mode if you intend to post process the pics.
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RAW files will come out of the camera looking very 'flat'. With a RAW file you need to make adjustments to contrast, saturation, sharpness and noise reduction that you are used to letting the camera do for you.
Other than that, it's certainly a learning curve, and it will take some getting used to, but there's not really anything you can do wrong that will result in irrecoverably bad shots (any more so than when shooting JPEG, at least!)
When processing, do you go through the same steps all the time, or does each picture differ?
RAW files will almost certainly be processed differently every time, although if you are shooting a series of images in the same location under similar lighting, then you would probably apply many of the same changes to multiple images.
One of the biggest benefits of RAW file shooting is that you can effectively do the 'post-processing' of the image in the computer later, rather than having the camera do it. In JPEG mode the camera will typically try and make a nice, saturated, contrasty image, but in doing so it makes many assumptions, which might not be what you want. With a RAW file you can correct exposure errors, you can recover detail from the shadows or limit overexposed highlights, you can alter the white balance, and so on and so on.
As such, applying a 'standard' adjustment to every image regardless of the content somewhat defeats the purpose of shooting in RAW. Yes, for most images, you will apply contrast adjustments, saturation adjustments, noise reduction and sharpening (and often much more), but the amount you apply will be determined on the effect you want in your final photograph and based on how the camera has recorded the data.
Shooting in RAW can be considered in many ways a paradigm shift. When you shoot in JPEG, you are creating a photograph there and then -- you can make minor adjustments after the fact, but many of the decisions were made when you pressed the shutter button.
When you shoot in RAW, it can be helpful to think of the camera as a data capture device -- you want to use it to capture the best data possible, which you will then turn into the photograph you want using your RAW processing software (Lightroom, in your case). You are using the camera to capture as much data as possible, even though you may throw some of it away when processing the file. It alters how you think of photography from being just something you do when holding a camera to a two-part process that gives you huge flexibility when 'developing' the image, be it an hour or a decade later.
In film terms, JPEG is roughly equivalent to taking your film to the local drugstore to get it developed, whereas RAW is equivalent to doing your own developing in a darkroom. The drugstore produces perfectly good snapshots without any effort from you, but in the darkroom you can create something far more special given a bit of work.
@abirkhill I don't find that my RAW files look flat at all, quite the opposite: I'm often impressed with how good they look without doing anything to them. I mostly shoot with prime lenses so I will usually apply a crop to get the composition I was after then set the white balance and maybe adjust the levels.
...getting the "right" exposure. The trick with RAW shooting for me is to expose so as not to lose any detail in the highlights or the shadows, allowing all the wonderful controls of Lightroom to recover those you want at the level you want. It, and the equivalent ACR 7.0 in Photoshop, are so good at this that it will be the rare case that you have to go the HDR route unless you get to a scene that is 7 or more stops wide in tone. Of course you can do this to some extent with JPEGs, even white balance mistakes, but not so freely; you don't lose information and you don't have to worry about posterization and other nasty arfifacts creeping in.
As Alexis said above, with JPEG you are actually commiting yourself to almost every aspect of final presentation there and then at the moment of shooting, hardcoding much of the detail that can be awkward if not impossible to undo. With RAW you are not, delaying, actually even postponing, many (most?) crucial decisions to the leisure of an editing session. Provided you have all the information available in recoverable form. There is no such thing as SOOC in this worldview.
Good shooting and editing!
Any thoughts on shooting in RAW vs RAW+JPEG? Is the only difference the amount of space taken up on the SD Card?
Thanks, everyone, for your reply. Just out of curiousity, do you shoot in RAW, or RAW+JPEG? Does shooting in RAW+JPEG save two separate files, and if so, is that the only difference?
And Alexis, I'd be using my Canon G12.
RAW+JPEG will create two files. The JPEG will be the same as if you just had JPEG mode enabled (so it will have had the camera's noise reduction, contrast, sharpening, etc. applied), the RAW will be the same as if you just had RAW mode enabled.