Should I shoot RAW????

[Cussy]

Sam Bean gave us a really good talk at EMUP in March. One of the things she showed I asked if she would write a piece on for us on Digigreen. She's a busy lady, so said I could use her photos.

We've discussed it time and time again, should we shoot RAW. The answer is always a resounding YES, but Sam showed this very clearly in picture form; in fact far better than I've ever seen it before.

Sam took the following photo of a Bohar Snapper (sorry, I know it's blue water!). Many cameras can shoot both JPEG and RAW, so she had both for this particular photo.

1. Jpeg straight from camera:


2. Often a good solution to a photo with a blue/cyan cast is to convert to monochrome, so this is the Jpeg converted using Photoshop:


3. This is the Jpeg processed in PS tweaked using Levels and Curves:


4. Exactly the same shot processed using Adobe RAW converter:


So should you be shooting RAW? Do you really still need to ask??

Thanks to Sam for letting me use her images and I'll try and do a similar greenwater example.

Rob

[whacky]

A picture paints a thousand words

[KenByrne]

An interesting example. I've long been convinced of the advantage of shooting RAW. An interesting fact I picked up is that all Nikon RAW files have a JPG embedded in them. Even if you only shoot RAW you can still get an as shot JPG. It's supposed to be possible to extract the JPG using PhotoShop but I've not found how. What I did find is a really simple piece of software that does the job in seconds. Really Useful Software for Nikon DSLRs

So using the extraction software I've created a quick and dirty green water example.
JPG as shot, not a very promising picture



After a little adjustment not much better.


The RAW shot adjusted in the convertor and you get more idea of what it should have been. It's a bit noisy as it was shot at ISO 1000 and lightening it up brings out the noise.

[Mike W]

I'm ambivalent on this - and very seldom use RAW.

Personally, I feel that Sam's picture just shows that RAW allows you to choose your colour balance later, rather than having to do it in-camera. Since making large changes to a jpeg file in Photoshop degrades image quality RAW can be a better route, but get it right in-camera and there's little or no difference. If I look at a print or an on-screen TIFF I can't tell if it was from an in-camera jpeg or from the RAW file.

All of which may be complete rubbish - one of my aims for this year is to try and improve the technical quality of my pics, and one of the ways I intend to do it is to shoot more RAW. Remind me to visit this thread again next year.....

[triplefin]

The quarry/seabed and boat look good, as does the diver, the trouble is the water has lost that georgous green colour. I did a lot of ambient light shots of divers/wrecks last year all in raw, but so easily lost the green water colour if I was concentrating on getting the wreck/divers the 'right' colour post processing.

I rarely use raw for macro images because I find that I dont need to do the amount of post processing, if any, that I need for wreck/diver ambient light shots and all it does is create extra bother changing it to a Jpeg. That said there are always a few I look at and think hmmm could have done something with that if it had been in RAW.

[Cussy]

My main justification for shooting RAW is the lack of compression. In low light levels I think Jpeg compression does weird things with noise that can't be dealt with when processing. The RAW gives you the ability to first treat the noise and then apply sharpening knowing you aren't going to be sharpening Jpeg artifacts.

My other justification is to be lazy. I will tend to white balance on something nearly white/grey/black and then manually use the sliders in Lightroom to get it more green. As Jane says you do tend to end up with too blue an image, so I then add the yellow back to get a decent green.

I'm also not convinced Sam's snapper would have been quite that colour with manual white balance. This shot looks shallow to me and from my experience stalking Pike this sort of depth is a bugger to get a decent WB for and you never end up with decent lights or whites, there will be a blue/green or red cast visible in the white areas.

You can get several programmes to do bulk conversions exactly the same as the camera would do, so you get the Jpeg as shot. You then have the fall back of the RAW to be able to push an image you otherwise wouldn't. So in terms of post processing it doesn't have to be onerous.
Rob

[KenByrne]

I think getting the WB right in camera would be the prefered option. However I found a couple of problems with that. Using a card to set manual WB in the UK I found that the water often got a magenta cast, also below about 15 metres there wasn't enough light to get a WB reading. I've shot RAW since day 1 and don't find it a chore to convert the shots I want to use elsewhere.

Something that really surprised me was how much better macro shots looked when white balanced in post. I've used various settings of WB on camera (auto, flash, daylight) and still find the whites to be off a quick tweak in ACR made a vast improvement. For a long time I did nothing with WB on these type of shots but after trying it once I'm now convinced it helps most images.

For example this shot was made in very low vis with WB set to flash. The low vis has reduced the contrast in the shot.



This is the same shot with a few seconds ACR processing to alter the WB and also increase the contrast.

[Mike W]

I think colour balance is one of the trickiest things to get right underwater. As Jane says, changing the colour balace of Ken's shot gives the diver and wreck 'better' colour, but the water loses the characteristic green - as it would, if you take out green it takes it out all over, not from one part of the image only.

What gave me pause with Sam's image was the blue water is the same blue in both shots, but the fish is a different colour. Can't understand how that works...

What I keep coming back to is that if the pics need little or no post-processing, then there's little or no justification for RAW - Ken's macro shot could have been tweaked IMO just as succesfully in jpeg as RAW.

Cussy's point about compression is a good one. I have an Oly C5000 that does 1.2mb jpeg or 15mb TIFF, no Raw, and my Canon 350 does RAW or 3.5mb jpeg. If I shoot either camera in jpeg mode, then open the files on PC and save as a TIFF, I can tell the difference (At 100% on the monitor, and around fine detail) between the Oly jpeg and TIFF (The jpegs are very compressed), but not between the more lightly compressed Canon jpegs and TIFFs from RAW.

Whenever I edit pics that will be printed or used large I open the original file, duplicate and save as a TIFF, then work on that.

As I say, though, it may well be me that isn't making the most of RAW, we'll see...

[Mike W]

Very quick greenwater comparison - which I think comes out in favour of RAW (Just how fast can one person change their mind....?), though it was just 'quick and dirty'!


Original jpeg - cropped and resized, otherwise as it came from the camera:



Processed jpeg - cropped, resized, auto-levels






From RAW - Rawshooter, tweaked highlight contrast, exposure, colour balance, then imported to Photoshop and auto levels

Dammit - 3rd shot won't import...see post below...

[Mike W]

Third shot