The Power of Raw

[genevh]

Here's an article from Beyond Megapixels on the power of RAW that some may find interesting:



http://www.beyondmegapixels.com/2009/07/the-power-of-raw/

[SharLamb]

That was dramatic. I'm not to a point where I can imagine needing that kind of power of recovery, but I know that I'm having fun with "normal" photos in RAW for now.

[Bayla]

Here's a Before and After of a photo I rescued using RAW. It was a jpg taken on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. The exif data reads 1/60, f/5.6, ISO 2500, FL200. No Flash. It was taken by a 13 yr old kid who, I suspect, hadn't a clue what they were doing with such an expensive dSLR, and then emailed me the picture. I was about to trash it, and then decided to open it in RAW and see what I could do. After RAW I opened it in PSE6, converted it to B&W and then colour tinted the baby's cardigan. The brushes were added for the class I took at Jessica Sprague.com:

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1mxYeSfbcqwz8i29SBs87EyevOHzvA_thumb.gif (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1mxYeSfbcqwz8i29SBs87EyevOHzvA)

The baby's parents and me (her grandmother) are delighted with the result!

[SharLamb]

WOW Bayla! That is awesome. That's quite a sales pitch! Just a beautiful scrap page too.

[Codebreaker]

While Raw is indeed a powerful tool for pulling back apparently lost images, in my opinion it shouldn't be used as a band-aid for lack of understanding of camera control.

It's one reason why I encourage people to take Jpegs first and get used to using the camera - getting correct exposures. This ultimately means that you need to do less work in whatever processor you have.

Don't mis-understand mean - I'm not suggesting that anyone here is doing so, after all I don't really know you ;) Its just that all too often I hear that Raw processing is being used as a recovery method rather than for straight processing and interpretation of the image.

And yes, I still get images from my camera that have gone wrong and try and bring them back to life in Lightroom. Not many though. ;)

Colin

[genevh]

While Raw is indeed a powerful tool for pulling back apparently lost images, in my opinion it shouldn't be used as a band-aid for lack of understanding of camera control.

Totally agree! I've always felt that while RAW is a powerful tool when working on my photos, it is not a substitute for proper use of the camera itself.

[Not4wood]

What everyone has mentioned so far is very right on the money. But using Raw is not meant to be a crutch, and yes it can both help save an image or give you the means of helping create a better image by using the information that the Raw Image has captured. The sensor is also seeing things in greater detail that neither the JPG's can capture or actually from what I've seen our eyes as well.

From what I've also seen, is that if someone is using a Camera on Full Auto 24/7 they might not be a complete newbie but they either don't have the understanding nor the interest to take control of the camera and they certainly won't be using Raw.

I feel that if a person doesn't want to take the time to learn about taking the camera off Auto ISO, The Auto WB settings, or as far as going to be using Aperture or Shutter Priority instead of the Auto Scenes again they wont even think of using Raw. So I think making a statement about somebody using Raw as a crutch if they don't understand taking control of the camera should rarely ever happen.

Now I find this very embarrasing but I actually do know several people who are extremely happy using the camera on Full Auto and are extremely proud of there work. They don't want to have the time to learn more about the camera or I would even say are way too lazy or afraid to even think of doing this. This kind of person is feeling that If they don't want to learn these difficult things about there camera they also have no intention of learning something that will be extremely advanced.