General Photography Chat - Page 66

photoLith · #**1301** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 8:44 PM**

I am going to shoot raw from now on, now that I have a full frame. I only ever shot in jpg with my d200, mainly because it took up so much room on my computer. My next purchase will be an imac; but that wont be for months, right now Im just using a macbook, not ever a pro so its pretty crappy for photo editing.

mr.John · #**1302** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 9:12 PM**

If you put your your camera at the highest setting for JPG , 90% of the time your results will be as good as if you shoot RAW ( without the massive file)

Whats wrong with these JPG files?

flar · #**1303** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 9:35 PM**

^^Nothing wrong with them per se, but if you make any adjustments with jpegs you start losing quality very fast. There is a far greater range of adjustment possible with RAW. I think the best thing about RAW is you can change the white balance however you like. You simply can't do much with a jpeg that has the wrong white balance. My particular problem has been that people want large prints from jpegs on my old D50. I could get better quality if I had shot raw.

mr.John · #**1304** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 9:46 PM**

Yeah but with the new generation of cameras you can make most of the adjustments while your shooting including white balance

again... tell me whats wrong with these jpeg photos which were processed using only Nikon's crappy software (which came with the camera) how would shooting in RAW improve them?

flar · #**1305** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 9:50 PM**

It's your choice to shoot jpegs, and many people do. In my personal situation, I've run into some limitations with jpegs and now prefer RAW. One day I while I was out taking photos, I started talking to a guy who happened to be a pro photographer. He told me over and over to shoot RAW. I argued that jpegs were all I needed and wasn't convinced, but about a year later I finally switched after I started running into the limitations of jpeg. Most of my shots are fine as jpegs and will never be printed, but you never know, so better safe than sorry.

mr.John · #**1306** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 9:59 PM**

I'm sure RAW has it advantages in some situations ,what I'm arguing is 90% of the time it has no visiable advantage which leads me to the question how far can you go processing photos before it no longer becomes photograph? when you start getting into HDR nonsense and so on...

glowrock · #**1307** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 10:13 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by photoLith

^
Thanks, thats in old town Spring north of Houston. Dont know if youve ever been there but its pretty cool, very touristy but lots of good old restored Victorian and arts and crafts houses there.

Yeah, I've been to Old Town Spring, photoLith. It's definitely a cool place to photograph, no question about it. Oh yeah, I'll now be in Houston for two weeks starting on Feb 11th, so perhaps we can meet up for a phototour sometime?

Aaron (Glowrock)

photoLith · #**1308** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 11:14 PM**

^
I hope so, I go to Lafayette on Wednesday and may be there for 10 days or so. I may be able to make it back in time though I hope.

ue · #**1309** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 11:20 PM**

What are these so called "limitations" of JPG? I mean, I guess if you're editing the hell out of your photos, then of course quality will be lost, especially if you have an extremely incorrect exposure. But, most people on this site seem to be happy with minor curves/contrast/brightness/saturation/highlights adjustments. I'm not meaning to debunk your claims, I'm just curious about these "limitations" because aside from overediting, I haven't heard of any problems. Is resolution one? JPG seems pretty fine unless you need billboard sized prints.

Quote:

Originally Posted by i_am_hydrogen

Redunancy is key, of course. I back mine up on an external drive. I also save high-res versions of edited shots on my computer at work. And I email myself those shots as well. You could open an entire gmail account just for that purpose.

Not to mention your online flickr account, which can serve as another back up.

photoLith · #**1310** Posted **Jan 29, 2012, 11:37 PM**

Here's a good website that explains the benefits of both raw and jpg.

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/raw-vs-jpeg

flar · #**1311** Posted **Jan 30, 2012, 2:41 AM**

I don't do a lot of processing on most of my photos, but one place where RAW is much better than jpeg is for pushing shadows or underexposed images. RAW gives you a lot more leeway to lighten shadow areas (I use curves for this), while jpegs will leave you with grain, artifacts or colour banding. RAW also gives you a slightly better chance of recovering blown highlights or increasing contrast on hazy photos. RAW thus gives you a better chance of "saving" photos. If you need to do any colour correction, RAW gives you the original sensor information to work with. And of course, RAW lets you make the white balance whatever you want. If you shoot jpegs, you can't change the white balance very much without artifacts, you're stuck with what the camera gave you. I find this especially problematic on night shots. The biggest problem with jpegs is that every single time you save it, more information is lost, and there's no going back.

What I can say in favour of jpegs, at least on Nikon cameras, is that most of the time you get a pleasing result. On the newer cameras, jpeg mode automatically fixes chromatic aberration, and does an excellent job. The Nikon Picture Controls give nice colour and several styles of contrast to choose from. I usually use a custom variation of the Landscape setting. I never personally got very good results from Active D Lighting, but it can be helpful increasing detail in shadows and highlights (sometimes after the fact I wish that I hadn't had it turned on, no going back on jpegs). Auto white balance is generally good outdoors in the daytime but fails often indoors, in combination lighting (like fluorescent and daylight mix), at dawn and twilight in the winter and for most night shots.

The main thing for me, is that if you ever have the opportunity to sell your photos or make large prints, it's best to have the highest quality possible. They usually don't want you to send in jpegs.

I don't do weddings or portraits, but if you do, you might want RAW files to ensure you get skin tones right in the final product.

Tony · #**1312** Posted **Jan 30, 2012, 3:09 AM**

Anyone know of a good tripod head that works well with panning a video camera (which is also affordable)? I have an image in my mind of what it would look like (a crank to smoothly rotate the head, and possibly a standard column crank which is typically readily available).

It would also be really cool to have the thing on wheels.

photoLith · #**1313** Posted **Jan 30, 2012, 3:14 AM**

^
If you want a head that pans smoothly than your looking at spending at least 100. The panning head I have for video was I think around 250.

diskojoe · #**1314** Posted **Jan 30, 2012, 3:21 PM**

There is nothing wrong with jpeg as long as you get the exposure correct out of the box. Now if you edit the crap out of your photos like I do then you may find those limitations being spoken of. But ive shot in jpeg on my camera before by accident and the pics still come out pretty good.

mr.John · #**1315** Posted **Jan 31, 2012, 5:54 PM**

Quote:

The main thing for me, is that if you ever have the opportunity to sell your photos or make large prints, it's best to have the highest quality possible. They usually don't want you to send in jpegs.

Have you sold many prints? what's in demand? if the photos will be used on websites do they still want RAW copies? how are you marketing your work? who does your printing?any tips?

diskojoe · #**1316** Posted **Jan 31, 2012, 6:04 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr.John

Have you sold many prints? what's in demand? if the photos will be used on websites do they still want RAW copies? how are you marketing your work? who does your printing?any tips?

Yeah, you can print a raw. You have to convert to jpeg or tiff. Tiff is a better way to go because you can keep it in a 16 bit configuration.

diskojoe · #**1317** Posted **Jan 31, 2012, 6:08 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by photoLith

I am going to shoot raw from now on, now that I have a full frame. I only ever shot in jpg with my d200, mainly because it took up so much room on my computer. My next purchase will be an imac; but that wont be for months, right now Im just using a macbook, not ever a pro so its pretty crappy for photo editing.

Get an external hard drive. A couple terabytes is a must when hardcore into photography. The pro mac book wont really be that much different from what you have now. Its just black. You can run all the same software on either.

Ayreonaut · #**1318** Posted **Jan 31, 2012, 6:56 PM**

So I usually get anywhere from 10-70 views a day on Flickr (2 or 3 hundred when I've been uploading), but today I have nearly 1500 (but the most for any one photo is 3). I think somebody went through my entire stream.

Okayyou · #**1319** Posted **Jan 31, 2012, 7:39 PM**

I've had that happen before. I'm not a huge fan of the flickr stats, sometimes it is impossible to know who is looking at your photos or how they got there. I'll get 10-100 hits per day from the South Korean search engine http://www.daum.net/. It never tells me what photo people are looking at. I'm hoping the improve the stats with some of the new features they are planning to release this year.

flar · #**1320** Posted **Jan 31, 2012, 8:41 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr.John

Have you sold many prints? what's in demand? if the photos will be used on websites do they still want RAW copies? how are you marketing your work? who does your printing?any tips?

I never provide my RAW files, I process them and convert to TIFF, which is a lossless format. Usually graphic design people specifically ask for tif files. For a website I provide lower resolution. I don't actively market my photos, but I have a website and I've posted so many over the years that they turn up on Google and people approach me. The majority of my sales have been on the subject of Hamilton. I don't usually see the final product when someone buys a print because they order them directly off my website (www.metroperspectives.com). Sometimes people approach me directly, one person wanted to print an eight foot panorama of the Hamilton skyline for his living room. I've provided images to web sites, CD liners, pamphlets, ads, research reports, videos, newspapers and magazines. A TV show even approached me about using a shot of Ottawa, but they didn't want to pay. Here are a couple recent places where my photos have appeared:
http://issuu.com/urbanicityhamilton/docs/january_2012/1
http://www.hamiltonmagazine.com/sitepages/?aid=4528&cn=Features&an=FEATURE%20|%20Good%27%20Hoods