Archive for December, 2009
Stephen Shankland on shooting raw
In a recent article, Cnet’s Stephen Shankland makes some interesting points about raw files vs JPEGs in your photographic workflow. Here’s one that everyone should consider and which we continually emphasise to photographers:
If you’re converting a raw image with software, you not only get more computing horsepower than a camera offers, you get algorithms that are updated.
He’s absolutely right. Put differently: raw files from several years back can look incredibly good when processed using the best of today’s raw converters—much better than they ever did when they were first taken.
JPEGs produced by expensive professional cameras, even recent ones, shot in difficult conditions (low light, mixed lighting, high contrast) are completely outclassed by raw files from the same camera, taken at the same time, processed in today’s best raw converters. When you tell the camera that all you want is a JPEG file, you have to make decisions that are often better left till later (things like sharpening, contrast, colour space, white balance, noise reduction—none of these settings affect the raw file in any way) or ask the camera to make them for you. In many cases, the decisions you make are difficult or time-consuming to reverse later and have a permanent effect on the quality of your photographs.
Today’s raw converters deal with colour fringing, overexposure, underexposure, sharpness, noise, detail and resolution much better than most cameras’ JPEG engines. Whether you shoot professionally or for pleasure, if you’re serious about image quality, choosing to shoot raw makes sense and costs just a tiny amount of disk space.
Yesterday’s gone but you’ll have gathered the point of this post: the raw images you shoot today are likely to look even better in tomorrow’s raw converters. To start with, all you need to do is tell your camera to shoot raw—and if you don’t know what to do with a raw file yet then set your camera to shoot raw plus JPEG and store the raw files safely away somewhere. They’re your digital equivalent of film negatives and there’ll come a time when you’ll be very pleased that you still have them.
December 9th, 2009 by Bahi
A good Lightroom 2 video tutorial
When we deliver one-to-one Lightroom training, we leave photogrphers with one of several published Lightroom books to supplement their notes. (Watch for reviews of these books in future articles.) Some photographers understandably prefer to watch video tutorials, rather than plough through a book, in which case we recommend this video tutorial.
The instructors
When you learn using a one-way medium like video, you’re at the mercy of an instructor’s styles and priorities but the approach adopted by the two presenters of these videos should please most viewers.
Jeff Schewe works closely with Adobe on Lightroom and Camera Raw, testing the software and providing his input as a professional commercial photographer. He is also the current author of the best source of information on sharpening digital images for print and screen, the awkwardly named Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom
Michael Reichmann is an alpha tester for Adobe products, a long-established photographer himself and the man behind The Luminous Landscape.
Those of you familiar only with Jeff Schewe’s posts to various forums, for which he sometimes employs what you could call a very direct approach, might be surprised by the avuncular style on display here— there’s a twinkle in Jeff’s eye that came as a surprise to me when I first watched it. The conversational format of the video works well and the collection is easily worth the price of download, at $40 for more than seven hours of HD, split into many short, bite-size episodes.
Good for beginners and existing users
If you’re planning on booking one-to-one tuition with us, this tutorial is a good primer but it’s just as useful if you plan to work alone. You’re likely to learn quite a bit and even experienced Lightroom users will probably find new information and appreciate Jeff’s insight. The tutorial covers most aspects of Lightroom 2 and only minor details are outdated. (There were some changes introduced in the resizing methods used by Lightroom at version 2.3, for example.)
After watching the video a few times…
If you have specific questions after completing the videos, you could always buy some support time with us. More information coming soon.
We have no links whatsoever with Mssrs Schewe or Reichmann, nor with the Luminous Landscape, except as satisfied customers.
New readers always welcome
If you’re finding these snippets useful and you know others who’d benefit from reading them, please pass on the details of the site. You can sign up for free with Google to get new articles e-mailed to you every morning (UK time) so you don’t have to keep checking back. The link is on the front page but you can also click here. (We never pass on or sell your e-mail address.)
December 7th, 2009 by Bahi
White balance in raw vs JPEG, part 1
A traditional reason given for shooting raw (if you can call any aspect of digital photography “traditional”) is to be able to set white balance in post-production rather than during the shoot.
Claim
The old argument goes like this: when you shoot (particularly events, concerts, weddings…), you have enough to worry about without having to add white balance concerns to the mix. Why rely on auto white balance or set custom white balance using large grey cards for each type of light? You’re better setting it after the fact, taking the occasional shot using a small grey card in it but not having to fiddle with the camera settings. This argument was often advanced by proponents of a raw workflow, who claimed that this approach only worked when you shot raw, not JPEG.
Counter-claim
Others now claim that you can shoot JPEG and take the same approach—set white balance when you’re back at your computer, in a single click, as if you’d shot raw. They say that it’s just as easy and you can even use the same white balance tool.
Facts
Here’s what you need to know.
- Just as easy but not as good. Yes, it’s just as easy to use the one-click white balance tool with a JPEG but compare the result with a raw file shot in the same conditions and you’ll see significant differences in colour: the JPEGs can look distinctly unconvincing by comparison.
- The more challenging the light, the bigger the differences. If you’re shooting in low light and particularly if that light is tungsten (regular indoor lightbulbs), your results can end up looking a little rough; if you’re shooting JPEG, they’re can get very rough. You’ll know this already if you shoot conferences and events in ambient light and deliver colour results. It’s just as easy to click and change white balance in post-production with a JPEG but it’s much harder to look at the results with anything but disappointment.
- Challenging light conditions are not uncommon. Current digital cameras struggle when there’s a strong imbalance between red, green and blue light in scene, particularly if there’s not much light around to start with, overall. For example, if you shoot events in ambient light and deliver colour work, your files have very little blue colour information in them because tungsten light provides mostly orange and yellow. (You won’t see things that way at the time—your own internal white balance routines are much more sophisticated than those of your camera.) When you get the images back to your computer and set white balance, that tiny amount of blue information needs to be amplified to make the images look colour balanced and that process can introduce noise and colour shifts that make the images look a little flat, even with a raw file. With a JPEG, things are worse because of the way the files are compressed. The same thing can apply at dawn or dusk (lots of blue light) or in the mixed light you find at concerts and nightclubs.
Coming soon in part 2, some examples of raw-vs-JPEG white balance corrections—some will be extreme, others less so. You’ll be able to see the differences between raw and JPEG quite clearly.
And a quick update on group training
We visited several potential venues in London last week and we’re working out figures and catering costs. Things are looking very good for January and February, with places (and gift certificates) available later this week. More news to follow shortly—please pass on details of our site to anyone you think might be interested. Meanwhile, we’re still taking bookings for one-on-one training sessions at your studio, office or home. Mail us and we’ll work out a course structure and schedule that suits you: develop@shootraw.co.uk.
December 17th, 2009 by Bahi