General Photography thread

[Wozza]

I already found out how to shoot in Raw alongside jpeg on it. I did that for a while and just realised I wasn't doing anything with the Raw files. I rarely do any post processing and have little interest in doing so, at the moment. All the Raw files were doing were taking up more space and giving me more stuff to deal with, so I went to just using jpeg as it's more than sufficient for my purposes.

I'd ruddy LOVE to have RAW versions of the JPGs I shot in my early years of photography.

Just saying.

(Nothing to stop you taking RAWs and simply archiving them for now.)

 

[Wardy's twin]

To add to this Raw vs jpeg subject. I'd liken it to digital music files.

I listen almost exclusively to lossless files, either via streaming or burned from my cd/vinyl collection. I can hear a difference, and it matters to me. For those that can't hear a difference, or can but aren't bothered by it, then sticking to lossy in these days of huge digital libraries and mobile phone listening via bog standard headphones makes most sense. Serious music listeners will always tend to favour lossless over lossy though. Just like serious photographers will always favour raw over jpeg.

I do listen to lossy files. Exclusively old reggae burnt as mp3's. Most of that in its original format was pretty poorly recorded anyway and I grew up listening to loads of cassettes, so I'm used to most of that music being much more about feel than sound 'quality'. Horses for courses and all that.

So for my photography, I'll be sticking to jpeg for the foreseeable future.

Nikon p950

not sure i agree with the analogy but each has their own opinion and i understand where you are coming from

just listening to Ken Booth ... nearly 50 years ago I feel old

let me know how you get on with p950 as I had wondered about the p900, a friend of mine had one and loved it and he had some pretty decent dslr kit.

have you tried taking a picture of jupiter yet? i would be keen on seeing how it turns out...

 

[Wardy's twin]

I'd ruddy LOVE to have RAW versions of the JPGs I shot in my early years of photography.

Just saying.

(Nothing to stop you taking RAWs and simply archiving them for now.)

same with me....

 

[Wozza]

not sure i agree with the analogy

Indeed. A closer music analogy would be a producer saying 'I'm happy with high-quality MP3s, so I threw away the master tapes...'

*shudder*

 

[1066familyman]

I'd ruddy LOVE to have RAW versions of the JPGs I shot in my early years of photography.

Just saying.

(Nothing to stop you taking RAWs and simply archiving them for now.)

And do what with them? 99.9% of them are shite anyway I'm not going to add filters and such like in post processing to try to make them look half decent either.

 

[1066familyman]

not sure i agree with the analogy but each has their own opinion and i understand where you are coming from

just listening to Ken Booth ... nearly 50 years ago I feel old

let me know how you get on with p950 as I had wondered about the p900, a friend of mine had one and loved it and he had some pretty decent dslr kit.

have you tried taking a picture of jupiter yet? i would be keen on seeing how it turns out...

I have photographed Jupiter with it funnily enough. Appears to have some of its moons in the shot too. I didn't feel it worth posting here though as it just looks like a few bright lights in the sky.

 

[Jack Straw]

I have photographed Jupiter with it funnily enough. Appears to have some of its moons in the shot too. I didn't feel it worth posting here though as it just looks like a few bright lights in the sky.

Did you just go out randomly with your camera, or did you planet in advance?

 

[1066familyman]

Did you just go out randomly with your camera, or did you planet in advance?

Well I saw the Mercury was rising. Listened to Venus as a Boy and some classic Earth & Stone. Decided against a Mars bar and BINGO!...there was Jupiter right before my eyes

 

[Bodian]

I'd ruddy LOVE to have RAW versions of the JPGs I shot in my early years of photography.

Just saying.

(Nothing to stop you taking RAWs and simply archiving them for now.)

And do what with them? 99.9% of them are shite anyway I'm not going to add filters and such like in post processing to try to make them look half decent either.

I guess it really does come down to what you think you might be doing in the future. I have shot RAW since I got my first DSLR in 2011 - but for the first five years or so, after I had processed them I saved them as JPGs and deleted the RAW file (space mainly). But now I know more about photography, and have better processing skills - I wish I still had the RAW files of some of my better pictures.

But if you're really sure you're never going to be in that position (or similar) then there's nothing really wrong with JPGs. Although a RAW file simply with 'Auto' in Lightroom can often be better than an in-camera processed jpg.

 

[Wozza]

And do what with them? 99.9% of them are shite anyway I'm not going to add filters and such like in post processing to try to make them look half decent either.

Yeah, it's the 1 in 1000 shots which you'll wish you had in RAW and could make half-decent...

 

[Jack Straw]

Well I saw the Mercury was rising. Listened to Venus as a Boy and some classic Earth & Stone. Decided against a Mars bar and BINGO!...there was Jupiter right before my eyes

You could have mentioned Uranus?

 

[1066familyman]

You could have mentioned Uranus?

I'll set it up, you tap it in

 

[Wardy's twin]

I have photographed Jupiter with it funnily enough. Appears to have some of its moons in the shot too. I didn't feel it worth posting here though as it just looks like a few bright lights in the sky.

I have photographed Jupiter with it funnily enough. Appears to have some of its moons in the shot too. I didn't feel it worth posting here though as it just looks like a few bright lights in the sky.

Try it again on manual with setting at 1/100sec or so and no ISO and aperture f4 which i think will be a lot darker and use manual focus to set to infinity . If you can see Jupiter's moons ( usually 4 are picked up of the loads that are there) then you will never see the detail on Jupiter. When you do this the moons will disappear. Images that show both are composite. its a very good test of your camera (for me )

 

[1066familyman]

Try it again on manual with setting at 1/100sec or so and no ISO and aperture f4 which i think will be a lot darker and use manual focus to set to infinity . If you can see Jupiter's moons ( usually 4 are picked up of the loads that are there) then you will never see the detail on Jupiter. When you do this the moons will disappear. Images that show both are composite. its a very good test of your camera (for me )

Thanks, I could try that. Shame the best viewing was about 3 weeks ago and we are currently having a lot of cloudy skies.

Btw, how will I get no ISO? I think the minimum on the P950 is 100.

 

[Wardy's twin]

Thanks, I could try that. Shame the best viewing was about 3 weeks ago and we are currently having a lot of cloudy skies.

Btw, how will I get no ISO? I think the minimum on the P950 is 100.

Should have said the lowest iso so 100 iso will do. You may have to play around the shutter speed depending on what aperture you end up with but main point is to reduce the light captured as Jupiter is a very bright object. I have been trying to take it through a telescope and it shows some detail but nowhere near enough yet so I need to keep improving my technique. The telescope is probably only a * 20 magnification so nowhere near the camera. Yes it was 390 million miles away rather than 600 million , not sure how that really works .

 

[shingle]

I guess it really does come down to what you think you might be doing in the future. I have shot RAW since I got my first DSLR in 2011 - but for the first five years or so, after I had processed them I saved them as JPGs and deleted the RAW file (space mainly). But now I know more about photography, and have better processing skills - I wish I still had the RAW files of some of my better pictures.

But if you're really sure you're never going to be in that position (or similar) then there's nothing really wrong with JPGs. Although a RAW file simply with 'Auto' in Lightroom can often be better than an in-camera processed jpg.

Fortunately chaps I don't have any regrets. I've only shot RAW since my first digital camera in 2003, and I have something like 350,000 files, Firstly NEFs (Nikon) then CR2s (Canon) and now ARS (Sony) all 350,000 files have been converted to Adobe DNG, all the raw images are catalogued, captioned and keyworded and stored on my 8TB hard drives, all are backed up of course and easily accessed and the 8TB HD's cost me £150 each.

 

[shingle]

I guess it really does come down to what you think you might be doing in the future. I have shot RAW since I got my first DSLR in 2011 - but for the first five years or so, after I had processed them I saved them as JPGs and deleted the RAW file (space mainly). But now I know more about photography, and have better processing skills - I wish I still had the RAW files of some of my better pictures.

But if you're really sure you're never going to be in that position (or similar) then there's nothing really wrong with JPGs. Although a RAW file simply with 'Auto' in Lightroom can often be better than an in-camera processed jpg.

Very true.

 

[shingle]

Scott Kelbys book on processing raw files using Lightroom is brilliant, so easy to understand, a step by step guide, and available on amazon or ebay
There is nothing to fear, and your pics will look so much better. My regret, I wish I'd known how to process raw files from the start.

 

[Bodian]

Fortunately chaps I don't have any regrets. I've only shot RAW since my first digital camera in 2003, and I have something like 350,000 files, Firstly NEFs (Nikon) then CR2s (Canon) and now ARS (Sony) all 350,000 files have been converted to Adobe DNG, all the raw images are catalogued, captioned and keyworded and stored on my 8TB hard drives, all are backed up of course and easily accessed and the 8TB HD's cost me £150 each.

Goodness me...

 

[shingle]

For those of you thinking should I shoot raw, here's the an image that I took today of a church ceiling. The first image is just a straight jpeg conversion from a raw file, the second image is the same raw file but with a few adjustments made in lightroom which took about 3 minutes, then converted to a jpeg. The second image has much more detail in the shadow and highlight areas, and generally looks brighter. Some of the detail will most likely have been lost if the image had been shot as a jpeg.

These are just basic edits that have been applied that you could pick up in a morning. And for those that like the technical details 5 second exposure at F16