RAW - Finally converted.

Prophet · 19 Sep 2007 at 14:49

I've shot in RAW before but as I'm still a n00b at editing I find it really slow, frustrating and tiring to edit. I'm upgrading soon to a C2D system so will make a big effort to install only the programs I need then try to device an efficient work path.

Any tips would be great

snow patrol · 19 Sep 2007 at 21:38

ok, i'm tempted to convert to RAW. However, how easy is it to browse through shots when i put the sd card in my pc? Ie with jpegs i can just used windows picture viewer to easily skip through my pics and delete ones i don't want. I'm guessing i can't use that with RAW files. I know photoshop will load them, but that's hardly a quick program for browsing through them. Any thoughts?

wez130 · 19 Sep 2007 at 22:01

lightroom will give you a browser for raw files

snow patrol · 19 Sep 2007 at 22:41

wez130 said:
lightroom will give you a browser for raw files

thanks, will look into that.

V-Spec · 19 Sep 2007 at 22:43

Make sure you've got the correct RAW codec, if you've got a newer generation canon camera you may need to get the codec, I use ACDsee and irfranview for looking through my RAW files..

teaboy5 · 19 Sep 2007 at 23:51

raw shooter, you can still get the free version floating about on the web

robmiller · 20 Sep 2007 at 02:46

wez130 said:
Tiff - advantages, they are lossless so keep 100% detail, disadvantage is they are huge - like 50mb per image, that's roughly 40 shots on a 2 gig card

jpeg - advantage, small file size, disadvantage they are a lossy formayt so lose detail from the image.

Hardly the only two options, though. (Losslessly) compressed RAWs are about 10-15MB a pop.

wez130 · 20 Sep 2007 at 07:51

robmiller said:
Hardly the only two options, though. (Losslessly) compressed RAWs are about 10-15MB a pop.

his camera can only shoot tiff and jpeg, that's what he was asking.

D.P. · 20 Sep 2007 at 09:05

At the worst, you can shoot RAW and batch convert to jpeg with some simple processing (sharpen, boost contrast a little).

YOu should then have decent enough photos, but can then go back to the RAWs to correct any photos you want with problems.

Vertigo · 20 Sep 2007 at 09:20

Out of interest, of those of you shooting RAW, how many also get the camera to store the jpeg as opposed to just the RAW and what are the advantages of doing so (disadvantage is obviously space).

wez130 · 20 Sep 2007 at 09:35

not me, just the raw shot.

Helium_Junkie · 20 Sep 2007 at 09:45

So are there any RAW editors that do everything that photoshop does?

Shoei · 20 Sep 2007 at 11:05

Helium_Junkie said:
So are there any RAW editors that do everything that photoshop does?

Dont think so.
My personal choice is NX for NEF processing and CS2/3 for anything that cant be done in NX, ie using clone tool to tweak bits. Until Nikon bring out Capture NX 2 with lots of photoshop tools i'll be using the above combo.

V-Spec · 20 Sep 2007 at 11:22

Helium_Junkie said:
So are there any RAW editors that do everything that photoshop does?

Just get the RAW plugin for photoshop, thats what I use for my stuff. I usually view thumbnails and basic stuff in Canon photopro (yes I know its a n00b program) then do the other stuff in photoshop..

Darryn · 20 Sep 2007 at 11:41

I shoot in RAW and process with Aperture, It just allows more flexibility with the processing, whilst retaining the original quality.

I tend to take 60gb of memory cards and a 120gb HDD whenever I got to an event. (2x16gb, 1x8gb, 4x4gb and 2x2gbSD)... I havent had to use the HDD once since getting the 16gb CF cards though.

wez130 · 20 Sep 2007 at 12:00

good god, how many shots do you take?
I went walking round Newcastle the other day and took maybe 200 shots, but about 50 of those were for panoramas.

robmiller · 20 Sep 2007 at 15:46

Vertigo1 said:
Out of interest, of those of you shooting RAW, how many also get the camera to store the jpeg as opposed to just the RAW and what are the advantages of doing so (disadvantage is obviously space).

Use a program like Preview Extractor to just rip out the embedded JPEGs once you've loaded the RAWs onto your PC: less space on your cards than and just as convenient as RAW+JPEG.

Darryn · 20 Sep 2007 at 22:51

wez130 said:
good god, how many shots do you take?
I went walking round Newcastle the other day and took maybe 200 shots, but about 50 of those were for panoramas.

When I say event I mean a full weekend of motorsport, I try and capture 2 shots of each car in each race also if possible ill try differant angles/positions/compositions... So thats normally about 100 photos per session and over the course of a weekend there are usually about 20 sessions, so for an normal race weekend I can easily end up with 2000 track shots, then ive got crowd candids, air display, other random shots and also the drivers fanclub meetings.

At about 8-13mb per RAW that tends to weigh in at about 25gb for a weekend, however, I like overkill.

On a positive note, i tend to end up with 200 usable images by the time ive finished sorting and processing, which is a pretty poor keeper rate.