Rodolfo Paiz
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 p.3 #11 · D300 users do you shoot Raw or JPG and why? | |
codeninja wrote:
Here is the dilema. I want the maximum possible IQ out of D300, whiile not having to tweak every single photos one by one individually. That leaves the option of batch processing RAW, and I'm not 100% if that is still better than JPG out of D300. Sure, I can do special processing on some photos, but there is no way I would do it all...
You're hung up on the notion that RAW requires you to process each and every shot to get something usable, whereas JPG naturally and magically comes out "pretty good" with no effort on your part. That notion is both silly and incorrect, but it's often stated by people who don't know any better. It's just wrong.
Look at it this way: RAW is like a film negative, JPG is like a Polaroid or a simple set of 4x6 prints from the corner drugstore. You take the shots the same way, and you take your "film" into your developer the same way... but in one case, you get the negative and a set of prints, while in the other case they throw away your negatives and give you only the prints, whose limited quality will limit you forever.
For every shot, you set white balance in the camera (even if you set Auto, the camera chooses a white balance). For every shot, you set exposure, ISO, and so on. You can tell the camera you want vivid colors, you want high/low/no sharpening, and so on. JPG takes all of those ingredients, "cooks" them into a pretty low-quality image (good enough for many purposes, but low in relation to a RAW file quality as discussed previously). RAW will go into the computer with every single bit of data the sensor recorded, and the RAW file has all those ISO/WB/IP settings coded into it too... so LR, ACR, NX, or whatever RAW converter you use, will do the "cooking" for you and still give you a usable image immediately.
You do not have to do any extra processing to RAWs compared to JPG. You just take the shots, import them into the computer, and you're done in both cases. If you just want what the camera would have done, you do the six-second process I described before and you can get all the JPGs you want, without any additional real work. But you also have the flexibility to tweak, change, and process to your heart's content on each file, or by batches, without losing anything.
Do you see what I'm saying? This whole idea that you have to process a RAW is just wrong... all the camera image settings are in the file, and it's just as ready to print or send as a JPG the instant you get it into the computer. The only cost to you is a larger file, which does take a couple of seconds more to process... but you get benefits from those couple of seconds which last forever. You have the option to do more work on the files, but you do not have any sort of requirement to do so.
Besides, don't underestimage the power and benefit of batch processing. Ever had a day when the camera's WB decisions were just off? You can (destructively) alter all your JPGs at length and with some work... but RAW, it's just a function of selecting them and changing the white balance number. All edits are non-destructive, too, so your images are safer.
What software do you use? Let me show you the exact workflows required, and you'll see what I mean. There is no extra work in RAW, really... no real cost except for file size, but lots of benefits.
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