Once we’ve got the shots onto the computer, the RAW directory is backed up to DVD. Obviously, the shots straight from the camera (none of which are deleted during the day, despite how bad some of them might look on the camera’s screen) go straight into the RAW directory. Inside there are (usually) three more sub-directories: RAW, TIFF and Finished. Each wedding has its own folder in my Photos directory. For this I use a dedicated card reader, rather than having to plug my camera into my computer and sit there draining camera batteries. Obviously, the first thing we need to do is get the photos off the card. Let’s pretend that we’ve got back from a successful day’s shooting with our Compact Flash cards all ready to go… ![]() However, newer cameras coming onto the market are addressing that issue, and whilst they might still be well out of some people’s price brackets, they will get cheaper over time. That’s fair game: shooting RAW can slow down the continuous drive of a digital camera, and the buffer can fill up quickly. The biggest one for me is brought up by sports photographers who have to shoot many frames very quickly. In the interests of balance, there are a few good reasons to shoot JPEG instead. Admittedly it’s not necessarily as quick as just dropping the shots into iPhoto (or whatever package you choose to use), but given the advantages abound when it comes to adjusting photos, the short time penalty is one which I’m more than willing to pay. The point is that you never really know when that awesome shot’s going to come, and once you’ve got the Compact Flash (or SD or whatever) then shooting on it’s free.Ĥ) Processing RAW images doesn’t take forever, so there’s no reason not to use it all the time. It’s now a canvas print hanging on my wall downstairs, and it does look good, but it’s only around 20×16″. The large print which came from it wasn’t so hot. The resulting image, as fantastic as it was, was a JPEG. The sun was setting, I had some lovely warm-up filters on the front of the lens. When I first got into photography I took an awesome landscape. Given that once you’ve taken the photos you’re more than likely going to view them on your computer afterwards, it seems a bit strange to me that you’d let your camera deal with the RAWs.ģ) Saving RAW for special occasions, like the “Sunday Best” of digital photography seems crazy to me. The only difference is that if you think you shoot JPEG, actually you just leave the RAW processing to your camera. As a landscape photographer that might not bother you, but as a wedding photographer I can’t go back and ask them to just do that again (well OK, sometimes I can).Ģ) Everyone shoots RAW. When we come back to digital shooting, that just means that with RAW you can recover from any minor mistakes you make. Negative film has a greater latitude, which means that any minor mistakes in the exposure can be corrected during the printing stage. That is, you have to get it bang on to get the most out of it. In terms of nailing the exposure, digital cameras have a similar exposure latitude as slide film. This also means that you’ve got a little bit more room to move. It doesn’t mean that there always *will* be, as you’ll learn from many people who’ll tell you that they’ve compared the same image taken as JPEG and as RAW, but there are situations (usually higher contrast images) where it will be the case. This means that there can be a greater tonal range in the resulting image. The RAW output of most cameras is 12 or 16bit, whereas the JPEGs are only 8bit. ![]() Let’s also get something out of the way about “why RAW”:ġ) RAW images have (more often than not) greater colour depth than JPEGs. ![]() I’ll tell you what I can fit into some sort of logical order, but don’t expect this to be a crash course in wedding photography. If, after reading this article, you feel you want to go out and shoot RAW, great. It works for me it may or may not work for you. The images are processed on a 20″ iMac with 2GB RAM. A typical wedding (if there is such a thing) uses around 5 to 6GB of Compact Flash. I shoot entirely digitally on a Canon EOS 5D. First of all, though, some background and disclaimers: įollowing on from the recent JPEG vs RAW discussion, I offered to write a short article for the Digital Photography School on my RAW workflow. The following post was submitted by Carl Ebrey from Carl Ebrey Photography.
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