Image quality

[eurotrash]

Ken Rockwell. The biggest fool of the cybernet..
I could go on and on, but I'd much rather put a bag on his head and karate chop him in the ear instead.
IF you must shoot jpg, do it in fine. There's little difference, he may be right. But why have a nice camera if you're not going to use all the available quality? Might as well get a point and shoot with that logic that Mr. Rockwell pumps into peoples' brains.

 

[Michael J.]

Fives year ago I got the D80. I shot almost Auto. Luckily my daughter dropped the cam and the lens got damaged.

I went to buy a new lens. The salesman offered me the Nikon 16-85 and 20% discount. During paying I saw the D5100. Just a small money more what the 16-85 costs I didn't buy the lens. Yes I got the D5100.

At home I started to read about it and started the first time no use Auto.

I read lots of which program is good. I used almost every Program like LR, PS, and so on.

I started Shot in jpeg and RAW. I practiced RAW wondering I can get the same result as the camera jpeg ooc.

Now I think RAW is for me a must. Yesterday I shot something and the setting was not put back. I forgot it. But I shot RAW and the birds were great.

I needed more than one year to get confidence shooting RAW.

Sunday I shot 46 Portraits without a safety-net called camera in jpeg.

To develop it took me just 30 min. time.

The result is great. Now I know the difference between camera in jpeg (which is great) and the usefulness of RAW.

I think everyone have to find out. Is as same as you tell a child not to touch a flame. Only if it touches by itself it believes that hurts.

a short resume: Learning by doing, get familiar of your programs an you will know what works for your needs.

Even I don't do a living with photography I wanna the best to show my family, my friends and in the Internet








Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[STM]

The more I read this the more perplexed I become. Why would anyone want to settle for image quality less than what their gear is capable of providing? That makes absolutely no sense to me. That is like plunking down $5000 for a D4 and putting a LENS BABY on the front of it or buying a Porsche and replacing the high performance tires with $25 RETREADS.

Use your camera to the limits of its abilities. Anything else just plain makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[MinnBen]

Thank you, all, for your helpful comments about shooting raw. This does seem to be a topic that engenders passion! I do understand the benefits of it and definitely will try it before long. Was just worried about what I will be getting myself into. Is Photoshop pretty much the best program for doing this or are there others that you would recommend. (I know how complex Photoshop is and would probably experiment with View NX2 first.)

BTW, in spite of the benefits of shooting raw, I do believe that there are other qualities of a DSLR that set it apart from point and shoot cameras. Even after just a couple of months I see a dramatic difference between what I am shooting now and what I shot with a P&S.

​Thanks again. I am looking forward to giving it a try.

 

[Horoscope Fish]

Thank you, all, for your helpful comments about shooting raw. This does seem to be a topic that engenders passion! I do understand the benefits of it and definitely will try it before long. Was just worried about what I will be getting myself into.

RAW vs JPG is photography's version of the Ford vs. Chevy debate and will rage on forever, most likely, because the different formats both have their place and their uses. I just think shooting in RAW is the next logical step for those who really want to take more creative control over their photography but I also understand that's now what everyone wants to do.

Is Photoshop pretty much the best program for doing this or are there others that you would recommend.

I hesitate to say "Best" but it think we can all agree it is the most powerful. It's also pretty much the standard of the industry. It's also expensive and there are alternative programs that work very, very well. I would suggest you look into Adobe Lightroom before taking the plunge and buying Photoshop and I say this as a Photoshop CS-6 user. The only reason I'm using CS-6 is because I could get the academic license version which cost a fraction of full retail. You can download free, 30-day trials of course of both applications.

Free editors I can highly suggest that work with RAW files are Google's Picasa and IRFanview, though the latter requires you install some plugins (just a tiny separate file you'll need to download from their webpage). Nikon's ViewNX2 has it's following but I find the interface abominable, personally. Still, that's just my opinion and ViewNX is a very capable editing package that's also free.


...

 

[WayneF]

Free editors I can highly suggest that work with RAW files are Google's Picasa and IRFanview, though the latter requires you install some plugins (just a tiny separate file you'll need to download from their webpage). Nikon's ViewNX2 has it's following but I find the interface abominable, personally. Still, that's just my opinion and ViewNX is a very capable editing package that's also free.
...

But beginners unfamiliar with the Raw process don't always realize the full story.

Editors like Irfanview, Faststone, Picassa, even ViewNX2 (which is truly abominable) - these might be said to be "editors", and they might be able to"read" Raw files, but they are anything but Raw editors. All they can do is read the Raw file, let you apply some edits, and then save a JPG. Next time you open that Raw file, there are no traces of the previous editing.... So you have to do it again, or you use the previous JPG file, which is then NOT lossless editing. They are not Raw editors. I doubt they are 16 bits. There is no advantage of Raw using these editors. You would be ahead to start with JPG.

Adobe and other actual Raw editors are very different. They save a list of your changes, and next time, you do start again with the original Raw file, and that previous change list is applied automatically (to the view you see). But when you change that edit, you only change the list, you are not shifting image tones over and over, back and forth. You output your final decision as JPG one time (tones shifted one time, only this one set of JPG artifacts are added). If you change your mind later, you discard that JPG (expendable) and start over with your original Raw file and the change list. This is Lossless editing. One could go on and on about the virtues of this, but we gotta understand the difference is day and night.