I have always shot raw. From day 1 to now, always raw. Sometimes I will have a combo of raw/jpeg for a quick showing of an image, but raw is always there. So today I was shooting a dance performance and it was going to be fast moving, really fast moving between all the various performers. There was no way my camera was going to be able to keep up. I always new the answer, but didn't want to acknowledge it - shoot jpeg! As the final minutes clicked down I dialed in my white balance, tested my exposure and retested until it was time. In my favor, no changing of the lighting, full on blasting sunlight the whole time.
It was completely the right decision. Things were moving so fast there was no way the camera could have kept up otherwise. The images turned out great, and all the fretting to make sure I had everything dead on right paid off. What really seemed to work for me, came up with this nugget of knowledge on the spot and went with it, was to take some frame filling shots of the grass from my shooting location using the shutter and aperture I wanted and then dialing in the histogram using my ISO so that I had a perfect histogram of the grass peaking dead center. Sure there is some blowing out on the skin from the dead overhead full sun and the girls were sweating hard, but it was a perfect balance between being able to see in the shadows and the blow outs are to be expected.
In the end, I put a new tool in my tool bag and reduced my fear to shoot straight jpeg. However, when I was done it felt so good to put my camera back in raw.
Feel free to share you own experience like this.
It was completely the right decision. Things were moving so fast there was no way the camera could have kept up otherwise. The images turned out great, and all the fretting to make sure I had everything dead on right paid off. What really seemed to work for me, came up with this nugget of knowledge on the spot and went with it, was to take some frame filling shots of the grass from my shooting location using the shutter and aperture I wanted and then dialing in the histogram using my ISO so that I had a perfect histogram of the grass peaking dead center. Sure there is some blowing out on the skin from the dead overhead full sun and the girls were sweating hard, but it was a perfect balance between being able to see in the shadows and the blow outs are to be expected.
In the end, I put a new tool in my tool bag and reduced my fear to shoot straight jpeg. However, when I was done it felt so good to put my camera back in raw.
Feel free to share you own experience like this.