Somehow Shot JPEGs Unknowingly Yesterday

As I was importing images from my morning shoot yesterday I got a message at the end stating that some files could not be converted to DNG (I convert all my RAW files). I was very confused, and concerned, but given that I had shot a video at one point I just figured that was the cause of my issue. Today, as I started editing them I came across a file name change on some which I didn't understand until I realized that these were not RAW files but JPEG's!!

How the heck did I wind up shooting JPEG's yesterday?!

In all I shot 16 JPEG's before it went back to shooting RAW again. The change in format coincides with a lens change (24-85mm to the 16-35mm) but the change back does not. The only thing that changed between the last JPEG and next RAW file was that I turned off bracketing after shooting some HDR frames (bracketing was turned on after already taking several JPEG's).

I'm thankful that it reverted, but I'm concerned that this could have happened without my realizing it. Perhaps I inadvertently pressed the QUAL button on the back and rotated a dial, but that would explain one change, but not both. I'm really stymied!!

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

BackdoorHippie said:

As I was importing images from my morning shoot yesterday I got a message at the end stating that some files could not be converted to DNG (I convert all my RAW files). I was very confused, and concerned, but given that I had shot a video at one point I just figured that was the cause of my issue. Today, as I started editing them I came across a file name change on some which I didn't understand until I realized that these were not RAW files but JPEG's!!

How the heck did I wind up shooting JPEG's yesterday?!

In all I shot 16 JPEG's before it went back to shooting RAW again. The change in format coincides with a lens change (24-85mm to the 16-35mm) but the change back does not. The only thing that changed between the last JPEG and next RAW file was that I turned off bracketing after shooting some HDR frames (bracketing was turned on after already taking several JPEG's).

I'm thankful that it reverted, but I'm concerned that this could have happened without my realizing it. Perhaps I inadvertently pressed the QUAL button on the back and rotated a dial, but that would explain one change, but not both. I'm really stymied!!

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Click to expand...

Jake, I have had it happen a couple times but usually dark and I was changing ISO and hit quality (next to each on 7100) Typically it has been my fault!

Same as today I realized after I did a panorama that I was still on bracketing for an HDR

Pat in NH

I hope they were not very important images that you can not salvage.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but your camera has been taken over by evil spirits. Consider burning some sage and bringing in a practitioner of the black arts to help rid your camera of these unearthly beings.

I did it once too :torn: Im pretty sure I did the same as Pat, while changing ISO or maybe white balance.

I did it similar to Pat's as well. On my D7100 ISO is second to bottom. On my D600 the second to bottom button is QUAL so while shooting on my D600 I inadvertently changed to JPG instead of changing my ISO.

After a couple years with my d7000, I did that for the first time just last week while trying to change the ISO. I actually caught myself while I was changing it a 2nd time a few shots later. Possibly it would have ended up back at raw and created the same dilemma if I didn't catch it.
Hopefully you just had a bad day with the fingers because having the quality randomly change on its own would be a horrible glitch to worry about.

Time for new glasses... gotta stop shooting in the dark! haha. Were you using your night vision lens? lol Atleast it switched back.

I just realized that these were probably your foggy woods shots. If so then you really needed the RAW files to get all the detail you needed for the shots.

HDR images can only be recorded as JPG as they are "processed" images.

Don Kuykendall said:

I just realized that these were probably your foggy woods shots. If so then you really needed the RAW files to get all the detail you needed for the shots.

Click to expand...

None of the jpegs got processed, Don. It was a stretch of photos I took while on a pier at Mountain Lake. If this is the photo you are referring to...




... then you should have seen it straight out of the camera. The eye sees so much more, so I knew I'd need HDR to try and capture the depth of what I could see vs. what the camera could capture, but they just didn't come together well, so I had to pull as much as i could from one of the frames. Because there aren't really a lot of details there, and because I wanted to convey more of a mood than to point to any specific subject here, I chose to back off on the clarity slider a bit and not to sharpen as I normally do, which may also contribute your perception.

And in reference to the HDR images, LensWork, these are not in-camera HDR but the merging of multiple RAW images in post-processing using Photoshop and Nik HDR Efex Pro 2. Technically, they are converted to Tiff format first before loading into HDR Efex and the result gets stored as a PSD file from which I produce a JPEG for viewing.

In all cases, it still doesn't get to the bottom of the initial issue. I might buy the explanation of fat fingering the QUAL button somehow, though I was shooting at ISO 100 with the Auto-ISO on, so I hadn't looked to change it once. But what bothers me most is that it got undone at some point - for which I am very, very grateful.

I can understand accidentally changing a camera setting, such as RAW to JPEG. Once while putting my D600 on a tripod, I accidentally hit the Fn button and rolled the back wheel, changing it from FX to DX. Boy was I upset that I didn't see the crop lines in the viewfinder. After that, I reassigned the Fn button to Spot Meter.

In your case, however, it's hard to imagine you would also accidentally change the settings back to RAW.

I've done the DX/FX change before on the D800. There's a setting that allows you to set it so the cropped portion is grayed out. I immediately did that since I do use the swap on that camera fairly often (not on my D600).