Photography help thread.

Ok, when it comes to photography, i'm the proverbial "Dummy" - although I haven't got a copy of "Photography for Dummies"..............well, not yet !

I set my Leica to take both RAW and JPEG with every shot. So the SD card in the camera, on which the image details are saved, has both a RAW file and a JPEG file for each and every photo.

For safety sake, I remove the SD card from the camera every so often and "copy" the files (both RAW and JPEG) to my computer (and again to an external solid-state hard drive). Does this copying in anyway modify or corrupt the RAW or the JPEG files, either those on the original SD card or those copied into the computer or the external hard drive ?

Based on comments above about "Lightroom", "Photoshop" etc, I could  take a group of RAW files and batch modify them to my own specification, to get what I consider to be the "semi-perfect" set of images for printing. Alternatively I could take each individual image in turn and fiddle with it until I get the perfect image for that individual picture (well, perfect to my eyes at least!). I presume these modified batches or individual files could then be saved under a new name and the original RAW file(s) - (and JPEG files ?) would remain uncorrupted ? It this correct?

However, this batch processing doesn't seem to be any different in concept to simply letting the Leica experts build a "Jamie/Kevin/Count'd Special" RAW -> JPEG converter into the camera to produce a really good JPEG file in the first place. And I still have the RAW file to play about with if I so wish............

Or am I missing something ?

Nope. Not unless you open them and re-save.

My favourite is the 40D software version from this display of variations.

Yes, I thinfk you might be.

You create a recipe and save it, naming it something like Sat +3, Con +8, Sh-0.5 WB5400. After time you'll end up with a number of recipes stored in you processing software.

You can then process one or a batch of photos using the recipe you think appropriate.

I prefer photoshop, it's black and white to me.

Hey Don, Just expanding on Winky's answer. I'm guessing you are more familiar with film camera tech ? If so you could think of the RAW file as the digital equivalent of the negative and the JPG as the processed image from that negative.

So if you never have any intention of processing the RAW files yourself, you could save a lot of space on your SD card and just save to JPG. However the fact that you have saved these means that if you were ever curious you could compare the in-camera processed JPG with what you, or someone who knows what they are doing , could achieve in LR/whatever from the same RAW file.

HTH

Forgot to say that is a great image Winky.

That's a lovely shot Winky.  Agree with what you say, its just a good guide for beginners to get sharp shots but if I was shooting landscapes ideally I'd prefer to use a tripod

Of course, a tripod is preferable, but this was on a trekking/climbing trip and an F5 and couple of f2.8 zoom lenses were already weighing me down!

Thanks for that info winky.

Its triggered a further question. I often view the photos that have been copied to the computer (not those copied to the external hard drive) using Microsoft's Office Picture Manager. Does simply "viewing" the pictures in such a program modify or corrupt them in some way ?

No Don, you'll only change the file if you save to it, viewing it is fine.  Worth backing them up elsewhere though, as you would with music files, just in case you lose a drive etc

Thanks Frank,

Yes, I appreciate that I could develop a small number of recipes and then judiciously use them to produce results from a RAW data file.

I had presumed (dangerous to presume, I know !) that Leica (and Nikon, Canon etc) had done all this hard work for us. So, for example, when I select "mountains" from the "scene" menu, I had presumed that Leica had built-in a "highly professional"  RAW --> JPEG recipe, perfectly suited to "daylight mountain scenery" as well as setting up shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance etc etc

I appreciate that I could invent and use my own recipe for playing around with RAW files, but in my case I doubt if I would improve on Jamie's recipe, Leica's recipe, Kevin's recipe, or winky's recipe..............

I feel as if i'm really begining to loose the plot here, never mind missing something !

Thanks dayjay,

Yes, I do back them up on a solid state hard drive. To date, I have also kept most, if not all, of the original SD cards. I appreciate that I could re-format them and use them over again, but I was concerned that any copies I made ( to computer or external drive) might somehow be of inferior quality than the SD originals.

Hi AC, you give me far more credit than is due regarding film. I have even less knowledge of film processing than digital processing

But I do appreciate that someone who knows what they are doing might be able (post production) to improve on a "picture-by-picture" basis what Leica (or say Nikon) do on a "one-solution-fits-all" basis inside their cameras.

I would have thought it was in the interest of every camera maker to provide the best recipe they possibly can, in-camera ?

The in camera Jpeg is a compromise product, the camera does not know whether you are trying to create a dark gloomy picture or a bright cheery one - the camera will will produce an average one taking into account any requested "Art Mode" settings.

With the Raw image the user has the opportunity to really fine tune the image.  The RAW image will allow one to change the exposure by several stops either way and in a selective manner - eg darken light areas lighten dark areas, change the colour balance etc.

It is. And they do the best they can & in most cases that is a good job. But it is all very subjective and you will appreciate that a hand made image is likely to start out similar to the in-camera conversion but then can be tweaked to your own preference through dodging and burning (& other) techniques.

Scott

Thanks Derek and Scott and others,

I think i've got the "picture" now (sorry about the pun !)

It all probably started with Frank's comment at the beginning of this thread :-

"The 40D's JPEG converter isn't very good and the results from Canons Digital Photo Professional software is ever worse, it's absolutely abysmal . You'll get far better results shooting in RAW and using Picasa (free from google) to convert to JPEG"

and my response to it.

For the most part, I make do with Leica's in-camera efforts. But I have retained the RAW data so that "one of these days........."

Don

Looking at your photos, the Leica is obviously doing a good job, but there may be times when it gets it wrong. I always view both the RAW and JPEG images. It’s often quite obvious when the JPEG conversion has gone wrong and even predictable in some cases. Clouds are not the 40D JPEG converters friend.

If you have any photos of mountains surrounded by clouds, it might be worth checking out the RAW image.

Below is a camera produce JPEG and RAW opened in picasa and saved as JPEG with no editing.

Manufacturers can only legislate for typical, average or assumed scenarios. But every situation is different, and potentially every photo, and what it requires to present it at its best can vary - and whilst a series of photos under the same conditions - same subject matter, lighting, lens, etc are likely to have sufficiently similar to allow batch processing, even then you might want to emphasize something in one by tweaking contrast, saturation, shadow fill, sharpness etc.

to see what I mean, just take any two different photos -even jogs - and start playing with some of these parameters, deciding if it looks better a bit sharper, or with shadows deepened and so on: and once you've decided what looks best, check if the settings are any different from when you started, and whether the settings on the two images are the same - I would expect not. A manufacturer can't make that visual subjective assessment, and can only generalise.

As for creating jpg itself, that is just a lossy compression process -akin to producing an mp3 audio file, whereas the raw file is equivalent to wav. So data is thrown out, the choice is just what and how much - ho 'flat' relatively the jpg is.

+1 JPG degrades with each edit and save.

I find it funny people here spend a ton on HD / WAV files, yet prefer JPG pics. Yes they are quick and convenient for sending in email, but if you truly want to print larger pictures and doing editing and fine tuning, RAW is the way to go. 

One other very key item, people should use is a monitor colour calibrator, so they can see the actual colours from the picture, that is if you are serious about editing and printing. 

Also better to spend your money on the lenses as the digital camera bodies will change much more frequently, where a good lens will hold its value and use.

Maybe here, ears are better than eyes ?

Guy,

I wonder what would happen if Naim produced a DAC with "brightness", "contrast" "sharpness", "Hue", "saturation" or the musical equivalents and enabled us to adjust the "tone" of the music, "darken" certain frequencies and "lighten" others ............................

..................especially if they incorporated a "reset" button  ................

........................that failed to work once you had "saved" your latest incarnation of Beethoven's Ninth after nine minutes of "tinkering"

Frank,

I know which picture I prefer, but I don't know which one more faithfully reflects the view at the time the picture was taken.

BTW, thank you for your comments, but as you allude, its the Leica, not me, that is delivering any decent results.

And the question is, the really big question: would that be so very wrong? At the risk of this becoming a hifi thread... at the end of the day, if you get the music to sound as you like it, surely that's actually what it's all about! Whether that is correcting an imbalance - percieived or real - in the recording, or simply making it sound how you think it would - how you would play or record it if you were the musician/engineer. Just like making a photo either artistically how you like it, or visually accurate as far as your memory serves, it's just the same.

yes, old style tone controls were crude. And from received wisdom introduced unwanted artefacts. But these days many people are using room correction software. And what about ,loudness' controls, adjusting the frequency response so that when listening at different levels you hear the same subjective balance between extremes of frequency range (needs to be more sophisticated than a simple one stage on/off).

provided that these don't produce unwanted artefactss or distortions, and maybe can be switched out of circuit completely if desired, there is no reason why they should be considered as harmful, and, for some at least, they might be the be all and end all of system upgrades.

so what about it, Naim?

Your analogy fails.

All of this has already been done by the time you get your music.

With photography capturing RAW and then processing to produce a picture you are performing the tasks of artist, recording engineer, mixer and masterer. When people see my pictures, unless I say that it is a rough mix, they are getting to see the picture the way that I intend. Yes they may be able to open a jpeg and play with levels and things but they cannot make it better. The only hope that they have is to use a better screen (maybe with a better cable) and make sure that it is set up correctly (colour balanced, nice solid desk or whatever).

The thread is now splitting into two directions

1 - The degradation of Jpeg files with repeated opening and saving (with or without making any changes)

2 - The increased versatility of RAW files versus Jpeg files

Re 1 Image degradation

There is a  way to start with Jpeg files and not lose quality and that is by using a non destructive editing process.

During the edit of the Jpeg file a list is maintained of all the changes being applied to the image (not the file) and when the editing work is complete the list of changes is saved alongside the original file. When the image is to be viewed or printed or emailed the original file plus the changes are processed to create a transient image which can then be output for printing or emailing at the required size.

This is how Lightroom and Aperture handle the processing of images. They can be used to process Jpeg or RAW files.

Some people do not like the way a non destructive editing process runs the computer a bit hotter as much more processing is required to recreate and display the image. However remember that MIPS are free (Millions of Instructions per second), either use them or lose them.

Re 2 Increased versatility of RAW files

The advantage with using RAW files is that there is a greater depth of data to retrieve to ie detail in the shadow or highlight areas of the image.

The picture of the clouds by fatcat shows how by adjusting the highlight and shadow controls very useful data can be revealed.

Rant on mode.

I do not know why people are suckered into buying cameras with high numbers of pixels if they are not going to create large print images or extract small areas of the image from the whole. Unless they are technology addicts.

You do not need a 16mp camera to create an image the size of a postcard.

The only reason is if the camera includes useful extra features - eg 5 way image stabilisation etc

Rant off