Anyone shoot RAW?

[Carl_Constantine]

Just taking an informal poll (and I can't seem to create one here) who shoots RAW for macro shots, who shoots JPEG, who goes back and forth, and why/when do you use each?

[rjlittlefield]

Both.

When stacking, I shoot JPEG because with my equipment RAW is too big, slow, and awkward to process.

Otherwise I shoot RAW because it gives much better possibilities for color correction and brightness adjustments.

--Rik

[acerola]

I always shoot RAW. (I'm not stacking yet)

[DaveW]

RAW only, I too am not a stacker yet but eventually hope to give it a try.

DaveW

[puzzledpaul]

Both

RAW for 'proper' shots ... same reason as Rik

Jpg when just messing around .. ie trying new / different setups ... or for stuff am not really interested in (but someone's asked me to take pics) ... like an 'Event' day my daughter asked me to 'document' ... about 600+ shots in 7hrs. RAW would've been way ott (and didn't have enough cards anyway.)

Also don't stack atm.

pp

[lauriek]

I always shoot RAW, stacks or not.

The only issue I have is that huge 500gb hard disk I added to my setup last year is going to be full in a couple of months, so I need more HD space. My computer is not very up to date (AMD Athlon barton core 2600, 1.5gb ram) but I don't have any speed issues dealing with RAW files.

I'd only revert to JPEG if I was out and about and was running out of CF space...

[DaveW]

Can I ask a stupid question, well I usually do anyway! When you have taken all these shots for a stack and compiled a successful image from them, surely you only keep the successful image and delete all the stacking shots?

To me keeping them would be like building a new house and then forever leaving the scaffolding used in its construction lying around in the garden. If they have served their purpose there is no point in keeping them on your hard disk if you will never use them again. That would mean around 20 images reduced to one on your hard disk? To me it's like keeping half a dozen images virtually the same. I go through mine, pick the best and delete the rest.

I know of photographers on other sites claiming they have hundreds of images on computer and plug in hard drives, and admit many are virtually the same. They say they just keep uploading their memory cards to the computer and never get around to removing the rejects and duplicates.

Why clutter up a hard disk with stuff you will never need again, or that is virtually identical to another image, just keep the best and junk the rest! Saves loads of computer and even CD space.

DaveW

[Charles Krebs]

Dave

When you have taken all these shots for a stack and compiled a successful image from them, surely you only keep the successful image and delete all the stacking shots?

If I have a successful "stacked" image I never delete the files used to create it. When you stack an image and work on it carefully, you are (nearly always) aware that it is not "perfect". There are always little things that might be better. The software is always improving, as are my "clean-up" skills. Once the source files are gone there is no hope of improving the stacked image in the future.

I nearly always shoot raw plus a jpeg. Sometimes I choose a "small" jpeg. Many stacks just do not work well, or would require far more time to "clean-up" than the image warrants. With the jpeg's I can load them up into the stacking software and run a few "tests" very quickly. If the original jpeg's are well exposed and look good in other areas (color balance, contrast...) I may not go the raw files. But occasionally, when you get a very "special" shot (or the jpeg's would require considerable "adjustment"), I like to be able to go to the RAW file and do everything as best I can.

Stacking certain images often gives you backgrounds and large areas of smooth color gradations with no details. Unless you deliberately make an effort to introduce a single image as the background (instead of using the background as produced in the stack) you risk problems with posterization if you make significant tonal adjustments. (I believe Wim does this fairly regularly). This is much less of a problem if you work with 16bit (per color) files, which are obtained from the raw files.

One microscope illumination method I use (DIC) would require me to spend an inordinate amount of time adjusting to get correct color balance for the shots. By shooting RAW, I can have a setting that gets the jpeg close, but get it just the way I want when converting the RAW file. That way I can devote all my attentiveness to the subject and composition while shooting, rather than playing with the white balance.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I don't edit out my shooting sessions adequately. There is much useless stuff that could be deleted. But even when I do sit down and do a serious "purge", I "err" on the side of keeping a shot that is just "OK", rather than deleting everything but the "A" material.

I can always buy another 750GB external hard drive for less than $200.

Charlie

[Carl_Constantine]

This has been quite informative. thanks everyone for your input, keep 'em comin'.

[rjlittlefield]

I see that Charlie has already covered many of these points, but let me put my own spin on things.

I also save the source images for most of my stacks, even a lot of them that don't work out.

There are several reasons why I do that:

• It's cheap. Even a long stack consumes less than $0.10 of disk space, and that's including the two backup copies that I keep on removable drives. At the cost of my time, it's way cheaper to keep everything than to spend time figuring out what's for sure OK to delete.
  
  (Today's special at Circuit City is $250 for a 1 TB external drive -- that's $0.75 per GB for three copies. Most of my stacks are well under 100 MB = 0.1 GB as JPEG.)
• The source stacks make good test cases to help drive and test the development of stacking software.
• Once in a while, I actually do go back and reprocess an old stack to get a better image. A bit more frequently, I go back and check the source images to see what actually caused some strange feature I just now noticed.

The issues I mentioned about "big, slow, and awkward" are a bit subtle:

• My camera (Canon 300D, now almost 4 years old) writes to its flash card pretty slowly, and direct connection to a computer is hopelessly worse. Most of the area of images to be stacked is completely OOF, which compresses very tightly. It's not unusual for each of my jpegs to be 1/10 the size of a raw. That difference in size, combined with the writing speed, ends up meaning that I can shoot a deep stack several minutes faster as jpeg than as raw.
• Although Helicon Focus will now read raw files directly, most other stacking software will not. So to run a raw stack through anything except HF, I would have to convert them separately.
• Since my deep stacks are all shot with carefully set up illumination (and I don't wrestle with the vagaries of DIC), the color and brightness require at most minor corrections and the advantages of raw over jpeg are much diminished, though not eliminated.

I suspect that if I had Charlie's camera, I'd be using his approach. Getting rid of that time-to-write issue would be a big difference, and being able to get both raw and jpeg from a single shutter click would kill off most of the software compatibility issues.

--Rik

[augusthouse]

In regard to storage and archiving; another important issue regarding keeping copies and backup copies on various hard drives is the fact that such devices are susceptible to magnetic spikes and mechanical breakdown - it happens.

All files should also be archived to DVD. This is not a hassle if sequential backups are done regularly and religiously. Two copies should be made and one stored at a remote location, just in case your place is hit by a meteorite or something less dramatic yet just as destructive occurs.

Not all recordable DVDs are created equal. Some of the cheaper ones have a short life. The best that I know of are Taiyo Yuden 'Master' DVDs. Many of the name brands, Sony, TDK etc often use the second grade Taiyo Yudens for their product, but best to go straight to Taiyo Yuden and buy their 'Master' quality DVDs for archiving purposes. The cost is not prohibitive.

Craig

[DaveW]

Craig,

If your place is hit by a meteorite the last thing you will be bothered about is images on your computer, particularly if you happen to be in it at the time!

DaveW

[augusthouse]

Dave,
I promise the get some shots and post them just before the moment of impact.
If I don't get to post the shots I'll leave the camera in a 'black box' - tell them to look for the 'black box'.

Craig

[rjlittlefield]

All files should also be archived to DVD.

This is good advice, but as I see it the reason is software errors and human foulup, not magnetic spikes and mechanical breakdown.

My ordinary hard disk backup procedure makes a complete new copy of everything on my disks every month or so, with incremental backups every day. The previous month's backups are stored offsite. At changeover, the current backup disk moves offsite, then the previous backup comes onsite, gets overwritten with a new full backup, and incrementals happen daily until the next changeover.

This scheme gives me protection up to the previous month for anything short of a firestorm that takes out my entire neighborhood, and it gives me protection up to the previous morning for anything that fails to trash two disks simultaneously.

What it does not protect me against is a software glitch or user error (who, me?!) that silently deletes or trashes a file and then happily keeps backing up the trashed version.

One or the other of those seems hugely more likely than any other problems.

--Rik