The Official Photography Thread - Vol. 3

[goste187]

to you all who shoot in RAW: what are the advantages over JPEG? do you always shoot in RAW, or is it situational?

I personally always shoot in RAW. RAW allows you to control the white balance in your pictures with a finger click. Also since you're working with an uncompressed file from the start, you'll end up with a higher quality JPEG when you export your files. 

 

[Fong$tarr]

^^^I know I always have to ask with this RAW vs JPEG thing. But with RAW, are you saying you just have to click a button to fix the white balance or is it a slider thing like color balance in photoshop? What if say Lightroom gets the white balance off or not to the color you want it to be? What if you want it more blue than yellow?

 

[goste187]

^^ I use LR for my post processing and it offers you a wide range of options to adjust the color balance. I guess the point being that RAW gives you that extra bit of flexibility to adjust the WB as you see fit. JPEG, not so much. 

 

[Fong$tarr]

^^ I use LR for my post processing and it offers you a wide range of options to adjust the color balance. I guess the point being that RAW gives you that extra bit of flexibility to adjust the WB as you see fit. JPEG, not so much. 

But how so? When I correct white balance on Photoshop, I do color balance (first) but not just on the midtones but on the highlights and shadows. That way you can get full control if say you want your shadows to be more red or your whites more blue.

Then if you are a total nut like me, you go into selective photo and change each color to your liking which also helps in white balance. So say if you are still not getting your whites to that blue hue, you can add Cyan to it or drop your yellows to help get the color right.

I know this is a long process to some but I can wiz through this fast and I like to have full control. And I am not doubting that RAW is better than JPEG but I just find it odd when people mention white balance when it can be changed in JPEGs as well. The only bad thing I guess I can see with white balance and JPEG is if you photo is that off, it is hard to adjust it to a natural color without straining the photo and creating some sort of pixel issues, especially when color is blending with another color. You'll actually see a lot of grain but that is why you should be shooting with your white balance fixed rather than shooting with it not since editing should be a minimal tool. I am not a 100% sure if RAW solves this but I would imagine it would be better since the pixels are bigger by count.

 

[goste187]

So basically in LR you have this little panel. Naturally LR isn't the robust editing tool PS is but it handles a lot of things very well, including WB. You have those sliders there to adjust your WB as you see fit. You can also use that eye dropper tool to pick a tone within the picture itself to use as your white balance. You can also see all these variations in the preview menu before you actually set it. 

I guess the point being between this work flow and going through PS, is that LR is much faster and simpler to adjust the WB "at the click on a button"

I admittedly have never tried adjusting WB through PS, but I have tried to adjust JPEGs WB through LR, and the difference is very evident. JPEG just doesn't play as well.

 

[goste187]

And now for some randoms in my hood today. Decided to draw inspiration from the snow instead of hiding from it.

 

[Fong$tarr]

Interesting. I guess I have to play with LR more. I have it and downloaded some VSCO filters and did some things but got so frustrated with it cause I didn't know how to use it properly that I just went back to PS. Haha. Go figure. Lazy to learn something that will make life easier. Story of my life.

And for you big ballers out there. LV camera bag.

 

[blueribbon23]

Kobe 9 Experience 

Nikon D3200

 

[HankHill]

goste187 Fong$tarr

You can do the color correction in LR as well its just in a different panel than the one with white balance. There's an HSL/Color/B&W panel to do it in. The white balance panel just holds most of the quick fixes like auto exposure (in which you can still adjust sliders). Take a quick pic in Raw format and try opening it up in Photoshop. It should pull up the Camera Raw software; that's basically everything you'd find in lightroom as far as post processing.

Personally I shoot in RAW+JPEG. If I'm shooting pics and I know I'll do some editing to them (harsh lighting, too much contrast, o/u exposure, etc), I like having the raw file to work with because there is a lot more data that I can use to recover. If its just something like taking a pic of my food or shoes, I'll just use the jpeg. I keep it in RAW+JPEG to avoid forgetting switching from one to another.

 

[Fong$tarr]

How do you guys manage the photo files for RAW? Do you just have a huge harddrive or do you have an external HD? I want to get an external but I also want to use iPhoto on my iMac but not sure if it reads photos on another HD. I guess I should just look into it but my HD is getting killed with the Mark 2 and 3.

 

[goste187]

I have all of the above. A huge HDD and an external. Since I don't do client shooting and shoot at my own leisure, redundancy isn't a huge priority for me generally speaking. 

 

[HankHill]

I have a TB in my mbp. A have a ton of externals that I use for various things, but I back up my photos to one of them.

 

[tokes99]

Good old Forest Hills... Can't be from Boston and never have hung out here as a teenager... Crazy how time flies...

good eye, not being from boston i remember being absolutely lost in that station the first time i had gotten off the train there; the upper/lower level bus thing is was so confusing...

tokes99 good to see some nice local shots

boston's history & size make it a pretty infuriating interesting place for picture taking

to you all who shoot in RAW: what are the advantages over JPEG? do you always shoot in RAW, or is it situational?

the simplest explanations is RAW format holds/records much more information & supposedly (depending on your camera) less in camera manipulation/processing (things like sharpness, lens correction, contrast, etc.). the advantage being a more hardy/robust file for post processing, much easier to recover blown out highlights & get details from shadows as there is MUCH more information available. you can see what your specific camera does to an image when you shoot RAW+JPEG. compare the images & check out their respective file sizes (on my camera the RAW file is on average 5-6x larger than a JPEG)

a good way to think about shooting in RAW format as opposed to JPEG is kinda like insurance, if you over/under expose an image, or get the white balance off, or maybe you know a particular situation you camera may struggle to process into a nice image, like when there is a some extreme light & dark contrast that would be really hard to retain the detail in a JPEG; a RAW file will be much more able to deal with those conditions. though because i'm definitely am amateur/ newb, i shoot RAW primarily so i don't have to deal with setting my white balance in camera all the time...

another bus/train station with the 8mm fisheye, i just like the lights here, like something out a sci-fi flick:

 

[bjamez20]

How do you guys manage the photo files for RAW? Do you just have a huge harddrive or do you have an external HD? I want to get an external but I also want to use iPhoto on my iMac but not sure if it reads photos on another HD. I guess I should just look into it but my HD is getting killed with the Mark 2 and 3.

iPhoto can read photos from another hard drive, but you can't have it reading photos from 2 hard drives at once as far as I know. You'd have to move your current iPhoto library (the actual file/folder) to the external, then open iPhoto while holding the option key. iPhoto will ask you to pick a library to work with - just point it to the one on the external. Since you're using an iMac it wouldn't be a problem to have your whole library living on the external since you never really have a reason to unplug it. If you're using a MBP/MBA or whatever then it gets a little bit trickier.

 

[Fong$tarr]

^^^^^^Nice! Thanks man. I'll definitely have to get an external soon.

 

[goste187]

 

Nice shot there! Was that handheld? What aperture?

 

[tokes99]

 

Nice shot there! Was that handheld? What aperture?

thanks, i believe it was somewhere between f5.6-f8 1/10s @1600 iso...the downside of a manual lens is not having aperture & other lens info in the metadata for sorting, but so far the great thing about having a super angle wide lens seems to be that clear handheld shots at slow shutter speeds are much easier to pull off

 

[yallayalla]

How do you guys manage the photo files for RAW? Do you just have a huge harddrive or do you have an external HD? I want to get an external but I also want to use iPhoto on my iMac but not sure if it reads photos on another HD. I guess I should just look into it but my HD is getting killed with the Mark 2 and 3.

i just filled up 2 TB on my external HD man :x with music movies photos.. mostly photos..
full frame + RAW definitely kills the HD

info on these external HD

I've seen so many photogs use this brand Lacie.. and i wanna know WHY compared to the other brands like WD, Buffalo, etc

 

[HankHill]

Whats up NT

I want to make sure I'm not wasting too much than what I should
thoughts on this price for this camera?

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/pho/4352494975.html

Should I aim for something else?

The images I am trying to capture images where I can take an image and the quality would be not freaking perfect but something that truly shows the quality of the image and shows how sharp the image is... I've been working with a powershot and I feel like a DSLR would help me get the images i'm looking for more

Aim for something else. For me, the D5000 is too old of a body for an entry level camera. Nothing wrong with it, but you can find a better camera just as cheap.

D3200 Kit refurbished for 399.99
https://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-nikon-d3200-242mp-cmos-digital-slr-camera

 

[SVNTI]

Few from tonight:

 

[grizzlyboy]

How do you guys manage the photo files for RAW? Do you just have a huge harddrive or do you have an external HD? I want to get an external but I also want to use iPhoto on my iMac but not sure if it reads photos on another HD. I guess I should just look into it but my HD is getting killed with the Mark 2 and 3.

i just filled up 2 TB on my external HD man :x with music movies photos.. mostly photos..
full frame + RAW definitely kills the HD

info on these external HD

I've seen so many photogs use this brand Lacie.. and i wanna know WHY compared to the other brands like WD, Buffalo, etc

I have the Lacie and like it a lot. More so because of the rubber outer protection. Other brands are just as good, IMO, but I have noticed the popularity in it as well. Maybe because Apple sells it?

 

[yallayalla]

^ ooohhhh had no idea apple sells em.. that actually explains a lot haha thanks!

 

[2morrowbegins2day]

Shot this of my friend in AC after i was done with a gig. Still testing out some edits. Let me know what y'all think.

 

[goste187]

^^ Really like this location for the shot. Also the picture is really nice too. If i had to nitpick I do have 2 critiques for the image:

1. The highlights are a tad overblown for my tastes, especially the one right behind his head. My eyes are directed toward that white light as opposed to the subject since this is portraiture.

2. Possibly too much foreground? The footprints where I can basically see he just walked there and did a quick U turn gives me a little too much info about how you setup the shot.

Overall still a great capture though and I really like the vibe/mood of the picture

 

[keko jones]

Shot this of my friend in AC after i was done with a gig. Still testing out some edits. Let me know what y'all think.

That fake bokeh is killing me ...... If it's not fake then 1. you sharpen the image to much and 2. the lens does not render a good bokeh at all.