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[marko]

My little fuji compact got dropped in a muddy puddle during the summer, and hasn't worked very well since, so, last weekend, I went out and bought a Nikon D5000, and very nice it is too!!

I want a longer lens, and a wide angle job too, but think I'll have to wait for birthdays and Christmases for those... have you seen the prices   

Anyhoo, I've been messing around with it for a few days now and am generally very pleased with the results. I feel that the jpg files are all a little under-exposed in the automatic settings, but see that it's possible to ramp the exposure up a bit in custom settings (two or three stops seems to be how those in the know refer to this kind of thing )

This is the first camera I've owned that does RAW files so I've taken a few of those to see what's what.

I get that RAW files (NEF files in my case) are not image files as such, but the raw data as captured by the camera, and that post editing that data means that there's no degradation when it comes to saving as an image file that can be shared with the world.

This is great, I guess, but looking at it before getting into it, it seems like a lot of work.
If you use RAW files, what workflows have you developed for managing them?
If I edit a RAW file in an image editor, I assume it changes the RAW data in that file unless I save as a new file. Is that correct?

Ultimately, I guess I'm asking "Why would I want to use RAW, and how should I use it?

-marko.

[Eccles]

RAW is the digital equivalent of the negatives, vs JPG which is your prints.  You can tinker with the "processing" of your negative to your heart's content, and make as many different "prints" as you like, while all the time retaining your original "negative".

Check out Bibble for a great workflow tool.

[DarkPenguin]

I use lightroom.  The lightroom 3 beta is available if you want to see how it works.  (This is a good tutorial for how to use LR2 ...  http://www.luminous-landscape.com/videos/LR2.shtml ... not free, however.  There are a lot of free tutorials out there.  Nothing so comprehensive.)

Edits to RAW files are not edits to the actual image data.  The edits are parametric and are either saved in sidecar files or in "tags" in the actual RAW file.  You'll have to export to jpeg or tiff to get a file with those edits "baked" in.

The main reason to use RAW is that there are better RAW converters than the camera's jpeg engine.  Those tools have been getting better and better over the years.  When I bought a digital rebel some years ago the tools were horrible.  Bad workflow, bad conversions and slow.  Now they are quite good.  White balance is something you might want to change after the fact and the demosaic, noise reduction and sharpening algorithms just keep getting better.  There are also methods of exposure that are optimized for digital.  Expose to the right is one.

The downside to using RAW is that you have to process all your images.  But remember that you can always batch process them through the software that came with the camera and get the same file (more or less) that would have if you just shot jpeg.

[marko]

Interesting.
Once processed, I could see me keeping the RAW files on an external drive, or possibly burned to DVD.

Lightroom, Capture 1, DXO and Bibble seem to be the major players in the RAW converter market; I read many comparison articles yesterday.
The conclusion would seem to be that they each have something that one does better than the rest, but generally, it always came down to a bit of a toss-up between Lightroom and Bibble.
I've downloaded the Bibble trial (thanks for the tip Eccles) and the LR beta v3 and am using LR first.

Lightroom 3 is interesting. Quick development presets that can be saved and used over, with a history. Sod the manuals and the tutorials, they can come later, I just jumped in to see what I could work out for myself, and I didn't sink like a stone, so not all bad, and a small list of things to glean from the help files/tutorials.

Thank you Mr. Penguin for your insightful post, this could be an interesting journey.
Right now, I'm off to test how MC copes with me asking it to stack files that are in the CD and Main databases into the same stack, then I'm going to play some more with my new toy.
I was looking at a 500D too (Digital Rebel, yes?), as it has a great LCD screen, but when I got them in my hands, the Nikon model felt so much better for me. The nice man in Jessops let me stick my own SD card in it and go round snapping things. Four hours later, I went back and bought it. More learning for me, but I'm happy.

-marko.
I have the imaginings of a workflow developing...

EDIT:

Right now, I'm off to test how MC copes with me asking it to stack files that are in the CD and Main databases into the same stack

Stacking does not fare so well outside of the main database. Even if I select two files inside the cd database, those two files are imported into the main library. No biggie really, I will try something else instead.

[RainCaster]

Hi Marko,
I have a big Canon DSLR and have been experimenting with it for several years now. It will shoot in JPG, RAW or both. When I ask for anything but JPG, the SD card fills up very fast. Since mine connects by USB2, the transfers get very slow as well. Other than that, I see very little difference except at dynamic extremes between JPG and RAW. (There is less banding in the shadows on a bright sunny day)

I have been very impressed with lightroom, but like all things Adobe, it is expensive. I have used the betas and found them to work very well. The UI is very responsive and FAST! That said, I seldom have the time to process the images to get that last 10% out of each image. So I have not bought lightroom, and I now use the DSLR in JPG-only mode. On occasion I do need to get that last tweak out of a photo, so I use PhotoShop for that. Some might say it's overkill, but that is what I have left over from an old UI design project.

I would suggest that you buy another internal drive for your RAW images. External drives are just too slow, unless you have 1394b. You can find a 7200 RPM 2TB drive for very reasonable these days, and the extra money you save can be saved towards that LightRoom license- or more glass. 

[DarkPenguin]

Disk drives and memory cards are cheap.  I wouldn't worry about shooting RAW due to size constraints.  (Unless you're shooting an A900 or 5D mk II or the like...)

As to converters.  There are those who like Silkypix.  (Perverts, if you ask me)  The Nikon software (Capture) is also very good.  I wouldn't buy C1 just because I do not trust Phase One to update it in a timely manner.  (Had like 4 free updates that I don't think I got and it took something like 4 years to get the ones that I did.)  Bibble is supposed to be nice but I never cared for it.  RAW Fidelity was supposed to be out (or at least in beta) around the middle of last year.   Still no sign of that.  DXO is only worthwhile if they support your lenses.  Photoshop requires a brain rewiring if you're trying to work your way through a lot of images.  (And then it is very fast.)  Raw therepee is free.

Download all the demos and try them all.  But make sure you load up a bunch of images and check out how fast you can cull the herd and do basic processing.  Getting everything "just so" is going to take a while with any converter.  How quickly you can identify keepers and bludgeon them into an approximate final form is a major part of how much you'll like a given converter.

[marko]

Hi Marko,
I have a big Canon DSLR and have been experimenting with it for several years now. It will shoot in JPG, RAW or both. When I ask for anything but JPG, the SD card fills up very fast. Since mine connects by USB2, the transfers get very slow as well. Other than that, I see very little difference except at dynamic extremes between JPG and RAW. (There is less banding in the shadows on a bright sunny day)

I have been very impressed with lightroom, but like all things Adobe, it is expensive. I have used the betas and found them to work very well. The UI is very responsive and FAST! That said, I seldom have the time to process the images to get that last 10% out of each image. So I have not bought lightroom, and I now use the DSLR in JPG-only mode. On occasion I do need to get that last tweak out of a photo, so I use PhotoShop for that. Some might say it's overkill, but that is what I have left over from an old UI design project.

I would suggest that you buy another internal drive for your RAW images. External drives are just too slow, unless you have 1394b. You can find a 7200 RPM 2TB drive for very reasonable these days, and the extra money you save can be saved towards that LightRoom license- or more glass. 

Interesting comments. Especially regarding the offset of time taken in post processing vs. gain over shooting in jpg.
Although still new to me, I found the default, best quality jpg images from my D5000 to be rather flat and a little under exposed. Shooting RAW and doing my own processing is producing much more pleasing results, but is time consuming. Maybe this will improve as I become more adept at this task, maybe finding a set of presets I can apply in batch for a given set of shots, I'm not sure, still early days, but atm, the benefit of RAW over jpg is way more than 10% for me. Another thing I need to explore is that I'm sure the camera has jpg processing options that can be tweaked... maybe once I've played with those, the RAW+processing time vs jpg comparison could shift in favour of jpg, I'm not sure. For now, I'm shooting RAW only, doing my own processing, then exporting to a folder watched by MC. I think this will be the foundation of my image workflow.

Disk drives and memory cards are cheap.  I wouldn't worry about shooting RAW due to size constraints.  (Unless you're shooting an A900 or 5D mk II or the like...)

As to converters.  There are those who like Silkypix.  (Perverts, if you ask me)  The Nikon software (Capture) is also very good.  I wouldn't buy C1 just because I do not trust Phase One to update it in a timely manner.  (Had like 4 free updates that I don't think I got and it took something like 4 years to get the ones that I did.)  Bibble is supposed to be nice but I never cared for it.  RAW Fidelity was supposed to be out (or at least in beta) around the middle of last year.   Still no sign of that.  DXO is only worthwhile if they support your lenses.  Photoshop requires a brain rewiring if you're trying to work your way through a lot of images.  (And then it is very fast.)  Raw therepee is free.

Download all the demos and try them all.  But make sure you load up a bunch of images and check out how fast you can cull the herd and do basic processing.  Getting everything "just so" is going to take a while with any converter.  How quickly you can identify keepers and bludgeon them into an approximate final form is a major part of how much you'll like a given converter.

If I stick with shooting RAW exclusively, I will be lobbying friends/family to club together for a lightroom 3 license for my birthday

I tagged an image file in MC with every keyword in the library and imported that into lightroom.
Working with the RAW files, applying keywords, then exporting to a folder watched by MC works well. MC imports the files, keywords and all, allowing me to take advantage of MC's vastly superior file management tools to place those exported files in their final resting places. They are then available for family consumption on the TV via theater view. Nice!

lightroom has an option that allows it to read MC's hierarchical keyword structure and replicate that in it's own keyword list, which is wonderful, or so I thought...

There is also an option to export the hierarchical keyword info when exporting, but however it does that, MC cannot interpret the information and so all the back slashes are converted to semi-colons, breaking the hierarchy in MC.

I've therefore turned off the hierarchical options in lightroom. It would be kind of cool if MC could read the hierarchical info written by lightroom

Took my camera out a couple of days last week and came back with a few reasonable shots that I popped onto pix01 - http://pix01.com/1j@Pn6Y

The dog is not mine, and was running when I took the shot... I didn't do a very good job of keeping it in frame, but still, it came out remarkably well, I thought!!
The shots of the bridges were taken at dusk in rapidly failing light. the blue ones were taken using the camera's built in night time setting.
All shot in RAW and processed in lightroom 3 beta.

-marko.