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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Who's shooting RAW for daily assignments?
Paul W Gillespie, Photographer
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Annapolis | MD | USA | Posted: 9:59 PM on 11.05.05 |
->> We shoot jpgs at my paper for daily assignments but I have been shooting RAW for my freelance clients and I love the results. I have just upgraded to PS CS 2 at home and use it for Nikon RAW conversions.
I have been showing my boss the better quality of both color and detail with my RAW images in hopes that he can get the higher ups to get us new computer gear and CS 2. We currently are running Macs with OS 9.1 and PS 6
So if you are shooting RAW at your paper or office tell me about your workflow, storage, pluses and minuses. Do you use it when shooting assignments that generate a lot of images, i.e. sports? Is it feasible on deadline assignments?
Thanks |
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Douglas M. Bovitt, Photographer
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Philadelphia | PA | USA | Posted: 10:44 PM on 11.05.05 |
->> Since we're still using D1H's at our paper and upper management expresses the need for better quality without wanting to pay for better cameras, we've pretty much been using RAW for almost every assignment. We use Photoshop 7 and OS 9.2.2 on three computers and one station has OSX and CS2 with the newest Photo Mechanic. That station is the one some of us fight to get on, but for the other stations, we all use the Photoshop browser to look at and open up the RAW files. Once you get used to it, it doesn't seem all that slow, but for the first week or so, you're sweating it on deadline. When using RAW, we let the color dept. know that there's a RAW file available by writing it into our captions, then putting an untouched file into a separate folder for them to get to. On the one station with the newest software, I ingest the entire disk with Photo Mech,using the caption tag to give general info before the ingest, then browse and edit accordingly (I love that station!!). Pluses are, like you said, better color and detail, especially with higher ISO's, and the minuses are that it is much slower with the old computers and software. I think that using RAW and getting new computers and software is probably a better alternative to buying new cameras. Sorry if this message seems jumbled, I wanted to post, but it's been a long day.
Dbo |
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Jonathan Castner, Photographer
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Longmont | CO | USA | Posted: 11:32 PM on 11.05.05 |
| ->> I shoot RAW 99+% of the time. I have to think really hard to find the last time I shot an assignment on JPEG. I tag images as I shoot when on deadlines so that I am shortening the edit process and only ingest the images that I have tagged. That means that I also only open up about a dozen images tops into PS for working/transmission. For me, RAW is easily the way to work. |
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Chris Preovolos, Photographer
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Stamford | CT | United States | Posted: 11:36 PM on 11.05.05 |
| ->> It is so much better and totally worth waiting for those CF cards to download...but I don't work the late shift so I hardly do anything on a real tight deadline, but really, it doesn't add much time to the workflow. |
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Jake Schoellkopf, Photographer
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Albuquerque | NM | USA | Posted: 11:44 PM on 11.05.05 |
| ->> I do about 75% of the time, but probably less now that I have a 5D and can't use Photoshop CS's ACR to work the files. Have to use DPP and it's slow on the little beast. With the MK II I shoot a lot of RAW, even on deadline. RAW is such a life saver. |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 12:08 AM on 11.06.05 |
->> I shoot raw for everything except sports on a deadline.
I use photo mechanic to do a rough edit, Photoshop RAW to do the conversion, then a couple of photoshop actions to do the appropriate colorspace conversion, resize and save to JPEG. Then it's back to photo mechanic to caption the JPEGs and transmit via FTP.
It's very efficient, and the extra dynamic range you get from RAW really helps with things like concert shooting. |
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Jack Kurtz, Photographer
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Phoenix | AZ | United States | Posted: 12:25 AM on 11.06.05 |
->> I shoot RAW for almost everything, using 20D bodies. Convert using CS2 and Bridge. When the conversion is clean enough, I don't even bother with Photoshop. I caption in Bridge and save the JPEG straight out of Bridge. Speeds up workflow considerably.
For folks still using CS, I think the upgrade to CS2 is worth it. There are some bugs in Bridge, but it is way faster than the file browser in CS and ACR3.X has an even better workflow than ACR2. (Version 3.2 of ACR supports the 5D, but there is still no support for the 1DMk2N.)
jack |
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Andrew Wheeler, Photographer
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Capitola | CA | USA | Posted: 2:25 AM on 11.06.05 |
->> Yeppers!
I'm another 100% RAW shooter.
CS2 made life so much simpler and I do a similar flow as Jack describes..
Andrew :) |
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Wade Andrew, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Winnipeg | Manitoba | Canada | Posted: 6:27 AM on 11.12.05 |
| ->> I decided to try shooting raw tonight at a basketball game with my D1H at 3200 and I noticed quite a bit more noise than I usually get in the same venue shooting jpeg. It was bad noise too, very "patterny" and strange, when the H is usually pretty clean at that speed. Has anyone else experienced this? I still love the D1H and I've recently blown up some pics to 20 x 30 for a gallery show from a trip I took to Haiti, so I'm a bit surprised that raw quality would be worse than jpeg. |
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Neil Turner, Photographer
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London | UK | United Kingdom | Posted: 10:35 AM on 11.12.05 |
->> I'm shooting RAW 100% of the time on a pair of Canon EOS1D MkII bodies as well as on an EOS20D. I moved to RAW about four months ago and now the workflow is second nature.
I use Photo Mechanic (latest version) to ingest the cards into a dated folder which I then go through and TAG the good and medium files. I then use PM to copy those tagged images into another folder, re-naming them in line with the company protocol as I do so.
The copied images then have their tags removed and their captions attached using PM's Staitonery Pad. I usually add a generic caption for that job to all of the files and then add details to indvidual files as necessary. I also use a lot of the PM variables to automatically date the caption which saves a few seconds here and there!
I then go through the renamed and captioned images and do my final edit using the TAG function again. The selected thumbnails are then dragged onto a Photoshop CS icon and opened, adjusted and saved as JPEGs in Photoshop before being transmitted back to the office.
One huge advantage of shooting RAW is that if you need to upsize the files, Photoshop CS and CS2 have a very handy + feature in the RAW module that uses very good algorithms to make your files bigger. The +1 when used with a Canon EOS1D MkII RAW file takes the aleady large 23 Mb file up to a very decent 32 Mb very successfully and the +2 gets that file up to 50 Mb pretty well and very quickly.
The rough edit and the final edit are archived seperately and on multiple external hard drives and Gold CDs.
The downside of shooting RAW is the relatively small number of images that you get on a single CF card - the Canon CR2 files take up between 90-120 images per gigabyte of memory card. The space taken up by archiving RAW files is large but I find that by ditching the rubbish it is manageable.
The quality advantage compared to the small amount of extra time spent editing makes it very worthwhile shooting RAW. I would find it hard to go back to shooting JPEGs again.
Neil. |
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Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 11:21 AM on 11.12.05 |
->> Paul:
I shoot RAW for everything except day time sports. Shooting RAW drops the drive speed and buffer size, plus the image processing time is longer. And, since I have the light play with I want to enjoy it. Otherwise, any sports shot outdoors under the lights I'm back in RAW mode.
I really like the fact that fact a RAW file is so much like a negative in my opinion, and the more recently released software allows processing of an image where I can achieve the same image (actually better shooting Canon RAW as opposed to tri-x at 1600 in low-light conditions) as if I was standing in front of an enlarger under amber safelights.
I like the fact that shooting RAW gives approximate the same or better latitude than film depending on the program used to convert the files. Currently, depending on the assignment and output, I have four different RAW converters at my disposal. Each have their strengths and weakness.
Is it feasible on deadline assignments? I definitely think so. I've been shooting RAW for a couple of years now. I don't use CS but imagine that the workflow is not much different than using PhotoImpact. PI treats the file like any jpeg or tif when you view the images in the folder. It takes me longer to edit the RAW file than it takes the program to convert it so that is a plus.
On deadline I edit the files off the cards in PI, caption in PhotoStation, and transmit files to external clients. The whole process takes about 5 min. a file on average.
After uploading or transmitting is done I rename the RAW files and archive them to a PC hard drive for four to six months to handle residual requests and reprints. After which the files are then burned DVD and stored.
I'm actually using less HD and DVD storage space now because earlier I kept separate folders with named generated tiffs of the keepers so that I could locate the file quickly. Now that I can easily rename the files in DPP I only store the RAW files and the catalog low-res files (in a separate archive system) that are uploaded to the website. |
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