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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Newspaper Shooters and RAW images
Grant Blankenship, Photographer
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Macon | GA | USA | Posted: 1:00 PM on 12.08.05 |
->> I ask this question every six months or so on some forum, but with the release of Aperture and other developments, I thought it might be time to ask again.
How many of you newspaper shooters out there spend time using Raw formats for your work? Dayjob here, not the stuff on the side. If you ever do shoot raw, when, why, how much, how often, and what software do you use to make it happen? Oh, Nikon or Canon? |
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Adam Hemphill, Photographer, Student/Intern
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Willimantic | CT | US | Posted: 1:23 PM on 12.08.05 |
->> I do.
- Always, unless on EXTREMELY tight deadline.
- Increased dynamic range and better tonal transitions (in my opinion).
- Usually around 4 gigs per game (on 1Ds).
- 3-6 days a week.
- Photoshop CS and Photo Mechanic (on Windows).
- Canon (1Ds). |
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Jeffrey Furticella, Photographer, Assistant
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Muncie | IN | US | Posted: 4:04 PM on 12.08.05 |
->> The only time that I will shoot raw format with Photoshop CS2 and Photo Mechanic is when I am doing an elaborate studio or location shoot where I am playing with gels and a lot of colors and tonal ranges. Under those circumstances I appreciate the added elbow room that RAW provides. Otherwise, jpeg Fine format is where it's at for me. I think it's too much time and energy spent, and with our newspaper's deadlines and the way our assignments are typically given relatively last minute, it's pretty impractical to shoot Raw format. I shoot using a Nikon D2H also for what it's worth.
-Furt |
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Kevin Kreck, Photographer
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Colorado Springs | CO | USA | Posted: 4:14 PM on 12.08.05 |
| ->> We, The (Colorado Springs) Gazette, don't shoot raw mostly because of the problem of archiving the daily work of eight shooters. I do like to play with the format and like Jeffrey have shot some studio work with it. With our shaky reproduction, the result generally isn't worth the added time. |
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Jonathan Castner, Photographer
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Longmont | CO | USA | Posted: 5:49 PM on 12.08.05 |
->> I shoot everything RAW. So much so that I can't remember the last time I shot JPG for anything. But then I'm freelance and thus do all my own archiving so space and time is not an issue - I'm my own IT guy. I use CS for my RAW conversions. It does a fine job and thus I don't have any reason to use a separate converter. I am set up for RAW and make it work easily. I have had too many images sell as stock to not want the color correction/exposure to be perfect. Especially on a "outtake" that suddenly become hot property I don't want to loose out on sometimes a load of extra money because it was shot jpg and the image is a bit under exposed and green. With RAW I can make is sparkle in moments. Also the RAW files are perfect for archiving because they are not corruptable.
That said, I don't go out of the office without 6 gigs of card space and if it's a long shoot, I take my 20gig Imagetank G2 to dump files to while I'm shooting. And I'm a Nikon guy. |
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Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 12:07 AM on 12.09.05 |
| ->> Except for day, outdoor non-state championship prep sports, all assignments, including indoor sports with strobes and events under the lights, are shot in RAW for the PhotoNews. The extra 90 seconds in converting to jpeg or TIF is worth having a digital *negative*. Storage isn't an issue - both hard drives and DVD material is relatively inexpensive compared to a few years ago for archiving. RAW software like DPP and Pixmantec's RAW Shooter Essential have improved RAW processing greatly. The extra 90 seconds is worth the quality down the line. |
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Grant Blankenship, Photographer
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Macon | GA | USA | Posted: 9:06 AM on 12.09.05 |
->> Kevin said that given his paper's shaky reproduction, it generally isn't worth the time to worry over RAW images. That's an aspect which didn't occur to me. For those of you who swear by RAW shooting, what steps are you taking at your papers to insure that the increased tonal range, etc., isn't being wasted when ink hits paper?
Also, you'll have to forgive my ignorance, but does PS CS2 already come bundled with the RAW converters, or are do I have to get the plug-ins somewhere else? Running Macs and OS 10.3.8 |
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Chris Preovolos, Photographer
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Stamford | CT | United States | Posted: 10:22 AM on 12.09.05 |
| ->> The archiving hasn't been too much of an issue. We were buring CDs with JPEGs, now I am buring DVDs with RAW so I get about the same number of assignments on a DVD as I did JPEGs on a CD. Therefore it wasn't a huge difference when I switched over. As long as I burn whenever I have enough to do so its not overwhelming. If you were already buring DVDs with JPEGs, its gonna be annoying to have to burn so often with RAW. |
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Chris Preovolos, Photographer
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Stamford | CT | United States | Posted: 10:23 AM on 12.09.05 |
| ->> ...I'm using a D2H, though, so the files are not that huge compared to some of the other cameras. |
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Jonathan Castner, Photographer
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Longmont | CO | USA | Posted: 10:41 AM on 12.09.05 |
->> I know that there are a lot of newpaper shooters who don't bother to work the image very much just because it is going to be printed on what is essentially toilet paper. There is a very good point to that but to me it only goes so far. When I see my work on newsprint I can easily tell my images from other photog's not just in style but the way that image looks tonaly.
The deal is that I shoot RAW for the exposure/color controls with the goal of ultimate tonality and quality. The way that I am set up for RAW would work well with JPG as well but I wouldn't have the fine controls that I do with RAW. In my basic image prep I use an action creating a set of adjustment layers in CS so with one button all my controls are created: saturation, levels, my basic curve setting, a highpass sharpening and a lossless burn/dodge . So when I press F10 all the adjustments are ready to go. I often just press my "Flatten layers and convert to 8-bit" action and caption the image because the image doesn't require any out of the ordinary tweeking. It's the 5% of my images where I use the RAW files ability to alter the exposure/color balance after the fact to make a real difference in the image and every so often it saves the shot. If I get all that for the extra 4 seconds that it takes to open up a file for processing as well as some extra drive space, I'll take it.
But bear in mind that I work for a number of newspapers, magazines and commercial clients so rather than try to only match the low quality requirements of one webpress, I am trying to meet the qualtiy expectiations of my pickiest client. |
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Wes Hope, Photographer
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Maryville | TN | USA | Posted: 11:00 AM on 12.09.05 |
->> D2h + Nikon View + Nikon Capture + 100% .NEF + full time news shooter + part time freelancer.
Shooting raw has become a big safety net for me. So much so, that if I shoot in jpg, I break out in cold sweats and shake uncontrollably.
Generally, nail the exposure 1st, then edit in View, tweak in Capture, fine tune and caption in PS CS/CS2. Archiving is a little more times intensive, but I think it's worth it. I'll always have that raw digital negative of that groundbreaking or check passing to work up in case one of the subjects pulls an Enron or Monica Lewinsky. |
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Ben Hasty, Photographer
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Philadelphia | PA | USA | Posted: 2:26 PM on 12.09.05 |
->> I've been shooting RAW on a D1H when I'm in situations where I'm not sure about white balance or exposure. Instead of trying to keep up with what white balance I've got the camera set to in mixed lighting situations, I just go with RAW and know that I'll be okay later. I've been using CS and CS2 for the conversion.
I feel uneasy about having images archived just in RAW format though. I hear that it can be rather difficult to open files from some early Kodak digital cameras that essentially produced all RAW files. I've been thinking about starting to create JPEG versions of all my RAW images. This way I can increase the chances of being able to access at least one version of the image 30 years from now when 2005 RAW files may or may not be compatible with then current software and hardware.
I suppose that if I had a camera that shot RAW + JPEG, then that would solve my problem, but the D1h doesn't do that. |
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Les Hassell, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Longview | TX | United States | Posted: 8:01 PM on 12.09.05 |
| ->> I pretty much only shoot RAW when the lighting is iffy, but after today I may have to rethink that. I had a CF card crash and, unfortunately, ImageRescue will only recover .jpg's. Anyone know how to recover RAW files from a crashed card? |
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Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer
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Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 9:14 PM on 12.09.05 |
->> Hessel:
It has been a long while since I had to rescue RAW files but I think the last time I had to do it I rename the three letter extension to files that would not open as jpeg. Good luck. |
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Nicholas Wright, Photographer
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Palo Alto | CA | USA | Posted: 9:39 PM on 12.09.05 |
| ->> I've been shooting in RAW with the D2H since the beginning of the year. I never hesitate to shoot at ISO 1600. Wouldn't even think about going back to jpeg. Full time at a pair of Weeklies, weddings, freelance, CS2, PhotoMechanic 3.something |
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Bryan Kelsen, Photographer
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Pueblo | CO | usa | Posted: 11:44 PM on 12.10.05 |
->> I may be out of the loop on this one, but I am totally confused as to why anyone wouldn't shoot their images in the RAW format if it is available on their camera. ((shaking head)) The reasons I have read up to now haven't made any sense to me. If you can get better images with more latitude and tonal range at the expense of just a few minutes of extra toning (if you are experienced in photoshop at all it may even be less than that) then I say do it. Hell, I used to shoot assignments on both Tri-X and Chrome way back when. Talk about a real pain in the a**! I may work for a daily newspaper and produce images for them, but when I pick up a camera I am still shooting for me. Afterall, it is ultimately my name under the photo.
D2H, Photomechanic, CS & CS2, and we convert our images to eps for our database, then back to jpegs for archiving. |
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Adam Hemphill, Photographer, Student/Intern
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Willimantic | CT | US | Posted: 2:18 PM on 12.11.05 |
| ->> While our reproduction isn't always consistent, shooting RAW is very much worthwhile when it's good. I don't half-ass my job of making photographs or gathering information, so why should I do so when the next half (editing) comes in? |
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Neil Turner, Photographer
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London | UK | United Kingdom | Posted: 7:31 AM on 12.13.05 |
->> In reply to Lee ( I also replied to Grant's original question on this topic and I still shoot 100% RAW) PhotoRescue Expert edition does a great job of recovering CR2 or NEF files. It also does a good job on .wav and obviously .jpg
You can get this really useful software from http://www.datarescue.com
Neil. |
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