Am I a lonely outlier

[huwm]

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Having shot in RAW/DNG or whatever for many years based primarily on it being the ‘only way’ I realised that I actually did almost nothing to my images except WB shadow lifting and crop/straightening. Variety of systems culminating in Leica about 4 years ago.

This has become particularly evident since switching to SL2S from SL2.

With a big trip coming up and expectation of taking a lot of photos I decided to try JPEG/DNG pairs on a couple of short breaks.

I used JPEG vivid on basis of a review I read years ago.

A few hundred ‘travel’ photos with variety of lenses.

On review at home on 32in monitor I had no particular desire to tweak the vast majority so stuck to the JPEG

A few that I thought might be amenable to improvement in RAW weren’t really improved that much, especially given the time and effort required.

I did the same with my Q2 with the same result.

Leica jpegs really are good, should that surprise me?

what about the shockers where either I or the subject moved or I had got the wrong settings etc?

thought I’d give topaz photo ai a go.

horrible results for faces and unless turned right down sharpening ugly too, just binned them 

no good for me for my practice 

but I did try it on some old photos etc and the upscaling denoising was very impressive so not given up yet

Does this experience chime with anyone?

[wda]

Huw, this is such a personal choice. I would always prefer my master files to be DNG. Then I can always be sure that I can go back to 100% data and not rue the day I ditched pixels by processing jpegs. File storage is nowhere near as expensive as it once was.

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[Ernstk]

Jpeg can be fine SOOC but you only really have control with DNG files. Also, as DNG developer tools improve, so will your DNG files.

Ernst

[250swb]

4 hours ago, huwm said:

 

A few that I thought might be amenable to improvement in RAW weren’t really improved that much, especially given the time and effort required.

 

Absolutely right, there is no reason to make any more effort, life is for living and not making photographs, buy postcards instead.

[huwm]

The thing about my photography is I suppose that it is a retirement activity and  functions in a large part as a 'device' to encourage me to look at the world more actively and  in a 'mindful' way.

Not sure I like the word mindful in this context maybe more an attempt to force myself to live 'in the moment' and the end result whilst I hope it captures my intention doesn't actually matter that much I suppose.

Hence my reluctance to tweek away and, in my case, slip into the sort of mindset I'm using photography to avoid.

I do look at old photos but vary rarely really and am aware that the the hard drives wether they contain RAW files or JPEGs will join the boxes of slides, negatives and prints under the stairs or in the loft for my kids to chuck away in due course along with my books, vinyl etc.

So for me it's actually the process of taking the photo and capturing pretty much exactly what I intended that is the key, then I can distribute a few, print a few, look at the rest for a few months or so then forget them.

I could of course use my iPhone Pro and oftentimes do but It is too 'easy' to snap and go and not actually look or see properly so I try to keep it as a communications tool.

[Viv]

Storage is cheap, so why not shoot RAW?

[huwm]

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4 minutes ago, Viv said:

Storage is cheap, so why not shoot RAW?

It is, I use a NAS 24GB and a few other drives for further back up and could easily buy more and more, but as I explained above it will be landfill in due course.

It's my winter 'black dog' speaking in a large part I suspect and I better get some UV light in soon - time for a jog along the seafront I think.

[Viv]

I hate my own Black Dog.

A seafront jog would certainly put him back in his kennel.

Me, I live hundreds of km from the sea ...

[evikne]

The end result is usually JPEG anyway, so if you're happy with the result straight away, there's little point in using RAW. In a way, I envy those who can do it.

But personally, I couldn't do without RAW, because I feel like I'm never quite finished with an image. And often when I see one of my old photos, I want to make changes to it, either because I discover mistakes, my taste evolves, or the editing program has gained new possibilities. Then it's nice to be able to make changes or start all over again, without any loss of quality.

[huwm]

1 hour ago, evikne said:

The end result is usually JPEG anyway, so if you're happy with the result straight away, there's little point in using RAW. In a way, I envy those who can do it.

But personally, I couldn't do without RAW, because I feel like I'm never quite finished with an image. And often when I see one of my old photos, I want to make changes to it, either because I discover mistakes, my taste evolves, or the editing program has gained new possibilities. Then it's nice to be able to make changes or start all over again, without any loss of quality.

I get that and the RAW/DNGs are on sd cards for probably a year before being reused. 

I reckon for me for sure a year is now long enough 🤞

Back from my slow jog and feeling less miserable 🙂

Edited October 9, 2023 by huwm
mood

[stuny]

I began using RAW with my R8 DMR and Capture 1.  Like you, I found I didn't have the time or inclination to do all that processing and reverted to processing similar to yours in jpegs.  I'm using a Q and a Vlux5 and am quite happy with the results.  You can see a half dozen of the Vlux5 images here:  Favorite Images - Leica Forum (l-camera-forum.com)

[hansvons]

18 hours ago, huwm said:

A few hundred ‘travel’ photos with variety of lenses.

On review at home on 32in monitor I had no particular desire to tweak the vast majority so stuck to the JPEG

It sounds like you are disappointed with your photography. You mentioned the size of your monitor explicitly. Why is that?

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It's all about culling and the subsequent editing of the 5-starers. 

Think of an assignment, and you are the client. On a regular job, you'd typically deliver 5-30 photos to your client–of course, only the best ones. Do the same for you and edit only the rare 5-star images to their fullest intention. But keep them all, except the apparent rejects, because you may revisit that particular shoot and find a hidden gem you had overseen. Digital storage is cheap these days.

Last year, I ended up with approx 300 good photos, two-thirds of them from assignments. Fifty of these might be worth printing. Five got printed. Another 20-25 might be added at the end of the year.

---

Editing photos makes you rethink the particular shoot, your technique, your subject choice, your interests and many other aspects that can only be discovered when you do an "awful lot of looking" (David Hamilton). In the end, photography is all about looking. You don't even need a camera for that. 

---

Shooting JPEG is okay for fast-paced journalism, as it's super quick and doesn't allow manipulation. RAW is for everything else that might see a longer shelf life. I believe editing is an essential part of photography and cannot be outsourced to a digital board in the camera doing all the editing for you and spitting out JPEGs. I was never fond of the commercial prints from the supermarket, chemist, or local photography store. The same can be said of JPEGs. They may look okay, but you won't have the chance to see how much better the image would have been if you had edited the Raw file.

 

 

 

[dpitt]

I can relate with the OP in a sense that I like shooting more than processing my shots on the computer. And I want my edits to be fast and straightforward. But I like to get the most out of my effort to shoot my pictures in the first place. So, I cull my results (sometimes drastically) and then spend a few minutes each adjusting mostly the same things that I could do in a wet darkroom, lighting, contrast, cropping...

The last time that I shot only JPEG was with my Digilux 2. I was not patient enough to wait for DNG files to be saved because it was so slow. The Digilux 2 gave incredible results when the exposure was just right. I shot with all JPEG settings on LOW. Low contrast, low sharpening, low saturation  and natural colors... Adding effects in PP is easier than removing them.

Even the JPEGS from the D2 got processed to really shine. And looking backwards, I spent more time working on them than I need now to get my DNG files like I want them.

My M8 was often used in DNG+JPEG, with JPEG in B&W. That helps seeing what works in B&W and the M8 SOOC in B&W are great, but still got cropping, pushing shadows.... But with the M8 and later camera's, I enjoy the extra flexibility of the DNGs and because it is fast enough to deal with the larger files, I do not have to wait like I did with the D2.

Now, I keep shooting DNG+JPEG. Sometimes I use the JPG file but most of the time I use the JPEG to see the goal and then make the DNG look like a better version of that. And all my keepers are archived in high resolution JPEG (+ the original DNG file of course) Hard disks grow in size faster than I can fill them up with image files, so no problem there. I can even keep all my DNG files, even my rejects. If anything, I am now more inclined to shoot in DNG only. Most of the time, I would get away with using the JPEG, but for these 1 of 100 files that really need it, having the DNG can be the difference between a reject and a great picture. And I see every picture as a unique moment in time. Re-shooting is no option most of the time.

Why would you want to spend 1000s on gear that can capture 12/14/16 buts per color channel (e.g. allowing for filtering colors after the shot) and then throw away most of the nuances because you only use a JPEG with 8 bit per channel. (8 bit = 256 steps , 12 bit = 4K, 14 = 16k and 16 = 64K) ?

It is very similar to throwing away a negative because you have made a print.

Just my 2 cents.

PS:

Did you actually try improving your keepers starting from the DNG ?
Chances are that if you think they look great already as JPEG OOC, they will be even better when starting from a DNG.
Only you can decide if it is worth the time and effort, but at least I would keep my options open for later.

 

[huwm]

I mention monitor(calibrated) size to point out decision to keep or not based on decent quality reproduction of the file.

I have the DNGs of my 'keepers' on the sd and do periodically spend time trying to improve them but run into time/benefit conflict.

I could get a more regimented workflow organised but for me it's about the looking really as I mentioned above and getting an accurate and pleasing result is not my end point just a bonus

I'm different to most of you guys I suppose

[oldwino]

Another thing to consider - every time you edit a JPEG it looses quality. If you edit a RAW file, then the JPEG you make from that is an "original" with the best possible quality.

[dpitt]

28 minutes ago, huwm said:

I mention monitor(calibrated) size to point out decision to keep or not based on decent quality reproduction of the file.

I have the DNGs of my 'keepers' on the sd and do periodically spend time trying to improve them but run into time/benefit conflict.

I could get a more regimented workflow organised but for me it's about the looking really as I mentioned above and getting an accurate and pleasing result is not my end point just a bonus

I'm different to most of you guys I suppose

I am glad you keep your DNG's. It could well be that you look at them in a different way 10 years from now. I recently did a project compiling digital pictures from more than 20 years ago. It was hard to accept that those 4-6 MP files were the best I could do back then. I am glad that I have them for the moments they captured, but I wish that they could have been shot with something like a Leica M8.

14 minutes ago, oldwino said:

Another thing to consider - every time you edit a JPEG it looses quality. If you edit a RAW file, then the JPEG you make from that is an "original" with the best possible quality.

Most professional editors offer 'lossless' editing now. i.e. all changes are applied in one go to the original JPEG. This minimizes losses, even if you make lots of changes. Even Apple FOTO's does that now.

You are right about RAW files. It is an advantage to have a new output every time (you can not even see the RAW on your screen before it is converted on the fly to a JPEG by the editor). But at the same time it is the Achilles heel of RAW files. You lose all your changes unless you have the original software that made it. Each update from LR may introduce small changes in the processing engine, resulting in different results. Usually you can keep the original by not touching it so that it keeps using the old engine, but the first slider you touch can break this.

Trouble really starts when you want to move from one software to another. They all offer imports to some degrees, but they are all different. And I found that between Aperture/LR/Capture One Pro/Darktable, there is no automatic import procedure. Even importing crops can be an issue, more advanced sliders like color balance, high dynamic range and others can not be imported at all. And then some of the sliders do not even exist in other software. That is why I export all my DNG keepers to full resolution JPEGs now when I am done. And I keep the JPEGs as an archive for easy access (on my internal drive all the time) and for safekeeping for the day that an upgrade of my Mac breaks my current software.

[marchyman]

3 hours ago, dpitt said:

It was hard to accept that those 4-6 MP files were the best I could do back then.

You had 4-6 MP files to play with!  <laugh emoji> Why I only had ...

In seriousness my very first digital camera in the late '90s was a point-and-shoot with built-in memory.  Couldn't add memory cards.  I could take about 30 1024x768 images or 120 512x384 images and therefore often used the smaller size.   That's barely more than thumbnail size, today.  I still have those images in my Lightroom Library, albeit expanded in size via software.  I didn't start shooting and keeping raw files until 2007 using an 8 MP camera.  I will sometimes re-edit those pictures when I have the need.

[wda]

Raw file capture was not available in the earliest digicams. Only professional cameras had the option at first. I also have a few precious digital files from that era, sized in bytes rather than kb or mbs. Saving as tiffs was an intermediate stage before RAW, in many guises. DNG was an attempt by Adobe to set a standard and Leica was one of the first brands to adopt it.

[tangosix]

I have been on the dng bandwagon for some time because I like to push and pull those files. 

But, sometimes, I agree that the JPG files from my sl2s are so very good.  However, the results are not consistent, or at least I am not consistent enough to rely on jpg only. 

I am stuck on the quality idea.  Not that anyone I have shot a project for lately would know the difference because they think their iphone is good enough. 

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[oldwino]

9 hours ago, dpitt said:

You are right about RAW files. It is an advantage to have a new output every time (you can not even see the RAW on your screen before it is converted on the fly to a JPEG by the editor). But at the same time it is the Achilles heel of RAW files. You lose all your changes unless you have the original software that made it. Each update from LR may introduce small changes in the processing engine, resulting in different results. Usually you can keep the original by not touching it so that it keeps using the old engine, but the first slider you touch can break this.

Trouble really starts when you want to move from one software to another. They all offer imports to some degrees, but they are all different. And I found that between Aperture/LR/Capture One Pro/Darktable, there is no automatic import procedure. Even importing crops can be an issue, more advanced sliders like color balance, high dynamic range and others can not be imported at all. And then some of the sliders do not even exist in other software. That is why I export all my DNG keepers to full resolution JPEGs now when I am done. And I keep the JPEGs as an archive for easy access (on my internal drive all the time) and for safekeeping for the day that an upgrade of my Mac breaks my current software.

That's why I still use film. 😉