Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Well some are of interest, but my illumitranned slides are more like 2A0 size at 100%. 70" wide. That's a lot bigger than the 40" screen they would have been projected on. I don't know who ever checked 35mm. at over 40x.  These are mostly images that have never been marketed. Of course the 6x6 negs do a bit better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't want to be rude, and it's a general remark aimed at LOTS of newbies recently.

Don't you think one should master the craft FIRST and then step into the professional world?

Sorry to say, but I don't think you will apply for lifeguard if you can barely swim. So why the need to step into the stock business if one 1) doesn't master the basics 2) doesn't have any pictures?

I don't get it :wacko:

If people think "stock" is a pleasant and easy way to earn money, they are in for a G R E A T disappointment. Count on many, many thousands of excellent images before money starts rolling in.

Cheers,

Philippe

So much a +10000

 

This is not really aimed at the original poster, or anyone specific but is a general comment..

 

I know we all start somewhere but photography is definitely a profession where everyone seems to think they can run before they can walk...

 

There is so much free information here and all over the internet on other sites that I really don't understand some of the questions asked here by people that believe they understand what they are producing.

 

Questions about keywording and the site in general I understand but when it comes down to the basics of photography and creating a sharp image (and what camera / lens etc) I get really annoyed enforcing my views that photography really is screwed for those of us trying to make our full time living from it....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A lot of good info here. But, I'm going to play devil's advocate when it comes to raw vs. jpeg. I used to shoot raw all the time. Then I noticed that most of the time, the final results I obtained from raw really weren't that much different from out of camera jpegs. The trick is to setup up your particular camera appropriately. I still shoot raw if the lighting is mixed, which is usually inside, or when shooting for a client, but outside for stock, it's jpeg 99% time and I've seen no difference in QC results. The older I get, the more I realize I don't want to spend a lot of time in front of a computer.

 

As for lenses, I agree that 18-55 kit lenses are usually fine for stock work. I shoot mostly with the Canon STM version, which is tack sharp. The one thing I will say is that because these lenses are inexpensive, the sample variation is probably greater than what you find in more expensive lenses, so the chances of getting a bad one are higher. But, if you get a bad one, it's really obvious.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have tried taking the same shot in both raw and jpeg, but didn't really notice a lot of difference so I stuck with jpeg.

 

I am happy with my 18-55mm lens as it seems to get good results, it's just for certain shots I've wondered if a more powerful one would be better.

 

A lot of good advice on here, which is appreciated. There is a lot of general photography information on the Internet, but it's helpful to hear the experiences of Alamy members.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Most of the time jpegs are good enough, but RAW will pay dividends  with high brightness range- no more blown-out skies- and at high ISO where you will be astounded where all the detail has come from. With Lightroom it's hardly a matter of time, only storage. Import and preview rendering take a bit longer but they can really be regarded as background processes.

The first time you fail QC with a high-ISO jpeg will be when you find out the difference. With a RAW you can crank up luminance noise reduction without really affecting detail- on a jpeg it turns it into plastic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shoot raw. It keeps your options open forever. The more you learn about photography, the more you will notice the difference between raw and jpeg.

 

In addition to dynamic range (highlight and shadow detail as Arterra says), another major difference is being able to control white balance. With an in-camera jpeg, the camera just has a guess at the white balance and you don't have a lot of leeway to alter it later. Also noise control is far superior with raw. In addition, in-camera jpegs often add sharpening which is far better done on the raw. If you learn to use Lightroom, then processing raws is as quick as processing jpegs. I always liken shooting jpeg only to shooting negative film in the old days, getting a set of prints and throwing away the negs. 

 

Even spacecadet, a diehard in-camera jpegger until recently, has seen the light now it seems.

 

The only reason to shoot jpegs is if you need them really fast (e.g news) and don't have any way of processing raw.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Even spacecadet, a diehard in-camera jpegger until recently, has seen the light now it seems.

 

 

Literally- looking at yesterday's take, nothing special, the skies are so much nicer. In jpeg it was routine to have to pull down a ND grad on a sky but in RAW they record fine.

It only makes a difference for a minority of images but it's just not worth switching back and forth. When my hard drive is full I may think differently.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When you shoot jpeg, you are shooting raw. You're just relying on the camera to do the conversion. And your camera manufacturer knows your camera's files best. Canon converted raws look better than Lightroom's. If you want to keep your options open, you can always shoot raw plus jpeg. Also, if you shoot a neutral profile, the jpegs you get stand up quite well to adjustments for highlights, saturation, etc. Most of the time, jpeg suffices. For those times that you need raw, shoot raw.

 

But don't take my word for it. This guy is way more experienced than me: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/03/ken-tanaka-shooting-jpeg-instead-of-raw.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recently acquired a Sony RX100 and, after reading about the super jpegs the camera produced, tried shooting in RAW and jpeg. After comparing my RAW conversions to the ooc jpegs I am back to shooting RAW only (with the exception of news photos where time is more important than quality).

 

Philippe also made an excellent point about copyright. However, if you can not see the difference then I can understand your sticking with jpeg.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recently acquired a Sony RX100 and, after reading about the super jpegs the camera produced, tried shooting in RAW and jpeg. After comparing my RAW conversions to the ooc jpegs I am back to shooting RAW only (with the exception of news photos where time is more important than quality).

 

Philippe also made an excellent point about copyright. However, if you can not see the difference then I can understand your sticking with jpeg.

 

 

You are correct, my RX100-3 makes really bad JPG images, all shooting requires RAW with this camera.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When you shoot jpeg, you are shooting raw. You're just relying on the camera to do the conversion. And your camera manufacturer knows your camera's files best. Canon converted raws look better than Lightroom's. If you want to keep your options open, you can always shoot raw plus jpeg. Also, if you shoot a neutral profile, the jpegs you get stand up quite well to adjustments for highlights, saturation, etc. Most of the time, jpeg suffices. For those times that you need raw, shoot raw.

 

But don't take my word for it. This guy is way more experienced than me: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/03/ken-tanaka-shooting-jpeg-instead-of-raw.html

 

Tanaka wrote that Friday, 09 March 2012.

It's sort of okay if you think of yourself as a buyer or end user of the image.

Tanaka likened the photographer to someone who buys a meal at a restaurant raw to bring it home to cook it instead of the let the chef cook it. Analogies are always false, but this is a blatant one.

The difference here is that I'm the chef and the camera provides me the raw ingredients and Tanaka throws them in the microwave.

Jpgs come out well if you have set up your camera well for the subject at hand. I prefer to set my parameters after the fact, during the post processing. It has always been this way, except for Polaroid. Yes some people were quite adept at producing great art using Polaroid, I even was quite good at it myself. But I preferred to develop my film a certain way and print my print a certain way. And buy a different film for another subject; develop that a certain way; print it a certain way etc etc. And somehow they usually came out better than the postcards from the 1 hour lab on the corner. Clients expected them to be far better than the drugstore print. They paid a lot more too.

And yes I know HCB never touched his film after he pressed the shutter. Not true btw. Later on he did have the best black and white lab in France to develop and print his images. And his negatives needed it too.

No more such labs for us: we have to do it ourselves. Snapshots can still go to the local drugstore aka jpg. All the rest: give them to best lab technician you can find. If you do a worse job of it than your camera does, fine: let your camera do the one button processing. Or use Instagram. But somehow it's not very wise to mock all those people that took all that time to master Photoshop and then take all that time to work on their images until they are just as they

have envisaged them.

 

Photographer-Polaroids-Andy-Warhol-5.jpg

Hey there's an analogy: jpg is Andy Warhol and Raw is Ansel Adams.

 

599a76a0.jpg

 

In my case: yes I do use jpegs, when my camera or my phone does not provide a raw file. Heck I'll even eat salad.

 

wim

 

edit: HCB = Henri Cartier-Bresson

 

edit 2:

 

case in point: my own two Tetons:

mount-teton-in-grand-teton-national-park

mount-teton-in-grand-teton-national-park

both not jpg - the 2nd after learning some more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When you shoot jpeg, you are shooting raw. You're just relying on the camera to do the conversion. And your camera manufacturer knows your camera's files best. Canon converted raws look better than Lightroom's. If you want to keep your options open, you can always shoot raw plus jpeg. Also, if you shoot a neutral profile, the jpegs you get stand up quite well to adjustments for highlights, saturation, etc. Most of the time, jpeg suffices. For those times that you need raw, shoot raw.

 

But don't take my word for it. This guy is way more experienced than me: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/03/ken-tanaka-shooting-jpeg-instead-of-raw.html

 

Me I would say for those times that you need jpeg, shoot jpeg. Otherwise shoot raw (+jpeg if you wish). It's all about quality and choice really. Raw converters have improved massively over the years. Adobe's Process 2012 is a big improvement on their 2010 which is way better than their 2003. If you really know that you are never going to want to reinterpret an image, change the white balance (using the camera WB is akin to always using an automatic camera exposure setting with default metering), convert to monochrome (16-bit is essential and jpeg is 8 bit only), rescue a very under or over-exposed image etc etc, then shoot jpeg only. But my advice to any newbie is to shoot raw and develop the images yourself - that is how you learn control, as in the days of the darkroom.

 

And the other bit of advice to newbies, triggered by something spacecadet said about running out of disk space and being concerned about the cost, is BACKUP.  A 1TB drive is enough for about 50,000 or so raw images from a 20MP camera and costs less than £50 (the price of 5 rolls of film + dev or so). A 4TB drive is less than £100. Incredibly cheap. Drives fail and your image collection is priceless and irreplaceable. So SHOOT RAW AND BACKUP.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

When you shoot jpeg, you are shooting raw. You're just relying on the camera to do the conversion. And your camera manufacturer knows your camera's files best. Canon converted raws look better than Lightroom's. If you want to keep your options open, you can always shoot raw plus jpeg. Also, if you shoot a neutral profile, the jpegs you get stand up quite well to adjustments for highlights, saturation, etc. Most of the time, jpeg suffices. For those times that you need raw, shoot raw.

 

But don't take my word for it. This guy is way more experienced than me: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/03/ken-tanaka-shooting-jpeg-instead-of-raw.html

 

Me I would say for those times that you need jpeg, shoot jpeg. Otherwise shoot raw (+jpeg if you wish). It's all about quality and choice really. Raw converters have improved massively over the years. Adobe's Process 2012 is a big improvement on their 2010 which is way better than their 2003. If you really know that you are never going to want to reinterpret an image, change the white balance (using the camera WB is akin to always using an automatic camera exposure setting with default metering), convert to monochrome (16-bit is essential and jpeg is 8 bit only), rescue a very under or over-exposed image etc etc, then shoot jpeg only. But my advice to any newbie is to shoot raw and develop the images yourself - that is how you learn control, as in the days of the darkroom.

 

And the other bit of advice to newbies, triggered by something spacecadet said about running out of disk space and being concerned about the cost, is BACKUP.  A 1TB drive is enough for about 50,000 or so raw images from a 20MP camera and costs less than £50 (the price of 5 rolls of film + dev or so). A 4TB drive is less than £100. Incredibly cheap. Drives fail and your image collection is priceless and irreplaceable. So SHOOT RAW AND BACKUP.

 

Agree with you - although with my camera I lose most of the depth (lots of greys) if I shoot JPG.

 

The raw converter in LR/ACR is at the very least as good as any in-camera software nowadays, with a vast amount of added flexibility - the idea that you can have an instant, standardised in-camera system that's better is simply wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

When you shoot jpeg, you are shooting raw. You're just relying on the camera to do the conversion. And your camera manufacturer knows your camera's files best. Canon converted raws look better than Lightroom's. If you want to keep your options open, you can always shoot raw plus jpeg. Also, if you shoot a neutral profile, the jpegs you get stand up quite well to adjustments for highlights, saturation, etc. Most of the time, jpeg suffices. For those times that you need raw, shoot raw.

 

But don't take my word for it. This guy is way more experienced than me: http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/03/ken-tanaka-shooting-jpeg-instead-of-raw.html

 

Me I would say for those times that you need jpeg, shoot jpeg. Otherwise shoot raw (+jpeg if you wish). It's all about quality and choice really. Raw converters have improved massively over the years. Adobe's Process 2012 is a big improvement on their 2010 which is way better than their 2003. If you really know that you are never going to want to reinterpret an image, change the white balance (using the camera WB is akin to always using an automatic camera exposure setting with default metering), convert to monochrome (16-bit is essential and jpeg is 8 bit only), rescue a very under or over-exposed image etc etc, then shoot jpeg only. But my advice to any newbie is to shoot raw and develop the images yourself - that is how you learn control, as in the days of the darkroom.

 

And the other bit of advice to newbies, triggered by something spacecadet said about running out of disk space and being concerned about the cost, is BACKUP. A 1TB drive is enough for about 50,000 or so raw images from a 20MP camera and costs less than £50 (the price of 5 rolls of film + dev or so). A 4TB drive is less than £100. Incredibly cheap. Drives fail and your image collection is priceless and irreplaceable. So SHOOT RAW AND BACKUP.

+1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

90% of the time, I don't need raw, so I shoot jpeg. We're not talking high art here, we're talking stock photography. Clients don't care. If i go out with a tripod to shoot fine art landscapes, I shoot raw or raw + jpeg. But shooting raw while walking around a city just isn't necessary with most cameras.

 

Honeymonster, you'll find many photographers are a dogmatic lot. I encourage you to find your own way. You may end up agreeing with me or you may not. Whatever works for you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fair enough, but being on occasion forgetful I reckon that having to decide which format to use might leave me without a RAW on the not-so-odd occasion when it would have helped.

 

I was quite dogmatic myself- until I changed. I shot both for a while to help with the transition. Now I just undogmatically point our the advantages.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fair enough, but being on occasion forgetful I reckon that having to decide which format to use might leave me without a RAW on the not-so-odd occasion when it would have helped.

 

I was quite dogmatic myself- until I changed. I shot both for a while to help with the transition. Now I just undogmatically point our the advantages.

 

 

I never thought I would see this day. When Rawism is finally accepted as a religion, the conversion of spacecadet (on his way to the moon or at least on the verge of abandoning Alamy for persistent qc failure?) and his later (undogmatic) evangelism may well be the latter day equivalent of St Paul on the road to Damascus.  :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.