Diagonals

[davidc]

Slightly off topic again but here is Ken Rockwell's thoughts on RAW that prompted the video response.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

I really don't have much time for Rockwell

[Mike Farley]

Interesting article, I'll give it a whirl.

I do find comments like this interesting.

•Rely on jpg if you are a good photographer and are very familiar with your camera's behavior. Otherwise shoot raw.

I'm not sure we have an emoticon for *shakes head in utter belief at the drivel people come out with*. There's only one reason to shoot JPG and that's the admission you can't be bothered to process a raw file properly

I wondered what you would make of that.

As a mono photographer, the guy might have a point. Yes, JPEGs are 8 bit, but as he is only interested in luminance values does he really need anything more than that? Where he might be losing out is in a bit of dynamic range, but he can disguise that by increasing contrast which suits monochrome anyway.

I would also point out that with the Sigma DP2M camera he is using for the images in that post, JPEGs definitely make the workflow a whole lot easier, especially on a Windows PC. Apart from the Iridient Raw converter which is Mac only, the sole method available for Raw processing is Sigma's own software. Overall it's probably no worse than the software supplied by other camera manufacturers (with the possible exception of Canon), but the bar is not exactly high. Most people seem to do either a straight conversion or one with limited adjustments to 16 bit TIFF and then import the files into their photo editor of choice for further manipulation. The Raw files are large to begin with, so it's a good way of chewing through disk space.

I'll take a look at the videos when I have a moment. Thanks for the link.

[Mike Farley]

It reminds me of this series of videos

http://froknowsphoto.com/raw-vs-jpeg-vs ... interview/

I had to stop looking at those videos. Rather too overwrought for my taste and the guy could have made his point more succintly.

[Mike Farley]

Slightly off topic again but here is Ken Rockwell's thoughts on RAW that prompted the video response.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

I really don't have much time for Rockwell

Quite how Ken Rockwell survives is one of the great mysteries of the Internet age. Someone at work told me about him many years ago and thought that he was fantastic.

Some of the people, all of the time, I suppose.