3 ms·

"So whether or not you trust the camera company to do the best job of demosaicing their own sensor is up to you, but if you use open-source software you're stil

by fleddr 5y ago

"So whether or not you trust the camera company to do the best job of demosaicing their own sensor is up to you, but if you use open-source software you're still going to get great images, but they're never going to look exactly like the JPEGs you get off the camera. If you're a professional this probably doesn't matter, but for an amateur who just wants to shoot RAW to take great lossless photos and be able to do some tweaking in post-processing it can be frustrating." I don't really see the distinction between amateurs and professionals here. I think both want the RAW starting point (after import) to look the way it was rendered in-camera. I think it's a myth that professionals "want" a bland starting point and customize everything. The ideal workflow is that your RAW looks the same as in-camera, and then you use the power of RAW to customize. That's quite different from having a neutral RAW and trying to reconstruct everything.

Fwirt 5y ago
I meant that a professional likely has an end goal in mind for developing an exposure and can use any software to obtain the result they want, whereas an amateur is likely more reliant on the software to provide sane defaults that look good enough. I don't think professionals necessarily want a bland starting point, but they probably end up straying so far from the default settings anyway that having a different starting point is less of a hindrance to them. Aside from that, the default settings and processing that the manufacturer applies may be undesirable for someone pursuing a more realistic and less "filtered for focus groups" result. All photography is illusion, but some want more control over the illusion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMMogOoWEbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMMogOoWEbI
- igouy 5y ago
  The simple fact that my ancient Sony SLT-A65 is set to M maybe excludes me from your notion of amateur without including me in your notion of professional ;-) My guess is that professionals need to take a lot of photos, process them quickly; and probably show their clients what they are doing, while they are doing it.
  - Fwirt 5y ago
    I guess 2011 could be considered ancient now... My SL1 (100D) is from 2013 but I never thought of it that way. Of course it's a crop sensor so I guess that puts me solidly in the amateur category, but I also enjoy shooting manual. (More often than not I end up ruining shots because of it though...) In my mind there are different kinds of professionals. Some, as you say, like to process lots of photos quickly. My sister-in-law shoots weddings semi-professionally and has Lightroom presets that she has built out to give her a quick jumping off point for the style that she likes, and sifts through hundreds of photos per session. Others spend a long time tweaking one or two exposures to frame or publish. Of course, if there was only one correct workflow, then we wouldn't have articles like this!
    - igouy 5y ago
      > never thought of it that way Me neither, I think of it as The Camera. > More often than not I end up ruining shots because of it though... I find me-ruining-the-shot less-frustrating than the camera-ruining-the-shot :-) > different kinds of professionals For sure.
ashtonkem 5y ago
I personally interpreted that as professionals knowing how to do more post-shot tweaking than amateurs. That obviously doesn't matter if the results are bad, but if the defaults require significant tweaking that isn't going to be something that will stop a professional, although they might find it annoying as a matter of workflow.
- fleddr 5y ago
  "but if the defaults require significant tweaking that isn't going to be something that will stop a professional, although they might find it annoying as a matter of workflow." Well, it's funny how that could go either way. A huge amount of amateurs use RAW and they might actually have more time/interest to do max tweaking on a file compared to a pro, who is on the clock. But there's also big differences between disciplines. In landscape photography, people use RAW to maximize the use of dynamic range, hence tweak it a lot. In sports and wedding photography, not so much. To comment on the Nikon domain, Nikon is widely praised for its color science. Their engineers spent decades perfecting it and it even carries through in lens design. In the case of wedding photography, typically the photographer wants to Nikon rendering as it was intended. And it's not just color science, also tone compression and noise reduction. Done from the source. If you'd take that RAW file and open it "neutral", without the proprietary demosaicing, curves, noise reduction, you're going to spend forever trying to reproduce the Nikon look. You fully dismissed a huge amount of value and are unlikely to regain it. That's why I strongly believe that both amateurs and pros want the camera vendor's rendering in RAW as a starting point. Unfortunately, this is only fully possible in their custom crappy desktop apps.

by fleddr 5y ago

Fwirt 5y ago

I meant that a professional likely has an end goal in mind for developing an exposure and can use any software to obtain the result they want, whereas an amateur is likely more reliant on the software to provide sane defaults that look good enough. I don't think professionals necessarily want a bland starting point, but they probably end up straying so far from the default settings anyway that having a different starting point is less of a hindrance to them. Aside from that, the default settings and processing that the manufacturer applies may be undesirable for someone pursuing a more realistic and less "filtered for focus groups" result. All photography is illusion, but some want more control over the illusion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMMogOoWEbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMMogOoWEbI

igouy 5y ago
The simple fact that my ancient Sony SLT-A65 is set to M maybe excludes me from your notion of amateur without including me in your notion of professional ;-) My guess is that professionals need to take a lot of photos, process them quickly; and probably show their clients what they are doing, while they are doing it.
- Fwirt 5y ago
  I guess 2011 could be considered ancient now... My SL1 (100D) is from 2013 but I never thought of it that way. Of course it's a crop sensor so I guess that puts me solidly in the amateur category, but I also enjoy shooting manual. (More often than not I end up ruining shots because of it though...) In my mind there are different kinds of professionals. Some, as you say, like to process lots of photos quickly. My sister-in-law shoots weddings semi-professionally and has Lightroom presets that she has built out to give her a quick jumping off point for the style that she likes, and sifts through hundreds of photos per session. Others spend a long time tweaking one or two exposures to frame or publish. Of course, if there was only one correct workflow, then we wouldn't have articles like this!
  - igouy 5y ago
    > never thought of it that way Me neither, I think of it as The Camera. > More often than not I end up ruining shots because of it though... I find me-ruining-the-shot less-frustrating than the camera-ruining-the-shot :-) > different kinds of professionals For sure.

ashtonkem 5y ago

I personally interpreted that as professionals knowing how to do more post-shot tweaking than amateurs. That obviously doesn't matter if the results are bad, but if the defaults require significant tweaking that isn't going to be something that will stop a professional, although they might find it annoying as a matter of workflow.

fleddr 5y ago
"but if the defaults require significant tweaking that isn't going to be something that will stop a professional, although they might find it annoying as a matter of workflow." Well, it's funny how that could go either way. A huge amount of amateurs use RAW and they might actually have more time/interest to do max tweaking on a file compared to a pro, who is on the clock. But there's also big differences between disciplines. In landscape photography, people use RAW to maximize the use of dynamic range, hence tweak it a lot. In sports and wedding photography, not so much. To comment on the Nikon domain, Nikon is widely praised for its color science. Their engineers spent decades perfecting it and it even carries through in lens design. In the case of wedding photography, typically the photographer wants to Nikon rendering as it was intended. And it's not just color science, also tone compression and noise reduction. Done from the source. If you'd take that RAW file and open it "neutral", without the proprietary demosaicing, curves, noise reduction, you're going to spend forever trying to reproduce the Nikon look. You fully dismissed a huge amount of value and are unlikely to regain it. That's why I strongly believe that both amateurs and pros want the camera vendor's rendering in RAW as a starting point. Unfortunately, this is only fully possible in their custom crappy desktop apps.