Digital photography and CAMERA RAW

Posted by olivier Lalin -

I shoot with Nikon D2X and Always in Raw format rather then jpg - IT is like having a negative with all of the information that you will be able to play with during "digital printing" to bring the image to Life ! You will be able to tweak The Color, density, contrast and retouch the image if needs be. A raw file is indeed comparable to the latent image contained in an exposed but undeveloped piece of film. It holds exactly what the imaging chip recorded. Nothing more. Nothing less.


This means that the photographer is able to extract the maximum possible image quality, whether now or in the future. A good analogy with the traditional world of film is that you have the opportunity to use a different type of developer or development time at any point in the future if one comes along that you think might do a better job of processing the image.- The latitude of a jpg is narrower and only allow you to do minimum corrections to the image -


I was at Nikon the other day - A photographer was ahead of me, claiming to the sales man that he believed his high end Nikon camera, that he had just purchased, was faulty-
"... The images are Flat, with no contrast and Unsharp ..." he was saying!
Nikon Policy in advance digital photography is to provide the photographer with a Raw format image that contains the most data the chip can possibly record on Pixels. It is for the Photographer to process his images according to his own specifics. And only last to add sharpness according to the final size of the print. Therefore quite important to make sure that your photographer is "Fluent with Raw format"!


My digital workflow is geared mainly around my work as a wedding photographer.I shoot between 1000 - 2000 images at each wedding in the raw file format. I specifically shoot in the raw format for all the well-known advantages, including a fast workflow. So my digital workflow is aimed at getting the best possible image in a fair amount of time … for a huge amount of photographs.

For photographers - if you already have Photoshop CS2, then you don’t need anything more than Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw for your raw workflow. Photoshop just came out with a new CS3 version which runs great on intel - You might want to consider upgrading too


If you want a comprehensive (and understandable) book on raw workflow :
THis is the bible - Real World Camera Raw with CS2,by Bruce Fraser.



photographe © Olivier Lalin © photographer
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