My images arrived today for my last assignment – Digital Image Qualities, I will sort them out tomorrow and post them off to Mr Taylor in the next few days. It will be interesting to see what he says. Looking at the printed images I think that I may have to take a further set of images to show a greater dynamic range.
Processing the Image
For this next project I was asked to look at the value of shooting in Raw format, on my camera this is called NEF.
I am lucky in that I can shoot both raw and jpeg at the same time.
I wanted to put the camera and the raw and jpeg images to the test so I looked at two images that I took of Brighton Pier at night, from some distance away. The images were taken hand-held.
After selecting the images I was asked to process them as I would normally do.
In the case of Jpegs in Adobe Photoshop I can ask the programme to auto-correct the image which I did. When you open a Raw image you are initially met with a different screen in order that you can make your own adjustments.
JPEG
NIKON RAW-NEF
When you open the jpeg image you are taken to this screen
Screen shot-jpeg
When processing a raw image you are firstly offered this selection.
Screen shot-raw
You are then taken to this screen for adjustment
Second screen shot Raw
Looking at the two images side by side (with the following screen shots to assist the viewer)
Raw V Jpeg
I was then asked to compare the two images.
The histogram’s do look very similar, there are only slight differences, with some clipping on the raw image.
There does seem to be a little more clarity on the bottom images, looking at the small man bottom right on the beach. There also seems to be a slight difference between the reflection of the pier in the water, although the piers blue and white light are too close in quality to call.
The white balance look nice to me.
Below is a screen-shot of the same image with the white balance changed to auto in Lightroom (raw image) what a difference, totally wrong from the scene that I remember.
Raw images changed to auto white balance
It may be my monitor, and a professional photographer may be able to see differences between the two images above, in the poster (not including the image above where the difference is clear) but I have to say that apart from the small differences that I have stated I think that they are very much alike.
An interesting exercise, you may say that should we bother to shoot in raw and jpeg, but as we saw in a previous exercise I think that the benefits are clear. The ability to recover data whilst processing the final image, date that is just not there in the jpeg image.
