28 March 2008
TWIP Podcast Episode #16 RAW
Posted by
Scott under:
Audio Podcast
Hosts: Scott Bourne & Alex Lindsay
Guest(s): Steve Simon, Fred Johnson, Ron Brinkmann
Location: San Francisco, New York, San Jose, Hermosa Beach
Intro Music by Scott Cannizzaro
Show Notes By Aaron Mahler
NEWS & DISCUSSIONS
- Today’s show is going to be a tad on the RAW side. 
- Scott gets to shoot and drive $2 million worth of cars in LA this weekend… should make for some interesting photos and anecdotes.
- Steve’s safely back from his third trip shooting in Rwanda… using, of course, a Nikon D3 where he was constantly pampered by noise-free high ISO shots in low light. (editorial note: [sound of another Canon owner banging his head on the desk])
- Steve has posted a couple of early shots from his post-trip editing on the blog. The assignment was for the Canadian government, but also dovetails with a personal project of his about the grandmothers who have lost their own children to AIDS.
- Aperture has updated its RAW compatibility and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for the Mac is finally shipping.
- Some new film scanners are out that have Alex pretty intrigued - 7600 DPI, 48-bit in the $599 range. Film scanning personal archives is one of those things that seems to be on everyone’s to-do list but always way down in the priority pile.
- Ron has sent about 4,000 of his old negatives to a service called ScanCafe. They are couriered from the Bay Area to India for processing. You might think twice about one-of-a-kind, precious negatives… but from Ron’s description, the process seemed quite successful. Total cost was in the $600-$700 range (not bad considering the volume). You do, however, get to preview the scans online and discard ones you don’t want prior to totaling your bill. Scanning includes dust removal, etc.
- Adobe has announced the Photoshop Express Beta that has been built entirely in Flash. The kicker? It allows you to do all of the editing work online.
- Express allows for online sorting, editing and management of your images online - perfect for cases where you need to do something on the fly but don’t need all the horsepower of Lightroom or full blown Photoshop. It’s the first step into “rich internet applications”.
- Alex cuts right to the chase: online is cool, but will we get it as an offline Air version of Express? According to Fred, it seems likely…
- The development of Express also serves both as a proof of concept for comprehensive, online apps and a project by which Adobe will internally be enhancing Flash and Air technology. This also represents another move toward in-browser, non-OS-specific software. Additionally, an app such as this can easily integrate with other online systems such as Facebook and Flickr to allow inter-service photo editing.
- Scott has provided a fairly detailed review of Express including a look at all 17 tools that it currently implements.
TWIP SITE OF THE WEEK
- Ron has chosen this week’s site: Shorpy - The 100 Year Old Photo Blog. It’s chock full of historical negatives that have been scanned at high resolution. It’s a great place to see some tremendous historical work as well as see images from all different kinds of negative types.
- This site is well worth putting in your RSS reader. (editorial note: They, uniquely, provide two feeds: one of just the imagery and another including news and commentary. Very nice!)
TWIP FLICKR CHALLENGE
- We’re nearing 3,000 members in only two months!
- This week’s winner of the HDR challenge: Jetty By Huey_J. (editorial note: Whoa! Staggering shot, Huey…)
- The runner up in the HDR challenge: Burlingham Mill By Andrew Stawarz.¬â€
- Scott used a highly technical process for selecting this week’s winner: he flipped a coin. Ok, that’s actually NOT an insult. The submissions are so varied and superb that it’s almost impossible to select one image that is far and above the rest. Awesome job, TWiPPers!
- This Week’s Challenge: People. (editorial note: “a people”, as Scott puts it)
- Standard rules apply: no nudity, please. No, we’re not prudes… but we’ve got young listeners and participants and need to retain the CLEAN tag.
- Thanks, again, to the fantastic TWiP participants out there who are keeping our forums positive and productive. Unlike many other camera forums, the TWiP crowd has managed to stay out of the snarky gutter and doesn’t have members bashing one another upside the head with folding chairs.
- Fred has pushed Scott over the edge with a new buzzword: The Flickrverse
THIS WEEK’S GUEST
- This week we discuss RAW with Mikkel Aaland, author of Photoshop CS3 Raw: Get the Most Out of the Raw Format with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Bridge.
- In relation to this week’s topic, our running member poll on the blog yielded: 36.7% shoot both RAW and JPEG, 21% shoot only JPEGS and 42.3% shoot only Raw
- Mikkel’s overview of Raw: The format allows you to retain much of the underlying information in your image as opposed to in-camera JPEG which is far more analogous to a print. Think of it as the “digital negative”. It puts you back in the “driver’s seat” during the editing process.
- For others, Raw is all about flexibility and being able to recover from mistakes (such as improper white balance or minor problems in exposure). This is an important point to make relative to the frequent assumption that a Raw image is “higher quality” than a JPEG. A JPEG shot properly will, for the most part, be every bit as good as the Raw image (and will require less initial work straight out of the camera). It will not, however, be nearly as flexibly if you wish to correct various aspects of the image.
- Alex makes an analogy in the realm of audio: an MP3 (the JPEG of audio) can sound good as long as you don’t need to EQ it much. Once you do, the “missing data” starts to become a problem.
- Is Raw the pure information off the sensor? Not entirely… it has still been processed to some extent, but not to the degree of JPEG. The main difference is that certain parameters that are malleable remain so in a Raw and can be locked down by the user afterward. In a JPEG, the image is processed more heavily and various parameters such as sharpening and white balance are locked into the image and the “excess” information outside of those bounds discarded in-camera. It is the discarded information that makes the image more compact in terms of file size, but also severely limits your latitude later to make more varied changes.
- There is currently no in-camera, standard Raw “format”. Each vendor represents the data differently (NEF from Nikon, CRW and CR2 from Canon, etc) in their individual Raw files. (editorial note: Will this change? Possibly… Adobe is urging standardization via their DNG format and some camera makers are already beginning to build it in.)
- What are the primary ways of dealing with a Raw file? The de facto standard is the workflow made from Photoshop, Camera Raw and Bridge. As Mikkel states it: “inelegant, but it will get you just about anywhere you want to go”.
- Mikkel describes Lightroom as a Porsche - sleek and fast for smoothing out the Raw workflow. It gets you most places but doesn’t eliminate Photoshop for various tasks.
- An important point to be made: In the film days, we selected various processes during developing and printing to get certain looks. Raw converters have a similar effect. Since they each interpret the image with their own biases, the results will vary from application to application (at least in their initial representation).
- What is the most important adjustment to commonly make when you first import Raw images? This is entirely subjective. A good importer, however, will allow you to define adjustments that favor your tastes (warmer or cooler, for instance) that you can often have auto-applied right off the bat.
- Photoshop and Lightroom share the same underlying Raw processor, so moving your adjustments back and forth between the applications is seamless and reliable.
- Alex poses the hot debate question: At what point do you apply sharpening to an image in the Raw workflow? Mikkel points out that, in order to “de-mosaic” the pixels that come off the sensor, a certain degree of blur is applied to any image. Adobe Camera Raw does a certain amount of adjustment and sharpening to this all by itself. The degree to which you apply additional sharpening - and at what stage in the process you choose to do it (start, during or after other edits) - remains entirely up to your personal tastes.
- Mikkel also describes techniques for sharpening that are broader, such as “cosmetic sharpening”. This is an editing process by which you opt to specifically sharpen, for instance, eyes but soften skin and blemishes.
- Mikkel leaves both options open when he shoots: Raw+JPEG. This allows him to run with the shots that meet his needs without post-processing while having the option to do detailed editing on the Raws that would benefit from added attention. CF cards are big and cheap enough now to make this a pretty viable option.
- Raw’s exposure latitude is often 2-3 stops (depending on the gear and the situation, of course).
- Steve asks how much the hundreds of different Raw formats actually vary when you get down to brass tacks. They fundamentally represent the same capabilities (relative to the camera), but the differences mostly exist in how the information is stored format-wise. This goes as far as some vendors encrypting the Raw format (which complicates or adds expense to the efforts of software developers). These variations often exist for “competitive advantage”.
- Mikkel brings up the topic of DNG, Adobe’s open standard that is a very viable archival format for your Raw images.
- Mikkel can be found at his website: http://www.shooting-digital.com/. He also hints that next week will hold some very exciting news from his publisher, O’Reilly.
LISTENER QUESTIONS
- The Skype Gremlims killed Fred (or at least his pipeline into this episode). 
Steve and Ron hang in there, though.
- Scott Stray writes: I am considering purchasing a used camera from Craigslist, what should I take note of when buying a used piece of equipment? Steve sells used cameras all the time… namely on Craigslist and suggests listing them on weekends. As for purchasing used cameras, Scott prefers to make his used purchases from respected dealers that can inspect the camera and vouch for its condition. This likely adds to the cost, however. Alex, for the most part, doesn’t buy any used tools for fear of how harshly they may have been treated. This is different, however, from purchasing refurbished cameras which are essentially factory new. (editorial note: I can vouch for this having purchased at least one 30D from Canon in refurbished form and being thoroughly satisfied)
- Yoni Mintz writes: Can you suggest a good workflow & service that allows internet or remote backup of master files in case of fire, flood, theft, etc? Ron does nightly clones to an external drive and recently had the source drive die -during- the backup process, rendering both incomplete. For offsite storage, Ron uses both .Mac and Mozy. Steve relies on Aperture and benefits from their “Vault” system that makes the process of moving a project to backup much simpler. This could, in theory, be uploaded to most any feasible offsite backup service. Alex emphasizes that, whatever method you use, focus on a good naming convention to simplify the process of cataloguing and locating files.
- Steve poses the question of how long to keep a drive around. Alex offers his golden rule: A file doesn’t exist unless it exists in two places. This provides some degree of safety when one of your backup drives takes a dive (but obviously necessitates cloning the remaining good drive again immediately to maintain the two drive rule). Don’t let a drive sit for six months without spinning it up.
- Alex and Scott both are looking toward buying pairs of Drobo systems with a new tool that allows them to synch one another across a network. One resides in the office, one resides at home and they mirror one another across the network.
TWiP TIP OF THE WEEK
- Steve’s on the hot seat to come up with a tip. Now. Right now. “The longer you spend with the people you photograph, the better the results you end up with.” This represents an increasing comfort level and familiarity that grows between both the photographer and the subject. Words of wisdom in general, but specifically stemming from his past week in Rwanda.
TWIP HOUSEKEEPING
- New Poll: How much do you expect to spend on gear in the next six months?
- Next week’s topic: Photography. (editorial note: stay tuned, a few things are in the hopper)
- Sometime during the course of the week, Alex will be pushing out a video on Histograms. Watch for it.
WRAP-UP
- Fred Johnson can be found at http://www.frederickvan.com/.
- Ron Brinkmann can be found at http://digitalcompositing.com.
- Scott’s photography can be found at http://avianstock.com.
- Alex Lindsay can be found at http://www.pixelcorps.com and http://www.pixelcorps.tv.
- Steve is giving an upcoming talk at Louisiana State University on April 2nd.
Send your thoughts, suggestions and questions to: twip at pixelcorps.com
Story ideas and other items of webly interest can be submitted via the TWiP Ideas Del.icio.us bookmarks
Share photos with your fellow TWiP listeners through the TWiP Flickr Feed
Submit your photos for “ruthless compassion” through our TWiP critiques forum.
27 Comments so far...
:DDennis Cadorniga Says:
29 March 2008 at 10:35 am.
Rhys, the show notes will be here once they are posted…
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Dave Amerson Says:
29 March 2008 at 1:28 pm.
Really enjoyed the show. The team you have works well together.
I look forward to each show.
Dave
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Jonathan Miner Says:
29 March 2008 at 7:44 pm.
“Our technology is foolproof” — Famous last words. While they are busy making their software more foolproof, we are busy making ourselves better fools.
Cheap disks may be “just fine” .. or they may not, especially under heavy read/write load. I’m not sure about their particular technology, but most systems don’t take kindly to multi-disk failure, or second disk failure while the first replacement disk is re-striping (to use RAID terminology).
I’ve had it happen with “quality” disks. In our large arrays we have had several occasions where multiple disks fail (luckily the arrays are multiple RAID LUNs and are mirrored offsite). Unfortunately, multiple disks bought together (from one manufacturing batch) will be more likely to fail around the same time. Buying better disks helps, but taking care, using RAID6 or RAID5+1 to handle multiple failures, and even proactively replacing disks is needed. Being ignorant of how your data is protected is a sure recipe for disaster.
Gizmoto gave a quite lukewarm (being kind) review unit. Personally I’m always leery of magical solutions, especially those that claim to be better than well established and tested systems like RAID.
And, of course, RAID, mirroring or products Drobo protect you only from catastrophic hardware failure. Backup systems (periodic snapshots) help protect you from catastrophic lack of foresight (operator failure), which happens far more often than hardware failure.
jon
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Scott Says:
29 March 2008 at 9:50 pm.
Jonathan I think you mean Gizmodo and frankly I couldn’t care less what their review says. People I know - friends - people I trust - are using Drobo and have seen it work. So while RAID may indeed be “well-established”, I’ve seen dozens of RAID systems crash and leave people without their data. Using a “well-established” data storage routine didn’t help them a bit. And I know nothing is foolproof, but I feel certain that the Drobo is as good as it gets - otherwise I wouldn’t trust my 450,000 images to it. They are NOT a sponsor and I have no relationship to them.
And I don’t understand your comment “Being ignorant of how your data is protected is a sure recipe for disaster.” If that were true, 99% of computer users would be default face permanent data loss since I am certain that 99% couldn’t tell you exactly how a RAID drive works.
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Alex Says:
30 March 2008 at 8:27 am.
2 Drobos - In 2 different buildings…is about as safe as it gets…
a
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Jonathan Miner Says:
30 March 2008 at 10:02 am.
Ah, guess that came out a bit more scolding than I intended, perhaps. Drobo certainly does sound promising (like ZFS in a nice external bundle), I just remember being excited about it and then reading the less-than-stellar Gizmodo review.
I just mean that I’ve seen people using RAID (and not) lose lots of data, sometimes priceless research, because they didn’t think about what they were doing (or hire someone who will). If you aren’t conscious of how you are protecting your data and why it is effective (and have multiple layers of protection), it’s easy for disaster to strike — or not. I’ve seen disks run for 10+ years without a problem, and I’ve seen two drives fail in a “new” machine at the same time.
And, of course, I have seen people who don’t understand their RAID systems destroy everything and seen RAID controllers fail.
Eh, maybe I worry about it too much.
jon
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Matthew Rogers Says:
31 March 2008 at 6:23 am.
Well, it looks like Shorpy is experiencing the TWIP effect…its server is dead, we killed it 
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Deke Kincaid Says:
31 March 2008 at 9:29 am.
For those who couldn’t find the drive cases Alex was refering to:
http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php
I kept on spelling it wrong, Weebetek, webatek, etc…
[Reply]
Andrew Stawarz Says:
31 March 2008 at 12:11 pm.
Many thanks for picking my picture of Burlingham Mill as runner up in your recent HDR Flickr Challenge. Certainly made my day!!
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J.D. Wegner Says:
31 March 2008 at 4:20 pm.
I sent all my old photos to Scan Cafe. I’m very satisfied with their service. I now have two DVD’s copied to my Lightroom catalog and then stored in my safe.
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Paul Says:
31 March 2008 at 5:18 pm.
I can attest to the Canon refurb program. I picked up a PowerShot S60 a little over a year ago from B&H for $189 and aside from the white box and a tiny sticker on the bottom of the camera saying it is refurbished, you’d never know. It works great, and was quite a steal at that price.
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Burt Says:
1 April 2008 at 8:01 pm.
ScanCafe — thought I’d note that I have used them to scan all our slides and scrapbooks going back to 1969 (which is the year I met my wife). I sent in 5 scrapbooks or 500 slides per batch, and sent one batch per month. That made the load to UPS more reasonable, and reduced the risk of anything getting lost.
Nothing was lost, and the results were excellent at a ridiculously low price. I have thought about scanning this stuff for years, but never did it. Now all those old photos are online for me. I have a copy of the DVDs in my bank safe deposit box, a copy in my data safe at home, a copy on my computer, and a copy in Mozy. Not to mention the original photos and slides.
Oh yeah. ScanCafe is not for those in a hurry. Takes about 3 months from shipping off your photos till the DVDs return. Mine have sat here for up to 39 years, so 3 months wasn’t a big deal though.
Dual remote Drobo - that sounds like something I need to look into. Might be a lot faster than Mozy. I could position one at my mother’s house (35 miles away) and one here. hmmm… I like that idea!
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Burt Says:
2 April 2008 at 1:52 am.
Remote Drobo? I can’t find anything about using Drobo on a remote site. The Data Tech site has a LAN solution for $200, which kinda looks like it would be the same as putting a Drobo on an airport.
Can you provide more info on how to use Drobo on both a local and remote site for offsite backup?
[Reply]
Jonathan Miner Says:
2 April 2008 at 8:17 pm.
Oh, I got distracted and forgot…
Great to hear the good things about ScanCafe … I saw it come out a while ago and it was pimped on a bunch of blogs (they had some sort of “affiliate” program for bloggers that sounded fishy to me) .. Good to hear about it from real people. Got the usual 10,000+ (20,000? who knows? I can’t count that high.) negatives and slides that I’m going to scan “one of these days”.
thanks, guys.
jon
[Reply]
Burt Says:
3 April 2008 at 2:44 am.
@Jonathan - ScanCafe again. I sent in a total of roughly 11,000 photos and slides (I estimated 200 photos per scrapbook and was usually low). Total bill was close to $2000, but worth it as my time is worth more (to me) than what it would have taken to do a halfway decent job on that many photos and slides.
One thing to note is that they scan EVERYTHING unless you note not to. A couple of early scrapbooks had newspaper pages of our marriage and other early items from the 60’s and 70’s. Every page and every business card was a separate scan. We decided it was kind of nice to have those too, but be aware of it.
Label your scrapbooks (or slide groups) with how you want them labeled, and it makes life much easier later. You can also mark “do not copy” on pages or images in your scrapbook, and they will skip them.
Basically, they assume that if you sent it, you want it scanned. Reasonable enough, but it often leads (at least in our case) to higher number of scans and costs than we expected initially.
Note that we have no regrets, but we do have a couple hundred scans (out of 10,000+) that we wonder why we paid for…
[Reply]
Brent Says:
5 April 2008 at 11:52 pm.
All I can say related to back up solutions is I opted for the ReadyNAS vs. the Drobo becase of how loud the Drobo is… I think even Leo on TWIT said it was something like a jet engine…. I have to say that when the lights are out in my office - its like the lights are not out in my office and who needs a heater anymore with all the stuff we need to keep our lives in order.
My solution is: Workstation - All files get backed up locally via LAN to the ReadyNAS - then all master photo files (thankfully I do not have 400,000 images like Scott) get placed on a 400gb firewire Maxtor drive I can take with me or leave offsite… that all said the NAS is also backed up with Amazon S3 and Jungle Disk becase Jungle disk will back up a network attached storage box and services like Carbonite will not (which is a shame, becase carbonite is so very easy for most to use and cheap)
Great show!
[Reply]
Girlsofblackdiamond.com - Glamour, Lingerie, Bikini Photography Says:
5 April 2008 at 11:57 pm.
[...] http://twipphoto.com/index.php/archives/229#more-229 [...]
dan Says:
8 April 2008 at 7:58 pm.
Alex mentioned on TWIP and MBW a hard drive and enclosure company called WiebeTech. I had never heard of the company and couldn’t spell it for Google to find, but I finally did find it. I thought I post it because it was not mentioned in either show notes.
[Reply]
ClubReading Blog » Stroll back in time Says:
23 May 2008 at 10:56 am.
[...] I got a heads up about this great site from the This Week in Photography podcast episode #16. [...]
Understanding Digital Film - Alex Pummer Says:
8 September 2008 at 10:03 pm.
[...] TWIP Episode 16 : Why RAW? - Show Notes TWIP Episode 16 : Why RAW? [...]
Joe Hewes Says:
15 October 2008 at 12:48 pm.
What I don’t like about these arrays (like Drobo) is that somewhere along the line there is a single point of failure. If there is a Drobo failure, you may not lose any data, but you may lose access to your data until the replacement Drobo unit arrives.
I like having data in two places, on two physically separate units. If one unit fails you will always have access to your data.
[Reply]
Scott Says:
15 October 2008 at 1:09 pm.
Joe the same is true of any sort of storage solution - array or not. There’s always a single point of failure that can take down the system. With the Drobo, you at least have the option to replace the data when a new array arrives. And of course nobody at TWIP has ever said that having your data in one place only makes sense. We always suggest having multiple backups. Using DroboShare or similar products helps move data to multiple Drobos and is a preferred starting point, along with additional offsite and/or online storage.
[Reply]
