RAW + Small JPEG question

SloYerRoll

So I almost always shoot RAW unless I'm in controlled lighting and I know my environment is not going to change.

What advantages are there to shooting RAW w/ small JPEG as well?
Is this just for file browsing purposes? If so, in camera or PP? Cameras and Mac seem to bring up all my shots fast enough for me not to get aggravated w/ them.

Any other pros or cons to either side of this coin?

Thanks for your knowledge.

Andy

SloYerRoll wrote:

So I almost always shoot RAW unless I'm in controlled lighting and I know my environment is not going to change.

What advantages are there to shooting RAW w/ small JPEG as well?
Is this just for file browsing purposes? If so, in camera or PP? Cameras and Mac seem to bring up all my shots fast enough for me not to get aggravated w/ them.

Any other pros or cons to either side of this coin?

Thanks for your knowledge.

Only if you want them for browsing / culling. But then again, Small Jpgs from 1Ds Mark II are quite large

gus

SloYerRoll wrote:

Is this just for file browsing purposes?

For me..yes , thats it.

SloYerRoll wrote:

If so, in camera or PP? Cameras and Mac seem to bring up all my shots fast enough for me not to get aggravated w/ them.

Then its not for you

SloYerRoll wrote:

Any other pros or cons to either side of this coin?

Thanks for your knowledge.

It just makes it really fast to look at the shots in a thumb (be that small or large) than opening the shot...it is faster but if you dont see the need then dont worry about it. I had 1500 shots to process through from last saturday...had i had the storage then i would have done it without thinking.

SloYerRoll

gus wrote:

had i had the storage then i would have done it without thinking.

Since I shoot Nikon and use "Picture Perfect Transfer" to load images off my CF cards...
Do the jpegs and RAW files load into different folders for browsing purposes?

I can change the "sort by" options and get the small jpegs in order so I can quickly get rid of the shots that are obviously no good. Doesn't that still leave me w/ the dilema of having a RAW file waiting to be deleted?

Can you divulge some of your RAW + jpeg workflow so I can use this useful tool?

gus wrote:

Then its not for you

It may be for me. I am just patient cuz my machine is pretty hard-core and I know there aren't many other machines besides MEGA computers that can do it much faster.

Can you divulge some of your RAW + jpeg workflow so I can use this useful tool?

SloYerRoll

Andy wrote:

Only if you want them for browsing / culling

I do want to play around w/ the workflow for culling. Just not sure how viewing a small jpeg and deleting solves the I still have a large RAW file sitting in my folder still.....

Andy wrote:

Small Jpgs from 1Ds Mark II are quite large

No good me getting jealous.
Jealousy won't buy my D2X:D

gus

SloYerRoll wrote:

It may be for me. I am just patient cuz my machine is pretty hard-core and I know there aren't many other machines besides MEGA computers that can do it much faster.

I have 2 gig ram & 2.2 core duo so im not exactly on a PII 350 & its still way way faster to view & process from raw+small jpeg. As i said its storage in camera that stops me.

SloYerRoll wrote:

Can you divulge some of your RAW + jpeg workflow so I can use this useful tool?

I have no workflow method..

SloYerRoll

gus wrote:

its still way way faster to view & process from raw+small jpeg

I agree that the JPEG view would be much faster.

I don't understand how having 2 digital files to delete is a more effecient workflow than just waiting for file browser software to load images. Dig?

Thanks for your time.

LiquidAir

I use Canon gear so I can't tell you about the Nikon software, but here is my process:

I shoot RAW only (no JPEG of any size)

I use Canon Camera Window to load the images off my CF card into a folder. It automatically sorts the images into folders named with the date and launches Zoom Browser (also Canon software) when the transfer is done.

Zoom Browser lets be view full RAW files full screen but will not let me zoom in to them. None-the-less, it is good for an inital cull of the images. In zoom browser I immediately toss any image that is a clear loser.

I then launch Lightroom and load each folder as a new shoot. I then walk through the images one by one adding metadata tags and doing initial dynamic range, white balance, exposure, tilt and crop corrections. During this phase I will also be doing a second pass cull of the images on finer critera that I couldn't judge in Zoom Browser (critical focus, motion blur, noise, etc).

At this point I have a set of shots suitable for proofs. From there I (or the customer) choose the money shots. Typically those select shots go through a more byzantine process: first DxO Optics for lens corrections generating a DNG file, then Lightroom to reapply the the earlier white balance and finally Photoshop for any further processing. The DxO -> Lightroom -> Photoshop path annoys me becasue it is slow and it litters my hard drive with large intermediate files (DNG, 16-bit TIFF). None-the-less, it is the best path I can find for getting top quality output and consistant color and exposure across a shoot.

SloYerRoll

Thanks Liquid, I almost share the same workflow w/ a few minor differences at the last few steps. And I'm not a pro yet, so I don't determine any money shots... yet

What I'm really trying to find out is this (and this has nothing to do w/ proprietary software):

What are the advantages to shooting RAW & w/ small JPEG vs. just RAW?
I understand that you can save time by browsing small jpeg files instead of RAW in your image browsing software. Isn't the time saved by viewing the small JPEG's lost by tracking down it's RAW counterpart to delete that one after you already scrapped the small JPEG???