Woops: another different SLR thread

Tannin

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
4,448
Location
Huon Valley, Tasmania
Website
www.redhill.net.au
For no particular reason, I just wasted/spent an hour posting in a different place, with the topic, of all things, yet another variation on that hoary old perennial theme, raw vs JPG. This one was a little different, however, insofar as it was less vague than most and focused on the question of what to usde for action photography. So, with apologies for the cross-post, here it is:

-------------------------------

For action, always JPG. The thing with action - the thing that the "always shoot raw" crowd comprehensively fail to understand - is that it is unpredictable, and that the most likely thing to happen immediately after a peak moment - i.e., immediately after you have fired off a series of shots - is *another* peak moment.

With action photography, the slower things get, the slower things get, and the more excitement there is, the more likely it is that there will be still greater excitement still to come.

Action rule 1: never, ever, let your buffer get full, because you can spend a whole day or a whole week waiting for something good, and when it happens, you very often find that something else follows it right away, and then another thing.

I am saying "with action", but seeing as the only action I shoot is wildlife, maybe I shouldn't generalise. Nevertheless, it's most certainly true with wildlife, and my casual observation of other sorts of action (sport in the main) suggests that it's true in other fields as well. And let us be clear about our meanings here: if the sort of sport you call "action" photography can be predicted well enough for you to always know what you are going to be clicking your shutter at next, and never once have wished you had more shots in your buffer - then it isn't action at all, it's just things that move fast.

ACTION is things that move *unpredicatably* - a game of football that rises above the precictable formula and turns into a heart-stopper, a crowd that suddenly takes on a life of its own (can we say "Rodney King?), or in my case a mixed-species feeding flock that turns up out of nowhere and presents you with 30 different birds and ten different species all at the same time. If you count up all the birds you will see over the next two hours, you are seeing most of them *right now*. The feeding flock has accepted you as part of it and they are up close and personal. This is the moment you live for. You shoot, shoot, shoot, for if you miss this moment you might wait another year or more to find another one.

There is nothing - but NOTHING - worse than having a wonderful moment like this arrive, and half way through your buffer goes full and you can see that golden moment slipping away while your buffer crawls its way into the flash card.

You owe it to yourself. JPG every time.

If you get your exposure or your white balance wrong and miss shots, then that was because you were not skilled enough at your craft. You need to practice more, and vow you will do better next time. Work at your craft. (I'll let you know when I have mastered the craft myselft. Well, maybe I'll let your great-great grandson know, assuming I'm still around in 2142.)

Still, at least you have a reasonable chance of rescuing some of the shots in PP, though it can be difficult with a JPG. Look at it this way: if it's too far out to rescue the JPG, would the raw actually have been any good? Really good? Or are we just talking a "JPG unusable, raw is so-so" situation? Most of the time, it's the latter, and so-so is not what any of us are after.

On the other hand, if you miss shots because you insisted on shooting raw and your buffer went full, then that's because you were too dumb to suit your method to your task.
 

Tannin

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
4,448
Location
Huon Valley, Tasmania
Website
www.redhill.net.au
Now a word about the "machine gun police" - the people who spray the epithet "machine gun" around at other photographers, with the underlying meaning that "real photographers don't take many shots", and "you machine-gun types are inferior, you think that quantity = quality, and if you only thought about your shots more and pressed the shutter less you might be almost as good as me".

Well, if I was a landscape guy, you know what? I'd agree with you!

(Although I try to make it a rule to shoot two or three frames even of a landscape - this is Australia, and it only takes one blowfly in the wrong spot to ruin a shot, and if you don't see the big black mark in the middle of your picture right then and there, you might be 400 miles away by the time you get to upload and review. Not a nice feeling.) (Oh, and as many shots as it takes if I'm doubtful of the lighting and want to bracket.)

But as a guy who shoots action, I get annoyed when I see this ignorant nonsense trotted out again and again with (in most cases) zero understanding of the different challenges that face different photographers.

For action work, a good photographer paces himself in exactly the same way that a good combat soldier does. When the action is thick, you don't pussyfoot around wondering if you fired five shots just now or fired six already (sorry Clint, couldn't resist the misquote), you fire as many as it takes to nail the shots you want. If in doubt, fire more. You can always throw duds or duplicates away, you can never, ever go back in time to take the shot you didn't shoot.

You don't just mash the button down until your finger gets tired, you fire frequent short bursts of three or four shots each (more or fewer, depending on the circumstances); you fire as many frames as you think might help, you are always prepared to waste another 20 minutes uploading and discarding duds because you are always maximising your chances of a great shot; but you always watch the shots remaining in the viewfinder and never, ever, ever leave yourself with no shots left, because the single most likely time to see a fantastic shot opportunity is also the time when you are probably pretty close to buffer full. Hell, at waterholes in dry places where the honeyeaters come down in flocks of 10 and 20, I've learned to bring my 40D and 100-400 along so that when I go buffer full on the 1D III I can pick up the little camera and use that instead while the buffer writes itself to card.

I bet it's not too different with other sorts of action either, but with birds you can be confident that the single most likely time to see the rare and special one (Bourke's Parrot, let's say, or Painted Honeyeater, Gouldian Finch) is when, for no reason you can ever put your finger on, a whole stack of creatures turn up all at once, so you shoot as fast as you possibly can because you've been waiting since before dawn and they might not come back tomorrow, and you know that within five or at most ten minutes you'll be staring at an empty waterhole with nothing more interesting to look at than a Crested Pigeon and the same pair of Galahs that have been sleeping in that Red Gum for the last two hours. THAT is when the rare ones turn up - right in the thick of the action - one strange face in the middle of a crowd, THAT is when the sparrowhawk swoops down out of nowhere, THAT is when they all fly up in unison to some unheard-by-humans signal, and THAT is when raw shooters have an empty buffer.

Well, if the action has been good enough, I'll probably have an empty buffer too - life is like that, and we always want just one more shot - oh, and always do as I say, not as I do!

But if you shoot action, shoot JPG every time. Action photography is about making the most of your chances, and the more chances you have, the better your odds.

Sometimes someone looks at one of my pictures and says "wow, you were lucky to get that!"

Too damn right I was!

All my better shots are "lucky shots", and the reason I got them is because I stayed out there by the waterhole or under the casurina tree or on the edge of the salt lake until I DID get lucky.

That's what success is, most of the time: you practice something and work hard at it and do everything you can think of to get better at it, and most important of all you stick at it until the gods smile on you.

Then you do it again.

The more you shoot, the closer your next lucky break is.

Needless to say, there is also a point at which blasting away with more shots of the same thing from the same angle in the same light becomes pointless. Once you are confident that you have the best shot you can make from a given position, stop. But while things are changing (i.e., while what you are doing is ACTION photography, not still life) keep on going. Shutters are cheap. Electrons are free. (Near enough to free.) Burn a few more, because you never know your luck.
 

Tannin

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
4,448
Location
Huon Valley, Tasmania
Website
www.redhill.net.au
A final word. None of the above should be taken to mean that "JPG is better than raw" or "always shoot JPG", or anything of the kind. Always shoot whatever it is that will give YOU the best chance of getting YOUR best shots, doing the sort of photography that YOU like to do.

I shoot birds in JPG, unless I have plenty of time and I'm in doubt about the lighting, when I switch to raw + JPG. For landscapes and non-action things, I normally shoot raw + JPG, because buffer space is a non-issue even on the older, slower cameras I use for static subjects (20D and 400D), and although I am mostly either happy with the JPG or unhappy enough with the shot to not want to keep the raw either, it's nice to have the raw to fall back on if its needed.

When I first got the 1D III, I expected that the much bigger buffer would let me do birds in raw instead of JPG. I even bought a better raw converter to go with it. It took me about two days to realise that even a 1D III buffer isn't always big enough.

It's not that you need however many shots the Mark III raw buffer holds, it's that the ergonomics of the design force you to take either less than you need or more than you need. I don't know about you, but I cannot take a single shot with the 1D III set on high speed unless I tap the shutter release instead of squeezing it gently - and with long lenses you need to be smooth and gentle.

How hard would it be for Canon to provide a pressure-sensitive shutter? What would it cost? Five dollars extra? Ten dollars? Even if it's fifty bucks, who cares? Want a single shot, press lightly. Want 5-6 FPS repeat? Squeze firmly. Want the full 10 FPS? Squeeze hard!

Very simple, very practical, *very* useful.

Why are we still using 1970s-era shutter buttons?

And why is Pentax the only SLR maker with that most sensible of simple practicalities, a raw button?

And why am I so far off topic? It must be bedtime.
 

e_dawg

Storage Freak
Joined
Jul 19, 2002
Messages
1,903
Location
Toronto-ish, Canada
Wow, it's like the Lord of the Rings trilogy on shooting in JPEG ;)

You know, you didn't have to go through all that trouble to convince us. All you had to do was say "Ken Rockwell -- the Chuck Norris of Photography -- thinks shooting in RAW is for weenies." End of story. And if Ken even so much as surmises, nay, muses on the merits of a JPEG only world, then let it be so in the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, for thine is the power, the kingdom, and the glory for ever and ever, amen.
 

Gilbo

Storage is cool
Joined
Aug 19, 2004
Messages
742
Location
Ottawa, ON
Tannin, I think you can set the 1D MkIII to shoot slower. That might help with the "less than you need or more than you need problem". I have no idea what custom setting this might be, but I'm pretty sure I read about it somewhere. I also don't know if it would actually help or not.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,742
Location
Horsens, Denmark
I was bouncing off the buffer the whole time last night. My action photography (argentine tango), always has something interesting going on. Good dancers can go from walking side-by-side to a flying gancho before you could press the shutter. And with it as dark as it is, shooting in JPG just isn't feasible. How dark? Dark enough that these windows barely obscure the outside near midnight.

Need more buffer. A slot for an SODIMM would be most welcome.
 

P5-133XL

Xmas '97
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
3,173
Location
Salem, Or
Ever thought that it really comes down to your particular style. Some may prefer to shoot raw and some may prefer .JPG and that there really is no single right answer but rather simply one choice of many that a photographer chooses to optimize the vision that he/she is trying to place on paper.

My point is there is really no need for a RANT on this topic: People can make their own choices because in the end, it will only effect that person and not others ...
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
To each his/her own... Jpegs may be fine if you use a fixed white balance, perfect exposure and other settings, and don't do any tweaking. However, I don't like to throw out 6 of 14 bits on a $8000 camera. There are too many limitations from the jpeg and artifacts that limit NR and other PP options. Dodging/burning, radial density corrections (including asymmetrical offsets and gradients), partial/multiple CA corrections, and spot color tweaks among other common corrections may suffer as well.
 

blakerwry

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Oct 12, 2002
Messages
4,203
Location
Kansas City, USA
Website
justblake.com
You guys hitting the buffer, what flash cards do you use? A friend of mine purchases SanDisk Extreme III cards because of their touted reliability, qualified environmental extremes, and high speed.

Personally, I found the SanDisk Ultra II cards to be plenty fast and I imagine they are just as reliable despite lacking the official qualifications.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
Mostly Extreme III and now IV. The newer bodies like the 1Ds MK III can take advantage of UDMA, whereas the older bodies like the 1D MK III cannot. Still there is some benefit in downloading. I still have some old Ultra II cards but the download speeds are quite slow.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
20D has only a 6-frame buffer so it is always empty. ;) The Ultra II is fine for that camera.
 

udaman

Wannabe Storage Freak
Joined
Sep 20, 2006
Messages
1,209
And my latest attempt at a panorama includes 80+ pictures, so I don't think a 1Ds buffer would do me any good, either ;)

Hmm, remember my posting on the cost of 1995 DIMM prices vs 1999?

Tannin's rant aside (geez Howser's going to go into permanent comatose mode if you keep doing that ;) ), in another 5years or so I'll bet this becomes relatively a moot point. Flash mem will be much faster by then, and at least in the dSLR higher end models the transfer from sensor to memory bandwidth should increase enough by then to alleviate this bottle neck on RAW vs Jpeg.

At any rate, seems like Tannin just posted yet another a reason to get a Nikon D3, rather than Canon FF, lol. Can't wait until Jan to see what an upgraded 5D brings, crop factor bodies will hopefully die out when smaller/lighter weight FF bodies show up...can't beat a FF VF for ease of viewing/manual focusing.

But heck whatever type of 'action' photography you do, if you really want to capture *all* of the possible distinct moments...just use a 4k res, Red One camcorder :p. Video with sound is so much more involving of the moment than still photography, especially with birds (works for babes too), IMHO.
 

Tannin

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
4,448
Location
Huon Valley, Tasmania
Website
www.redhill.net.au
Actually, I don't much care for moving pictures. YMMV.

And it's not about capturing every moment, not even close. It's about capturning the best moment.

But, eventually, the technology will be good enough to allow raw even with action work.

BTW, why do you write "raw" (an ordinary English word, doesn't stand for anything, just "raw" as in "a slice of raw apple") as "RAW" and "JPEG" (not a word, an acronym standing for Joint Photographic Experts Group) as "Jpeg"?

</nitpick>
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
I write RAW to refer to file format rather than general usage of raw. That is just my style. On another forum it would be CR2 or NEF, etc., but some people in a general forum such as this one may not be familiar with the extensions.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,497
Location
USA
And my latest attempt at a panorama includes 80+ pictures, so I don't think a 1Ds buffer would do me any good, either ;)

No, the original 1Ds was very slow, taking about 45-50 seconds to clear the 10-frame buffer. Five years ago the image processors were not as fast.
 

udaman

Wannabe Storage Freak
Joined
Sep 20, 2006
Messages
1,209
Actually, I don't much care for moving pictures. YMMV.

And it's not about capturing every moment, not even close. It's about capturning the best moment.

But, eventually, the technology will be good enough to allow raw even with action work.

BTW, why do you write "raw" (an ordinary English word, doesn't stand for anything, just "raw" as in "a slice of raw apple") as "RAW" and "JPEG" (not a word, an acronym standing for Joint Photographic Experts Group) as "Jpeg"?

</nitpick>

Does anyone really want to capture every moment (other than Paris ;) ), and have to cull through hours of useless video?

eventually the technology is already here, read up on the Red One camcorder...more to follow in the near future, the future is here (albeit @ a professional level Hasselblad price). I forget where I saw it mentioned on a photog forum, but supposedly Zeiss gave Kubrick that special F1.0 lens for the candlelit movie Barry Lyndon

~$100k in dollars back then, nice to be a famous movie producer, perks of the trade :).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072684/trivia

A D3 @6400 would have captured sharper images of those transient bird shots, long lens or digiscoped with the Zeiss 85mm scope. Canon has a lot of catching up to do with the D3 now.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,742
Location
Horsens, Denmark
I'd have said juvenile Kelp Gull, or something rather similar to a Kelp Gull - not sure which gulls you have in California. Nice work Dave!


We have white ones and brown ones. I'm sure they have better names, but I don't know them. At one point I was told that the brown ones are female and the white male of the same species; I have no evidence either way.

These aren't nice bird pictures, in that the birds simply wouldn't move. This pelican was essentially full-frame in my 50mm prime and wasn't caring. Of course, with all the time in the world, I still couldn't get the focus right (I was too close).
 

Tannin

Storage? I am Storage!
Joined
Jan 15, 2002
Messages
4,448
Location
Huon Valley, Tasmania
Website
www.redhill.net.au
Gull plumage. Excuse crappy pictures, just the first ones I found to illustrate with.

This is an adult Kelp Gull. Most other large gulls will look broadly similar.

050418-170904fp.jpg


This is a juvenile Pacific Gull. Again, most other species of large gull are much the same.

050418-171736.jpg


To tell the species, you need to look at particular features, not just the overall colour. We can tell that the first bird in a Kelp Gull rather than a Pacific Gull because it has a finer bill with a mark (red dot) on the lower mandibile only. We can tell that the second bird is a Pacific Gull because it has a heavier bill with marks on both mandibles (black tip to the bill).

Here in Australia, we have only two large gulls: the Pacific Gull (found here and in other places nearby), and the Kelp Gull (from memory, mainly found in South America but also in other parts of the world, including here). So to identify the bird, you need only work out which of those two it is.

In California you probably have three or four large gull species. You won't have Pacific Gulls, you may or may not have Kelp Gulls, and you'll have one or two other ones. Any local birder will be able to tell you which these are and how to recognise them.

But even without knowing your local birds, I can assure you that it's a large juvenile gull - that speckled brown plumage is unmistakable.

Unless, of course, it is a one of those very rare and much sought-after birds, the famous Web-footed Pigeon.

You might wonder why there are so many young birds. It's because (at least in the case of the Pacific Gull) they retain their juvenile plumage for four or five years. Adult plumage birds are anything over 5 years old. I would have to check, but it's probably safe to assume that the other species (including your bird) do much the same.
 

Wavemaker

What is this storage?
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
29
Location
Offshore
My best bird pic evar! I'm catching up, Tannin! ;)

I would have taken this image at a much lower angle. Actually, for this one, I would have sat the camera directly on the dock surface and got a ground-level (i.e. -- "bird-level") shot.

A lot of people make the mistake of consistently taking images at their normal head height. Depending on what I'm shooting, it's not uncommon for me to raise the camera well above my head, kneel a bit, or maybe drop down close to or directly onto the ground.

By the way, I have taken a lot of wildlife imagery, but, it's all on film (mostly Kodachrome 64 or Kodachrome 25). Of that, I have plenty of seabird imagery. One of my favourite seabird images is a pair of resting brown pelicans perched in front of a bleached mangrove and cypress backdrop.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,742
Location
Horsens, Denmark
I was actually waiting for the bird to begin to fly away. I was approaching, with auto focus dialed in and sports mode set, waiting for the moment when he flew away. But he didn't. I had to stop for fear of kicking him. Then I took a picture and walked away, sad that it wouldn't play my game. Pout.
 
Top