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| Despatches May 2008 : Monthly column as featured in Practical Photography | |||||||||
| Its 6 am on a Sunday morning in Co Wicklow, and I suspect a few of us are a little worse for ware. Being the boring Anglo-Saxon I managed to avoid the temptations of an 18yr old (Jameson’s) in the bar last night so am annoyingly bright eyed and bushy tailed, but I think a few were indulging in the Dark Stuff to the wee small hours, and are now paying the price. But the mood is jocular, as it has consistently been on this workshop, and as we wait for the light I continue my Oirish acclimatisation. I’m told that for this shot of the evocative Round Tower at Glendalough rising out of the mist a Graduated Thundering Gobshite filter will be fierce handy all together now, and an aperture of f turty-tree-and-a-turd is necessary. Now I have to say that photography is essentially for me a solitary venture; I do like my own space for these magical dawn sessions. But occasionally, just occasionally, it’s good to be part of a mob, and this weekend I’m enjoying the craic with this pack of celtic photographers. And so we’re stood by a row of tripods, looking like a posse of paparazzi awaiting the Second Coming of Britney Spears, talking about colour temperature, as you do at dawn on Sunday. The sun has yet to make an appearance, and the mist hangs heavily in the Glen. Like a symbol of Ireland the Tower stands proud. If I were a 9th Century monk I’m not sure I’d feel totally secure ensconced in there with Vikings rampaging below, but I suppose it beats the perils of Yeovil on a Saturday night. The indirect glow of dawn is filtering through the sky, and as the mist wafts and wanes the click of shutters penetrate the air. It’s a wonderfully evocative scene; subtle, moody, ethereal, perfectly in keeping with the sense of history which is almost tangible. There’s no direct sunlight on the scene yet and the colour temperature of the ambient light bouncing around our patch of atmosphere before sunrise is literally sky high, and therefore a cool blue. It’s a low contrast scene; the glowing display on my monitor looks flat as a pancake and, quite frankly, nothing to write home about. But if ever there was an example of the advantages of shooting RAW, this shot is it. Why? Well, stood by the tripod now I’m pre-visualising how this image is going to look when its been processed. Its easier to put contrast into an image then it is to take it out, so I’ll be using all the flexibility of the RAW file to hopefully make an image with a complete range of tones from pure black to clean white. This way of working, of thinking through all the stages in an image’s birth before the camera is even touched, is fast becoming my mantra. I realise I’m probably preaching it with all the conviction of a convert, but it works. Crucial to it all though is making sure at the time of exposure that the maximum amount of tonal and colour information is recorded, and then holding on to that data right through the workflow. That’s why I shoot RAW all the time. |
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| I know you’ll all have read it countless times before, but lets just reiterate why we use RAW as opposed to jpeg. If you’re shooting jpeg information from the camera’s sensor is immediately being thrown away as the image is transferred to the memory card. The image is being compressed, altered, messed about already without your consent or knowledge. Its criminal. As that image is writing to your card its already been sharpened, had its colour balance “corrected” and half the data has been irretrievably binned. The only person who should be making such fundamental decisions about your precious images is you. RAW images have all the information from the camera’s sensor; pure, unadulterated, virgin. The RAW file has much greater exposure latitude than a jpeg, and it’s sent to your Sandisk with loads of lovely tonal and colour information. Why is that so important? Well, try making a few adjustments to the levels of an 8 bit jpeg in Photoshop. See those nasty gaps and spikes that appear on the histogram? Those are missing tones and rogue pixels destroying the smooth gradation of tones in your sky. Try the same with a 16-bit RAW image. No peaks or troughs. Happiness is a smooth histogram. So, if you care about your pictures, shoot RAW. Clearly the RAW conversion stage is crucial but daunting to some. It needn’t be. Actually RAW processing is no more time consuming than sorting through a load of jpegs. I used to shoot RAW & jpeg, but now don’t bother; I found I was just binning the jpegs. But I will grant that there is a bewildering array of options for converting your pictures from RAW; Lightroom, Aperture, Adobe RAW, Capture One, DxO etc. Oh, and the camera manufacturers own converters. But no one uses them, they’re crap. Deciding which to use is a bit like choosing a film used to be, you decide on one that suits you, learn about its foibles over the years and get on with the job of making the best images you can. Talking software is possibly more tedious than sitting through an amateur dramatics Gilbert & Sullivan production and maybe you’re loosing the will to live reading this, but for the record I use Phase One’s Capture One. I think it’s controls and flexibility is superior to anything else I’ve seen, but I’ll admit I’ve not spent precious time comparing all the alternatives, life’s too short. We’re all beavering away, exploring different perspectives, peering through each other’s eyepieces. It consistently amazes me how photographers stood next to each other can come up with such different takes on the same scene; it’s refreshing. Eventually the sun is up and the mist burns off, killing the mood. We’re all heading back to base when the phone chirps; we’ve left one behind. The eejit wandered off in amongst the gravestones. Ah well, I feel a casualty rate of one out of ten is acceptable. Sean the Donegal deep-sea fisherman heads back to fetch him whilst we carry on. We’ve a date with a Full Irish Breakfast. And then Kerry, and the Dingle Peninsula. |
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