Wow ruchai that is a fantastic macro shot I bet you are well pleased.

I'll second that. Lots of detail and very sharp.

Don

ruchai,

Excellent picture. Do you have a pair of pictures of the same subject, one taken in raw, one using in-camera jpeg? Whilst everyone agrees that raw can produce some excellent pictures, it would be interesting to see examples of both for comparison.

Duncan

I took in RAW + "jpeg basic". I usually use the faster loading jpeg to Cull the pictures and delete them away. If compare with "jpeg basic" they are obvious that the RAW pictures are much better. I can not explain the differences in words but when I started using this method I rejected many jpeg pictures only to find out later that they are more than ok in the RAW version.

Ruchai

Next time you get an example could you post 100% crop of the affected area of each using best quaility jpeg so that we can see for ourselves. Your Robberfly shot is very nice but it does show some jpeg artifacts.

Many thanks

Here it is. The same picture saved as 'excelent quality jpeg'.

Bees starting their new colony in our garden, flocking together. Taken with D50, Nikkor 80-400VR in RAW+JPEG.

I think the differences are obvious. If you do not care much about details then use jpeg. If you want to get all out from the pictures use raw. Every time you saved or make corection in jpeg you lost some details. Digital cameras adjust values for average people. If you are not taking birthday party pictures then they did not programed for you. Taking pictures of birds or insects it is far better to have the camera leave all the adjustments to the photographers.

I only started using raw a few months ago. People in the net told me like I am telling you now. I made a try and like it. It is not difficult, the only draw back is it take more time to do and more memory to store the bigger files.

The first one is RAW (222.5KB), the one on the right is JPEG (196.8KB).

Thanks for your posting Ruchai

Yes you can see a marked difference in your images. I wonder if this is a Nikon thing as I've not noticed such a marked difference on Canon. I think I will try some more experiments next time I am on a shoot.

Another rock into the pond !!!
 

Following Ruchai's wonderful picture and Duncans comment I decided to do a comparison. The weather here is dull, cold and wet, so it was a workshop and flash thing. Afraid no fancy butterflies or food shot this time. :D

The main subject is a milling tool I made up to allow me to shape the covers on my ML7 model. I added a bit of colour and a vernier for fine detail to allow the differences to show up.

I have never used JPG Basic before so thought it would be interesing. Certainly if you shoot a lot of RAW I can see merit in Ruchai's method of saving RAW + JPG Basic to speed up sorting ' wheat from chaff '.

I have been doing a bit of a web trawl and there does appear to be differences in how camera's process data off the sensor. Within the Nikon brand for instance the degree of in camera processing of JPG's is different depending on the target market for the camera.

So these results may be specific to the D100. The pictures were taken one after the other at the same camera settings of 1/160 @ f16

The attached composites have not been processed other than to convert the RAW image. The softness at this stage is a D100 thing.

Don

Ruchai,

Would it be possible to post pictures that have NOT been processed other than the conversion of the RAW file. Preferably of a subject like your Robberfly, where there is something to really compare. The reasoning behind the thread was to look at the effects of in camera processing. From what I have read there is processing of both RAW and JPG files. It is just that depending on the target market JPG's can receive significantly greater in camera processing than RAW files.

Thanks

Don