Reasons to shoot raw I: Black & White conversions

There are a couple of good reasons to shoot raw (and a couple of good reasons to shoot JPEG too of course.) It all depends what you want to achieve. I'm not going to open that can of worms, these discussions are all over the internet.

Instead, I want to show "things you can't do with a JPEG" - I did that waaaaaay back then (here and here) when I started blogging and using raw data (hey, those old examples might be bad, but they're not that bad I hope), and it's time to revive that topic because "a picture speaks more than a thousand words."

Software has changed. Back then, when I switched to using raw and started posting my first raw vs. JPEG examples, I was using Rawshooter Essentials (RIP) to develop the raw data, and Picasa to organize my photos. Nowadays I'm using Lightroom, and ACR has a new "2010" process version that extracts more detail, and Adobe keeps updating the camera profiles so they'll get better and better. [And I also hope that my post processing skills have improved. :)]

So - one of the reasons to use raw data are black & white conversions. Lightroom's HSL panel turns into a black & white mixer when you switch processing to monochrome, and you can do some really insane tweaking with it (see screenshot). Raw data has more bit depth than JPEG. This allows really strong black and white edits with the B & W mixer panel in Lightroom. Edits that go far beyond a simple desaturation.

Below is a photo from my hike on the "Kleine Reib'm" last year in September. It was 10am and the later summer morning sun was creating a situation of strong contrast and long shadows as a very good foundation for a strong black & white conversion. As usual, I offer this as an after/before comparison with a mouse-over image.

"Fagstein / Steinernes Meer" // Nikon D700 @ ISO360, 24-135mm lens @ 36mm, 1/60s @ f/8
Mouseover image shows the original raw data processed with the "Camera Standard v3" profile in Lightroom and daylight white balance.
Click on the image to view larger in a Lightbox.

I want to post at least two more articles on reasons to shoot raw - one to illustrate highlight recovery, one to illustrate salvaging shadow detail. Stay tuned! :)