Sunday, October 19, 2008

Handheld test, and RAW

I post this boring picture for two reasons:

1) It was a test to see how long a shutter speed I could hand-hold my 85mm lens at (since it does not have stabilization).
Nicely it turns out that 1/60th is quite usable, and that if I use the rapid-fire setting and squeeze off three or four shots at 1/30th, then one of them is usable! I am very happy with this discovery, I have not seen this tip anywhere else.
Furthermore, the first one is never the usable one, which means that doing this makes a big difference. (This picture was the third of three. The other two were more shaken.)
(This method would not have been so practical back in film days.)

2) It was a good opportunity to test RAW, which I'm trying to use more. As you can see, the highlights in the yellow leaves are clipped. Extracting the picture from the RAW file I was able to save them.

We also see that the camera-generated JPG has more saturation than the RAW. This of course can be moderated as on "develops" the RAW file, or later.

For those not in the know, "RAW" is the data from the camera in un-processed form, instead of made into a finished JPG file by the camera the way the manufacturer anticipated you'd like them to look. RAW files are bigger and need special software to "develop", but they contain all the data the sensor recorded, so they give more leeway for critical pictures.

1/30th usable, third in the rapid-fire set, JPG:

1/30th, from RAW, highlights not clipped:

1/30th, the first pic from the rapid-fire set, shaken:

Patrick said:
Since it is never the first shot, would pausing before actually taking a shot provide some benefit as well?

eolake said...
I think the main thing is the action of pressing the button jigging the camera. Unavoidable to some extend.

One should always pause anyway. If one just lifts up the camera and presses in the same breath, one will get lots of shaken pictures even at medium shutter speeds.
Pause, stop breathing for a second, and squeeze gently.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting approach - similar to some point and shoot camera's "best shot selection" mode, in choosing the best of a burst, but with a DSLR. Is the RAW color closer to the scene, or is the JPEG rendition more accurate?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Hah, good question, I had not even considered that.
I had to load this page on my laptop and take it to my window... actually the JPG is much closer, perhaps surprisingly. As near as damn.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Ah yes, the best-shot feature might be where I got the idea. They should enable that in DSLRs too, it's very useful.

Anonymous said...

interesting.
Since it is never the first shot, would pausing before actually taking a shot provide some benefit as well?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

No, I think it's the action of pressing the button.

(One should always pause anyway. If one just lifts up the camera and presses in the same breath, one will get lots of shaken pictures even at medium shutter speeds.)