RAW vs JPEG, Myth or Fact? The Definitive Guide

Too much orange color? Hit the jump to know what's going on

Today I am going to wet my feet and discuss a much debated topic, RAW vs JPEG. This topic causes almost as much debate as the Canon vs Nikon does amongst fanboys, but this post is not about concluding which one is the best, but rather the strengths and weaknesses of each format and when to use either of them.

This post is intended for beginners and experienced photographers equally, I will compare both formats in 5 categories: white balance, highlight recovery, shadow recovery, noise and sharpness.

Hit the jump for the real showdown.

Quality vs. Contrast: Soft Light Ain't All That (Intermediate)

When starting with lighting education, the typical response to unflattering shadows is to seek a softer light source (with less defined shadows). Of course, a soft light source will be more forgiving and many people look better with soft light. However, in my view, soft light by itself is helpful but is not the answer. I suggest instead to emphasize controlling the contrast between highlight and shadow.

To illustrate the difference between these two approaches (quality vs. contrast), check out this test shot:

How does it feel? Except for dramatic purposes, it is not a look that most people seek for portraits. Yet this is a photo with a soft light source. Don't believe me? I agree it sure doesn't look like it is a photo with soft light. However, check out the shadows on the wall. The evidence is right there - shadow edges are blurred - the definition of soft light.

Now, check out the shot above, reproduced here for convenience:

How does it compare to the soft light photo above? It's still edgy (intentionally so) but has a much more mainstream look than the soft light photo above. The shot was done with an SB-800 flash, a popup flash, and of course ambient light.  The flashes were bare.  No umbrella, no softbox, no modifiers, no postprocessing. Check the shadow of the nose or the shadow of the shirt sleeve on the left arm (zoom in if needed). The shadows have a well-defined edge - evidence that hard light was used.

To make the shot work though, I controlled the contrast between highlight and shadow - not letting it get too high. If I recall, I intentionally underexposed the ambient light by about 1 stop. The SB-800 was on TTL, about 1 stop underexposed. My rationale was that with the ambient at 50% of what it should be, and the SB-800 at 50% of what it should be, both would add up to the correct exposure - except that I've controlled the direction of the light. [Note: flash blur is a risk when flash and ambient are equal in intensity but here the shutter speed was 1/250 - therefore any flash blur would not be noticeable.] The popup flash was acting as fill, about 2 stops underexposed if I recall. The purpose was to work with the (underexposed) ambient light to bring up any shadows. If I wanted a less dramatic look I could have increased the intensity of the popup flash instead (e.g., FEC -1.3), which would reduce the highlight-shadow contrast.

The above shots illustrate why in my view, controlling contrast can have more positive impact on your photo than the quality of the light. Fortunately, we don't have to choose one or the other exclusively - we can use both. However, I wanted to make the point that contrast is arguably more important than the quality of the light.

BTW, controlling contrast doesn't necessarily require another flash. For example, we can use reflectors or ambient light as fill.  To learn how to control contrast, please check out the TTL Flash Tutorial (especially Part 2). :)

Related article: simulating soft light with a hard light source.

UPDATE I found a related Strobist.com article (with much better photos!): http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-axis-fill-ring-fill-against.html  -- Although David Hobby used a hard and even restricted key light, the photos don't look harsh at all. Instead, they look a bit edgy but pleasant, at least in part due to careful control of the ratios between key, fill and ambient.

Shadows; three-dimensional lighting; softer hard light without modifiers

After learning about the advantages of moving the flash off-camera, I'm now learning how to deal with shadows. Conventional photo wisdom is to fill in the shadows with omnidirectional light or on-axis fill. Here is a sample:

In this shot, I used the popup flash to fill in the shadows.

The flash did lift the shadows but there are basically only 2 intensities of light on the subject's face - lit and unlit. I think this looks ok but looks "insufficiently 3d" or kind of flat because there are only 2 main intensities of light - the filled-in shadow and the highlight.

Another approach is cross-lighting. It looks very cool, like a still from a hollywood action movie but is sometimes too unnatural.

A third approach I'm learning about is to let the fill light come from around the same direction as the key, except closer to the camera axis. What this does is to fill only a part of the subject, leaving a portion still in full shadow.

Here's how I think it works (click on the diagram to enlarge).

Disclaimer: I'm not an engineer or physicist. In the diagrams above, assume that the view is a bird's eye view with the camera on the bottom of each diagram. In the top diagram, the red circle is lit by a small light source. The circle is lit basically in two ways: either it's lit (parts exposed to the light) or it's not.

The green circle shows the effect of a large light source. I simplified the large light source by representing it as 3 points. The circle has parts that are exposed to all 3 points, some that are exposed to only 2 points, some that are exposed to only 1 point, and some that are exposed to none of the points. The parts exposed to all 3 points are brighter than those exposed to only 1 point. Thus instead of having almost binary lighting like with a small light source, there is a smooth gradient (don't forget - there are an infinite number of points between the 3 points).

The blue circle is what I'm hypothesizing - that to some degree, it's possible to simulate a larger light source with 2 smaller light sources, where 1 of the light sources is closer to the axis of the camera. Like a larger light source, there are parts lit by 2 lights, parts lit by 1, and parts that are unlit. Unlike a larger light source, however, there is nothing between the two points of light, so the gradient won't be as smooth. I think it would look "more 3d" though, than just using a simple omnidirectional fill.

Real world sample: In the following shot, light from the window acted as the rim light. Instead of using on-axis fill to lift all shadows in the subject's face, or cross-lighting from the angle opposite the window, I positioned the flash from the same side as the window (as far as my arms could reach :) ). This is somewhat like having point A and B from the diagrams above. As a result, there are at least three distinct lighting intensities on the subject's face: rim light from the window, light from the flash which is functioning as the key light, and an unlit shadow area. (There's actually another area from the reflection of the music sheet but that's a separate point.) The effect IMO is to make the subject appear more 3d than binary lighting as used in the previous shot. In addition, even though the flash is hard light (I didn't use an umbrella or diffuser or anything - look at the shadow cast on the music sheet), it doesn't seem very hard on the subject's face (but I'm not yet sure if that's just because of the roundness of our son's face...).