 |
| All images are from the JPEG files. This is about a 50% crop of the original. (click to enlarge) ISO 1250 |
Recently, I photographed a family event under very difficult lighting conditions and found that the JPEG files actually worked better than the RAW files. I found that interesting. Here's the rest of the story.
Since buying my Fujifilm X-T4, I really haven’t had much opportunity to get out and use it as I would ordinarily do. This COVID-19 thing keeps hanging around still somewhat restricting travel and activities as well as miscellaneous and family obligations have been taking up much of my free time lately. Now, add to that my wife and I getting our home ready for sale, selling it, interviewing builders to build another home and the major task of going through 45 years of accumulated “stuff” and that hasn’t left me much time for any photography. :-(
 |
| This is the original JPEG as shot of the image above. (click to enlarge) |
Word to the wise: Under no circumstances accumulate decades of stuff that one day will be the most daunting task you have ever faced in going through it, deciding what to donate, discard and keep. If you can go through your accumulated belongings incrementally, you’ll be much better off! Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...
The other day was my youngest granddaughter’s 5th birthday. My son and daughter-in-law looked hard for a venue that offered social distancing, entertainment and amusement for about eight girls of similar age. They found the perfect place in the form of a farm and stables. The venue offered horseback riding in the form of a trainer leading a horse around a large indoor arena, a petting zoo and a place with several picnic tables where the girls could sit and have birthday cake, etc.
Being the designated family photographer for the past 45 years, I thought it a good time to use the X-T4 and see how it performed at the birthday party. I packed up the camera body with the 16-55mm f/2.8 lens attached, the 55-200mm lens as well as the 10-24mm lens. My daughter-in-law is quite an accomplished photographer in her own right and she would be shooting with her full frame Canon gear. I would be making record shots to add to the folder of family photos in my Lightroom catalog. My plan was to just give her a copy of all of my images as JPEG files. In fact, I set the X-T4 so one of the memory cards recorded RAW files and the other JPEG files. I planned to just give her the card so she could have them and edit them as desired.
 |
| The bright daylight was nicely tamed as the JPEG files had a surprisingly amount of dynamic range. ISO 800 (click to enlarge) |
When I arrived, I found the venue provided horrible circumstances in which to photograph. It was large, cavernous, pretty dark inside (read that as ISO 6400 territory) with both mercury vapor, sodium vapor and incandescent lights lighting different areas of the area. Add to that large doors being open and bright sunny daylight streaming in which would backlight the girls as the horse was led around the arena. I don’t think the lighting could get much worse. Regardless of the poor lighting and unfortunate circumstances, the situation had to be overcome. After all, it was my granddaughter’s birthday party!
I attached the 55-200mm lens, set the X-T4 on Auto ISO with a maximum ISO of 6400 then set the minimum shutter speed to 1/125th second. Stopping movement wouldn’t much of a problem with a horse traveling at 2 mph. I set white balance to Auto as well and set the camera for aperture priority and the lens at f.5.6.
Okay, I’ve rambled on long enough about the conditions and what my task was. What happened that was interesting was that it didn’t work out that I was able to give my daughter-in-law the SD card with the JPEGs so I took it home and loaded both the RAW files and the JPEG files into Lightroom Classic. When looking at the files and preliminarily picking and editing a few, it turned out the JPEG files, even under such bad light, high contrast and terrible circumstances, were easier to edit and finalize than the RAW files! Who would have guessed? By the way, due to the extreme contrasty situation, I set the film simulation to Pro Neg L. That is not the flattest film simulation available in the camera, but the camera handled the lighting situation very well.
 |
| ISO 6400 (click to enlarge) |
It was easier to edit the JPEG file into final images than my RAW files. That, in and of itself, is quite unusual. The JPEGs were sharper, had better color and allowed me to reduce or eliminate the noise while keeping detail. The RAWs didn't handle the noise nearly as well. There must be some kind of magic in Fujifilm’s in-camera film simulations and JPEG engine. At the end of my LR session, I struggled to duplicate the look of the JPEGs when editing the RAW image files. Go figure?
Often times, I’ve written about how good JPEG files are in today’s latest and greatest digital cameras. To me, this is a good example of when a manufacturer’s internal image processor does much better job than Adobe’s Lightroom RAW converter. Also, I'll acknowledge that Capture One or another image editing software might have done better with the RAW conversions. So, I can't discount LR as the issue and not some magic in Fujifilm's JPEG engine.
 |
| ISO 6400 (click to enlarge) |
 |
| No horses were hurt in the making of this birthday party! (click to enlarge) |
 |
| (click to enlarge) |
In the future, I won’t hesitate to shoot JPEGs with this camera. I now have full confidence that, under difficult and unusual situations, the JPEGs may actually work better than the RAW files.
Join me over at my website, www.dennismook.com.
Thanks for looking. Enjoy!
Dennis A. Mook
All content on this blog is © 2013-2020 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.
Hi Dennis,
ReplyDeleteI’d be interested to know the in-camera settings you used for Tone Curve, Color, Clarity and Sharpness to get the results in these images. Dan Bailey, a Fujifilm Ambassador, always raves about the results he gets shooting jpegs using the in-camera settings and rarely shoots RAW Thanks.
photoguy1743, thanks for your question. I know Dan and he is not only a good photographer but also a good teacher. He is worth reading.
DeleteI used Pro Neg Std. highlights, shadows and clarity zeroed out. I set the noise reduction on -4, color for -1 and sharpness at +1. When I shot medium format film cameras for decades, I used to use a Kodak color negative film made for weddings and portraits. The last version I used was called Vericolor III. I found it worked very well for outdoor subjects, landscapes, etc. as the contrast curve was a bit lower than the typical outdoor film. Also, the colors were not overly saturated but very neutral and realistic. Of course, we couldn’t adjust color or contrast when printing back then, only brightness and color balance. Pro Neg Std. is very much like Vericolor III and I find it very versatile for general work. I hope this helps.
Good job Grandpa! Your granddaughter looks like she enjoyed the ride.
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting result between JPEG and RAW. There have been times I have shot JPEG with Olympus, and the light fooled the meter and I was unable to rescue the photo, regardless of what I did with the temp and tint.
Curious if the new Fuji and updated LR still result in the "worm" effect I hear Fuji users discussing.
Jim, yes, unusual and unexpected. Since, I’ve bought my X-T4, I’ve not had any issues with the “worms” or smearing of greens. I’ve found that using the same sharpening parameters as you would use for Bayer sensor cameras just doesn’t work well with the X-Trans sensor. I’ll reduce the Detail slider to 0, reduce the radius slider to .9 and then add some Amount slider. Also, I’ve found I don’t need to add as much Amount to get the same level of sharpness as with other cameras. The X-Trans sensor seems to inherently give a bit more sharpness and detail than Bayer sensors. I believe the worms are from over sharpening.
DeleteHi Dennis,
ReplyDeleteLovely family photos. The girls will appreciate them when they are older and looking through albums.
I also have the X-T4 and gave up using raw files some weeks ago. The jpg files are nicer to look at and, best of all, I don't have to do much (if anything) with them. Maybe a bit of contrast or clarity if the scene was dull. I use the film simulations without any adjustments. Negative High is my usual setting. Oh, and I also set the noise reduction to -2 and the grain to Weak. Life has been much simpler since I switched to jpg only.
Thank you Marcus.
ReplyDelete