The Things I've Seen

The nice thing about RAW is that it is exactly what the camera captures. It may not sound like much, but the benefit of it is you can tweak it to hell in back. There are billions of more colors in a RAW image versus a JPG. The noise reduction is more fine tuned. And the tonal values from high to low are greater.

One of the bad things about shooting RAW is that it does require post processing. As a photographer learns their craft more, they will want to have more control of the images they produce. It is likely that the image that your camera is capturing is not the way that you saw it. The best way to correct that is to take a RAW image and make it the way you saw it.

Thanks for your response.

Thank you!

Most of the work you see on here is taken with either a Nikon D200 or D300. I often times use polarizers and GND filters as well. 

I also use Lightroom, CS3, and Photomatix depending on my needs. But most of my editing is done in Lightroom. I try and keep it as realistic as possible.

The image here was taken with a Nikon D300 with a polarizer and a 2-stop graduated neutral density filter to darken the sky. Because I shoot in RAW, the images right out of the camera are very bland. I first corrected for white balance, exposure, contrast, saturation. I then dodged and burned to balance the polarization and GND filters.

The image on the left is what the camera saw. The one on the right is what I saw.

Really? Wow! That really means a lot to me. Thank you!

Thank you!!! I wish I could tell you I traveled all around the world. But in all reality, I don’t venture past the 4 corners area. We’ll see what the spring brings!