Author Topic: Success, organization, mistakes - a warning tale. (Read 512 times)

Alf · « **on:** November 21, 2011, 03:26:08 PM »

My home workflow is pretty simple: shoot jpeg+RAW, import into iPad to choose thw survivors, do some editing there in Snapseed or Photogene2, import the rest to the PC and do the real postprocessing in Lightroom.

But I was going to leave for Rajasthan, and to bring with me as little as possible.

Before leaving I worked out the numbers, and the result was unconfortable - expecting about 3500 pics, Jpeg+RAW was too large. Plus, I wasn't going to take my iPad with me, so I thought the jpegs would have been useless as the postprocessing was going to happen on my home PC in Lightroom.

So I decided to test my luck, and save space by going RAW only on my E-PL1 - beautiful jpegs or not.

Fast forward a few weeks, and here I was at home, unloading my cards and finding how painfully slow is the RAW only import on the iPad: it has to create a jpeg preview for each RAW pic and it takes forever and ever ever. Not going to happen.

Intermediate solution, leave the iPad alone, skip that step, on to the PC and massive import of whatever was in the cards.. 2337 .ORF files to look at.

I ended up abandoning the cleaning task, and processing what I liked most for a few weeks, then coming back to the task and finally completing it at 715 pics (just more than 30%) to process.

I am at #314, 400 to go, only about 80 of those are already edited.

Lessons in editing:
1. Massive works must be in jpeg+raw for me. Picture selection from the sofa is unbeatable, and gives as a result a sorted set for LR editing. Going RAW only was the biggest mistake and resulted in lots of time wasted.
2. Olympus viewer must not be undervalued. Frome the raw ORF files it produced a parallel set of nonedited jpegs to play with on the iPad this winter.
3. Lightroom is great for for the organizing work, and works beautifully with the iPad as secondary almost-calibrated monitor for editing (thanks Ctein for this idea). This resulted in the most beautiful prints from my files ever made.

Lessons in shooting:
1. Yes, you can shoot in the field without seeing (really harsh daytime light), as long as you know what you are looking at and are ready to crop.
2. The greatest defect of the E-PL1 is that it is slow to operate and focus, missed quite a few opportunity pics in the street because of this.
3. The greatest strength of the E-PL1 is image quality, with the Lumix 20/1.5 and also with the 14-42mkI which really shines when you get to places where light is strong.

Open:
More lenses for the E-PL1 or a new body?
Lenses : Samyang 7.5 or Olympus 9-18, plus 45/1.8
Body: Price dictates it should be G3 or E-PL3, but I really like the V1.

While my brain works out a solution, you'll find me shooting here and there, and playing again with the Raj files.

Em5 Pete · « **Reply #1 on:** November 21, 2011, 03:57:19 PM »

So, you have your Winter Photo's already taken

I find I upload all my RW2 files on my Computer, and work from there... I don't delete as much as I should.
I use Capture One, and it takes just a few minutes for a few hundred full-size RW2's from my SDHC card.

But, I don't have 1000's to deal with, just a few hundred at most.

lisandra · « **Reply #2 on:** November 21, 2011, 05:08:19 PM »

Im not understanding...exactly how does RAW+JPEG saves you time?

count_zero · « **Reply #3 on:** November 21, 2011, 05:12:48 PM »

Quote

2. Olympus viewer must not be undervalued. Frome the raw ORF files it produced a parallel set of nonedited jpegs to play with on the iPad this winter.

The getOlympus Q&A person said that Jpeg from the camera could be better than from OV2 because the firmware is newer than the OV2 software conversion. I don't think we have an OV2 update since the last E-P3 firmware update, but it's probably just as good as the E-PL1 firmware.

Alf · « **Reply #4 on:** November 21, 2011, 10:55:26 PM »

Quote from: lisandra on November 21, 2011, 05:08:19 PM

Im not understanding...exactly how does RAW+JPEG saves you time?

When importing into the iPad, if I shot Raw+Jpeg the process is many times faster, because there is no need to create a preview from raw.

voyager · « **Reply #5 on:** November 21, 2011, 11:09:58 PM »

I used to do RAW + JPEG but I realized that it was redundant for no reason. If you are ever happy with JPEG files, then it works sometimes, but I never am.

adash · « **Reply #6 on:** November 28, 2011, 07:39:40 AM »

Quote

When importing into the iPad, if I shot Raw+Jpeg the process is many times faster, because there is no need to create a preview from raw.

No idea how iPad works, but the RAW file has an embedded preview image, while JPEG does not.

Success, organization, mistakes - a warning tale.