BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I mostly agree with what you said, but this comment made me think does subject really trump quality? I say no, they are probably equal, and here's why. One subject I've always been interested in is naked wimmin. Great subject for photography, as proven by naked wimmin magazines and so on.
Of course, the Hog has a naked wimmin section. The quality of work there is stunning. Stunning because mostly, it shows poor quality does not trump subject matter (I can't pull it off either guys, no big deal). My second thought contradicts my first thought, and that is photographing cats and dogs. Not as great a subject as naked wimmin but it is so hard to take truly bad picture of a cat or a dog, even if taken with a cell phone by a first time photographer.. So whats my point?

No idea, I haven't finished my first coffee yet.

leftj Loc: Texas

Might just be the most insightful post of the day.

chasgroh Loc: Buena Park, CA

...do you mean he's not truth-telling? Because "anecdotal" has that as its base, personal experience included. When I read stuff like this "story," I tend to think that the writer actually read of the account in a bio/history and is simply recalling in his own words.

leftj Loc: Texas

Oxford Dictionary - "not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research."

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

If your point is that some women are better looking than others then subject matter trumps technical quality.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

If you shoot in RAW, and then don't touch that image with any other processing then you have let a machine finish your image. The main difference is the raw image probably looks like crap, while the jpeg probably looks good. Both can be edited quite nicely from minor tonal changes, changing shoe colors to putting the head of a goat on your x's body.

As for people being negative and insulting in this forum, I'd have to assume you never participated in old FidoNet Echo's or about any of the internet newsgroups. This forum is about as friendly as it gets.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Actually, he had an almost photographic memory (no pun intended). He could remember exactly what happened in even his very early years. For him, f/stop and shutter speed did matter and he was most likely being somewhat funny in his response; he also had a tremendous and at times, inappropriate, sense of humor.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Depending on the photograph, in either case, the image could look fairly good out of the camera, or really bad out of the camera. If shooting RAW you would automatically process, if shooting JPEG not so much. Other than that you have at least entertained the thought of "putting the head of a goat on your x's body" I'm not sure what you are getting at. No one has said you cannot process JPEG. And, in fact, I am saying that you most likely should do that in many cases.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Unless the camera has clipped off some highlights or shadows that you want to recover, it should be safe to edit the JPEG.

But to avoid banding and loss of quality from saving and re-saving the image, convert it to a 16-bit TIFF and work on that version. Once you are done you can save it as a JPEG.

Other than highlight and shadow recovery and the remote possibility that the JPEG already had some banding when it left the camera, there may be little reason to do the raw conversion manually on your PC. Active-D lighting on your camera can also help with moderately wider dynamic range scenes.

There is some justification to starting from the camera's JPEG. If it looks decent then the image was probably exposed correctly. If the scene's DR was too wide, even development from raw might be challenging and the final result might not look appealing.

But if the highlights look good yet the shadows look blocked up, you will need to start with the raw file and bring back the shadows that the JPEG does not have.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

No, that point was regarding dogs and cats.

The women point was that while naked women are spectacular subject matter, poor quality could make any woman not the least bit appealing.

The final point was each point was contradictory. I had no point, nor my morning coffee.

I've since had my coffee, and my new point is, there is no way in hell anyone on earth can look at a great photo and determine if it was taken as a raw or jpg, or any other format.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

Mostly agree. But some are willing to go through hell to prove otherwise.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I process every single jpg worth keeping. If you don't understand what I'm getting at you're not trying. I don't understand what you are getting at when you say "if shooting JPG, not so much" It's particularly confusing since I do process all my jpgs worth spending time with. You say no one has said you cannot process JPEG, perhaps, but almost everyone wearing the raw t-shirt insinuates/says exactly that. Even you, in this post, insinuated it when you said "if shooting jpeg, not so much" I've seen numerous posts on this subject that make it seem if you take only jpg, you might as well leave your lens cap on.

I agree that all RAW photo's must be post processed, even if just to get them to the quality of the jpg. To go past that, rarely does it make any difference if the original was jpg or raw. With a jpg, I can change the white balance, brightness, add blur, remove haze, change shoe color, fix red eye, remove wrinkles, fix your nose, zits, arm fat, replace sky or your ex's head with that of a goat. Can I win photo contests, don't know, don't care.

To me, the main value of raw is it forces a few SOOC folks to get into editing. Editing is my main photo hobby, not that I mind taking pictures, but I don't spend days designing a photo shoot, and hours getting just the right picture. I actually think I take pictures so I can load them into my editor an spend some quality time with them. Been doing exactly that since long before raw was available. When it became available I naturally fooled with it long enough to discover it had no real benefits to me, and YES I have a good understanding of what raw is, and what jpg is, and yes, I love editng photo's. Jpg and editing are not close to mutually exclusive.

And no, I could not in a million years tell if your snapshot of a flower vs your 2 artistic shots of flowers were shot in RAW or JPG. No idea. I'd say both artistic shots had the background edited out, or, were taken with a black velvet sheet behind the flower. I've a ton of flowers like that taken in jpg that I replaced the background with black, or some other appropriate color. Zero, nada, nothing to do with raw or jpg.

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

Or if using photoshop you can save as a pdf, keeping all your layers and edits. I personally haven't used TIFF files since PHOTOGRAFX, long, long before raw files were available. More over, you can actually save jpgs quite a few times at low compression rates with little or no noticeable image loss. More more over, if saving for web, you can often compress down to 60% with no noticeable image loss, depending on the image of course. I always keep my original jpgs, never, ever save the edited file over the original. If I do lots of complex, or time consuming edits, I also save as a PDF. I also save a highly compressed version usually 60% that is also resized HD size (1920 x 1080) which looks fantastic on my monitor, Cell Phone and 55" HD TV, which replaced my slide projector on funky movie screen that used to bore everyone with slides. Now I can do it much better on my HD TV. If I ever want to print, I have both the original jpg and the editied PDF files that are full quality.

TheDman Loc: USA

Here is a side by side comparison, raw and jpg, straight out of the camera, default settings. The difference is so severe I can even see it on my phone.

http://derekdphotos.com/derek/rawjpg.jpg

BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

No wonder you're sporting the RAW T-Shirt. The problem is not the world of jpeg, but your world. Have your camera, or something checked.