bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

The crashing part is resolved by buying the insurance. DJI is the producer of most consumer drones. The give you 48 hours from the first use to buy their crash insurance. There is a deductible. I've used it once (so far!) and they sent me a brand new one in 3 days.

The boredom issue is divided in two parts. If all you do is fly it like a model airplane, it will get boring. Airline pilots get bored. The other part is the photography and videography. Drones are cameras. A drone adds to your range of composition possibilities. If you are not bored with photography and videography, you will not get bored with a drone.

Flyerace Loc: Mt Pleasant, WI

Jerry,
In Wisconsin, drones have altitude limits when within 5 miles of an airport. The ENTIRE of Racine County is within 5 miles of an airport. Kenosha Airport on the south, Batton Field in Racine, Milwaukee on the north and Burlington on the west. That means no high flying drones anywhere in Racine area. I don't mind because I can stay within the confines and not get in the way of corporate jets or commercial flights. It is kind of fun to fly drones. Mine has a very limited battery fly time, but I bought a ton of batteries and can cover a lot of space. Try it, you might like it.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Jerry--

Every exposure I make is recorded both as a raw file and as a carefully crafted JPEG. The exception is with my older cameras (D200, D300s), where the inherent limitations of the cameras put some tight constraints on any benefit that the raw information would provide. In the case of the D200, the whole purpose of using the camera at all is to take advantage of the characteristics of the CCD sensor and the designed-in look and feel of the images. Nothing I choose to do with the JPEG, including sometimes switching to Black & White and using built-in processing options has any effect, nor places any limitations on what I might choose to do later with the raw version.

Sometimes, those JPEGs turn out to be exactly what is needed. Here are three images from my school's graduation ceremony early last month.

I call the first one "Rapt Attention." It is of the Valedictorian delivering his address. Folks on the stage are the Superintendent, School Board, other members of the Administration, the Principal, and others from the school. I've already forwarded a copy of the file to the Valedictorian, who loves it and is planning to print it for display. I know that Ben doesn't have the most attractive facial expression, so both you and he can take a look at the fourth image below.

I haven't fully decided about the other two images. They are shot as a diptych. The student speaking was talking about what the past four years at the school had meant to him, and he was making a brief statement to his parents in his native language. I happened to notice that they were standing just two or three rows in front of me and were standing to receive his words. And yes, I wish I had framed the Principal better in the shot of the graduate.

These were all shot at ISO 1,000, f/4.5, 1/50 second with a D500. White Balance was set manually at 4,000K to match the LED lighting used in the year-old venue. And while I did think about it, nothing has been done to them since they left the camera.

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BudsOwl Loc: Upstate NY and New England

Unfortunately, when I click on yje picture all it does is enlarge it for the screen. There is no way for me to see the whole BEFORE or the whole AFTER so that's why I thought it was to pictures. My apologies to Jerry.
Bud

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

The 5 mile guideline is out of date. The FAA has created a system called LAANC where you get clearance on your cell phone for mapped areas around airports. Not sure what you mean by "high flying" but the overall FAA drone limit is 400 feet.

Each of the squares in the circles have a ceiling ranging up to 400 feet. The area between Racine and Burlington is wide open to drones.

Robertl594 Loc: Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Nantucket

It’s simple math. JPEG’s are 8 bit which equals 256 tonal processed values per channel. RAW is 14 bit, which equals 4,096 unprocessed tonal values per channel.

Now, I’m no math major, but I personally think 4,096 tonal values sure is a lot more information than 256. Remember CGA vs VGA?

Memory and storage are cheap. The RAW files are not that much larger than JPEG’s that it makes a huge difference.

I have not shot a JPEG since 2000 when I learned the difference. I am so sorry that the images I shot in 1999 are JPEG.

Why drive a YUGO when you can drive a Rolls Royce for no more money and retain complete control of your files for newer software as it is developed?

So, I agree with your plug for RAW!

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

Brilliant color and clarity 💙💙🏆💙💙

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

Maybe I wasn't shooting ETTR, but I have yet to find RAW better than JPG for getting detail out of shadows.

Blair Shaw Jr Loc: Dunnellon,Florida

profbowman Loc: Harrisonburg, VA, USA

Jerry, I am very glad for you that you could save and work with some photos from back in 2016. However, as a scientist, I want to point out that your experience does not show that saving a file as RAW vs. saving it as JPEG is better.

To make a fair comparison, one should have these items. (And I am not trying to defend either approach but rather just supporting science.)

1. The same starting conditions. Someone who works with the RAW tile and someone who works with the saved JPEG file that comes out of the software that does the conversion from RAW.

2. The experiment needs to be controlled. In this case it means that we need to see the results from the person working with the RAW file and the best result of the perions work from the JPEG file.

3. And since we are dealing with some subjectiveness from the observers and the developers, this study needs to be "blind." The same software needs to be used in both cases, and the best way would the developers should not know which file they are beginning with.

To illustrate my point, I have attached a file where I used very simplistic software and still came out with rresutls similar to yours. I began with your JPEG fille as posted to UHH since I did not have access to the file you began with. I worked on the man and the woman with their plate at the table and then cut them out oof you photo and pasted that back over top of my massaged photo so that the backgrounds were similar. --Richard

davyboy Loc: Anoka Mn.

These to are different pictures!

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Look carefully. Pay special attention to the green blouse and the arm coming out of its sleeve.

Josephakraig

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I'm an old guy, I've been shooting for 60+ years, ever since high school. I have graduated to a Nikon D850 and am thrilled with how good it makes me look. I also have been using a drone for the last ten or so years. While I have a few drones, my newest is the DJI Mavic 3 pro. I have lost drones, it's not a good day when that happens. I have found that they don't work well under water or in the rain. I have spent plenty getting them repaired and plenty buying them but they can give you some really spectacular pictures. If you really want to try drones I would suggest that you try a drone with a camera that has a larger sensor than the average drone has. Something like the DJI Phantom 4 Pro or the Mavic 2 pro. Each of them have the 1" 20 megapixel camera and give pretty fair dynamic range. Both of those drones can be had on the used market pretty cheap if you consider $700 or $800 cheap. The DJI Air 2S also has a 1 inch sensor, it is 20 megapixel with pretty good dynamic range and shoots RAW as do both of the other drones I named. The 2S is going to be hard to find on the used market, it is really well liked but they only cost $999.00 brand new for the basic kit. I recently upgraded to the DJI Mavic 3 pro which has a slightly larger camera that has very nice dynamic range plus has three different cameras. The main camera is a Hasselblad 4/3rds and is really nice, the second which is a mid range telephoto lens while having the capability to shoot in 48Megapixel mode is not as nice a camera as the main camera but does pretty well and there is a third camera that shoots at 166mm for a pretty long telephoto. If you are good at using Lightroom or any other variant of software that has a camera RAW editor then you can get a lot from any of the drones I just listed. I have tried to attach pictures but the system doesn't seem to be working, they are remarkable. As I have gotten old it is much more difficult to get shots I used to be able to climb around to, now my drones do the climbing. I take at least as many drone pictures now as I do on my 850. The drone can't match the 850 but they are good. I highly recommend you get a drone with a good camera, you will get shots you could only have imagined before.

SX2002 Loc: Adelaide, South Australia

I've probably shot a RAW file 20 times in my life, I can never see the difference to the same shot in JPEG. (NEF(RAW)+JPEG Nikon) I prefer to get it right in the camera than spend a lot of time editing...
I get published regularly in national magazines and have won several awards so I've never felt the need to shoot RAW.