First ,sorry for a off topic question.
I am giving an introductory lecture on RT to a group of professional photographers most them using JPEG workflow and want to switch over to RAW workflow. So I am looking for a powerful title which compel them to attend , not to miss the class at any cost.!!!
And most of the them have heard of Lightroom
and not of RT and DT and the concept of FLOSS.
and most of them think that RAW means Lightroom ,and Lightroom means RAW, so for such a crowd I want some compelling and attractive title to RT introductory class.
Please give some suggestions. I am doing this with no commercial benefits.
Thanks in advance
Liberate Your RAW Processing A look at non-proprietary RAW processing with RawTherapee
That’s just off the cuff. I presume your presentation will try to point out various advantages to using RT versus Lightroom. Your actual title should hint at those advantages, and should strike a tone that is suitable for the audience and the venue.
I am from India too and here is what I think about your idea.
In a typical Indian wedding, the official photographer comes with a couple of strobes on a stand and he generally can control the lighting to his wish. Everyone adjusts to his demands!! Therefore, apart from white balance issues (and a normal Indian customer is not bothered if the red saree of the bride has a bit magenta overtone or the Yellow turban on the groom’s head looks a bit saffronish) he (there are no female wedding photographers!!) will not gain much by switching to a raw workflow. In my personal experience, I found out that they are generally very happy producing rich saturated colours and brightly lit smiling faces in their photos. Using Rawtherapee will be too subtle an improvement for them at the cost of spending lot more time.
However, most social events in India are poorly lit and the photographer is not granted full access. Here using raw images can make a significant difference in salvaging an OK image into an acceptable image.
Therefore, if I were in your position, I will make this point clear to them and actually show them a few examples how you were able to retrieve an image from an impossible position to make them attend your classes with seriousness. Also, anything free loses its importance so I also suggest that you should charge them a significant amount (after all they are professionals, they should pay to improve their skills). Once they have paid you, it will force them to attend regularly. If you do not want to keep any of that money, you can always donate it to FOSS programs!!
I wish you all the best in your endeavour. Cheers.
I agree with you to some extent regarding raw workflow for wedding photographers in India.
But ,you might also know that the trend is shifting more towards candid shots, so does your idea hold good for candid shots also .
Most wedding photographers want to take a look at candid photography in wedding ceremony , so what is your take on this about raw work flow here, please comment.
I am no expert in photography but one thing is clear to me. The difference between shooting raw and in JPEG comes to fore when one is interested in subtler points of photography. Another general rule is that very few people in life will care much about subtlety (in anything). Therefore, for a professional photographer to find a paying client who appreciates the nuances brought forward by raw processing is extremely rare. Upshot of all of this is : a photographer should embark on a raw workflow only if he or she is interested in subtlety and therefore is not happy with jpeg results coming out of camera.
Since candid photography at a wedding hall in India is also geared at showing a person at his/her best, the subtlety of getting their character into a photo is absent. So even if they do candid photography, it will be hard for them to appreciate the difference. That is why almost everyone with a camera is happy with camera output.
Anyways, to cut a long answer short, it is not the type of photography that demands raw workflow but a type of attitude. Unless your students have it, no matter what they do, they will revert back to jpeg. Saying, `I don’t see much difference anyway.’
I’m not indian but I photographed an indian wedding in the past. And I must say that looking back I wish I would have already photographed in raw. I just photographed the temple ceremony and it was basically harsh midday sun with strong shadows under the stone structures. So the results are extremely contrasty pictures, often overexposed in one part or underexposed in the other part. Plus sometimes desaturated colors because of the bright light. Here raws would have helped a lot in bringing out more color and more detail.
Well, kind of. But I was photographing the whole event during the ceremony including the guest etc… and so I had to deal with the lightning conditions. This was candid shots. Same was valid for the other photographers at the place.
I disagree with this. The point of using raw is not to salvage something out of a bucket full of garbage. Delete the garbage, be a better photographer. Using raw lets you tweak images at a quality level which is just not possible with JPEGs for technical reasons, not taste or opinion. It puts you in the driver’s seat. If I was at a workshop where someone talked about raw as a way of recovering my crappy photos, I would leave. On the other hand, if I was at a workshop where someone explained what raw is and how to improve my camera skills in such a way that I take full advantage of the various benefits raw brings, that’s a workshop I could attend.
There should not be any white balance issues when shooting with strobes. They are controlled light, designed to have a consistent and pleasing tone. If someone has white balance issues when using multiple strobes, I’d recommend attending a different kind of workshop.
@Morgan_Hardwood Here are many ways to get a white balance issues with strobes:
Use two strobes from different companies, neither of them are of neutral light type.
Bounce them off locally made umbrellas that are not pure white
Compete your strobes with bright yellowish lights from the video shooter who is simultaneously capturing the wedding live.
Set a totally wrong white balance in your camera while shooting in such an environment.
Believe me, most stills wedding photographers in India not only employ all of these methods but also are ingenious enough to cook some more of their own ways.
Secondly, there is a large spectrum between an acceptable image and a GARBAGE. For example, one can have a beautifully composed shot capturing a decisive moment but the lighting is so awful that a baked JPEG is not usable. Again, this is what usually happens at an event shoot in crappy light in India. That is what I meant when I said that raw workflow is more useful in there.
@shreedhar ok, I accept your arguments - human ingenuity knows no bounds, and the ability to improvise seems to be inversely proportional to one’s income (thinking of myself here, I’ve done my share of lighting hacks), and raw sure can help.
Thanks a lot for the link of Floss presentations , but I am sorry to say that I have no knowledge how to make use of it, sorry for my poor computer knowledge.
So ,please can you give me step by step instructions on how to get these presentations in to my windows system and make use of it .Please note I am on windows system with Firefox browser .
