Because I have been shooting jpegs with the Nikon P5100 for the past three weeks, I decided to shoot jpegs with my D200 for a while. And I think it produces nice jpegs. But for one reason or another I switched back to RAW and then I noticed that the shots in the LCD looked more like I wanted them to look than they used to do. And then the penny dropped and I remembered an article by Thom Hogan I had read HERE.
And I realized that for the past several years during which I have been shooting RAW I have not taken the appearance of the jpeg into consideration because I have been working on the principle that the jpeg settings do not affect the RAW appearance.
But what I had done when I set the camera to shoot jpeg, was to set the jpeg the way I wanted, and those settings set the appearance of the jpeg image in the LCD even when I reverted to shooting RAW.
The key part of the article is where Thom Hogan talks about the jpeg embedded in the RAW file. Here is what Thom says:
Raw files aren’t processed by the camera. The image processor (EXPEED, Digic, etc.) isn’t involved in interpreting the data. The data in a raw file is essentially a digital count of the analog value of light received by each sensor location. But…
Raw files contain embedded JPEG images (some older Nikons used TIFFs). That embedded JPEG image is used for the preview image on the camera’s LCD and for histogram calculation. That latter point is important: if you’re using histograms to judge exposure, then the camera setting values should closely mimic both the actual conditions (white balance) and your eventual post processing choices (sharpening, etc.). If you use mismatching settings, the histograms will lie to you, which can cause you problems when converting, especially if you accidentally blow out a channel.
And this is also true, it seems to me, of the appearance of the image in the LCD.
Here, to show that a shot taken with the camera set to jpeg can produce a well exposed and colourful image, is a shot taken as a jpeg with the D200.
And finally, I am still working through the 900 + images I took with the Nikon P5100 in Paris. And still thinking about how best to present a selection of them.
