NYCC: Lesson 2

Embrace RAW.

I've shot RAW since day 2 of my photographic journey. Originally this was done solely on the reading of a website that claimed "you should only shoot in RAW". At the time, I had no idea why. I was too bogged down with learning the camera inside and out to bother with post-processing.

Less than a year after I was fully engrossed with tweaking my pictures to ensure they look and feel as I had originally seen them or intended them to feel.

But at certain times I'm reminded of exactly why RAW rules.

While I was rushing to a press event, I happened across this little R2 unit. He was buzzing and whirring in circles briefly while I pushed through to the front of the crowd and in an instant, he was off!

Camera always in hand, I was able to make a few photos before he completely disappeared. however, upon checking the photos on the LCD, I was dismayed at my inability to set the exposure quickly enough. I had dialed-down the flash prior to making this photo, for something else, and had not powered it back up before this picture.

Luckily, shooting in RAW I was able to make a few key modifications. First, I changed the white balance. Although the strobe did indeed fire, and the white balance was set to flash - I was rather unhappy with the apparent amount of ambient tungsten light that made its way into this image. Even at 1/100th, the yellow hue from the lights was blasting the dome of this astromech unit.

Once I cooled the photo down a bit, I was then concerned with the exposure. I used both the overall exposure setting, as well as fill light slider in Lightroom to get the initial exposure where I wanted it. After that, I modified the dark, light, highlight and shadow curves to get it just right. Finally, I popped the blue tones a bit more to bring out the detailed color of the droid.

In hindsight, I really should have avoided the direction flash, as the front panel of the droid is over-exposed. Additionally, I should have held the camera up a bit more and shot downward to avoid the distracting feet in the background. Otherwise, I was ecstatic with the ability to turn this dull shot into something tolerable to look at.