Reurters issues ban worldwide ban on RAW photos
- Thread starter Michael Thames
- Start date
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Oh brother. This is a PR move in pseudo journalistic integrity that in the end, penalizes photographers and doesn't help anyone else. Thankfully almost all modern DSLRs can shoot both at the same time but now this requires the photographer to manage two data chains, buy more media and have their journalistic integrity called into question, all in one fell swoop. Ironically, sending Reuters RAW images guarantees more truth and integrity than sending JPEGs, but they are too PC to figure that out. Most photojournalism that is shot out there always faces challenges with correct white balance, sharpness, grain from shooting under or over exposed under duress. RAW was a viable solution to many of these challenges, but Reuters has decided to take those options to produce better, more truthful images to what actually existed away from photographers. They suck.
I only shoot RAW but thankfully, I shoot for myself and my art, not for Reuters.
I only shoot RAW but thankfully, I shoot for myself and my art, not for Reuters.
It makes sense. Most of their photos go online and there's no need for them to download these huge files from the modern megapixel cameras, especially when someone sends them dozens of images at once.
It's Reuters, not Vogue.
It's Reuters, not Vogue.
Which reminds me of an old Seinfeld bit (paraphrased) - "You're not journalistic. And you've never had integrity".
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lovecameras
Carbonite Member
Ridiculous. Watering down on quality. This society sucks when it compromises all the time and sheeple tag along....
"Reuters found that photos processed from RAWs are more likely to distort the truth."
What? You can manipulate a .jpg in photoshop just as easy as a RAW file. You can pull some more info out of the blacks, or the burned out areas of a photo with RAW but that's hardly distorting the truth, more like uncovering it.
What? You can manipulate a .jpg in photoshop just as easy as a RAW file. You can pull some more info out of the blacks, or the burned out areas of a photo with RAW but that's hardly distorting the truth, more like uncovering it.
Michael Thames
Carbonite Member
I think it's an attempt by the media to call into question any photo, or video for that matter and suggest it's photoshopped. If you see a legitament photo or video of a UFO, people flood YouTube with fake videos so after a while you don't know what's real or not.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
combatentropy
Veteran
Andrius Simutis
Veteran
I'm not too surprised by this really. I don't shoot as much photography professionally these days, but I was a full time photographer and then photo editor for a magazine group in the pre-digital era. We shot slide film almost exclusively. Mostly it was for reproduction quality, but it really taught you to nail it in camera as you didn't have much room for getting your exposure wrong. It also took away any questions about manipulation.
The Reuters (not Reurters) decision is also the result of images that didn't have the content changed, but had enough manipulation of the lighting to change the tone of the image and thus the meaning. Things like amplifying a ray of sunlight to highlight a subject and make the image more dramatic. That's fine if you're shooting a movie, but not so much if you're reporting the facts of what happened.
The Reuters (not Reurters) decision is also the result of images that didn't have the content changed, but had enough manipulation of the lighting to change the tone of the image and thus the meaning. Things like amplifying a ray of sunlight to highlight a subject and make the image more dramatic. That's fine if you're shooting a movie, but not so much if you're reporting the facts of what happened.
Can't you do that with a .jpg as well?
To some extent, but you are already limited to an 8 bit color space vs 12 or 14 bit, so far less room for manipulation and it is far more obvious to a photo editor if you do.
indiawilds
Veteran
Basically they want you to shoot it in the camera as jpeg and then mail them/courier the card. No postprocessing. So see through the viewfinder, compose as you visualise it and then click. Get it right in the field and then move on to the next project. I guess 95% of today's shooters will fail to get acceptable quality when that critieria is implemented.
Barry_Green
Moderator
I seriously, seriously cannot understand folks nowadays.
A Reuters picture editor says "Hi, I'd like to pass on a note of request", and the website interprets that as "REUTERS ISSUES A WORLDWIDE BAN." The Reuters note said "please don't send us processed photos, only send photos that were originally JPEGs with minimal processing" and the website interprets that as:
Sheesh, hyperbole much?
As Indiawilds said, it certainly sounds like they're asking you to not "interpret" the news through grading. How is that a bad thing? Shoot it, report it. My interpretation of it would not be that it's a "worldwide ban on raw", or an assault on journalistic integrity, or that it requires a gigantic "ban raw" symbol... it'd be that they're saying "Please don't shoot in raw and then grade it and then send that to us, send us the original JPG. If you HAVE to mess with the levels, then adjust the levels a little, but leave it as untouched as possible."
Why would they want that? perhaps to avoid a situation like this, wherein Newsweek and Time both used the same photo on the same day, but through "artistic interpretation", they send a very different message with the same photo:
So the assertion is that Time tried to paint OJ as guilty and to make him look more "sinister" by darkening the photo. Whether you agree or not, I do think a disservice was done to fairness in reporting by manipulating the photo in such a way. Then again, I think a disservice was done to fairness in reporting by Newsweek slapping a hyperbolic title like "TRAIL OF BLOOD" in thick bold letters over his photo, where Time took a much more neutral angle with "An American Tragedy" using a much less in-your-face font...
But at least with unprocessed photos, any bias that's conveyed is strictly the magazine or news network's, and not the photographer's, so it seems like at least a start... and in a free market, Reuters should be allowed to (and in fact are free to) set the standards by which they will buy photos; if you don't find their standards to your liking, you're free to sell your photos to AP or the BBC or Al Jazeera or NBC or C-SPAN or Fox News or any of the other outlets, right?
Michael Thames
Carbonite Member
I seriously, seriously cannot understand folks nowadays.
A Reuters picture editor says "Hi, I'd like to pass on a note of request", and the website interprets that as "REUTERS ISSUES A WORLDWIDE BAN." The Reuters note said "please don't send us processed photos, only send photos that were originally JPEGs with minimal processing" and the website interprets that as:
Sheesh, hyperbole much?
As Indiawilds said, it certainly sounds like they're asking you to not "interpret" the news through grading. How is that a bad thing? Shoot it, report it. My interpretation of it would not be that it's a "worldwide ban on raw", or an assault on journalistic integrity, or that it requires a gigantic "ban raw" symbol... it'd be that they're saying "Please don't shoot in raw and then grade it and then send that to us, send us the original JPG. If you HAVE to mess with the levels, then adjust the levels a little, but leave it as untouched as possible."
Why would they want that? perhaps to avoid a situation like this, wherein Newsweek and Time both used the same photo on the same day, but through "artistic interpretation", they send a very different message with the same photo:
So the assertion is that Time tried to paint OJ as guilty and to make him look more "sinister" by darkening the photo. Whether you agree or not, I do think a disservice was done to fairness in reporting by manipulating the photo in such a way. Then again, I think a disservice was done to fairness in reporting by Newsweek slapping a hyperbolic title like "TRAIL OF BLOOD" in thick bold letters over his photo, where Time took a much more neutral angle with "An American Tragedy" using a much less in-your-face font...
But at least with unprocessed photos, any bias that's conveyed is strictly the magazine or news network's, and not the photographer's, so it seems like at least a start... and in a free market, Reuters should be allowed to (and in fact are free to) set the standards by which they will buy photos; if you don't find their standards to your liking, you're free to sell your photos to AP or the BBC or Al Jazeera or NBC or C-SPAN or Fox News or any of the other outlets, right?
So who is manipulating what? Sounds like you are fine with mainstream news manipulating photos to their likening, but someone on the ground reporting sending in raw files which are much more accurate are not somehow representing the facts.
High1ander
Well-known member
I don't think that is what he is arguing.
It seem's like people are making a hen out of a feather. I'm not on reuters, so I have no idea of what the average problems they have with images, but I wouldn't be surprised that some people try to maximize too much out of their raw pictures (maybe sharpening too much, HDR-look, etc.) and that those "problems" are usually something you get when you play too much with the raw-files, but much harder to have it set in JPEG on the camera to create "too fancy" pictures (sure, you can put the sharpening/detail to max, etc. but I think few would do so). That's just one of my guesses for why it preferred to have JPEG's over raw. Basically, shooting RAW is for the intention of post-manipulation (and max quality archive), JPEG is shoot to be finished and sent as it is.
Andrius Simutis
Veteran
It's also a file size and speed issue. If you take the time to clean up the raw images and then upload them as big DNG files, the other photographers for AP could have a JPEG already on their sites beating Reuters to the scoop. The glossy weekly magazines will still want those raw images since they have a little more time to put a nicer looking story together.
Barry hits the nail on the head. Peta Pixel does a "OJ / Time" cover & really did a number on editorializing from the top.
Yes & no. The heart of what they're saying is "Don't send us edited photos." So if you shot a jpeg & did a lot of processing to it, they wouldn't be happy. But if you only shot RAW & then sent them a jpeg that only has minor level corrective adjustments, I'm pretty sure they'd be like "Yeah, that's fine, just try to shoot jpeg too next time."
I also think that if you shot something with the wrong white balance, you could send them the untouched jpeg off the camera & a jpeg from the RAW image w/ corrected white balance, and again, I'm 99% sure they'd still be fine with it.
Yes & no. The heart of what they're saying is "Don't send us edited photos." So if you shot a jpeg & did a lot of processing to it, they wouldn't be happy. But if you only shot RAW & then sent them a jpeg that only has minor level corrective adjustments, I'm pretty sure they'd be like "Yeah, that's fine, just try to shoot jpeg too next time."
I also think that if you shot something with the wrong white balance, you could send them the untouched jpeg off the camera & a jpeg from the RAW image w/ corrected white balance, and again, I'm 99% sure they'd still be fine with it.
High1ander
Well-known member
As a photographer, you won't have them on most of the time. It "taints" the image too much, JPEG more or less force you to do it right and be conservative.