Reurters issues ban worldwide ban on RAW photos

[J Michael]

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.

If you are shooting with a 5D III you are going to be shooting with some combination of settings for contrast, saturation, color tone, and sharpness. It's up to you to decide which settings to use. Should one desire to alter the image so as to make your subject appear a certain way the settings are available to do so - on a 5DIII it's just menu->picture style and select a style you've pre-defined for contrast, saturation, color tone, and sharpness. That was the point. Now if you need to supply work for Time and Newsweek perhaps you have a custom setting for each one. Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to bracket between your custom settings. I'm picturing Reuters dealing with a bunch of Instagrammed images and thinking this is going to solve their problem.

 

[Michael Thames]

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.

What I mean is, who did the manipulation of the skin tones on the two magazine covers? The photographer or the magazines? In effect what I think they are saying is........ Let Rueter's do the manipulation... Shut up and just send us the photos.

 

[High1ander]

If you are shooting with a 5D III you are going to be shooting with some combination of settings for contrast, saturation, color tone, and sharpness. It's up to you to decide which settings to use. Should one desire to alter the image so as to make your subject appear a certain way the settings are available to do so - on a 5DIII it's just menu->picture style and select a style you've pre-defined for contrast, saturation, color tone, and sharpness. That was the point. Now if you need to supply work for Time and Newsweek perhaps you have a custom setting for each one. Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to bracket between your custom settings. I'm picturing Reuters dealing with a bunch of Instagrammed images and thinking this is going to solve their problem.

Of course you can have different settings like that, but I don't think people "when doing fast news" will have settings on the camera that are too "extreme" in skin detail, tone, hue, etc... You might have one with a bit more color and contrast, one more softer, etc. but it will probably be much more subtle than the effects applied later when working with Raw, I'm mostly thinking of people going too crazy with getting an HDR-look Raw. Basically, I think that if you are forced to do JPEG, you will play it a bit more safe. Don''t get me wrong, I think raw is great and I would prefer getting raw pictures to work with, but if the deal is that it needs to be fast, then raw just doesn't cut it.

What I mean is, who did the manipulation of the skin tones on the two magazine covers? The photographer or the magazines? In effect what I think they are saying is........ Let Rueter's do the manipulation... Shut up and just send us the photos.

I don't think reuters did the manipulation, I would think that is the magazines themselves.

 

[DLD]

... I'm picturing Reuters dealing with a bunch of Instagrammed images and thinking this is going to solve their problem.

I'd call them "the citizen journalists", people who are not pros but those who just happened to be in the right place at the right time (or the wrong place at the wrong time). And that won't be in any way comparable to the high quality pro photography but it'll be better than nothing at all.

And Reuters workflow probably has to reflect the vast preponderance of the "citizen journalist" photos over pros.

 

[J Michael]

... it will probably be much more subtle than the effects applied later when working with Raw...

Yes, if one had ulterior motives it would be to ones benefit to make the alteration subtle. For instance in covering the black presidential candidate making him slightly darker than he really appears, or shifting the color tone slightly green on a white candidate to make her appear sick. The goal after all would be to invoke some psychological cue. There is an interesting effect with color balance - the eye tends to accept what is seen when there is no standard reference by which to compare such as a guide print. It may become so accepted by the viewer that when a correction is made to make the color more realistic the attachment to the prior color balance may result in a rejection of the better/accurate color. I've seen this a lot. So subtle manipulation may not be noticed by the editor when there is nothing by which to compare.

 

[High1ander]

Yes, if one had ulterior motives it would be to ones benefit to make the alteration subtle. For instance in covering the black presidential candidate making him slightly darker than he really appears, or shifting the color tone slightly green on a white candidate to make her appear sick. The goal after all would be to invoke some psychological cue. There is an interesting effect with color balance - the eye tends to accept what is seen when there is no standard reference by which to compare such as a guide print. It may become so accepted by the viewer that when a correction is made to make the color more realistic the attachment to the prior color balance may result in a rejection of the better/accurate color. I've seen this a lot. So subtle manipulation may not be noticed by the editor when there is nothing by which to compare.

True, but to me the settings that "should" be done in camera can more or less only be seen as choosing film stock and lenses, i.e. some will have more color and contrast, others will be more muted, some might have better yellows and others pinks, etc... but as long as you are not using a "crazy film stock/settings" then I don't think you are doing anything wrong. I mean, I don't think that when you have little time you will worry about finessing the image, and when you are working in conditions that you can't control the light and the subjects then you will have to play it safe in camera. If you are shooting in a controlled environment then you can do all the tweaks you like, but then you are likely not in a time constraint to get the picture ASAP to reuters either.