as RAW as it gets (shooting in RAW/NEF format)

After getting into ISB, I had the pleasure of meeting many good photographers. When I tried to steer the discussion into RAW format and image processing workflows, almost all of them had the opinion that RAW format isn't worth the pain - atleast when shooting at a party. I thought I'd take this example to illustrate how shooting in RAW helped me get a good shot.

Here's a picture of one of my friends downing a bottle of beer. I wanted to catch the silhouette for a creative shot. But the light source that was supposed to create the silhouette crept in and fooled the camera's spot metering and grossly underexposed the picture.

Nikon D90 - 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6G VR - 24mm - F/9 - 1/320s - 800 ISO - Cropped

If I had taken this photo in JPEG format, I would have had a tough time to recover the details without botching up. Mind you - asking my friend to pose for the shot again was not possible! The point is that the image sensor of my camera (Nikon D90) is actually sensitive enough to capture a lot more detail and it did. But it is not apparent on the JPEG because the JPEG processor used only part of the dynamic range of the data to render the image, thus sacrificing on the detail.

I toook the RAW image into Capture NX2, I pumped up the exposure compensation to +2 (This brings out the detail in the dark - just like 'pushing' ISO 100 film to behave like an ISO 400 film). I set shadow protection to 10 (brought out more detail and more noise with it) and then a noise-reduction to minimise the effect of noise. I then converted it to a Black-and-white image (for the feel) and this is what I got.

If I hadn't used the RAW option, this image would have been unusable.

I totally understand that shooting in RAW takes a lot of precious memory space, and the amount of work involved is a lot. I bought enough memory (memory is cheap) and I use the processing power of my laptop at night (many a times, my laptop runs overnight to convert my NEFs to JPEGs using my specific settings. 95% of the photos look good with batch-processing and then I dump the associated NEFs. The rest of the 5% can be vastly improved by manually developing the NEFs. Then there's the 1% of shots (like the one above) that have some creative potential in them and I love to spend a lot of time developing and re-developing them till I get the picture the way I want it.

Using RAW, you're using your expensive image sensor to the best capability. Shooting in RAW is not as painful as people portray it to be. You don't even need specialized software because the latest version of Picasa seems to handle RAW files from most of the popular cameras, so maybe you should give it a try. Believe me, it's worth it.

What an MBA can do to you

Looking back at my illustrious past, the 18 long years of education is projected in my mind's eye in black-and-white. There were days when home-work was heavy and there were days when nothing in the class made an iota of sense. There were days when I skipped lunch to read for an exam and there were days when crows took a dump in my lunch box.

All of those days seem like sweet (or gross) memories of the past, but nothing compared to the feelings that went through my mind when I looked at the "blackboard" today. Profs have uploaded the course-outlines that describe what to expect from a class-room session. The course-outlines give a taste of how much work goes into each session. Every 2 hour class-room session seems to ask for about 10 hours of effort outside the class-room. There's tons of pre-read, assignments and projects attached to every class. I was expecting a lot of work, but nothing to this magnitude.

I then talked to a couple of people about what they think of the course, and I heard some interesting perspectives. I seem to like what they said and I pen it down here. I would like to visit this post after a year to see where I stand. Here's the jist of what I heard today.

"Attending class is probably one of the least labor-intensive aspects of the learning here. It is what I do before and after the class that really matters. I understand that I need neither an MBA degree nor association with a premium b-school to understand the basic concepts of business. I also understand that I do not earn recognition as an MBA student if I can spit out business jargon. What I get here is an opportunity to open up my mind, take a step back, and get a new perspective of life and the people that make up my society. This course will not teach me how to be successful as an individual. It will instead teach me how I can steer a team or a society to success in what they do, and that, in turn, will make me successful. I came here with a perspective of my own. I might end up unlearning all the concepts that the society has driven into my head. I emerge out of the crowd only when I can think ahead of them and the society. That's what thought-leadership is all about, and that's what I get to learn at ISB."

I will sleep over these thoughts tonight and see how I feel tomorrow. I wish all my classmates the very best for their first core-term.