In another forum, a reader asked for the raw files associated with one of my Last Word posts. He wouldn’t tell me why he wanted them or what he was going to do with them, so it was a no-brainer to decline. He was not pleased. The incident did have an upside, though: it got me thinking about why I don’t routinely post raws of all my comparison images.
The first reason is logistical. I have posted tens of thousands of images here over the years, and storing that many raw images is beyond the capacity of any hosting company server for which I want to pay. The economics of hosting and storage are interesting: were I operating my own server, storing, say 20,000 raws would not be a terribly expensive proposition. If I were to post all the raws that I use to programmatically analyze cameras, that would amount to hundreds of thousands of files, perhaps millions, and storage, even on my own server, would be a problem.I do not normally retain those files.
The second reason is conservation of my time. If I posted raws, I’d still have to post the JPEGs that I post now. And, because WordPress doesn’t support any raw file types, I’d have to upload them with ftp, and link them manually to the posts. Life’s too short for that.
OK, so it’s not practical for me to post all the raws. But why not send them to anyone who asks for them?
There’s the time thing again. I wouldn’t expect a huge influx of such requests, so that’s hurdle, but not dispostive.
There’s a much more serious time problem, though. Raw development offers an opportunity for many decisions. Some of those decisions influence the results of comparisons. I have found it sometimes difficult myself to keep the playing field level when doing comparisons requiring raw development. To do that requires care, precision, and patience (the last is necessary when you have to go back and do everything over because you screwed it up the first time). In the distant past, when I have shared raw files with people I didn’t know well (we’ll get to the situations where I have and still share raw files at the end of this post) I have spent hours working remotely with folks whose raw development produced conclusions that they thought were at variance with mine. I have never failed to successfully drill down far enough to resolve things, but it is very time consuming.
Many of my images are not developed in black-box standard raw developers such as Lightroom or Capture One, but require RawDigger, dcraw or libraw to gain the necessary control. Most people seem to have trouble using those programs, and teaching folks how to use them remotely has taken, and would take a lot of my time.
The above paragraphs assume that the recipient of the raw files is teachable, meticulous, and has no agenda. If I don’t know that person, I am concerned about all those things, especially the last one. That final concern is exacerbated by the tenor of some of the requests for raw files.
I do share raws with some people, people who I have convinced myself are:
- unbiased
- careful
- precise
- analytical
- willing to share results
- willing and able to collaborate on joint projects (I often share code with those)
- willing to share their raws with me
There aren’t a teeming multitude of those folks. It would take two hands to count them up, but I wouldn’t have to take off my shoes.
It also begs the question of why Anyone would feel entitled to them…
There is that, too, Mike. It’s funny, but it seems like the people who have been the least helpful are the ones who think they most deserve access to the files.
In my experience people who imperiously demand raw files are doing so because they disagree with some conclusion, and plan either to develop the file in some different way so as to claim bias in how I did it, or hope that I’ll say no so they can say that that invalidates some conclusion. I say no, for the same reasons as you.
Of course I don’t include in this category people who politely suggest that some issue might be mitigated by a different approach to conversion, or some such.
Hi,
I guess most people have some bias, it is hard to avoid. Realizing that we probably have some bias may be a good starting point.
Regarding sharing raws, I sort of feel that they belong to full disclosure, so I try to share them when I feel it benefits the reader. When I got my P45+ and shared a lot of comparisons with my Sony Alpha I tried to share raw images, because that made sense.
With your way of testing, there will be a large amount of raws. You also describe the protocol used. So I don’t really see the value of sharing raws.
With medium format it used to be rare to have access to raw images. But, I feel that gap is somewhat filled by DPReview, now that they have tested several medium format systems.
I have not posted that many raws recently, I would do that if I regarded it important.
Best regards
Erik
I see a strong snobbism in this post, but it’s never been uncommon in photography community, especially when everything was analog.
Please explain about the snobbery in the post, as you see it.
People way too often forget that they’re not entitled to anything. A few days in India will set that in stone for most people.
Thank you for what you do Jim and f’ya-all to those that aren’t grateful.