2014 Thunder Over Utah

[John Driscoll]

First attempt at Warbird photo with rented Nikon 200-400 f/4.  Seems a little "flat"

[Anna M. Wood]

Nice shot....

Is the image SOOC?

A little work on the RAW file in Lightroom/Photoshop will make that image pop.  I use the Nik Color Efex plugin quite a bit along with Lightroom/Photoshop to bring out the detail and colors of an image.

[John Driscoll]

Ya, JPEG.  I haven't jumped into RAW yet.  Looks like it's the next step.

[John Driscoll]

Grabbed this one this morning.  Yesterday was overcast, but it was sunny when I took this one.  Looks a little better, but not like what I see from this group.

[Joe Copalman]

Ya, JPEG.  I haven't jumped into RAW yet.  Looks like it's the next step.

Lightroom is actually a great JPEG editor as well - with a lot of flexibility when it comes to adjusting colors.

That said, RAW is a great step to take.  I used to question the need to shoot RAW in the "severe clear" shooting conditions we have in AZ, but it does allow for more tweaks to be made before any unwanted noise or aliasing is introduced, which to me is worth the extra hard drive space it takes up.     

[Anna M. Wood]

Shooting raw is the way to go.  JPG's throw away so much of the image data with its compression scheme.

Here is an example of one of my recent images.  Was pretty dull SOOC.

http://azaerophoto.com/forum/index.php?topic=2588.msg51894;topicseen#msg51894

[Mike Margolis]

Shooting raw is the way to go.  JPG's throw away so much of the image data with its compression scheme...

I have few regrets. A major one is the period of time I shot only in JPG - used up less card space and looked better on the camera's LCD... If I only knew... If I only knew... RAW, RAW, RAW!!!

[Warbird Keith]

TA-4 photo pass.

[Tower Guy]

That is really a "kick ass" shot of the Scooter Keith, very nice!

[Joe Copalman]

That is really a "kick ass" shot of the Scooter Keith, very nice!

Agreed.  Have you thought about a 2:1 crop to cut out the sky up top?