Success, organization, mistakes - a warning tale.

Alf

Top Veteran
My home workflow is pretty simple: shoot jpeg+RAW, import into iPad to choose thw survivors, do some editing there in Snapseed or Photogene2, import the rest to the PC and do the real postprocessing in Lightroom.

But I was going to leave for Rajasthan, and to bring with me as little as possible.

Before leaving I worked out the numbers, and the result was unconfortable - expecting about 3500 pics, Jpeg+RAW was too large. Plus, I wasn't going to take my iPad with me, so I thought the jpegs would have been useless as the postprocessing was going to happen on my home PC in Lightroom.

So I decided to test my luck, and save space by going RAW only on my E-PL1 - beautiful jpegs or not.

Fast forward a few weeks, and here I was at home, unloading my cards and finding how painfully slow is the RAW only import on the iPad: it has to create a jpeg preview for each RAW pic and it takes forever and ever ever. Not going to happen.

Intermediate solution, leave the iPad alone, skip that step, on to the PC and massive import of whatever was in the cards.. 2337 .ORF files to look at.

I ended up abandoning the cleaning task, and processing what I liked most for a few weeks, then coming back to the task and finally completing it at 715 pics (just more than 30%) to process.

I am at #314, 400 to go, only about 80 of those are already edited.

Lessons in editing:
1. Massive works must be in jpeg+raw for me. Picture selection from the sofa is unbeatable, and gives as a result a sorted set for LR editing. Going RAW only was the biggest mistake and resulted in lots of time wasted.
2. Olympus viewer must not be undervalued. Frome the raw ORF files it produced a parallel set of nonedited jpegs to play with on the iPad this winter.
3. Lightroom is great for for the organizing work, and works beautifully with the iPad as secondary almost-calibrated monitor for editing (thanks Ctein for this idea). This resulted in the most beautiful prints from my files ever made.

Lessons in shooting:
1. Yes, you can shoot in the field without seeing (really harsh daytime light), as long as you know what you are looking at and are ready to crop.
2. The greatest defect of the E-PL1 is that it is slow to operate and focus, missed quite a few opportunity pics in the street because of this.
3. The greatest strength of the E-PL1 is image quality, with the Lumix 20/1.5 and also with the 14-42mkI which really shines when you get to places where light is strong.

Open:
More lenses for the E-PL1 or a new body?
Lenses : Samyang 7.5 or Olympus 9-18, plus 45/1.8
Body: Price dictates it should be G3 or E-PL3, but I really like the V1.

While my brain works out a solution, you'll find me shooting here and there, and playing again with the Raj files.
 
If JPGs are for editing purposes only why not shoot at the lowest JPG resolution? And why not take more memory? it's cheap! And perhaps better not to put all eggs in one basket anyway when traveling.

I think it took me several weeks to edit and process my summer vacation pictures. Very tedious.

Sorry about your experience. I've had my own similar "educational experiences".
 
One of the question marks I have when I eventually replace my E-PL1 is ergonomics. I really like the size of the body and the shape of the grip and having handled an E-PL3 recently it felt like a (small) cake of soap in comparison, and I wonder how much of an improvement the third-party grips are. The G3 also looks very good on paper but I find the combined flash and viewfinder hump detracts significantly from the compactness of the camera. To be truthful as well, I don't see the character in the Panasonic bodies that I do in an Olympus (which may or may not be a bad thing depending on your point of view). The GF1 may have a bit of soul, but I can tell you that my GH1 is just a box of electronics. Nice camera, great specs and features, kind of boring. I enjoy taking a nice image with the E-PL1 more than with the GH1. If Canon ever comes up with a decent mirrorless system then both my Canon DSLRs and the Panasonic go, and the Olympus stays. For myself I see the E-PL2 and the E-P3 as the possible future upgrade path, although maybe without the intermediate step.

Of your current kit the 20mm is what it is; great lens optically with only okay AF speed. With the 14-42 however the difference in AF speed between the MkI and MkII is very noticable, even on the older E-PL1 body. I've lots of good things to say about the 9-18mm, but have no experience with the Samyang or the 45mm.
 
Raw only or raw + small jpeg, leaves you in fix if you suddenly need some good Jpegs. At my grandson's wedding, I planned to process after getting home. But suddenly three or four family and friends wanted copies. They could not use the raw, so I spent many hours of my vacation, pp pics and making copies. Wading through the raws to select just the ones worth finishing was a real pain. Nope, not again. Always have the jpegs. I guess my work flow needs some work.
 
Alf, I should have known I could count on you to share the "underbelly" of your latest trip, photographically speaking. I've learned so much from your experiences and one day when I finally do get a chance for a real vacation/trip, with all that you've posted I should be in good shape - especially once I get that iPad# whatever.

I find this very thought provoking. Do you find with your E-PL1 that it is easier to separate the "wheat from the chaff" by looking at the jpegs plus the fact that viewing them on the iPad is so much easier? Remember, I have no first hand iPad photo experience...I've been living on yours, Karen's, Christina's and a few other's iPad fumes.;) If I may ask for a little clarification - if you'd shot both RAW + jpeg would you have only imported the jpegs? I'm not sure how the uploading works on the iPad and how you cull the photographic herd?

As for your camera...you've been such a loyal E-PL1 owner and done so well with it... Perhaps you'd enjoy the flip up screen one of the newer PENs?

Thanks for this thread, Alf - and I'm looking forward to my continued journey through your pictures, as well
 
Do you find with your E-PL1 that it is easier to separate the "wheat from the chaff" by looking at the jpegs plus the fact that viewing them on the iPad is so much easier?
In a word, yes.
Let me explain in steps.
1. The SDcard goes from the camera to the "camera connection kit" (a tiny reader) and into the bottom of the iPad.
2. iPad propts you for import, you say yes, and the files get imported. The iPad has a simple app to look at albums, zoom on pics, mail,print,delete them and little else. Jpeg+RAW pairs are identified as such, and you only see the jpeg, but have both. (this is the key point) So, when I delete a pic, it deletes both jpeg and RAW files. When I want to work on a pic, the app (Snapseed, photogene2, or other) decides if it likes to work on the RAW or sticks to the Jpeg. If I save a pic from the iPad, it goes to a separate folder where all saved pics go. My originals remain untouched.
3. When I want to begin Lightroom editing, I connect the iPad to my computer via USB, and Lightroom sees the iPad as a camera. I import the surviving and untouched jpeg+RAWS and happily work on them. If they are nice, I also import the iPad-saved jpegs.
4. I delete the jpeg+RAW files from the iPad to free space for the next ones. They are on my disks now and the computer takes care of backup.
5. After editing, I export an iPad-sized version as Jpeg to my sync folder, and they go back to the iPad via WiFi sync to look at.

Boring details upon request.:)
 
Alf,

What I find amazing are the shots you take even with the slow and older E-PL1. You do a really good job of taking quality images and then PP that make them really stand out.

I'm extremely unorganized with my photos, but I'm finding myself more towards the RAW+JPEG liking. Part of this is I haven't been as happy so far with the E-PL1 jpeg files as I have been with my E-P1 JPEG files. I'm also finding out that I can get a little more DR when it really matters using RAW. I actually use windows preview most of the time but sometimes I use Infraview to view the images I want to keep or get rid of, in JPEG. Then I use Olympus Viewer for those that I feel can benifit from RAW processing. The good OOC jpegs do get saved to a seperate location, along with the JPEGS created from the RAW files. The original RAW files go in a seperate folder.

This all comes from someone who NEVER shot RAW with my E-P1.
 
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