Continuing from Part 2.
So the time has come for the final post in this series of my forced jpeg experience. I do feel silly about the whole thing really – User of Foveon equipped Sigmas since 2002 and still haven’t learned anything about modern modes such as the JPEG mode. :) Remember though that the very first Sigma was the SD9 and it didn’t even produce any JPG’s, only RAW. Perhaps that says something about my old fashioned work flow?
Back to the session. I selected a small number of shots using the following settings, actually I never changed once settled.
SD14, studio JPEG only workflow in camera settings: Contrast: +0.8, Sharpness +0.4, Saturation +0.1, Color space: sRGB. And Fluorescent white balance.
I might add that if you wanna be cool and take nice shots of someone in a Studio and show the person what he / she looks like on the LCD then this work flow works nicely – even if you shoot RAW – BUT be prepared to change back to some other WB, like flash or daylight. Perhaps with one of the shots using a grey card visual in a shot and color pick wb for the rest of the shots. Perhaps Bob has something to say about this? I know you use Fluorescent WB a lot!
Now, first I think you wanna see something from the day:

Some collected shots from day 2.

50% magnification.

100% magnification.

200% magnification. Do you see me?
It’s no RAW but it’s really nice to see how well the JPEG engine is working. I can’t let you have these are full sized downloads mostly because they’re not aware of their sudden fame but these crops still shows what I’m talking about. I’m sure they will resize and print nicely large.
The second day I had some time before the first customer arrived and I had a slight different light setup. I wouldn’t cry if I had these as RAW, would sure be nice too see how good I could make them look. Still, for a normal person, these looks nice enough.

Some others jpgs, straight out with no adjustments made.
All in all I now know that my SD14 can do jpegs and they will be perfectly usable if there is a studio occasion where speed as a must. And yes, light areas will clip much sooner then with a RAW, so you need to lighten your subject more carefully. Or agree that blown out areas can be cool if in the right spot. :) I’m totally not used to that but will live.
Oh and the 18-50 2.8 ex did a magnificent job. It’s no prime but delivered nice, crisp contrasty shots. Also, I never really had any problems with batteries, I brought way to many with me. Good as backup but not really needed. I used six batteries in 8h of shooting using battery pack. Perhaps the smaller file size gave some extra juice?
Please feel free to comment and share your own images and experience. Or just ask a question or two.
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