RAW vs. JPG article

[Sheila_Ward]

There is always a lot of discussion as to which is best to shoot in . Thought some of you might be interested in this article, especially if you are new to DSLR.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/r...rawtruth1.shtml

I always shoot RAW. Sure, it takes time to post process, but it has also saved my behind when I have the white balance set up wrong or something like that.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Ding Ding

JPEG Shooter – The camera captures RAW data, and it then develops the image into a JPEG or TIF. The RAW data is discarded. The photographer gets the camera’s rendition of the file and is essentially stuck with it unless a loss of quality is to be tolerated through editing. And this may be OK if all the parameters like exposure and White Balance were properly set in the camera. But in the real world that is rarely the case 100% of the time.

And that's why I shoot raw... with the fast pace some storms evolve at... I don't have time to worry about white balance. While I am more than certain I can expose a photo correctly 99% of the time, it's nice to have the raw there in case something *does* go wrong. If you are off by a stop or 2 (underexposed), raw can save your butt. Once again, I don't always have time to check the histogram during chasing.


Aaron

 

[Scott Taylor]

I only shoot raw as well, for the reasons Aaron touched on. I don't know about other dslr cameras out there, but I use the 20D and it gives you the option of shooting raw + jpg. Though I never use it, I could see where it might come in handy at times. Big issue here is storage though, unless you have your laptop handy to dump your flash card to or have extra flash cards.

 

[mark humpage]

It really depends what your output audience is. If you are shooting pro/semi-pro and regularly sell photos for publications then the 'digital negative' or RAW image will be most desirable. If you are content with just printing out for personal use no bigger than A3 then I defy anyone to spot the difference between high res JPEG & RAW. One also has to consider file sizes and consequent PC storage space. Write times are constantly improving nowadays & I shoot using RAW+JPEG, although even a few secs write time can be darn frustrating when a tube is hopping around in front of you

Mark