I'm going to shoot JPG.....

Lefrash

Lefrash

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Fraser
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In digital world photography this seems to be one of the most contentious choices there is. And the general consensus seems to be raw is the best way to go. However, the downside of raw is really impacting me at the moment so I decided to shoot jpg for a wee while. And quite frankly my (untrained) eyes are struggling to find a benefit of raw- My situation is probably quite a regular one... got a pc which i use for my editing but its a bit long in the tooth. Things get a bit slow when dealing with raw. I tried for a while just shooting in Jpg, and this allowed me to transfer the files straight onto my tablet and let me use snapseed. When i do this, I have th most fun, its easy and theres not a million sliders that i don't know what they do. Its just quite a nice experience. Perhaps if I get a better computer I may go back to raw, however I've made a conscious decision to decide I'll take that out the equation, and just let my camera do the bulk of the processing.


What do you all think of that? :D


(I've got a giant SD card coming so to be honest I'll almost certainly shoot raw+jpeg but I'm a drama queen and like to make a big impact wherever i can haha)
 
There are many benefits to shooting raw but then that depends what you want to do with the end result. There's no right or wrong option. Many cameras have such a good engine in them that JPEGs are handled really well. I shot JPEG on my XT10 when I went to Iceland and was more than happy with the results.
 
Ruffmeister said:
There are many benefits to shooting raw but then that depends what you want to do with the end result. .
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So what you meant was.. "There are many benefits to shooting raw - for those that require them" plenty of people (yes me included) can go through life never needing to shoot raw ..some of us (again me included) make a living out of photogrpahy and not shooting raw

Yes raw is great ..IF YOU WANT/NEED IT. most people don't need raw... they just get talked into beleving they do :)
 
KIPAX said:
So what you meant was.. "There are many benefits to shooting raw - for those that require them" plenty of people (yes me included) can go through life never needing to shoot raw ..some of us (again me included) make a living out of photogrpahy and not shooting raw

Yes raw is great ..IF YOU WANT/NEED IT. most people don't need raw... they just get talked into beleving they do :)
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I wasn't preaching that you had to shoot raw. You don't and that's fine. I wasn't looking to say anyone was right or wrong here.

As I said, I shot jpeg in the XT10 and the output was great. I opt for Raw now but it's just a preference.
 
If you're happier with jpg, then fine. I'll only give one small word of advice; the time may come when you either develop other aspirations in photography and want to return to an old image and then find that the jpg doesn't give you the "headroom" to do what you'd really like to do; or you might come across an occasion where you really need to recover the highlights and again find that the loss of information inherent in dropping bit depth and information really hits you hard.

In your position, I'd let the camera produce both but only use the jpg.
 
I used to shoot raw exclusively when i used a Cacon,then I moved to fuji and found the jpg very good for most things.
However I am going to do a reshoot tomorrow because the jpgs do not give me the latitude to pp so i will shoot in raw.
Horses for courses I suppose
 
I did an outdoor event last weekend with another bloke, we took over 10,000 .jpg images, raw would have been a huge drawback
 
I only shoot raw when I am at the limits of the camera iso ect. Otherwise I find it a waste of time.I cannot tell the difference between a raw and jpeg photograph taken side by side in normal conditions. It's nice raw is there but it really has very marginal use for me.
 
RAW all the time for me. I'm not under time constraints to get my work to anyone and maybe only edit one of two from a mornings shooting so an extra couple of minutes is no big deal in Lightroom. Can't see me ever shooting a jpeg.
 
More than 90% of the digital photos I've taken over the last 15-years are jpeg. Rarely felt the need to shoot RAW.
 
Lefrash said:
....got a pc which i use for my editing but its a bit long in the tooth.
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It shouldn't be surprising that you can't really see the difference if you have an old slow PC with a low grade screen and you don't understand the sliders. I suggest you'll not see a difference until you have a better screen, faster computer and are more familiar with post processing raw files. Meanwhile there's no reason you can't enjoy yourself shooting jpgs.
 
You can do what the hell you like - your happiness is your business. But around here you might be judged according to the photographs that you produce, and the exact mustard that they cut. You can stay light, or go deeper. Your choice entirely.

Actually, the mechanics are a distraction. It's how they're used and to what end. So do it your way, but let's assess the results.
 
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I need to shoot RAW mostly, because I'd arse up the WB 90% of the time otherwise :D

I'll be sat at the laptop processing either way, so I may as well process raw files, I like that I can push them that bit more. No right or wrong though, as already said
 
I've been increasingly working with the Jpg files over raw in recent years (post move from canon to Fuji) BUT hit an interesting limitation with Lightroom this week.

I purchased a 8mm fisheye from this forum, and Lightroom only has the lens correction profile available if you shoot in raw (and you can't manually correct to the same extent).

Odd one I was not expecting
 
Wish i was good enough to shoot jpeg :D with shooting Nikon i download my raw files into View NX this applies the jpeg settings i have in my camera to the displayed image,if i open the file into Photoshop it opens the base raw file, so if ime happy with the displayed image i resize and save direct from View.
 
It depends on personal preference to shot raw or any other. JPEGs also have merits and demerits.
 
StephenM said:
If you're happier with jpg, then fine. I'll only give one small word of advice; the time may come when you either develop other aspirations in photography and want to return to an old image and then find that the jpg doesn't give you the "headroom" to do what you'd really like to do; or you might come across an occasion where you really need to recover the highlights and again find that the loss of information inherent in dropping bit depth and information really hits you hard.

In your position, I'd let the camera produce both but only use the jpg.
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Yeah, absolutely. I think I'll end up shooting both anyway and if there's anything I capture worth keeping as a raw I'll do it. I use my tablet everyday for generally everything internet related, it's an amazing invention, I'll almost certainly be getting a bigger screened one in the no so distant future so if all goes well I'll pr9bably just forget a new computer and splurge it all on a top end tablet.

Shame snapseed doesn't accept Nikon raw files , I'm sure it'll come.....
 
StephenM said:
If you're happier with jpg, then fine. I'll only give one small word of advice; the time may come when you either develop other aspirations in photography and want to return to an old image and then find that the jpg doesn't give you the "headroom" to do what you'd really like to do; or you might come across an occasion where you really need to recover the highlights and again find that the loss of information inherent in dropping bit depth and information really hits you hard.

In your position, I'd let the camera produce both but only use the jpg.
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I always shoot RAW + JPEG. I then run through the good ones which can be processed quickly with just a few jpeg tweaks. That's usually all of them. If any of them have the potential to be candidates for big prints, maybe even an exhibition print or membership of the portfolio I'll later go back and process them from the RAW. Usually that's none of them, but it's difficult to tell in advance. Sometimes my best efforts to produce a really good image just fail. Sometimes what was intended as a quick shot turns out to have unexpected potential. And sometimes months or even years later I'll sometimes return to an old photograph and try reprocessing it from RAW with my latest skills, image editors, etc., just to check out what difference they make.
 
I've just started shooting RAW+JPEG with my X100T as the JPEG's tend to be very good. I do like the RAW files also just in case I want to play with the image more, and use the additional attitude of the RAW file. If I had to choose just one format it would be RAW.
 
After over 70 years of processing my images from scratch, first chemically and now digitally. I would feel uncomfortable not being in control of what I output.

Raw processing came naturally to me as did using photoshop as a replacement for darkroom skills, and the retouching bench.
I can not see me ever not shooting raw... it only takes a few seconds per image to process, certainly less time than making a bromide or colour print, so I do not find it onerous at all.

However, as in the days of wet darkrooms, I do not process every image I take. I check them all in Irfanview first, and note those I wish to take further, which is usually no more than about one in three. and put them in a new "selected" folder.
This ratio has gone down in the past few years, as I have a natural age related tremor in my hands, and now take shots in groups of two or three. ( Much as press photographers do now) This has not only solved most of the shake problem, but I have found that when shooting, at 3 shots a minute, and comparing the results, there is always one better than the others content wise, especially when people are involved.
As I said, raw is absolutely the natural way to go for me.

shooting Jpeg is more like shooting transparencies, especially in medium and large format, where it is a costly and frustrating business to get it even slightly wrong. With those that miss the mark going straight into the waste bin.
In controlled studio condition shooting large format transparencies was not a problem at all, but outside and ad-hock, I much preferred the safety net of large format colour negative, and the freedom it gave in further treatments.
 
Lefrash said:
Shame snapseed doesn't accept Nikon raw files , I'm sure it'll come.....
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I doubt it. Raw files have to be processed and exported to be viewed appropriately and every manufacturer has their own raw file encryption format. Such websites usually only work with compressed jpg images and will compress an image accordingly to suit their site requirements and consumer display screens.
 
I love these discussions. There are the Post Processing evangelists who like nothing better than correcting camera mistakes on their computer.

Then there are those who don't worry so much and just enjoy taking pictures without so much expectation.

Personally, I prefer to PRE PROCESS, and do my correcting before I ever press the shutter. Adding light where needed, or holding it back where there is a bit much, either by diffusing it in some way, or blocking it by putting something solid in the gap.

When you assess a scene, you learn to assess when it is 'dodgy' and you are going to need to work hard at it - that would be a time to use RAW and turn the D-lighting up if necessary. I always prefer to hold the highlights, just like shooting E6, shadows are easier to recover than highlights, once the white is burned out it is gone forever.
 
I'm another JPEG user. Started with film and did my own D&P with B&W then ended up using slide film almost exclusively so I was well aware of the frustrations (and extra cost per useable slide!) of not getting it right in camera. I've played with raw and after shooting and recording in both raw and JPEG, I processed the raw files before I looked at the JPEGs. In every case the camera had made a far better job of the conversion than I had so I have let them do it ever since! I know that there are situations where raw allows more recovery of highlights and/or shadows but I don't tend to shoot that sort of situation so the extra headroom that the raw files would give me, I don't need.
 
I started off with JPEG when I got my first DSLR, a Canon 300D, but in those days the JPEG's were a bit flat and although you could tweak the in camera settings I think RAW was still the best option back then. These days I get the impression that JPEG's are a lot better but I've just carried on with raw with the theory that it's a digital negative that I can always go back to.

I can see the advantage of JPEG's for special filter effects and such and for stuff like event shooting where you may not have time to sit and go through hundreds of raw pictures but I'm just a happy amateur and not pushed for time so raw is ok for me.
 
Depends on purpose (and end-use). But with raw you can maximise your control over the image - a worthy aim? That's not a substitute for getting it right in camera, but once that exposure's made you might like to adjust tones if nothing else, and working from a raw you can do that without degrading the image in the way that working on a jpg or a tif does.
 
Lensflare said:
I love these discussions. There are the Post Processing evangelists who like nothing better than correcting camera mistakes on their computer.
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Every single file is processed either by you or the camera (which in reality is just an algorithm made by someone sitting at a computer in an office somewhere).
Sometimes the camera just can't give you what you want and adding light or reducing light is not an option.
 
I used to shoot JPG, then I got more into processing and discovered things like banding appearing in skies as I played with contrast, shadows and highlights. In those cases it was insoluble, there just weren't options to get what I wanted from what I had.
Each time you save JPG you introduce more compression, so unless you keep an uncompressed source image when you make any minor edits you have to begin again with the source JPG and remember what you did - Obviously things like Lightroom do this for you.

Now I shoot JPG+RAW - in many cases the camera does an admirable job and I often share directly from the camera to social media. If I really like a picture then being able to take it into Olympus Viewer 3 or Lightroom, crop, level and adjust it to exactly what want is a massive bonus. I don't have many images where my edited version isn't better than the camera's JPG.

I used to worry about the card space and disk space for storing it all but they're so cheap now it's not worth bothering about.
 
Nostromo said:
Every single file is processed either by you or the camera (which in reality is just an algorithm made by someone sitting at a computer in an office somewhere).
Sometimes the camera just can't give you what you want and adding light or reducing light is not an option.
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?????

I take it you have never heard of flash/strobe or reflectors or diffusers then ?
 
Fine if you only ever photograph models, products, macro etc, not so good if you photograph landscape, astro, sport etc.
 
BrynBoru said:
I doubt it. Raw files have to be processed and exported to be viewed appropriately and every manufacturer has their own raw file encryption format. Such websites usually only work with compressed jpg images and will compress an image accordingly to suit their site requirements and consumer display screens.
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every raw file contains a fully processed and compressed jpeg which can be extracted with out a raw processor. ( called instant jpeg from Raw)
Lensflare said:
?????

I take it you have never heard of flash/strobe or reflectors or diffusers then ?
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All those things have their place... however they are not appropriate in many situations..
for a number of years i shot shop and store interiors almost always by available light.
In most cases the designers wanted the lighting to remain as they designed it.
It would have been far easier to light the shots myself. One of my competitors always shot with two pieces of film in his camera, and ordered his film un-backed. . He developed the second sheet as a mask to tame the highlights and included lights.
I can do the same today, by fusing two shots suitably processed from raw.
Using raw is not the easy way out, it is usually the best way.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
every raw file contains a fully processed and compressed jpeg which can be extracted with out a raw processor. ( called instant jpeg from Raw)
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Yes, but I believe you mean the native JPEG thumbnail, not a "fully processed" image. Do you know of any Instagram/Snapseed type sites that will accept raw files?
 
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