Is RAW the only way all the time ?

Maybe it's because I come from a long (no make that a Loooong, Loooong) background of shooting on film, I have a bit of a pragmatic approach - with film, unless you had either an exchangeable back camera, or were prepared to change film mid roll, or waste lots of film by changing the ISO mid roll and altering the dev. time for the "keepers" part of the roll, you sort of had to decide what you were going to shoot on before even stepping out of the house... colour (slide or print) or B&W, slow (25-50iso) medium (64-100) or fast (400)... and a heavy day's shooting might have been 3 rolls - maybe 100 shots tops (apart from a 2 week stint as a ships photographer, where I burned more of Kodak's output than most people would in a lifetime (call it 50 rolls of 36exp a day!).

And that approach, mostly, has come over to shooting digital for me... I don't generally shoot moving things, or sports, or people, most of my stuff is on a tripod, either landscapes or still lifes, and with the landscapes, I'm very often back home with 3-4 images from what I call a very productive day. With the still life stuff... well - i've been known to spend over a week building a set, playing with the lighting, faffing around inordinately, using the camera tethered to my computer, and composing the whole thing in liveview - only to take a single frame of the eventual thing... That shot ends up on my computer, as a raw file, and, yes... it falls in to one of Kipax's categories... it very often gets "substantial" amounts of photoshopping done to it, as I defnitely have a mental image of the final output, which isn't generally what people would consider a striaght photographic representation.

HOWEVER, it doesn't mean, that on the odd occasion when I do have to shoot something thats fast moving and involving people, I try and use the same approach - I'll happily stick the 7D onto "machine gun mode", shoot medium sized jpegs (to avoid flooding the buffer a little longer), play around with the ISO and push it as needed, to get the pictures as required.

The key is using the APPROPRIATE method for what you're shooting. Sometimes its raw, sometimes it's Jpeg, and sometimes it could even be shooting both...
 
Why shoot RAW? I do it mostly to give options in the future if I decide I'd like to re-process in a significantly different way.

When I first moved to DSLR just over a year ago I started out on RAW+jpeg, but in the end found I never used or wanted the jpeg files and moved to RAW exclusively. I've always manipulated images as long as I've been able and well before digital came on the scene, so I don't see the point *for me* of having output as jpegs.

So far I've never needed a 'machinegun mode' so I'm happy to carry on like this.
 
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I shoot both, Raw to the CF card, small jpeg to the sd card. Helps if I want to import into the ipad when away
 
Byker28i said:
I shoot both, Raw to the CF card, small jpeg to the sd card. Helps if I want to import into the ipad when away
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Actually, that's a good point, I'd not thought of that... May try that trick myself next time I'm away.
 
when you shoot jpeg, aren't there quite a few in camera adjustments made depending on the manufacturer. e.g. in respect of sharpness, noise, etc., etc., ……. I have read reports that some of these (global) adjustments are not desirable and it is best to decide, based on the image that you have taken, what are the appropriate adjustments to make.
 
BillN_33 said:
when you shoot jpeg, aren't there quite a few in camera adjustments made depending on the manufacturer. e.g. in respect of sharpness, noise, etc., etc., ……. I have read reports that some of these (global) adjustments are not desirable and it is best to decide, based on the image that you have taken, what are the appropriate adjustments to make.
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Yes very much so, but what I think some people seem to forget is that sometimes it's just nice to go out and take pictures and not worry about pixel peeping them or any other such inspection. Sometimes snapshots are just as fun and fulfilling as anything else.
 
and does it depends on manufacturers, don't some put more effort into their jpeg engine, (conversion) than others and presumably you can "like" say the Olympus jpegs, but "not like" the panasonic jpegs.
I saw differences between Olympus and Panasonic in their jpeg files

I have seen jpeg engines criticised and some praised
 
BillN_33 said:
and does it depends on manufacturers, don't some put more effort into their jpeg engine, (conversion) than others and presumably you can "like" say the Olympus jpegs, but "not like" the panasonic jpegs.
I saw differences between Olympus and Panasonic in their jpeg files

I have seen jpeg engines criticised and some praised
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Perhaps, I know people say the new Fuji CSC cameras have cracking JPEGs but in reality I just don't care enough, both Nikons I own take plenty good enough JPEGs for what I'm after when I'm just taking fun snapshots of friends etc.
 
Jpeg for me, dont have the time or inclination to shoot to shoot Raw, cant honestly think of a single image ive taken where shooting Raw would have allowed me more leverage in PP than i needed shooting Jpeg, i would imagine that Raw is the only way for wedding photographers though, maybe wrong though.
 
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Does anyone use sRAW ?
 
Gary Coyle said:
Jpeg for me, dont have the time or inclination to shoot to shoot Raw, cant honestly think of a single image ive taken where shooting Raw would have allowed me more leverage in PP than i needed shooting Jpeg, i would imagine that Raw is the only way for wedding photographers though, maybe wrong though.
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Wedding Photographers - Both my son and my daughter are getting married next year and I notice in their spec that they state that they only supply jpeg images, which surprised me but after reading the above comments I can now see why
 
BillN_33 said:
Wedding Photographers - Both my son and my daughter are getting married next year and I notice in their spec that they state that they only supply jpeg images, which surprised me but after reading the above comments I can now see why
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That'll just be because they provide Processed shots Bill - not only would most of the general public get confuddled if they got raw files and had to install extra drivers to see the files, but the wedding 'tog would process their files then rename the final selection of processed images with consecutive numbers in the export to save any "why haven't I got all the pictures" questions...
 
BillN_33 said:
they state that they only supply jpeg images, which surprised me but after reading the above comments I can now see why
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That's the only way that they could deliver them to you though (well I suppose they could give you TIFF), unless I've misunderstood what you've said.
 
BillN_33 said:
Wedding Photographers - Both my son and my daughter are getting married next year and I notice in their spec that they state that they only supply jpeg images, which surprised me but after reading the above comments I can now see why
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To each other???

Dont wedding togs "shoot" raw and then supply Jpeg, thought that was standard practice
 
Wow this thread has sort of snowballed :)

The reason I brought it up was coming from a long line of Nikon DSLR's D100, D200, D300, D2x well you get the picture, (sorry never used Canon or Sony so can't comment), for a long long time the jpeg engine was very much so so from these cameras, and even basic adjustments in a Raw package yielded substantial improvements in image quality, so you sort of got used to RAW only as being the way to shoot digital (well for me anyway). Today however, I'm finding (just my point of view that is), that modern DSLR's and Mirrorless cameras are producing better and better jpeg straight out of the camera.

For many years I was indoctrinated into the "must shoot raw", and have spent countless (albeit sometimes quite fun hours) in front of a computer processing them, I just quite recently found that the camera manufacturers are producing images SOOC that seems to be perfect for my use without further manipulation. As I said, for shots that call for RAW (Weddings, paid gigs, once in a lifetime visits) etc. or in situations where you know the camera will struggle (very contrasty conditions, very high ISO, tricky WB etc), I will not hesitate to switch to RAW.

I know there's the argument (which I sort of subscribe to as well) that today, storage is cheap, and shooting raw gives us a way of "future proofing" the image as better RAW developers come along, but for the vast majority of my images that will only be displayed either on a computer monitor or on a flat screen TV, my very personal opinion, is that there isn't much in it, and I would rather have 100gb of images to back up than 1TB of images if I shot everything raw.

Just to be clear on this point, I'm just one guy with one guy's opinion, and in no way does that mean what works for me does for you too, and if you want to continue to shoot RAW only, all power to you, the images you will no doubt produce will be the very best the file can output. Likewise if you are a jpeg shooter because of convenience and image sizes etc, that well done those people as well.

I was certainly not my intention to start a RAW vs JPG war, (especially at this time of the year). Peace everyone :D
 
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TheBigYin said:
Actually, that's a good point, I'd not thought of that... May try that trick myself next time I'm away.
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I used to do it when shooting rugby.
Small jpeg would upload from the camera straight to the ipad whilst walking back to the clubhouse, which could then go on slideshow next to my pile of business cards.
I'd then use the either (usually the raws) to produce a final image to sell via my website, which raised money and helped fund the team.
Just left it like it since but it's proved useful when away at other times.
 
The other time I use jpeg is when I'm shooting for b&w. I can set the picture style, then have the B&W as jpeg, raw on CF. If I'm delivering to web so small images (800x600) then thats fine as small jpeg on a 5dmk3 is quite large.
 
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Must admit I wouldnt have the confidence to shoot JPEG for something that I deemed important. I always shoot RAW and have taken the time to learn what I need to do to get the very best results from the RAW file. I know where I need to be with regards to the histogram to keep the data that I need. Never taken the time to do that with JPEG. Might be just the same, most of the time it probably would be but sometimes having the RAW files just gives a better result for me.

Does it matter anyway?
 
I have to admit. I only shoot RAW. After getting my D7k I immersed myself in youtube and obviously found Jared Polin. Being a noob I went straight to settings and change to RAW. Never changed it back.

I don't need both formats and can fix more in RAW. So #1 for me too
 
JPEGs all the way for me! Don't want to spend ages dealing with processing raw files so don't. I know you can batch process in LR or similar but I'm happy to leave that to the cameras, especially the Fujis. Having spent years shooting film (mainly slide in later years) I'm confident in getting things right in camera and if I'm in doubt, a quick bracket all but ensures at least one correctly exposed shot! If I screw it up, I'm big enough (and apparently ugly enough ;)) to take it on the chin.
 
with the sigma dp's you will nearly always get a better quality image shooting raw, then converting to jpg with the software (even auto batch conversion)

with some camera's you will also get much better results doing raw >dxo batch conversion with a normal preset. and you can get dxo for free sometimes, i think you can get version 8 elite free atm

jpg is ok, but if your "advanced" raw is a better default, unless you have a reason to shoot jpg, quick turn around time or ease of use needed for example :)
 
pingu666 said:
with the sigma dp's you will nearly always get a better quality image shooting raw, then converting to jpg with the software (even auto batch conversion)

with some camera's you will also get much better results doing raw >dxo batch conversion with a normal preset. and you can get dxo for free sometimes, i think you can get version 8 elite free atm

jpg is ok, but if your "advanced" raw is a better default, unless you have a reason to shoot jpg, quick turn around time or ease of use needed for example :)
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It is sometimes not best to use RAW, too easy to fill the buffer. Nothing worse than knowing you've missed a great shot because the buffer was full. It has nothing to do with being 'advanced', unless I'm just 'retarded'...
 
Yet again why do we need a what is better discussion, comes down to what is required
If I were going to photograph somewhere/thing that I may never see or go to again it would be raw. Mainly for the extra adjustments that could be made to get it spot on or perhaps print extra large.
For wandering around days out jpeg is sufficient although I like to tweak them too.

Both have pros and cons, just use whatever suits
 
I have just compared the 80MB Tiff images and the 6.8MB jpegs produced from the X3F 55MB DP3M files and the Tiff images look "better" on my computer screen although not as much as I thought - that's all I can say as I'm not as expert as some who have contributed to the thread …… I'll continue taking RAW images
 
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tijuana taxi said:
Yet again why do we need a what is better discussion, comes down to what is required
If I were going to photograph somewhere/thing that I may never see or go to again it would be raw. Mainly for the extra adjustments that could be made to get it spot on or perhaps print extra large.
For wandering around days out jpeg is sufficient although I like to tweak them too.

Both have pros and cons, just use whatever suits
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exactly this, it's like the discussion in another thread, what camera is better - the one that does the job you need it for, it doesn't actually need a debate because there is no right or wrong answer.
 
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As already said by a few others: It's Horses-for-Courses and which file format you individually feel more comfortable with - The same as which camera brand is 'better' for you.

I exclusively shoot RAW because it offers me more options to achieve the final image I would like. But as some here already know, it also gives me the options to screw it up and fail! :D

As someone who has only been using DSLR for one year, it gives me more confidence.

The huge files are an excellent incentive to only keep the images which I like (regardless of which ones others like). They all go RAW > TIFF > JPEG final output anyway.
 
I shoot everything in JPEG and RAW, for me it's the best of both worlds.

I should add that before the digital revolution I used to print direct from the negative. Wanting complete control over your image is just as important today as it's ever been !
 
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GeeJay57 said:
It is sometimes not best to use RAW, too easy to fill the buffer. Nothing worse than knowing you've missed a great shot because the buffer was full. It has nothing to do with being 'advanced', unless I'm just 'retarded'...
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that quantifies as a valid reason to shoot jpg :P
 
just shoot UCB, Job done .
 
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