Wedding in Raw or Jpeg?

[ntexas49]

Have got a big wedding to shoot next month. Have a Canon 30d (new and still learning about) and wonder if I should shoot in raw. I would use Canon DPP and to tell the truth am not sure it would be worth the extra hours of work to shoot raw. I am slow at raw and don't think I would get extra benefit from doing raw. It may sound lazy but it is hours and hours and hours of work. I like taking the photos and not the processing. Am I alone here?

[Cope]

I don't shoot raw, but I don't shoot for money. The few really bad pics I have shot couild not have been salvaged with any PP. Since it's for money, maybe shoot Raw+jpeg?

[Wes]

Uh, oh..... I smell another RAW vs. JPEG shootout. I like what PeteQ once said (I'm paraphrasing here, so Pete - correct me if I'm wrong), "If you know how to use your camera and you know how to manage your exposure and all that other stuff, you'll get no benefit from going RAW over JPEG." (something like that)

If you go down the RAW+JPEG route make sure you've got plenty of memory available.

[kenw]

I shot 99.9% of my shots in JPEG....but if I were to do a wedding, it would defintely be in RAW. Why?

1) one-time-shots, no retakes, no do-overs
2) awful lighting

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Shooting JPEG only=throwing out about 1/2 your data and no way to retrieve.
Shooting RAW=100% of data

You talk about all the time that it takes to convert from RAW to JPEG, what are you doing that takes so much time to do simple conversions?

To be honest in a wedding shoot you will most likely shoot 400+ shots over the day but in reality you will present to the bride as proofs 40-60 shots which means that you don't need to "process" every shot that you make when you are reviewing the shots. Load the RAW files into your desk top, look at them, instantly decide if it is a possible keeper or toss away (closed eyes, odd object in BG/FG that you won't PS out, overly bad lighting, etc) and then go back through the edited pile and do your Post work on the keepers.

If you don't keep your RAW files you might as well be using a P+S!

[jeffkohn]

For some, JPG may be "good enough", but that's not the same as being "just as good". RAW is superior to JPEG by pretty much any measure you can name except for the amount of card/disk space used. I don't even think the time/processing argument works in favor of JPG anymore, because the RAW convertors have gotten much better and a lot of people find that a RAW workflow is actually faster than a JPG workflow.

The only time I would think of shooting JPEG would be if I were going to have to print completely un-edited shots straight from the memory card. And I can't imagine ever being in such a situation, so I always shoot RAW.

[CaptainTom]

I shoot raw+jpeg. The jpegs are generally absolutely fine, but on the rare shot that was mis-exposed, or the white balance got thrown off, the RAW file is there to bail me out.

If I were simply shooting for my own benefit, jpeg would be just fine.
I do have lots of memory cards.

[ntexas49]

Thanks for the replys folks. Will be shooting raw and griping the whole way:) Need a partner who is into picture processing and let me just shoot. Have a nice day. By the way I made my own reflector from a DIY I found on the web.

[NathanJK]

If you want to speed up your raw workflow, I definitely recommend working in Bridge for your conversions. You can apply an adjustment to one image, then select all the others that are similar and sync them with it, its REALLY helpful.

[a2rob]

Originally Posted by NathanJK

If you want to speed up your raw workflow, I definitely recommend working in Bridge for your conversions. You can apply an adjustment to one image, then select all the others that are similar and sync them with it, its REALLY helpful.

Is that Adobe bridge that you are referring to? I can't get the batch function to work like that so I have been usig Bibble. Care to explai?

Thanks

[NathanJK]

Yeah, Adobe Bridge. What you do is select a group of raw files then right click and say "open in camera raw". The most I've done at a time is 25 or so, but I'm sure you can do more. Then you choose one image that is indicative of a group of images, make your adjustments and then select the entire group, they will all be lined up on the left side of the raw conversion window. Once they are all selected go back over to the top left corner and click on synchronize. This applies the changes you made to all of the files it selected. You'll see a little triangle with a ! in it pop up on all of the images and then disappear from each one sequentially. Once its done you can go and check, but it should have applied all of the changes to the files you selected. Once you've finished your group of images, you can then select them all again and save them all at once which is really helpful. This is what I do for web galleries or proofs in order to move a lot of images through in a relatively short amount of time. I also have several actions that resize for the web or for print setup so I can just batch the jpegs once they have been saved after conversion into other "for web" or "proof" folders. For photos that are actually ordered, I go back to the original raw file usually and do a new conversion/touch up work/optimize for printing. So far it seems to be the most efficient way to work for me!

[jeffkohn]

There's another way to batch-apply setttings in Bridge. Right-click on the "source" image that has the settings you want to copy and choose "Copy Camera Raw Settings", then select the image(s) you want to apply the change to and right-click and choose "Paste Camera Raw Settings". A dialog will pop up prompting you to choose which settings you want to apply.

[NathanJK]

Cool, I never knew that Jeff! I think Bridge might be kinda like Photoshop...12 different ways to do different things, all of them valid but one sometimes better than the other

[Silvernic]

Raw+Jpeg and lovin every minute of it! Sure, you'll burn a little more memory, but you'll definitely get to see which you like more with no regrets.

[a2rob]

Hey thanks, this actually works!!!!