RAW or JPEG??

[Mongo]

PLEASE NOTE:
This thread is 3 years old and has been bumped up by Wes in THIS POST since he noticed a couple of funny things about it....


Ok, what are the advantages to shooting in RAW mode compared to JPEG? I know you are supposed to be able to manipulate the image more in RAW, but is it any sharper of an image?


Edit by Abel: Added old post info

[Abel]

hehe i was thinking of making a post to inform people about the advantages of RAW...

I switched from jpg to raw about 7 months ago and i love it. the ability to adjust white balance and exposure levels is definitely a godsend!

those two items by themselves have saved me plenty of photos in the past. im thinking raw gives be about + or - 2 full stops of exposure control which is very nice to have. with my 10d, i find it underexposing alot duing bright daylight hours so not only can i correct it on the camera but i can also adjust it in post processing.

sure the files are much larger than jpg but think about it, a JPG is a compressed image file so right off the bat you will be editing a lossy file to some extent.

and yes, postprocessing raw files takes much more time but i feel the end result is well worth it.

give it a try and im sure you will love it.

[Mongo]

I did try it once, but the image size (got like 9 shots on a 64mb card) has kept me from trying it more. I have since picked up a couple more cards so I may try it again.

[Abel]

ahhh for reasons of being short on storage.. i can understand shooting JPGs...

i have a 4g card which holds like 600 Raw files so i just shoot away at the max size..

[Mongo]

Originally Posted by Abel

ahhh for reasons of being short on storage.. i can understand shooting JPGs...

i have a 4g card which holds like 600 Raw files so i just shoot away at the max size..

Dang, I wish...lol I have 2-128's and a 64 now. I can get 90 on each of the 128's and like 45 or so on the 64. Thats at full standard resolution. Im not going to worry about it too much right now but was really curious for when I go DSLR .

[swanny338]

Whenever I am shooting sports, I normally use JPEG just cause it gets outta the buffer quicker and I dont want to be post processing a couple hundred raw shots, cause it would take forever to get them to the parents. I really havnt shot RAW much yet but thats cause I liked how easy JPEG was. NOw with my 10D I will be probably doing most of my shots in RAW, except.. sports.

Oh yea, if I am shooting sports for news print I will shoot RAW cause I only need one or two good pics and 1 or 2 are easy enough to adjust.


So what editing software does everyone use for RAW editing, I have heard iffy things about the canon software but I havnt tried anything else.. yet

[gpgyo]

For sports I use JPEG so that I clear the buffer faster and because I generally do less post processing on those. In the studio its always RAW. With a RAW file, in addition to the advantages discussed above, you have the option of 16 bit image editing, at least in PSCS (I'm not sure about prior versions.) Since PSCS has built in RAW conversion its all I use for post processing. Before going into PSCS I use Breeze Browser for review and to determine which ones are the "keepers."

Greg

[speedydave]

+1 to what gpgyo said.

[mattchow]

raw+ medium jpg. :D for shots where i know i wont be filling up my space.
large jpg for car shows.

[cbuhay]

Originally Posted by swanny338

I dont want to be post processing a couple hundred raw shots, cause it would take forever to get them to the parents. I really havnt shot RAW much yet but thats cause I liked how easy JPEG was.

Actually, shooting with raw and post-processing with CS, you could color and exposure correct one shot, and apply the raw settings for the whole set by batching your job. I do it all the time :)

I shoot mostly portraits, and I find that raw is invaluable. I have streamlined my workflow enough that it hardly takes any time to do the extra processing that comes along with the raw format. Plus, I love the extra latitude a 16-bit lossless tif file gives me. I usually batch process my pictures, and I have actions or scripts that allow me to convert from one file type to another. Typically, I will have the same file in: raw, 16-bit tif, 8-bit jpg rgb (sized for printing), and 8-bit jpg srgb (sized for the net). Maybe that's a little overkill, but memory is cheap.

just my .02

[Wes]

Wow! Just looking through old threads and saw this one. A couple of things come to mind....

1 - Abel actually had enough time that he was able to post more than once in the same thread.

2 - The whole "RAW vs. JPEG" question is still no closer to being answered than it was 4 years ago. Funny how some things never change.

3 - It wasn't all that long ago that people were shooting with 64Mb and 128Mb cards. Nowadays most people won't touch a card that holds less than 1Gb.

[Abel]

haha LOL @ Wes...

being able to post at all is tough to do these days.. this thread was from 12-14-04 and we had about 55 members at that time. i was in recruitment mode bigtime and i made it a point to answer every thread, every response etc in order to help build content and create a discussion in order to help bring members back in etc... Now it is very hard to be able to just relax and browse the forum since Im pretty busy doing the admin stuff behind the scenes..

Info on site at time of this thread:
Members at time of post: 55
Thread Count at time of post: 97
Posts Count at time of post: 495

What we're up to now:
Current Members: 12,629
Current Thread Count: 65,310
Current Post Count: 600,424

Crazy huh?!

Thanks for bumping this thread... I got a kick out of your response!

[Cope]

Originally Posted by Abel

ahhh for reasons of being short on storage.. i can understand shooting JPGs...

i have a 4g card which holds like 600 Raw files so i just shoot away at the max size..

My D200 with a 4GB card only allows 240 RAW, but 450 large/fine jpeg.

[Wes]

One other thing I noticed.... this particular RAW vs. JPEG thread petered itself out within 10 posts. Nowadays you'd have at least 15 posts in which people would post a link to other threads where this topic had been discussed before.

[rogerfsmith]

Originally Posted by Mongo

Dang, I wish...lol I have 2-128's and a 64 now. I can get 90 on each of the 128's and like 45 or so on the 64. Thats at full standard resolution. Im not going to worry about it too much right now but was really curious for when I go DSLR .

Since 1 or 2 gb cards are available for in the $15 to $30 range (and of good speed and quality in that price range) why not upgrade your cards?
Cheers,
roger