RAW vs JPG

[SpecialK]

I just bought a Nikon D3100 and am curious what benefit there is to shooting in RAW format vs JPG? Is the benefit just in editing?

Also what editing programs are you Nikon guys using? PSE? Picasa? Something else?

Thanks for the help,

Kyle

[Steve Foss]

There used to be a distinct advantage to shooting in RAW, but I quit doing it a couple years back, and shoot almost all my work in jpeg now. Exception is when clients want RAW images (hardly ever).

Without getting overly technical, there are two categories by which I judge RAW vs jpeg.

1. Ease of post processing. Using Photoshop, it used to be that only with a RAW image could you preview the image in PS and make all kinds of adjustments before even opening it. With the advent of CS3 and later versions, you can now open a jpeg in the RAW preview screen and make those adjustments. In CS4, which is what I use day to day, you can even recover/repair blown highlights with a jpeg.

2. Print quality. Apparent image quality on a computer screen, whether viewing an image in an online forum or blowing it up to 100 to 200 percent in PS and pixel peeping, is not the gold standard when judging image quality. Printing is. Most any decent image can be make to look sweet on a computer screen. High res printing is a more demanding format. Say five years ago or so, when I was experimenting with RAW vs jpeg capture and comparing prints, I couldn't tell any difference in quality between 8x10s or 11x14s captured in the different formats. I could detect small differences when I'd blow the prints up large, say 20x30. These differences were subtle, so subtle only anal photography types like us would notice any differences at all. But printing software and technology have moved along quite smartly in the last few years, and I believe the differences in large prints between RAW and jpeg are even smaller than they were.

Those reasons are why I don't shoot RAW anymore. Once I discovered that you could open a jpeg in the RAW preview screen in CS3, it was jpeg from then on, baby!

You can get into a discussion about the file sizes in RAW vs jpeg and how they affect speed per image writing to the card, downloading images and processing them, but with modern computers and the large and relatively inexpensive memory cards we have these days, such points are finer grit to me, and would not sway me in one direction or the other. If I was shooting action sports for a living, it would become more important to shoot jpeg-only, since bursting multiple images of action sequences in some cases requires the ability to get more images on the camera before the buffer fills. With RAW, you get fewer images on the buffer, and it takes longer per image to write to the card, since the files are larger. But for me and most other photographers, that's not much of an issue.

Others have different perspectives, and no doubt will share them. This is just the way I look at it.

[Ufatz]

Excellent post Steve. Thank you for reminding everyone that the final product is (a) most important and ( what you see on your computer screen is NOT the final product in most cases.

Photography has gotten completely away from this old film guy but I have staggered along with my beloved D50 and some lenses, two or three SONY DSC-85;s and of course some antique F-3's, F'4's and prehistoric M3's.

I do not knock the new stuff. It's am amazing world out there and a guy can get an image today in .8 seconds that he used to spend a lot of time setting up for.

Okay. That is all.

[MN Shutterbug]

Personally, I always shoot RAW and Jpeg, just to be on the safe side. Admittedly, 98% of the time I don't even open the RAW image. There are times, either due to an error on my part or just plain shooting at the wrong time of day, that the highlights get a bit hot. I have a much better chance of salvaging the detail by using the RAW image. The only other reason I like to have a RAW image is because I can play with the white balance after the fact. There again, it's something I rarely do but I like the option. After all, memory is cheap. As a side note, I still use Photoshop CS2.

[sanka]

I shoot pretty much only JPG anymore. When I know I'm getting a heck of a shot, something really interesting, I'll use RAW. Like MN Shutterbug said above, I don't even look at 98% of the RAWs I used to take, so I just stopped taking them. Switching to RAW takes all of a few seconds.