RAW or JPEG?

[Rob Jones]

Raw of course. You have a huge advantage over JPEG both for editing and printing.

[Geoff F]

This question was asked, once again, by a newbie on a serious photographic forum which I use and I started a near riot from the RAW fanatics by suggesting that RAW was slightly better than JPEG but the average 'snapper' wouldn't notice any difference and some professionals prefer JPEG. The RAW lobby took great issue at the term slightly and insisted that it was always massively better and any so called professional who uses JPEG should be publically flogged.

In reality, I stand by what I said. There is more detail in RAW and, as others have pointed out, you do have a second bite at White Balance, although it is always better to get it correct at the time of shooting. The downside is much bigger files which, with my basic computer, takes longer to download. If you do use RAW then convert it to 16 bit TIFF before doing any editing. There is no point in shooting RAW then converting to 8 bit JPEG. Save your finished image as TIFF then change to a low resolution JPEG for use on this or other internet sites.

Me? I use both. RAW when I'm taking a few photos which I may want to print at 12 x 8 or bigger. JPEG when taking a lot of snaps that will only be printed at small sizes.

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by Geoff F

This question was asked, once again, by a newbie on a serious photographic forum which I use and I started a near riot from the RAW fanatics by suggesting that RAW was slightly better than JPEG but the average 'snapper' wouldn't notice any difference and some professionals prefer JPEG. The RAW lobby took great issue at the term slightly and insisted that it was always massively better and any so called professional who uses JPEG should be publically flogged.

In reality, I stand by what I said. There is more detail in RAW and, as others have pointed out, you do have a second bite at White Balance, although it is always better to get it correct at the time of shooting. The downside is much bigger files which, with my basic computer, takes longer to download. If you do use RAW then convert it to 16 bit TIFF before doing any editing. There is no point in shooting RAW then converting to 8 bit JPEG. Save your finished image as TIFF then change to a low resolution JPEG for use on this or other internet sites.

Me? I use both. RAW when I'm taking a few photos which I may want to print at 12 x 8 or bigger. JPEG when taking a lot of snaps that will only be printed at small sizes.

Here here! Exactly my thoughts!
I've taken well over 100,000 shots with a mixture of RAW and JPEG. I can't honestly say I've ever regretted using one or the other.
There IS more detail in RAW images, BUT you've got to look really close. At 100% view I can detect some extra detail, but once the image is either printed or loaded on line, the differences have vanished.
It all depends what your proposing to do with them. If like me, your simply doing them for your own amusement and loading them onto sites like this, JPEG does very nicely thank you.

[steveo]

i too am a RAW convert. i got my D80 this time last year and it was jpg's all the way. i didnt even know what RAW was.
But now i've got a copy of CS2 and shoot mainly in RAW to give me the flexabilty with the exposure.

if fiile size is your issue, then it's a simple job to convert the RAW into a jpg after you've had a twiddle around with it. then you can resize/crop to your desired file size.

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by Geoff F

The RAW lobby took great issue at the term slightly and insisted that it was always massively better and any so called professional who uses JPEG should be publically flogged.

As was said earlier in this thread, some professionals (most notably sports photographers) pretty much have to shoot in jpeg both for the higher burst rate and also to meet newspaper publication deadlines. I'd be surprised if any wildlife professionals shoot in jpeg - not saying they definitely don't, just that I'd be surprised.

Originally Posted by Geoff F

There is more detail in RAW and, as others have pointed out, you do have a second bite at White Balance, although it is always better to get it correct at the time of shooting.

Haven't heard that before. The advice is to always try to get your exposure and composition right in camera but I've never heard that advice applied to white balance. On page 32 of Understanding RAW Photography Andy Rouse recommends setting the camera to either auto WB or daylight and then forgetting about it. He says that he always uses daylight so that he's working from a consistent point when correcting.

Dave P.

[GerryNick2]

Originally Posted by Hobjob

A good photo-editor will let you do almost as much manipulating to JPEGs as it does to RAW.

Getting the exposure right in the first instance is clearly the main factor in obtaining a good image. Unfortunately many of us, myself included, don't quite get it right and need to resort to post processing to make adjustments. Another problem of course is that it is far too easy and convenient to allow the camera to make the decisions with regard to exposure details. Whilst modern digital cameras have advanced considerably they don't always get it right. After all the in built processor is merely taking the information received and comparing it with a database of similar images and selecting the closest match.

Whilst good photo editing software will enable a fair amount of manipulation of jpeg's there is a considerable gap between what you can do with a jpeg and a Raw image file, in particular when it comes to recovering lost detail whether it be in the shadows due to under exposure or highlights due to over exposure. The simple explanation for this is that once the camera's inbuilt processor takes the Raw data and converts it to the jpeg format data considered to be surplus to requirements is discarded. Once this conversion has taken place no matter how good the editing software is the data cannot be retrieved. A Raw file on the other hand retains all the data captured at the time of exposure and nothing is discarded until the image is converted to another format, consequently imaging software is able to call upon that additional data that would otherwise be lost in the conversion to jpeg or tif formats.

A simple experiment to demonstrate the point is to take two shots one under exposed and one overexposed using the Raw + jpeg option where available. Load the images into your photo imaging software and then try to recover the lost detail in both images, highlights and shadows, you will see that there is quite a gap between what can be recovered in the Raw image as opposed to the jpeg.

If your camera does not have Raw + jpeg, an alternative is to shoot the same scenarios in Raw, load to photo imaging software,copy and convert to jpeg and then attempt recovery of lost detail in highlights and shadows.

Whilst I have a preference for Raw I would not knock jpeg as both formats have their plus and minus sides. At the end of the day it is down to what best suits an individuals style of photography. However, I do feel that it is important to have a reasonable understanding of the positive and negative sides between the two formats to make an informed decision on which way to go.

Gerry

[Tormentil]

Originally Posted by pressld2

some professionals (most notably sports photographers) pretty much have to shoot in jpeg ........... to meet newspaper publication deadlines.

Good grief!! Just how long does it take to transfer RAW files from a camera !!!!

[mh68]

This isnt a criticism of Raw in any way, but one thing thats puzzled me, regarding recovering shadow detail in Raw, is that, whenever I`ve tried it, either with a deliberately underexposed shot (to get a usable shutter speed in awkward circumstances), or with an accidentally underexposed shot,bringing up the exposure also brings up noise, to such levels that the shot is either ruined, or noise reduction software has to be used to such an extent that the supposed detail advantage of Raw anyway.
Most of my Raw shooting has been with my fz50, which granted, is a noisy cam anyway compared to a DSLR, but i`ve found the same with my Fuji s2, which has otherwise good noise performance.The increased noise has made the exercise a waste of time as far as decent results go.
Is this ability to recover underexposed shots to such a degree limited to the more high-end cameras with better noise levels than the cheaper DSLRs? I`ve seen shots online supposedly taken at 800iso or higher, deliberately underexposed by up to 2 stops for better speeds, then recovered in software, and wondered how on earth theyve managed to get such detail and controlled the noise...


Mark H

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by Tormentil

Good grief!! Just how long does it take to transfer RAW files from a camera !!!!

Depends on the camera's resolution and the resulting file size. But it's not just the download time that matters - it's also the time needed to convert the RAWs to jpegs. This also is reasonably quick if you're not doing any editing or making any adjustments or corrections to the images but in that case there's no reason not to shoot in jpeg in the first place!

Dave P.

P.s. just remembered, I'm not talking to you Tormentil, 'cos you're going to Canada this year and I'm not!

[Mumby]

Mark H,

I think that your conclusion is correct, the performance of a 'higher end' DSLR at any given ISO will be better than a cheaper camera, so recovering underexposed shots will give better results. I think one of the main reasons is that the more expensive SLRs have CMOS sensors, where as a camera like the Fuji s2 has a CCD sensor. CMOS sensors have better signal to noise ratios than CCD sensors as far as I know. Note that Nikon have moved from CCD to CMOS with the new D300 and D3 camera's, and now everyone is saying that they have the best high ISO performance of any Nikon. Canon has been using CMOS for longer, even the 300D uses CMOS, so they have have had the edge in high ISO performance for a long time.

Regards,

Paul