How accurate is Ken Rockwell?

[bribrius]

I shoot raw when I forget to change my settings, if I know the photo is going to need a lot of tweaking from the beginning, or it is serious enough I cant afford to miss.

But realistically, since I shoot a lot with a camera where raw isn't even a option and only jpeg I have become pretty reliant on just using jpegs. And even shooting raw + jpeg I usually only use the jpeg

 

[AlanKlein]

I keep shooting basic JPEG+RAW and honestly do not really know why. Probably "just in case". Images that I post here are all basic camera JPEGs with some quick pp. I do not remember when I last used a RAW file.

Pretty much what I do. With travel photos and family shots, jpeg is usually perfectly acceptable. Who wants to waste a lot of time processing each individual picture especially when I spend time make DVD's slide shows of the trips. My edits are usually cropping only.

As an aside, what did photographers do when they were shooting chromes? Other than using graduated ND filters, you just dealt with the range of the film and that was it. I think a lot of what we do, we do just because we can do it. We get caught up in the technical aspects rather than focusing on the more important aesthetic and content. Pretty much Rockwell's main and recurring point if you actually are reading his blog and not just repeating the negative comments from people who never look at his site.

 

[Solarflare]

I shoot RAW.

I dont see why I would use JPEG, which is a format that throws away a huge part of the information my camera has recorded.

If at all, I would store 16-bit TIFF so my images are more easily readable for future generations.

 

[Vince.1551]

I shoot raw simply because it's operationally easier to bring up shadows. And I don't have to start from scrap should I need to make changes to a final image. With JPEG I've to go back to the original image else I'll suffer from lost of data each time I save a JPEG file due to compression.

That I said I do use JPEG for snap shots