RAW vs JPG, should I start shooting in raw?

[manaheim]

yes

no

How to start a weekly flame war on TPF. Step 1. Post any one of the following questions:

• Do I shoot RAW or JPG?
• Do I need to buy a 47 megapixel camera to have good pictures?
• Amiga or Macintosh, which should I buy?

Aaaaaaanyway... to OP: Shoot with JPEG until your JPEGs make you angry because of something that you cannot fix, then start shooting RAW. JPEGs are a lossy compression- which means the data it doesn't feel that you "need", it hucks in the trash. If the camera misinterprets something on your scene (most famously light color), you're going to have a much harder time correcting it than you would with a RAW image.

Now... on to the flame wars! :mrgreen:

 

[Moglex]

How to start a weekly flame war on TPF. Step 1. Post any one of the following questions:

• Do I shoot RAW or JPG?
• Do I need to buy a 47 megapixel camera to have good pictures?
• Amiga or Macintosh, which should I buy?

Naaaah.

Those low resolution jobbies are for rank amateurs.

A 2400DPI scan from the neg of a 5 x 4 at the very minimum.

(So long as you don't want to print above 10 x 8).

 

[Bifurcator]

How to start a weekly flame war on TPF. Step 1. Post any one of the following questions:

• Amiga or [nothing else matters!], which should I buy?

AMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



/does the Jay Minor Rocks! dance/

 

[penfold1]

There is a good RAW vs JPEG comparison here -
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/raw/raw.htm
3 pages, but welll worth reading

Also for editing here is a run through of RAW editing:
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/workflow_basic/workflow_basic.htm

Personally I think if you have a 4GB memory card then shooting RAW is the best way to go. 2BG and 1BG cards tend to fill up rather quick when shooting whilst with 4BG you can get around 400 shots with RAW.

Thanks for the links, they helped a lot. I shouldn't have trouble with RAW, since I just learned the right way to use all the PS tools I have been using for years.

 

[Mav]

Funnily enough, too, my iView Media Pro program loads in my RAW files much quicker than JPGs, so it's actually quicker for me to browse RAW files.

Flipping through JPGs in iView, I'm left with 1-second or so delay from rotating my scroll wheel to seeing the image. It's almost instant with RAW.

Now that's odd. Mine is exactly the opposite. JPEGs are instant but RAWs give a second or two lag. It's bad and annoying enough that I'll move all the RAWs to a different folder. I have whatever the latest version was before they switched it to the M$ crap, for Mac OS X.

 

[Mav]

Here's my whole new take on the JPEG vs RAW debate...


Do you personally ENJOY the whole process of working with RAW files? If so, AND you can get better results that way, by all means shoot more RAW. If you don't, AND you can already get results that please you with JPEG, then there's no reason for you to be shooting RAW. Just shoot JPEG. Forget about anybody's comparisons on the various technical attributes of the two file types and who also might claim that you can do some things with with one but "can't" with the other because most of it is pure BS from what I've seen.

I shoot pretty much all JPEG. A big advantage of the Nikon system at least in my book is that their in-camera processing is great which makes it easy to get great JPEGs. The factory "Capture NX" RAW software on the other hand stinks and is a big pile of crap, and even a lot of Nikon shooters will back that up. And the other converters and programs out there all have their own way of doing things which isn't necessarily as good as what you could get from Nikon's own JPEGs. I personally don't enjoy the whole RAW process and workflow and enjoy far more the process of trying to get great photos that look their best straight off the camera, in JPEG. Apparently Canon makes it far easier to shoot RAW if their software is better, and it's included with the camera already? You have to pay for Nikon's Capture NX software which is slow, buggy, and clunky, but does do some neat things. At least if Canon's in-camera JPEG processing isn't as good, they at least make it easier to shoot RAW.


And the last thing I'll say is that anybody who claims someone is an idiot or stupid for doing things in a certain way (and not just limited to the whole RAW vs JPEG discussion) with regards to photography is automatically stupid and an idiot themselves in my book. Don't listen to these people.

 

[Alan Ellis]

Can I use my CS3 to process and edit RAW images into JPEGs or do I still have to use the Sony software to convert? Thx...

AE

 

[RockDawg]

Also don't by into the crap that RAW files are harder to use than JPEGs because RAWs need to be edited. Any competent image processing program keeps the process identical to both.

I recently started playing around with RAW and, from my admittedly limited knowledge and experience with this, that doesn't seem to be true. For example, I took some photos of a gorgeous orange sky the other night and was amazed to find that the displayed image was a lot different between Capture/View NX and the Adobes (LR and PS). The colors were very muted and dark in the Adobe software.

Researching this I found that it's aparently due to the Nikon software applying in-camera settings to the RAW file much like the camera would do to a jpg. Lightroom and Photoshop aparently don't do this, or don't do it nearly as well. The result isa that the images look completely different depending on which software I view them in.

What was amazing to me is that I would've expected the plain RAW (no in-camera settings applied) to be more indicative of the actual view that night, but instead the "processed" RAWs were more accurately reflected what I actually saw when I would've expected them to be a little more "exagerated".

What this means is that instead of easily using LR for most everything I now have to jump through hoops to do what I want. I'm not very good at procesing and altering my images to begin with and this just makes more complited. I'm very bummed to learn this reality of RAW.

 

[Moglex]

What was amazing to me is that I would've expected the plain RAW (no in-camera settings applied) to be more indicative of the actual view that night, but instead the "processed" RAWs were more accurately reflected what I actually saw when I would've expected them to be a little more "exaggerated".

What this means is that instead of easily using LR for most everything I now have to jump through hoops to do what I want. I'm not very good at processing and altering my images to begin with and this just makes more completed. I'm very bummed to learn this reality of RAW.

Hmmm.

You should expect the 'processed' image to be closer to what you 'thought' you saw.

That means it's doing it's job!

Your brain compensates for quite a range of colour casts so that you see roughly the same thing under a wide range of lighting conditions.

The unprocessed image just has what your eye saw.

If the software is competent the processed image will be closer to what you visualised post a great deal of processing by your own brain.

 

[Mystwalker]

If your camera allows - go RAW+JPEG

RAW gives best options if you know what you are doing, AND if you have the time.

I neither know what to do with RAW nor have time so I shoot RAW+JPEG. Just in case there is that one shot that I absolutely must have perfect.

 

[penfold1]

Well, I took some test photos in RAW yesterday, plugged m camera in and my mac refused to recognize the camera. I figured it was because I needed the Canon software, so I found the CD and installed that.

Then when I plugged the camera in it started to open the canon software, then froze, then said the camera was not connected....

I just added this mac to my arsenal last sept and it has caused me so much grief...

 

[Mav]

Researching this I found that it's aparently due to the Nikon software applying in-camera settings to the RAW file much like the camera would do to a jpg. Lightroom and Photoshop aparently don't do this, or don't do it nearly as well. The result isa that the images look completely different depending on which software I view them in.

Right. The algorithms that Nikon uses to go from RAW to JPEG are HIGHLY proprietary. All the other third-party software makers merely do their best guess or reverse engineering or their own interpretation of what things should look like with a given setting, and hence each RAW converter will give you a different look.

What this means is that instead of easily using LR for most everything I now have to jump through hoops to do what I want. I'm not very good at procesing and altering my images to begin with and this just makes more complited. I'm very bummed to learn this reality of RAW.

If you don't enjoy it and don't like the results you get or all the hoops you have to jump through, then I'd seriously consider just shooting JPEG.

 

[Helen B]

Right. The algorithms that Nikon uses to go from RAW to JPEG are HIGHLY proprietary. All the other third-party software makers merely do their best guess or reverse engineering or their own interpretation of what things should look like with a given setting, and hence each RAW converter will give you a different look.

Exactly. It's not so much 'unprocessed' and 'processed', but just differently processed. If you are looking at a recognisable image you aren't looking at an unprocessed Raw file.

Best,
Helen

 

[CloseToGermany]

I fell in love with Raw, it's really like they said about the printing or editing circumstance.

I am continually shooting in low light situations, and the editing option helps make up for my inadequacies.

 

[dEARlEADER]

Right. The algorithms that Nikon uses to go from RAW to JPEG are HIGHLY proprietary. All the other third-party software makers merely do their best guess or reverse engineering or their own interpretation of what things should look like with a given setting, and hence each RAW converter will give you a different look.

This is true... even Nikon can't get it right some times.... for instance on my D60 noise due to high ISO is way better dealt with in camera jpg as opposed to shooting NEF(RAW) and using Nikons ViewNX to convert to jpg.

The RAW files converted by Nikons viewNX are way noisy compared to just shooting jpeg.

How Nikon can't replicate their incamera processing on computer software is beyond me. They have some lousy ass software.

I used to shoot RAW exclusive... now I shoot jpeg... I focus more on getting shots right in camera (especially white balance)... this saves my PP time.... I never save a jpeg 20 times.... I never save a jpeg 3 times... I copy an unedited jpeg to a back up disc...

I find it more time consuming to shoot RAW and have to recreate the look of my jpeg. However, I'm just a hobbyist and not a pro. If I was a pro I would shoot RAW because I'm getting paid for my editing time.