Shooting mode; RAW vs. jpeg

[Arch]

Well, let's see...
I took 150 shots at a recent birthday party for my grand-daughter. That's two and a half hours for the conversion. Yes, jpegs ARE "that much quicker."

Now, speaking as a photographer...
If your niece's "smile and look were perfect," why the need for PP? What camera errors needed fixing? PP, even simple cropping, is nothing more than a mechanism to fix mistakes that never should have happened to begin with.

firstly, there is no need to be argumentative.
Now, im not sure what your workflow is... but if it takes you two and a half hours to open a raw file and go to 'file', 'save as' and choose jpeg, then your certainly not doing it as easy as the way my workflow works. For example you can batch process.

As for the large print for my bro... you do know that image quality is better at larger print sizes from a RAW file right?... thats the main reason,... the PP was minimal. Lastly, i dont see editing a photo purely as 'fixing mistakes'... the editing i did for the canvas print for example was purely artistic... as most portrait photographers would edit theres. Unless you think portrait and wedding photographers should shoot jpeg as well?

 

[Socrates]

firstly, there is no need to be argumentative.
Now, im not sure what your workflow is... but if it takes you two and a half hours to open a raw file and go to 'file', 'save as' and choose jpeg, then your certainly not doing it as easy as the way my workflow works. For example you can batch process.

As for the large print for my bro... you do know that image quality is better at larger print sizes from a RAW file right?... thats the main reason,... the PP was minimal. Lastly, i dont see editing a photo purely as 'fixing mistakes'... the editing i did for the canvas print for example was purely artistic... as most portrait photographers would edit theres. Unless you think portrait and wedding photographers should shoot jpeg as well?

I used your figure of one minute per photo to arrive at the two and a half hour total.

Also be reminded that you responded to my post where I very specifically referred to jpgs for snapshots. I clarified by indicating that these are shots where I rarely do any PP at all, except for a very occasional crop. I certainly wouldn't expect a portrait or wedding photographer to take snapshots.

By the way, I'm planning to take shots of my son in an uncoming marathon. These shots obviously can not be redone afterwards. Consequently, I won't use RAW because it will limit me to a burst of only six shots at 3 fps and I don't want to miss anything.

 

[Arch]

well, just so you know... or more importantly the OP, Download a free RAW converter, RAW Shooter Essentials is good if you can still get it.... Select all in the folder of RAWS go to batch process, choose jpeg and hit go.. in a few mins you'll have another folder full of your jpegs.... quick and easy.

... and yea you were refering to taking snapshots.. and my relpy was that a snapshot i took ended up being a good picture for my bro.. thats the point of always being set to RAW, 'in case' you happen on a great shot.

Anyways, lets move on since there's little point trying to convince everyone of the benefits.

 

[sabbath999]

This has been discussed ad nauseum. Do a search for varying opinions.

Thanks for saving me the typing. What ^he^ said.

 

[Mav]

Straight off the camera JPEG. Pretty bland and dull, huh? But it has some potential...

Processed JPEG:

- applied sharpening
- minor lighting adjustments
- applied non-linear Fuji Velvia profile color ramp
- applied a mild to moderate "smart vibrancy" function
- horizon leveled and slightly cropped
- some very slight noise reduction
- some other minor tweaks I'm forgetting about by now.

Printed at 20x30" at Costco and looks GREAT! Now I just need to find a place to hang the thing. Man, too bad I didn't shoot RAW though.

I have many more examples of great looking processed JPEGs from relatively drab looking off the camera shots. I post this one a lot because it's one of my favorites and it also catches one of my favorite phenomenas where you can see the sun's rays first shooting through upper atmosphere clouds creating a ripple effect a little bit before the actual sunrise. No offense to anybody here, but I might be more convinced to shoot RAW if it wasn't for the fact that a lot of the reasons given for shooting RAW or why JPEG is so bad are either exaggerated, or outright false. I routinely do to JPEGs what a lot of RAW shooters claim "cannot" be done period or not without looking horrible, and yet I have 20x30" prints hanging up in my place that look great. There is this myth floating around that all of your photos will automatically be sooooooo much better if you just shoot RAW, but it simply isn't so. There are some programs out there that do a lot of neat tricks and happen to only work with RAW files, but there are other programs out there that do the exact same things and work with anything you throw at it.

All that said, I did shoot RAW this weekend. My cousin was in her first more formal dress and her family wanted me to come over and take a bunch of photos. I was supposed to have like 30 minutes and hoped to get around a hundred shots from which I'd pick a dozen or so. I ended up with 5 freakin minutes, had no time to dial in my camera, no time to try some different poses and shots, and no chance to fix mistakes if I made them. So I shot RAW + JPG and got a whole 24 photos. From the looks of things I'll need the RAW files on 2 or 3 shots that are great but have some errors. A lot of the other shots with no technical mistakes had somebody blink, or a bad pose, etc. So if it's important, and I can't afford to make any mistakes, and I won't have much opportunity to get the shot, YES, I shoot RAW! :thumbup:

For the beach shot above, there was no need to whatsoever. I had the time, I had the right technique, I had the right tools and filters, I dragged my ass out to the beach at 515am to catch that light, and the rest was in God's hands.