K-x Raw or Jpeg?

Hi

After a lot of mulling over which camera manufacturer to go for I finally settled on Pentax; principally because of its better than average ISO performance in low light and the quality of its lenses.
I went for weeks walking around with my fingers in my ears oblivious to the rants of Canon and Nikon users urging me to go with them. Was it the right choice to go with the Pentax K-x?
Well, so far I think it is - with a view in the future to getting a K-5 for even superior image quality and improved ISO handling.

At the moment I am 'shooting' all my birds in JPEG format and using very basic auto setting features on Windows 7 to adjust the colours, noise etc of my images. For the most part though they are straight out of the camera and generally exposed near perfect.

However, having spent a lot of time browsing the wonderful web, I am getting the impression that it would be better to shoot in RAW format instead so I can get the best out of the K-x. The trouble is, DPReview insists that the jump from JPEG to RAW is negligible and not really worth the effort.

Silly then of me to go out and get Photoshop when I could have used Picassa instead!

Or is DPReview incorrect?

Would I see a big jump in IQ and design of my images?

I dont want to spend the next decade regretting that I never made any inroads into trying out RAW.

Your thoughts guys please...

QC

All my images are shot as JPEGs. Some manipulation is done in Photoshop as required.

Frankly, cameras have improved immensly and the difference between JPEG and RAW capture has narrowed. It is not possible to see the difference between my A3 prints and those of RAW shooters. Technique is much more important.

Where available, use the Premium JPEG setting.

been discussed many time there are pro and cons for each.
try searching the forums. wayyyy to much useful tips and insights for anybody to re-type it all for you today.

I shoot RAW, but fps does suffer. I once tried JPEG and found quite a few images with blown highlights that I could not recover. In RAW this is hardly ever the case.

So, I'm back to RAW. My bugbear is that I cannot continuously shoot. The K-x is supposed to do 4.7 fps with a buffer for 5 RAW images. I can only shoot 2 images before there is a pause. Found this disappointing on Sunday for example when there was a fight (or maybe courtship display) between 2 coots. I captured the start of the "fight", and the end of it. But missed what would have been a much more dramatic shot in the middle of it.

Maybe I should have perservered with JPEG.

I shoot nearly all my images in the DNG Raw format and I save them also as DNG Raw. I use DNG Raw as it is the Adobe Raw standard. I prefer to capture the maximum data and archive that original capured image. I then process these images in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) which comes as part of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. In ACR I set the white and black points, to avoid blown highlights or blocked up shadows and I also increase the clarity. After post processing in Photoshop, I save the images as TIF Files.

However, if I am running short of memory card space or require fast Frames Per Second, the I use the highest quality JPG setting.

There are many arguments on both sides but I am with the Raw party.

Many thanks for all the comments folks.

I think I will give it a go for a few days so I can say I have tried it.

As Alan has pointed out and experienced; sacrificing fps is just not an option if shooting behaviour and the actions of flitty birds like small birds etc.

Heading off now to play with Photoshop.

As said previously....There are many arguments on both sides but I am with the Raw party.

I had been taking bird shots and find the processing a lot more forgiving..Also the adjustment brush in raw 6 is amazing...

Hello QC
I also use a Kx and have it setup to shoot DNG RAW+ JPEG; yes this takes more space on the card, but you also get the best of both worlds.

SD cards are so cheap nowadays (£65 I paid for my smallest capacity, 256MB, and £6 for a 8GB ), so RAW+ JPEG shouldn't be a problem in that respect.

Chances are that you wouldn't want to upload all the RAW images taken, whilst you could browse the JPGS's and decide on which ones you'd like to work on. A win-win situation.

Regards
Adrian

Thanks guys, I will keep that in mind.

I do shoot in DNG raw for my wildlife shots. I think it's more of a safety net in case you get it wrong giving more flexible correction. On the other hand every shot in raw seems to need some attention which can be tedious.

it was your review for ephotozine that compelled me to look more seriously at the kr......
before looking at it seriously, I considered the kr to be less of a value than the kx..... the kx is still the best buy, but the the kr is better than I ever imagined it would be.
I'm glad I did look again, because as soon as we found one on sale at the same price point as the kx, we snapped it up.
I'm a raw shooter, but... I will say this... after setting in a -1/3 stop exp comp... so as not to blow the highlights... the kr does take a nice jpeg..... it has one more trick up it's sleeve... the ca and lens correction settings for jpegs, for some that is a nice feature. I suspect it slows the camera down but for many it means better images with no post processing....
as for video it is proving it's worth as far as I'm concerned. you can do manual... sort of.. I use m lenses and set the aperture manually, set the exposure with a grey card, then hit the ael button before recording and the camera doesn't change exposure during video shooting. Nice.

Ah the old Raw versus Jpeg. Not to sound snide, but I think if you have to ask the question then it really doesn't matter, save yourself some storage and time and stick to jpeg for the time being.

I think it's one of those natural progressions that every digital photographer goes through. You start of shooting JPEG because you can't be asked to learn all the ins and outs of raw processing. Then eventually you start running into the limitations of JPEG and you switch over to RAW. Or alternatively you turn into a sports/news/some-other-prolific shooter and you don't have the time to deal with processing so you stick with JPEG, but at least you know why you're doing so.

RAW is great, but if you're not going to take advantages of the flexibility it affords you, then it's just a waste of time and storage. IMO the image quality difference is not worth the effort between an in-camera JPEG and one that gets spit out of your processor of choice, it's the exposure latitude, white balance correction, etc... that makes it worth the effort.

I think that's most sensible response to this question I have ever seen!

Carry on with jpeg, but when you feel the urge, try a few RAW shots and see how you like processing them. if you're shooting something with a tricky exposure, that's a good time to dip your toe.

I've said this before but I think its horses for courses. I shoot RAW for most personal stuff, I shoot RAW+ for weddings so that the jpegs can be quickly uploaded to the client area of my website and I only need to RAW process the needed files rather than the whole lot and in the controlled environment of the studio (for some high-end demanding clients) I shoot exclusicely JPEG.

RAW here.