K-x Raw or Jpeg?

Think about this hypothetical situation:

You have a Ferrari F430 sports car and there are 2 roads you can take. One has a speed limit of 200 mph and the other has a speed limit of 20 mph. (In case you are not familiar with sports car, the F430 max speed is 200 mph). Which road will you choose?
If you choose the 20 mph road then you may be better off selling the F430 and get a scooter. What's the point of having a super fast sports car and limit yourself to a slow road?

Now replace the Ferrari with your K-x, the 200 mph road with RAW, the 20 mph road with JPEG and the scooter with a Point-and-shoot compact.

RAW is like a sports car maximum speed. It has everything that the camera can offer. You may not need it (like you may not drive at the speed limit) but there are cheaper alternatives out there which will save you a lot of money if you just want to do JPEG.

Of course, driving at 200 mph requires more care, skill, concentration - just like RAW will require more post-processing. Fortunately, sports cars have intelligent stability management, traction control, etc. RAW has... Adobe Lightroom (NOT photoshop!) or similar software.

I currently have a "quick JPEG" preset that apply automatic exposure adjustment, lens correction, tone curve, clarity, saturation and vibrance. The preset processed 800+ pictures in one of my recent session just by Ctrl-A and then choose the preset. 1 key press, 1 mouse click, a bit of scrolling (to go through the list of presets) and another mouse click for all 800+ pics.

That's without even discussing the fact that compression in RAW files is lossless whilst JPEG is lossy. And I chose my speed limit very carefully. A 12-bit RAW file has 16 times more data and an 8-bit JPEG.

So from my point of view, there are very few reasons to choose JPEG over RAW.

One problem I have with that is that the speed analogy isn't valid, it's nothing to do with speed.

Another problem I have is that done properly there is very little if any advantage to RAW capture, especially if batch processed. I don't see the point of arguing greater versatility in correcting errors unless the adjustments are done on an individual image basis.

So you put your images on sites in what format?

It sounds like this; the camera can't do as good a job as the individual when it comes to finally producing a jpeg and you paid how much for the camera? Best remove the jpeg option from the camera and get faster, more accurate AF.

Just think, a change of camera and you could shoot 14 bit RAW. Is there no end to image quality.

Best regards

Putting images on websites is an entirely different thing. A RAW file is like 10-20MB is size. You want website pictures to be about 0.1-0.5MB max because nobody wants to spend minutes loading a page. If you do pictures exclusively for websites then maybe it's a good idea to do JPEG (but maybe not - see flexibility below).

I understand why JPEG option is there (for example, higher speed, no need to invest in a RAW processing software, etc.) but I have absolutely no problem if it's not there. I don't invest in a DSLR to use 1/16th of what it is capable of because that is just a bad investment. All other things being equal, 1 > 1/16.

Lastly, I did switch from 12-bit RAW (Panasonic GH1) to 14-bit RAW (K-5). And IMO, there is indeed no end to IQ. Perfection is not attainable but people still pursue it.

It's not about speed. My point was that RAW gives you more flexibility. Like if you drive on a 200 mph limit, you have the flexibility of driving slow (and I use road, not highway!) or fast. On a 20 mph road, you don't have an option to drive fast (speeding not in the argument).

The sports car speed is meant to be an example of a certain desirable property you have in a sports car. Just like if you use the K-x, there are specific properties like wider DR, post-capture fixing of WB, etc.

If you do RAW, you can certainly do more RAW-specific adjustments (e.g. recovering highlight, pull up shadow, special noise reduction treatment, etc.). If you just want to mass-process a certain group a pictures, just mass-process and export to JPEG! But there are the RAW images right there when you want to do more than JPEG.

But if you do JPEG to begin with then there is zero chance you can do any adjustment to the full extent you can do with RAW. You can take perfect JPEG but there ought to be some occasions where you get the wrong WB on a priceless moment. Do you want to be stuck with the JPEG or have the possibility of fixing it with RAW?

Batch processing actually makes RAW versatility argument more valid. You can batch-process both JPEG and RAW. But if you want to (for example) recover 1 EV of blown highlight, you can't do it with a JPEG (all other things being equal).

And I would like to quote someone's signature I saw in one of the forums I read:

[quote:3496ace15f="testdasi
But if you want to (for example) recover 1 EV of blown highlight, you can't do it with a JPEG (all other things being equal).[/quote]I tend to fall back to the old skills used while shooting film. I tend to be able to judge EV compensation situations. If it's a "critical" shot I'd shoot 3,5 or 7 frames with EV comp presets.

That function could or should also be removed from the camera if we all shoot RAW as why have any photographic skills, the software will cover exposure mistakes.

I agree about the post processing advatages of RAW. I do not batch process. I aim to get the original shots correctly exposed.

Odd how the camera talk mimics HiFi jargon. Unfortunately I don't have the skill to say if a finished image started as a RAW or jpeg file from the camera.

Technically speaking, all my images are RAW but I choose to let the camera do the conversion. If the in camera conversion is not good enough for some people, maybe they should write to the manufacturer to get the in camera software improved.

Of course, depending where or how any prints are produced can also wipe out that extra detail gained so a double whamy.

Why do we even bother with producing images with so many pitfalls?

Best regards

[quote:3496ace15f="testdasi
But if you want to (for example) recover 1 EV of blown highlight, you can't do it with a JPEG (all other things being equal).[/quote]I tend to fall back to the old skills used while shooting film. I tend to be able to judge EV compensation situations. If it's a "critical" shot I'd shoot 3,5 or 7 frames with EV comp presets.

That function could or should also be removed from the camera if we all shoot RAW as why have any photographic skills, the software will cover exposure mistakes.

I agree about the post processing advatages of RAW. I do not batch process. I aim to get the original shots correctly exposed.

Odd how the camera talk mimics HiFi jargon. Unfortunately I don't have the skill to say if a finished image started as a RAW or jpeg file from the camera.

Technically speaking, all my images are RAW but I choose to let the camera do the conversion. If the in camera conversion is not good enough for some people, maybe they should write to the manufacturer to get the in camera software improved.

Of course, depending where or how any prints are produced can also wipe out that extra detail gained so a double whamy.

Why do we even bother with producing images with so many pitfalls?

Best regards[/quote]yep
in the old film days, we had choices about what film to use and how we exposed that film to achieve results we wanted. I preferred to over expose my 800 kodak neg film, underexpose vlevia, properly expose agfa ultra fifty, and slightly over expose agfa portrait 160.... unless I was shooting black and white film...

the drawback to "In Camera" processing vs "RAW" processing is this:
IF everybody uses the same thing, then everybody gets the same results....
So I cant swap sensors but I can process the raw file differently to achieve the results I want.

Very true Don in absolute terms but looking at the images we post here and other sites, we end up seeing differences in the quality and appearance of JPEG only shots.

I have no negative outlook to RAW and accept that "more" detail etc. can be achieved/retrieved but it's not for me. I can say that I don't set out to get a certain result. I just see the image, asses it (mind’s eye may say it’s a mono result, EV comp etc.) and shoot it. When I do see EV shortcomings on my images, they are normally close enough that a tweak in curves will fettle it.

To some, just getting into digital photography is a daunting task never mind the additional burden of PC/software skills needed.

Best regards

RAW gives much more leeway than JPG for processing. The trade off is much bigger file sizes and slower handling in the camera and PP software. You takes your choice.

There is certainly a speed issue with RAW v. JPG. JPGs are much smaller files and thus are moved around inside the computer much quicker.

I beg to differ on this one. Within the camera settings you can select image styles such as natural, vivid, etc., and each of these styles can be adjusted in terms of sharpness, colour saturation and contrast. Custome settings can be created via the USER mode if desired.

I have created the style I want from within these settings.

Then how we process in Photoshop will clinch the appearance. How much sharpening, the stype of sharpening, what other adjustments are made.

It's only a one size fits all situation when the user does nothing but accept how the camera arrives from the supplier.

Learning to use JPEG capture is no different than learning to use RAW capture settings.

A highly experienced photographer in strong control of what s/he is doing will get excellent results from shooting jpegs, JR being a fine example.

RAW allows (a) one to delay some of the work to the post processing stage rather than tweaking camera settings and (b) to rescue an imperfectly exposed image.

Provided how you work creates the results you want, then everything in the garden is rosy. I think Gartmore's approach makes a great deal of sense.

For example, I take lots of pictures of small objects in shady conditions (i.e., an ad hoc 'studio' in the field). I could (a) adjust the white balance in camera before photographing the finds and shoot jpeg or (b) shoot RAW and make sure there is something white in the image and set the white balance in Lightroom. I choose the latter simply because there is always something white in the image (the scale) and during the course of photographing several hundred small finds the light changes a bit.

As I use Lightroom, I find shooting RAW no more work than shooting jpegs. I do like the fact that my original RAW files are untouched and that I can create multiple copies in whatever format I need very quickly and easily.

It is very much courses for horses, and this whole endless debate is pretty pointless. The race car on the 20mph road is a bad analogy really. A better one would be if you had the chance to drive on a racetrack at 200mph the race car would be the best choice, but if you had to drive on a Romanian "yellow" class road, you're much better off using a Landrover. Use whatever you need to get the job done.

K.

I'm not against shooting jpegs. I use the same level of care no matter what I'm shooting. I have reasonably fast computers, lots of memory cards, ram and hd space, with Apple's Aperture, there is no loss of performance, or time inn my workflow. I have import presets that process the files on import. It is absolutely seamless from start to finish from the end user perspective... I could easily switch to "Jpeg only" and not see a huge difference anywhere in my workflow... Until I want to do drastic changes to an image, like heavy photoshopping, or completely changing the raw processing... So like it or not, I have the best of both worlds. If I shot jpegs I'd have the same workflow, little speed gains, a few extra gigs of space on the hard drives and be screwed if I want to to do extreme editing on any one image. That is where jpegs bites you when you need to or want to you can reprocess the raw files to your hearts content, jpeg is much more limited. but a good shot is a good shot, irregardless of file format.

as for jpeg+RAW, I'd be wasting time and space, Aperture handles the files in such a way that the jepgs are irrelevant.

There is NO disadvantage whatsoever to shooting raw if you have ANY duo-core or better intel mac, lots of ram, decent hd space and Aperture.

I can take 1000 images from several cameras, at a wedding, transfer them into my macbook, RAW process them, make a slideshow for same day edit slideshow, and be able to play a 300 image slideshow by the time people have finished eating thier supper, when the lights go down for the first dance (no photoshopping).

We just look at it from a different perspective. You look at RAW vs JPEG as tools. I look at RAW vs JPEG as limitations.

On an unrelated note, this reminds me of arguing things like lager vs ale, chicken vs pork, to-maa-to vs to-mae-to.

clearly we need to thoroughly try out each to the point of overindulgence. In the name of scientific research of course.... I'll start with a pitcher of lager and a bucket of wings, then try a pint or two of ale and some ribs... I'll get back to you when I'm done studying!

I don't care much for tomatoes, get somebody else to test that one.

If it wasn't for keeping a check on my weight I'd join you.

Maybe you're keeping them in the fridge? Destroys the flavour.