What do you shoot?

My first six months or so I was shooting JPEG's, but the last couple of years has been RAW. I have no reason to go back to JPEG's.

Gary

I saw that the 7D one team uses at work shoots RAW+ small JPEGs. That, I think, is an excellent solution. We're talking 2MP of JPEG, where you can decide to spend time on the RAW or not.

For my own use, I use RAW all the time unless there's a very specific need for JPG. I have the computing power to deal with it, so I do.

Bret

I have answered Raw+, which I use unless I am going to take a lot of pictures at airshows for example.

Not fully true.
The shooting is the same but there is a difference how the program renders a RAW file compared to the camera.
If you would have nailed the photo in jpg then there is little to nothing you need to do with RAW, i believe you meant that.
Still i love to try to make good photo's even better, i think PP is just as important then the time behind the camera.

I'm shooting in RAW and manually, that way it's easier to batch process

you can set up custom profiles for each camera.... but default settings, the RAW converter will do pretty much what the camera would in terms of whitebalance and exposure, if anything it might do a better conversion than the camera...

Are you two trying to confuse me now ?

nope just try it, you'll see if you no likey you only have to reset it to jpeg in your camera.
your pictures may come out a little sharper, that is about it, apertures default settings are pretty good.

Been RAW since my DS days... sounds so wrong!

Unless I am just wanting snaps, or trying timelapse stuff, then jpgs are fine. 99% RAW I'd say, maybe more!

Just converted a Nikonian colleague I work with to shoot RAW, he been jpg for years... and he uses a D3!

I almost always shoot RAW+ and have always done so since purchasing my first DSLR. If the jpeg is acceptable, or can easily be made so, I'll use it, but for what I consider my best captures (no snide comments, please:mrgreen I'll always work from a copy of the RAW and save the original: with the cost of TB+ HD drives these days I see no point in doing otherwise. For editing I mostly use PSE, resorting to the Imagenomic plug-in if noise is a problem, but have recently bought Adobe Lightroom, which I'm currently learning (ever so slowly) to use.

Jon

RAW and into Lightroom here.

I must be trying to nail snapshots?

I only shoot jpg. By the way, owning a D3 does not automatically qualify you as a competent photographer, it does mean you have to put up with a large, bright viewfinder and be able to carry it.

Feeling inferior now, need to try and take less than 200 to 300 shots per outing so that I have time to process RAW images. Will my photo,s reflect the improvement and can some one point out which photo's of mine already posted would show benefit from being shot in RAW?

I'm not against RAW, just some attitudes that people have against using just jpgs.

Best regards

Its all about work flow in the end. If you are happy with a little pp to jpegs then that's good.

Myself on a shoot I only work on between 10 to 15 images from a set, so for me working in RAW is simply a no brainer. I have improved the majority of my images from using RAW, there is always an improvement in white balance or even a slight change to exposure which can improve the shot.

I also find noise reduction in lightroom works better with RAW files. I have yet to meet a pro shooter who does no post processing with the their files, all photos are improved with some simple changes in pp.

One of the benefits of RAW is that you can make use of future developments in software better. I think of RAW as a digital negative and JPG as a digital print.

When I have time I go and scan more of my 1980s 35mm negatives. A few rolls of film the negs have gone missing and I've had to scan from prints!!!!! - better tthan nothing but the difference is remarkable. OK the difference between a RAW and JPG isn't so great, but Storage space and computing power are cheap these days.

I've learned from going back to the 1980s, 25 years later that it's best to preserve as much as you can today becuase the moments are a one off.

On that note, and I know you were joking regarding taking fewer pics, but I do regret not taking enough pics back then. I took 1200 pics yesterday. Our town had the Christmas light switch on and was plenty going on.

I agree. A compressed jpg is not a good start for PP.

Not really, if you're used to work with JPG files then RAW shouldn't be a problem either.
You will only gain some extra settings like whitebalance for example you can change that far easily with RAW than with JPG so in a way RAW is much more forgiving also with exposure since RAW holds more information. If a photo is too dark you can most off the time save it when you shot in RAW if it isn't too far off the correct exposure that is.
Shoot some photos in RAW+ you'll have the JPG and when you want you can play with the RAW file to see what that does and can do for you.

The only thing what I try to make clear is that the RAW will not match the JPG 100% because the RAW is literally raw data so it's open for interpretation.
Ask 5 bakers to make an apple-pie and they will all taste slightly different, that's how you should see it.
Also those RAW programs make a basic applepie so to say, it's still open to adapt it so you can add more sugar or some raisins if you want and that's why working with RAW can make a difference. You often can push the photo just a bit further then what the camera or default settings does.

Yes precisely, it just sounded like you said JPG and the RAW file will look the same but there will be some slight differences. There is even a slight difference in how RAW programs render a RAW file, it just shows how open RAW file is to changes. That's a good thing though because you can make it how you see it and are less stuck with boundaries.