What purpose is a forum that doesn't debate & challenge? Apologies if you find words on my original post 'offensive'. I wasn't aiming them personally at you by the way, or attempting to make a de-facto statement, but start a debate on the merits of shooting in JPG or RAW. The consensus is definitely RAW, and for very good reasons as has been pointed out in post after post. I'm sure there are all levels of knowledge and skills on this forum. Hopefully, the words and comments throughout this series of threads will help many of us make choices and decisions, or even experiment a little further, either in PP or within the camera.

Take time to read through all the posts, there has been many really interesting and well informed comments made, which I'm sure a lot of people, and I include myself in that too, have learned from.

If my 'throwaway' comment is too much then apologies, no harm was intended.

Sorry, don't take this thread too seriously, as I have said in previous posts, it is meant as light-hearted and fun. It is a debate however about whether we really trust the cameras JPG engine. Barrie (BForbes) made a really valid point a page of posts back about JPG's being someone else's interpretation of your image which is very true, and MrB wade a very well written and in my opinion, highly accurate statement about what is really actually thrown away in a JPG, and whether it matters. Jak thought I was 'having a go' at RAW shooters (Sorry JAK, that was never intended, or meant to come across in that way).

I guess I class myself as a 'non purist' photographer, I will state that I really don't care what I use to take images. Sometimes I still shoot on film, sometimes I shoot digital and choose RAW, at other times I go out armed only with my mobile phone camera, sometimes just with a home-made cardboard box pinhole camera. I even get fun out of using a £20 plastic Holga lens on my expensive DSLR. For me Photography is about experimentation, fun, enjoyment, learning.

On showing my work Jasper45, I have been putting my 'head above the parapet' for quite a few years. I have a long running photoblog on Aminus3 which has around 1760 of my images on it. You can get a link to if you look in my profile. I do not strive to produce 'perfect pictures', in the sense that I probably am not that good anyway, and probably too sloppy in technique, but I do admire those that make the time to perfect their values within the craft. Have a look at my portfolio if you get a chance. I don't really care much whether anyone actually likes them, some do, some don't. However, every image I take is taken for a reason...

Heres a link to my Blog link

I just started this discussion as a bit of light hearted fun. I actually teach post production, so am very familiar with all Adobe products from Lightroom/Photoshop through to Illustrator & After Effects. I have used these products daily in my job since the early 90's (practically since the launch of Photoshop - anyone remember Tiger Mountain or Photostyler?)

To be honest, I will shoot RAW if I can't determine the exposure accurately, or I'm unsure that any camera I'm using will not be able to cope with the lighting situation ( I love the one button RAW switch on the K-5). Mostly though, the kinds of shots I find I'm taking these days don't need to be shot in RAW, thats all. They end up re-sized to 800x600 and uploaded as LQ jpg's on my photo-blog, so going through the RAW journey is a little overkill.

A couple of years ago I ran a printing business, mostly doing canvas prints and very large paper prints for business clients. I always shot in RAW for commercial jobs, it was failsafe, easy to manage through Adobe Bridge, and images were instantly repeatable, as you well are aware.

I much prefer Aperture myself, although at home I am a great advocate of Open Source tools such as Gimp for Photo Editing, Blender for 3D modeling & animation, and Inkscape for Illustration. About five minutes ago I was editing in the free to use Pixlr Editor link online, it works a treat. The future of Adobe products is going the same way, on line and by subscription. The whole nature of photo editing will change fundamentally in the next few years.

Thanks for your post NaimKhan, which illustrates to me a number of things, mostly around what people expect their camera to be able to do. Firstly that shot is a really difficult lighting situation, and the dynamic range of the K-5 is being pushed very hard. I don't think there are any DSLR's able to fully handle the EV range here in a single shot. Indeed, the JPG has blown highlights, but the processed RAW has lost the shadow detail to quite some extent, so the approach at the shoot needs to reflect what the final output is intended to look like.

In this shooting situation, I would shoot with RAW, (mainly because the edit workflow is simpler in this situation, but you could do bracketed jpg's and get the same result) but then I would create several RAW edits with a range of exposures (from a single RAW file in your RAW software afterwards). Its straightforward to combine them to reveal the accurate exposure for each area of your image.

Lovely shot by the way.

That's an interesting comment, but only technically correct up to a point, as you still have to work on the RAW file in software, which has been designed by other people for their interpretation of the workflow, so your final result might vary, it will never truly be your own. To really test your tutor, ask him/her to process the same RAW file in Aperture, then in Lightroom, then in Capture One Pro. Without direct comparing, see if they can produce an identical resulting output each time. I suspect not, but not because they are not any good at it, but because the workflow is different for each brand, and differences, although probably minor will creep in.

So far RAW is definitely the leading choice here...... a few posts have said because they have fun with all the PP image tweaking, which is a good point, but I suspect thats not the case for everyone. How confident do people feel about the 'in camera' JPG engine of their Pentax DSLR's? Is there an expectation that images might go wrong if you shoot JPG for instance?

I've only owned my K-5 for a couple of weeks, but the jpg output seems pretty good to me, and I have not yet had any issues with blown highlights or lack of shadow detail, and the 'in camera PP' seems to be highly responsive and very tuneable. When I've shot with RAW+ and processed both the DNG & JPG images in Gimp, the final images turn out as identical, but the jpg's take about quarter of the time to process. I feel pretty confident that the out of camera jpg's perform well enough, and require just some minor PP tweaks for my everyday photographic uses anyway.

Also - Is it just my dated Mac, but is PDCU just awful to use? It seems to absolutely crawl on my machine, to the point where it is unusable.

No, I definitely can't do that LOL.... it was just a light hearted comment to get the debate going.

A minor debate I know, but it would be interesting to hear the views of Pentax User forum members on the benefits or otherwise of your preferences and why you shoot in RAW or JPG, or whether you always use RAW+ (hey.....but if you do - which one do you actually use)?

BTW- this is not really serious, just light fun, so what's your reasons for one or the other??

Personally, I shoot JPG with only occasional forays into RAW land, as my interests always evolves around attempting to achieve a certain look to an image whilst on a photo shoot. That's the fun part for me, not in the PP stage. Also, because I want to spend as little time in PP as possible, it means I really have to get to know how my camera behaves and how to get the most out of it..... and if I can't get the WB & exposure and colour and tone right on a photo-shoot, then I maybe I don't deserve a camera such as my K-5 (thats a challenge to photographers who shoot RAW because they have no idea about how to operate their camera!!). Anyway, jpg's take up less room on my hard drive, and I'm on a very lowly Mac-Mini 1.5 solo, so not exactly cutting edge. The K-5 jpg engine seems pretty good to me, so I don't see the purpose of RAW for everyday use??

In his newspaper shots, Live View was indeed the closest 'in focus' shot, so I think you are right.

Time for him to seek a repair, or sell up and move to Canon then.

But his earlier post (with the newspaper shots) show that his problem with the camera's focussing is that what looks in focus in the viewfinder manually focussed comes out focussed well in front of what he is seeing. He also checked across the range of dioptre settings in case it was his own vision, but to no avail. Something must be amiss somewhere, because manual focussing should be accurate, as in Algernon's shot above.