JPEG or RAW - what do you shoot??

JPEG or RAW

  • Total voters
    24
nikonpup

nikonpup

Senior Member
muzza22au said:
i will have thousands of images that i will be bringing back from africa and they all will be raw, i will take my time and process every single one of them.
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i figure by xmas u may be done processing your pictures. 46 days 200 shots a day = about 10,000
photos throw out half 5000 x 5 minutes to process each = 25,ooo minutes or 416 hrs 3 hrs a day = 135 days. Guess this why i shoot jpeg, i may not have time to wait on green bananas. :)
 
C

crycocyon

Senior Member
For casual shooting I shoot jpeg. If I'm serious about a particular subject I'll switch to NEF + jpeg. So I'd say about 80% jpeg, 20% raw.
 
Scott Murray

Scott Murray

Senior Member
nikonpup said:
i figure by xmas u may be done processing your pictures. 46 days 200 shots a day = about 10,000
photos throw out half 5000 x 5 minutes to process each = 25,ooo minutes or 416 hrs 3 hrs a day = 135 days. Guess this why i shoot jpeg, i may not have time to wait on green bananas. :)
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On night shift at work I have 10hrs to kill if there are no emergencies :) so I guess getting paid to edit my holiday snaps is pretty good in my books :p
 
P

pistnbroke

Banned
totally right but it you have 1000 on fri 1000 on sat and 1000 on sunday you will be a bit behind by the next saturday if it was all RAW !!!!!
 
R

RON_RIP

Senior Member
Raw, I am convinced that there is a photo hiding in that file somewhere and some day I may be a good enough editor to uncover it. I want every advantage available.
 
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PhotoEnth47

New member
I just had a perfect example of the advantage of shooting RAW (or both RAW & JPeg). I took some pictures the other day at a location which I will not be able to visit again for some years, (as I am in the process of moving to another country), and got some nice shots. When I got home, I loaded them on my computer, and opened the first JPeg to check them out, and wham! I had forgotten to set the white balance from tungsten back to daylight from a shoot the night before. They were all blue. Now I could go through and change them all on the computer, but as we all know, changing the colour from a tungsten setting to daylight with a JPeg is going to produce all sorts of posterization. Luckily, I had the RAW versions, and so there was no problem with changing the white balance, as the RAW file doesn't actually record this in the file in the same way as a JPeg. So RAW does give you non-destructive post processing, which you cannot have with JPegs. And of course, who among us has not done something dumb like having the wrong white balance set?
 
D

Don Kuykendall_RIP

RIP :(
I shoot mostly for myself BUT I also shoot for the shot to begin with and try to get it right to begin with. I generally only need to bump up the contrast and maybe lower the brightness and then check the sharpness. This gets my photos to where I like them. Maybe if I were shooting for money I might think about shooting in Raw. When I have tried RAW and edited it in CS5 I really have not see any better results than I get with the JPEG. Maybe I am missing something.
 
8

87mstng

Senior Member
Did the same thing as PhotoEnth, took some shots of my son skating for the first time and shot in the wrong white balance. Got home put the pics on the Mac and all the pics were to yellow (and dark). Lol.

Couple clicks in aperture with a RAW file and those pics all look how I think they are supposed to.
 
S

STM

Senior Member
87mstng said:
Did the same thing as PhotoEnth, took some shots of my son skating for the first time and shot in the wrong white balance. Got home put the pics on the Mac and all the pics were to yellow (and dark). Lol.

Couple clicks in aperture with a RAW file and those pics all look how I think they are supposed to.
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I did the same thing today while shooting at the zoo in bright sunlight. The D700 was left on a tungsten WB and I never noticed it because I rarely check the images after I shoot them. When I got home and opened the RAW files in CS5, I noticed they looked rather cool in hue and then saw my mistake and I just changed the color temperature to 6000 Kelvin and poof, fixed. I still love film and will shoot it until it is no more but you have to admit, there are some things in digital you just can't do with film.
 
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PhotoEnth47

New member
I have definitely found an improvement in my photos by shooting RAW and then post processing them myself. There are lots of adjustments I can make that the camera doesn't do the way I would like. Mostly I have to increase the sharpness, as I find that Nikon cameras tend to produce slightly soft pictures. Also, I like the colours to be a certain way. I like to have full control over noise reduction. I know that I could use the Picture controls and set them the way I like, but I have not necessarily found this to be completely successful, as I don't always want the same effects. So by post processeng I can get exactly the effects I want, which isn't always the same. I can even end up with different effects from the same RAW file, for different used, or to be more creative.
 
E

Eye-level

Banned
Tracsoft - Don Kuykendall said:
I shoot mostly for myself BUT I also shoot for the shot to begin with and try to get it right to begin with. I generally only need to bump up the contrast and maybe lower the brightness and then check the sharpness. This gets my photos to where I like them. Maybe if I were shooting for money I might think about shooting in Raw. When I have tried RAW and edited it in CS5 I really have not see any better results than I get with the JPEG. Maybe I am missing something.
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I'm with you on trying to get it right straight out of the camera...that is what I try to do...that is why my snaps suck for the most part...LOL
 
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PhotoEnth47

New member
Well, I guess that is why photography is an art. If it was always easy, then it would be no achievement to get a really good pic. If anyone could just point and shoot, what would be the fun for the enthusiast? No pain, no gain.

What annoys me, though, is that I more than sometimes forget to check one or more of the settings before I shoot. LOL. My own fault really. But you know how it is. You see what looks like a great shot, pull the camera out, compose, focus, shoot. I have been trying to get me to slow down and be more deliberate about the whole process.

One way that I have found that is successful for me, is that when I can I use a tripod. I know that is a dirty word to some, but when you use a tripod, it makes you slow down, and spend more time getting it right before you press the shutter. Another benefit is that then I can use the Exposure Delay Mode, in conjunction with the self timer set on 5 seconds, which is almost the same as using mirror up mode. Now the shutter press does not move the camera even slightly, and my pictures are noticeably sharper. This has greatly increased my keeper rate. Also, I have begun to use the Info button to show the camera settings on the back screen, which is easier than peering through the viewfinder or trying to read the top panel in sunlight.
 
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