Correct me if I'm wrong, but RAW is really for those "money shots" where you want to get every hair of detail possible. Jpegs are perfectly fine for anything less than that, yea?
Well, kinda. My 8GB SD card can only hold Edit: 550 RAW image files. I went for a walk once around a small pond and shot 700+ photos.I wouldn't quite phrase it like that. I would say RAW because you've paid huge bucks for a camera with that capability and the fact that shooting RAW doesn't cost anymore than shooting JPEG. But most importantly, those money shots pop up when you least expect them so it's best to always be prepared.
I am debating whether to use RAW or JPG while in Africa, I am thinking I will most likely use RAW.
Yes this is very true, I am just concerned with the write speed of the D800 and if I take multiple shots in succession. I would have to wait a period of time to be able to re-use the camera and in doing so can also make me miss that perfect shot.My take is that if you're on a once in a lifetime trip then it's foolish not to bring back as much as you can from it. Shooting JPG only would be foolish IMO. Yes, you would spend less time in post processing and sharing, but to know that you could have fixed the one thing that otherwise caused you to lose an amazing shot just because you decided not to shoot RAW would be heartbreaking. Why regret it on the back end? There are plenty of programs that will quickly export JPG's from your RAW files, but none of them work the other way.
Yes this is very true, I am just concerned with the write speed of the D800 and if I take multiple shots in succession. I would have to wait a period of time to be able to re-use the camera and in doing so can also make me miss that perfect shot.
Well you just have to remember that your should not use high rate frames per second to do film. Unless it's a very special moment, you can usually shoot 3-4 frames to get the image you want. I don't see the point in taking 25 images to get one shot. But that's me, I was raised with the single frame SLR and medium format camera and never sprayed and prayed.