RAW or JPEG!!!

[kimspics]

I just printed out a very good article ( more like a book- alot of pages) on wedding photography. This photographer says that they only shoot weddings in RAW and not JPEG. Her exact words are.... I can't stress this enough...shoot weddings in RAW....shoot in JPEG and you are asking for trouble. O.k My question is what is the difference and does everybody agree with this?

[jsanders]

Well this is an old discussion,
The big rule is
-If you plan to do a lot of post processing RAW is the best format to shoot. Because it doesn't do any conversions off the photo. If you want to shoot and print, then just shoot JPEG

[photoaddiction]

Raw is a digital negative, which allows you to do all of the processing later, jpeg is allowing your camera to do the processing.
This will help you understand better.
http://digital-photography-school.co...pros-approach/

[Major_Small]

This has been covered a million and one times. Always go with RAW if you intend on editing.

Here are the pros of each, if you're going to be editing:

• RAW
  • allows for changing exposure to a point
  • allows for clean change of white balance
  • acts as a negative - you can always go back to the original
  • avoids degradation from re-compression
  • puts more control in your hands (as opposed to letting a 1cm-ish square of silicon take creative control)
• JPEG
  • saves space

There are probably more pro's for shooting in RAW that I can't quite come up with right now, but that's pretty much it for JPEG's side.

[photoaddiction]

The comments on this are good also...
http://digital-photography-school.co...-you-shoot-in/

[jsanders]

By the way: is that article somewhere on the web?

[kimspics]

the article I read and printed is at http://www.all-things-photography.co...aphy-tips.html

[MarcelLuettmann]

The reasons are:
a) While producing the JPEG, the camera might create shadow / highlight clipping that was not there in the RAW, due to the lower bits per channel or higher contrast in the JPEG.
b) I've seen some shadow detail recovery from a 14 bit RAW that even the 12 bit RAW from the same camera didn't allow (it was a comparison of 14 vs. 12 bit on that camera). JPEG is only 8 bit (all per channel).
c) Small sensors and high ISOs produce noise. Cameras try to produce reasonable sized JPEGs with small, energy-saving processors. They eat noise and spit it out again, leaving something way harder to deal with when applying noise reduction.
d) JPEGs have white balance applied. If you correct that afterwards, you lose even more of the accuracy of the colors (remember, they already were reduced to 8 bits per channel!).
e) Read reviews. Almost every time, they write about getting more detail, more dynamic range, less noise or less NR artefacts when using RAW.

It's like making a fresh pizza vs. having a frozen one from the supermarket.
More work, but it tastes better.

Marcel

[jsanders]

Thanks for sharing but I think the link is dead!

[kimspics]

so do the majority of you all shoot in RAW? should I change my camera setting to RAW? if RAW is so much better why does jpeg even exist?