Should I be Shooting in JPEG or RAW?

[JoeMezz]

shooting raw gives you better latitude in post production... however, the latitude is useless to an uninformed user...... raw files are larger and require an eventual conversion to jpg before they can be shared with the public...

my advice would be to start with jpeg and focus on your in camera skills.... then once you have a solid foundation.... start shooting raw and learn how to maximize your imagery.. you can do both at once but the learning curve will be way longer..

in most situations, the histogram will provide useful information regarding the tonality of your image... it certainly doesn't hurt for you to learn and observe it..

I agree with Travis.. shoot jog until you outgrow that and then shoot raw.

[krphotogs]

Allow me to add my thoughts on this.... I think it depends on what you shoot, if you are going to shoot a hundred shots and post them all to a web-site for friends and family to see - shoot jpeg you will go crazy try to PP them. If you are going to take a hundred shots, and cull them down to 10 or 15 really good ones - shoot in raw.

Jpeg - being an 8 bit file has a much smaller number of colors that can be displayed versus a raw or tiff file (sorry, I have heard aobut 16 bit jpeg but no experience with it). Every time you save a jpeg file by definition you are degrading the quality of the image. Work in raw then your last step is write the jpeg file.

I agree with the one post who commented that you can develop your PP ability while working on your photographic skills. But, if I get to be really good at taking photos one day I may switch back to jpeg - but right now it saves me every now and then.

Kevin

[tirediron]

One further point against .jpg. It's a lossy format, that is: Each time you open, edit and save a .jpg image, you lose a bit of information. If you go back and make a number of edits to the same image as a result of bad planning, or a change of mind, you're going to wind up with a significantly degraded image.

[baddness]

Just a question. When shooting and doing post in RAW, change to 8 bit so that you can save as jpeg, is image quality lost?

[Travis]

Just a question. When shooting and doing post in RAW, change to 8 bit so that you can save as jpeg, is image quality lost?

make all adjustments in the highest bit setting... then bit down when finalizing to jpeg...

[krphotogs]

Just a question. When shooting and doing post in RAW, change to 8 bit so that you can save as jpeg, is image quality lost?

8 bit jpeg represents 256 different colors (2 to the power 8)..... 16 bit tiff is 65K... but you can't print all that.....

Kevin

[Ben H]

My attitude now is that I will shoot raw, especially if I'm likely to be getting something worth keeping (rare, but it happens..!

The only time I will go back to jpeg is if any of the following apply:

- I need to take a huge range of pictures (900 jpeg per 4gig card, versus 200 raw)
- I need to do long continuous burst shooting (my cam does 50+ in jpeg, and about 11 in raw)
- I don't plan on doing any post production and need a very quick output workflow for some reason

Otherwise, it's RAW by default now, even though the workflow, though more painful, gives better control.

[Dwayne Oakes]

It really is just personal preference. Try both and see which one you have
the most fun with and then practice feverishly. I use jpeg and no pp for
all of my work.

http://dwayneoakes.zenfolio.com

Take care Dwayne Oakes