Shooting In Raw

[Tibbiemax71]

I have had my Canon 50D for about 5 weeks now. I have always shot in JPEG, I was reading about RAW, that it is best to shoot in RAW as you can manipulate the photos more, I haven't tried it yet but might take have a go at shooing in RAW on the weekend. Does anyone else shoot in RAW and is better than in JPEG?

[Tibbiemax71]

Anyone

[kja]

Do a little search here for RAW as we have had several long discussions on it and there is a ton of good information on it. Also head over to POTN and look around.

imho RAW is a no-brainer. It's simply a format and if you don't want to do any processing really, don't. But the information is there if you need it. My biggest regret when I first moved to RAW capable system is that I didn't start shooting RAW right away because I bought into the scare-mongers telling how time consuming it was, how much storage it ate up and how much fuffing around one needed to do on a RAW image.

using RAW my editing time is drastically reduced. You still need to get the shot right in camera - the format you shoot in doesn't impact the essential need to get your exposure and composition as right as you can when you take the shot.

I don't like shooting jpegs simply because I don't need my camera to throw away information - and that's what shooting jpeg does. The camera decides that you don't really need all those pixels and tosses them. You might actually need those pixels to tweak the image in post, but they are gone baby gone.

And every time you save a jpeg, you lose quality. Since RAW is just as easy I see no reason to deal with this issue, as minute as it might be for some.

Storage is cheap.

you have the software (it also comes with your camera) so you're set to go. Editing is easy and you have far less worry that a tweak will cause undue noise or other problems with the final image.

You still have the option to simply download your images and go with no tweaking. Lightroom in particular is great as you can create a custom preset that applies during import and you just select that (you can set it as the default so you only ever have to deal with it once!) and go.

I only shoot jpeg on my baby Canon as it doesn't have RAW. It's fine. I miss having the leeway when I need it, but that's not what I bought that camera for so it's all good.

RAW or jpeg - both work. RAW is intrinsically better because it's more complete data and you as a photographer have far more control over your final image. As with everything in photography, there is a tradeoff no matter what you choose - you have to decide which tradeoffs work for you. there's no "right" or "wrong" and some shooters are perfectly happy shooting jpeg.

[Tibbiemax71]

Thanks so much for explaining that kja!! My camera allows you to shoot both in JPEG and RAW at the same time, maybe I should try that so I can see the difference in the image? I will do a search now and find some threads on it. Thanks heaps again!!