do jpegs rule?

[brianvickers]

I went to a Canon seminar once and the speaker was extolling the value of the jpeg output.....his opinion was that for most people there will be no need to reprocess to the extent that you would need the RAW image.

This has left a query in my mind...that maybe I'm missing out as I always shoot in RAW and maybe not benefitting from the massive investment made by the manufacturer in developing their jpeg conversions.

I'm assuming I'd need to be skilled enough to at least achieve what the jpeg in camera can do automatically.....and as I have far less experience and technical knowhow than the manufacturers software engineers then I'm not likely to be getting the best possible results.

I'm going to experiment with jpeg+Raw for a while and se what happens....I'm tempted to predict that I might come around to the Canon guy's point of view.
Whats your experience?

[pvasc]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I think now a days with EVF's, realtime histograms, and, or the highlight and shadow warning, if you get it right jpegs are all you need. BUT there are some challenging situations were having the RAW file would be beneficial. See my sand sculpture thread, not that there was anything of importance in the blown out sky on those, but if there were... It all depends on the situation. I shoot mostly jpegs, revert to RAW when needed. On the 4/3 system I was mostly RAW, I didn't shoot and evaluate the histogram in picture review mode, to many steps and time wasted, so I relied on the camera.

[StephenL]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I agree with Pvasc. It's much easier to tweak a raw file for things such as white balance and detail extraction. But it's also true that in-camera jpeg conversion has come on a lot in the last few years. I'm sticking to raws 'cos I actually enjoy processing them. It's part of my hobby.

[Guest]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I know people who always shoot in RAW, alwatys shoot in JPEG and shoot in both either at the same time, or sometimes one, sometimes the other.

'Tweaking' is all well and good and I do tweak. but the limits of my tweaking is a crop and/or a basic adjustment to exposure. Beyond that I'd rather take the shot again than go into a lot of processing. I'm a taker, not a maker of photographs.

[Floribunda]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I think it depends on just how serious you are about your photography.
If you print and sell for example I think RAW offers much for the person who enjoys pp.
I don't - my photos are taken for my enjoyment, to share with friends and family; most of whom don't appreciate the finer points anyway, and to interact and share on the forum.
JPEG serves my needs quite nicely.

[Bikie John]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I think it depends what your are photographing.

In-camera JPEGs are really good these days, and I have seen people on here say that their cameras produce better JPEGs than they can get form the raw files. If it's a nice well-behaved subject with no exceptional contrasts or odd colour casts then JPEG may well be the most economical route to a good result. Of course you get the conversion that the camera wants to give you, but these days you can tweak that a lot if you prefer high-key/low contrast/B&W/arty filter effects etc.

However if the scene has a very high dynamic range, some odd colour cast or is pushing the envelope in some other way then I reckon having a raw file is absolutely essential. There is much better scope for pulling detail from shadows and highlights, and correcting colour balance works much better.

When I first went serious digital with an E-1, I tried raw and didn't see the point so just shot JPEG. Until I needed to deal with some contrasty lighting and found that there simply wasn't enough data in the JPEG. Since then I have revisited some of those old files and been very frustrated at not having the raw data to use.

Workflow-wise, with Lightroom there is really no difference between processing from raw or JPEG. I suppose the trade-off is that if you do shoot raw you will use up more memory card/disk space. If you don't, you will miss it - and if you didn't get it at the time you have lost the chance.

Ciao ... John

[OlyPaul]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I suppose the question is do you shoot mostly in none challenging lighting conditions or challenging light conditions (read dramatic or interesting).

You can always use the camera menu as it was meant to be used in challenging lighting conditions to influence the exposure eg altering the tone control /shadow/higlight/contrast/saturation etc (why do you think there are so many settings!)
But in all honesty I find it just as quick to make a few tweeks to the raw file then keep going through the camera menu to alter the settings for different subjects /lighting conditions.

I'm a taker, not a maker of photographs.

I disagree with the above, as soon as you alter all the possible parameters of your in camera menu picture controls and alter the jpeg output settings you are taking control away from the camera standard settings and making a image as well as taking it...No different to raw except you have even more control with raw.

I guess you can see which side I come down on.

[Guest]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I use RAW because often I have selected a wrong setting - or lighting is dodgy - and I can make all the adjustments I need in PP.

[pdk42]

Re: do jpegs rule?

To draw a musical analogy - for me the original capture is the score with the PP being the performance. Both are necessary to get the end result right and the audience satisfied. PP on jpegs simply doesn't offer anything like the same degree of control. Look closely at jpegs and you'll see things like:

- NR that's maybe not needed leading to irrecoverable loss of detail
- Areas of over-sharpening
- Halos
- Unrecoverable highlights

Maybe you won't see this on every shot and maybe for a lot of shots it won't matter, but for sure an in-camera jpeg can only be inferior to a well processed raw. as a hobbyist producing a relatively small number of final images, I find PP enjoying and want to get the best possible output I can.

[ian p]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I use raw because I was told it was manly!

I want Auto-Raw! If the highlights are dangerously close to being blown out, the Raw is saved. Otherwise just save the jpeg.
Also Auto-Raw should detect family snaps from face detection of family members and just save the jpeg.

Apologies for Friday flippancy.

[Ulfric M Douglas]

Re: do jpegs rule?

IWhats your experience?

My experience in using ... let me see ... eleven Olympus and ... three Panasonic bodies with 4/3rds sensors : the sucess of Jpegs vs RAWs is entirely dependent on the camera,
unless the conditions (dynamic range of scene, very low light, bizarre light colour) demand the extremes of RAW processing.

So what I'm saying : tell which camera body and I'll tell my opinion on your likely success of quickly processing your RAWs to get at least as "good" as the camera's optimum Jpeg output.
(Out of the box Jpeg output is often very wonky, who knows what they drink in the factory?)

[Ross the fiddler]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I believe if a photographer can produce a good jpeg getting all the settings just right then the RAW isn't going need much tweaking, but it is worth saving as well because it is like having very good insurance in case you need it. That's why I prefer to have both while trying (not all that successfully necessarily ) to produce the ideal photo out of camera (jpeg) & having the RAW for when I need to make adjustments.

On the subject of a Canon person extolling the virtues of jpegs, when I was using my E520 & was feeling pretty good because I had just got the 14-54 II lens to make it even better, I went to the community college (in Penrith) where the teacher was a Canon user & then found Nikon & started extolling the beauties of that instead (unfaithful sod ), but he was trying to say we don't need RAW files & just use jpeg, convert to tiff to adjust... I think he was a little

Anyhow, I'm one of those that prefers the best of both worlds & I save LSF+RAW & I'm not & that's my story & I'm sticking to it!

[Ian]

Re: do jpegs rule?

For me, RAW is not inconvenient most of the time as I use Lightroom. As RAW offers more recovery potential from non-ideal situations that's what I use by default. If there is one issue with RAW it is that when using social media tools on the move then RAW becomes a bottleneck, but even when shooting only RAW on Olympus cameras now you can create a JPEG from the RAW file afterwards in the camera and then use that for posting to Facebook or Twitter.

Ian

[OM USer]

Re: do jpegs rule?

I shoot RAW+JPEG as its only disk space and go back to the RAW when I've made a mistake and need to rescue the picture.

[ian p]

Raw Pride!



I look down on JPEG shooters! If only Olympus did uncompressed raw!
I tell all the girls I shoot I can't show them the pictures. As they are RAW! "Do you know what raw is, baby?" <swagger>
"See this Olympus sweetheart? It's medium format!" <nods confidently> "MEDIUM!"
Girl: "whatever"