This is quite a common dilemma when considering photography. Should I shoot RAW or JPEG? I’ve seen quite a few articles and even more conflicts discussions on the topic. I’m fairly new to this, so these are my totally unprofessional views on it…
To clarify some terms first, JPEG is a common image format used just about everywhere. It is a compressed format, which means it’s quality may not be pixel-perfect, but the file sizes are rather small, so they don’t eat up too much space on your hard drive. On the other hand, RAW format isn’t really an image yet. This is the actual data that your camera sensors capture. So, when you shoot JPEG, your camera gets some data (RAW) from the light sensitive sensors, does some maths and creates a JPEG. You cannot get the original data back from a JPEG. But if you shoot RAW, the processing stops at the sensors and all you get is the raw data itself. This lets you in control of building that JPEG (don’t worry, there are programs out there to help you).
Now, why would I want to make JPEGs myself, and not let my camera do them? Because this way you’re in control. While creating the JPEG, your camera has to make some decisions. For example, it has to decide what is white or gray and what isn’t (so called white balance). Under different lighting, it’s hard to tell the real color of your subject. Take a white sheet of paper under blue light - is the paper white or blue? So when calculating the data from the sensors, the camera has to take the type of lighting into account. And when shooting JPEG, if it gets it wrong, there’s not much you can do about it. When shooting RAW, however, you can make this decisions afterwards, on your computer screen. Compensation for poor exposition (images being too light or too dark) is also much easier with RAW.
But all this means more work for you. So why should you bother? Well, if you’re just shooting your cousin’s birthday to keep memories you surely wouldn’t be bothered to process each photo and export it to JPEG. But when trying to make an artistic photo, you probably won’t mind all that extra work to make your photo look perfect.
Another problem (the biggest for many people I believe) is the file size of RAW files. They get much bigger than JPEGs (I’d say about 3 times bigger), which means you get less pictures on your memory card, or your hard drive for that matter. Also, RAW formats are non standard - every camera has its own. Even today, only a few programs are able to open your RAW files. And in 20 years… what do you reckon? :) So probably the smart thing to do, when shooting RAW, would be to convert your photos to JPEG when you’re happy with them.
One thing I noticed, photos shot in RAW are much noisier than those shot in JPEG. Why is this? When creating a JPEG, cameras usually apply some noise reduction filters to make the photo look better. But with RAW you don’t get these, so to get the same effect you have to apply the filters on your computer. This is again extra work, but means you have more control over these filters as well. Maybe you like some noise, or don’t like the blur effect that happens with noise reduction.
So, if you don’t plan on editing your photos, JPEG is all you need. It saves you time and disk space. Also it means you can fit more photos on a memory card. Maybe one of those extra photos is the right one and you would never have taken it, were you shooting RAW and running out of memory cards.
Me, I shoot RAW. It’s cold outside and best scenes don’t last all day, so instead of taking time to get the settings right on the scenery itself, I do it at home. This does mean I have to spend some extra cash on memory cards (currently I have two 2gb cards, but I’m upgrading soon), but it also means I have full control of my shots even after I’ve actually made them.
Best of
