[Markbrumbaugh]

I am going to try raw simply because, although I've shot film and Jpg for 50 years, I think I've more time and computer horsepower when I get home. There are so many adjustments to be made for in camera processing before the shot...I thought I'd just try it. It does not seem like its beneficial to try to get a plain Jane jpg...might as well shoot raw. Thanks for the advice.

[HEEGZ]

I am going to try raw simply because, although I've shot film and Jpg for 50 years, I think I've more time and computer horsepower when I get home. There are so many adjustments to be made for in camera processing before the shot...I thought I'd just try it. It does not seem like its beneficial to try to get a plain Jane jpg...might as well shoot raw. Thanks for the advice.

It's definitely worth while. However, working with RAW was an extremely frustrating experience for me with Photoshop and ACR. This was solved with my acquisition of Lightroom and I've only shot JPG once since then. Lightroom is simply an amazing tool for manipulating your camera data in order to make the images you want. JPG is convenient but I find it more difficult to be creative, not to mention the quality differences that become apparent after you have spent time working with RAW.

[Markbrumbaugh]

I have elements. Wonder how it compares to Lightroom

[HEEGZ]

RAW will be more tedious than in LR, the main difference I found was time spent. It won't hurt to experiment with it though. It was more of a time and ease of use thing than anything else.

[Schraubstock]

Remember that what you think you see, what you want to see, what the camera sees, and what's really there (if anything), are NOT the same.

That sums it up nicely.
I couldn't have said it better even if I had engaged a speech writer. (On second thoughts, speech writer? Na, too much spin).
But this is very true what you said, you can see this on some pictures when people "crank up" everything.

Greetings

[Mike Cash]

The embedded jpg in raw files is done according to whatever jpg settings you have made. Fortunately, it has no bearing on what image you later create with the raw data.

I quite often set my camera for b/w and get b/w embedded jpgs in my raw files. All the other settings also apply, so if you don't like them, set everything to center on the slides and color to "natural" and/or shoot raw. If you shoot raw, it doesn't matter a hill of beans what you do with the slides, though.

[maxfield_photo]

I have elements. Wonder how it compares to Lightroom

You mentioned ACR, Lightroom is essentially just repackaged Adobe Camera Raw with some other output options and metadata control. The GUI is little more intuitive than ACR, but really you'll have all the power of Lightroom as far as PP.

[Anvh]

but really you'll have all the power of Lightroom as far as PP.

And more.

[sprocketdog23]

Looking at your bio, I'm actually surprised that as someone who teaches photography, you advocate shooting jpeg over RAW. To say that RAW gives that little bit of extra personal control is surely an understatement. Yes it is a given that shooting RAW is not a substitute to getting exposure correct but to extend the argument that it can lead to lessening of the craft is preposterous. Surely capitalizing on capturing the widest possible dynamic range and the most amount of image information as the starting point is what shooting RAW is all about.

If you didn't know, an 8 bit jpeg file only offers 256 tonal values per channel while a 12 bit RAW file offers a whopping 4,096 tonal values per channel. That's a big tradeoff when shooting jpeg.

Sorry, that's not what I advocated, I don't see where I said jpg was better than RAW, or that I would advocate not shooting in RAW. All I said is that in my own personal work, I shoot in RAW less often than shooting with JPG. It's my personal choice to work that way......and I also will make the choice to sometimes take images on my mobile phone, or even use a $20 plastic Holga lens on my DSLR, or even take images with my homemade cardboard box pinhole lens camera. Maybe that makes me a heretic eh. Actually, the suggestion I made to the OP in my first reply was that he/she should experiment with the settings on their camera, which obviously means they won't be shooting in RAW. It was intended to be helpful. I don't know his/her level of skill, and jumping straight into the digital darkroom might not be the best starting place for them to learn how to operate their camera. Think about it!

In my teaching experience, which started way before digital, it was much easier for beginners to spot and understand mistakes that had occurred 'at the shooting stage', because it is obvious on a negative or transparency where exposure has gone wrong. In my opinion students I taught back then had more awareness and were more curious about getting the image exposures right. In the last few years, an increasing number of students have said to me that they read 'on the net and elsewhere' that it doesn't matter so much about getting the exposures right because 'it can all be fixed in Lightroom anyway'. Thats the lessening of the craft I'm referring to. I know its anecdotal, but around 400 students pass through the college doors every year, and its the kind of comment that occurs across a range of creative subjects. In other areas, such as 3D, learners get really frustrated that they can't turn out Pixar quality 3D animation in the first month of using Maya for instance.