[Rondec]

I just got back from a family vacation and I shot a lot of jpeg. For landscapes where I had time to set things up, use a tripod and maximize my settings, I did use RAW, but as rawr says, the jpeg engine in the K3 is pretty good and there just isn't a need to do deep editing on a lot of vacation snaps.

Honestly, if all you are going to do is open RAW files in lightroom, do a little white balance tweaking and sharpening and use a standard preset for that, you might as well shoot in camera jpegs. It is a lot quicker. RAW can save you though, if you are shooting in really dark situations, or in high dynamic range situations. It is probably best to experiment and figure out what situations one works better than the other.

[acoufap]

Most of the time I don't look at the taken pictures via the camera monitor.

Although sometimes I do. For example if I have chosen capture mode Monochrome (Black&White) to see if some scenario would work in Black&White. Recently I did some shots using this mode and was happy with the results.

Unfortunately I forgot to set the mode back to my standard mode Natural and took a bunch of photographs without looking at the monitor. To control time, aperture, iso etc. I rely on the top display and the viewfinder infos.

But no problem since I always shoot in raw (DNG). I could develop all the taken images in color and was saved.

That would not have been possible if I'd taken the images as JPGs.

So if you sometimes or often forget to change settings like white balance and color mode (Monochrome, Natural, Portrait, Landscape, ...) I'd suggest to go the "raw way" as I do and you won't worry anymore .

[rawr]

I could develop all the taken images in color and was saved.

Exactly the same thing happened to me once. I was shooting RAW+, but JPEG custom image setting was somehow set to monochrome. After shooting for a while I took a break to review my images, only to discover from the rear LCD that they were all shot in black and white. Like you, luckily I had RAWs to fall back on, so in post-processing I could make everything good after the event.

I guess if you do shoot JPEG, particularly exclusively, you just have to be very careful about your initial settings.

[kadajawi]

I just got back from a family vacation and I shot a lot of jpeg. For landscapes where I had time to set things up, use a tripod and maximize my settings, I did use RAW, but as rawr says, the jpeg engine in the K3 is pretty good and there just isn't a need to do deep editing on a lot of vacation snaps.

Honestly, if all you are going to do is open RAW files in lightroom, do a little white balance tweaking and sharpening and use a standard preset for that, you might as well shoot in camera jpegs. It is a lot quicker. RAW can save you though, if you are shooting in really dark situations, or in high dynamic range situations. It is probably best to experiment and figure out what situations one works better than the other.

I don't see how JPEG is faster. The only difference it makes is the second it takes to load the raw file. I'd say for not so important photos I might take 5-10 seconds to edit. And being able to reliably sync WB over hundreds of photos saves time too... and unless you fixed the WB in camera you just can't do that to JPEGs.

[Lowell Goudge]

I started shooting RAW exclusively a couple of months ago. Even bought myself a new 32MG card so that I could hold more pictures. Now I'm considering going back to JPEG, because I have to do too much work using RAW. When I download my pictures I'm often disappointed by how they look, dull and drab. Then I have to apply all kinds of edits to get the picture to look approximately how it was taken. I use the image on the back of the LCD as an example for my edits and that image is in JPEG format .

I find I have to do a lot less tweaking when I use JPEG plus I have more room on my card to save images. I'm using Photoshop Elements 12 as my editor maybe that has something to do with it. I get better results using the Pentax Utility program, but it's extremely slow when it comes to downloading pictures from my camera. Anybody else feel like this ?

Kin have toyed with RAW from time to time, but always fall back to JPEG. Like you inhate spending a lot of time post processing. I work hard to get shots exposed correctly and to set contrast and saturation like I want it in camera.

While I agree with the benefits of RAW in terms of starting with 12-14 but colour depth vs 8 of JPEG, and the ability to save things if you screw up the shot, they do not outweig the time for me at least,

As for the loss of compression, if you save jpegs at highest quality there is very little compression other than the reduction to 8 bit color.

As for downloading from the camera, I never do this directly. I always pull the SD card and use a reader, saving the files directly to where I want them on my disk. It is the fastest way, and there is one other benefit. I find usually downloading through a camera stores the files with a new date, based upon the time of download, where as copying them from thenchiomleaves them with the original creation date.

[Volker76]

Kin have toyed with RAW from time to time, but always fall back to JPEG. Like you inhate spending a lot of time post processing. I work hard to get shots exposed correctly and to set contrast and saturation like I want it in camera.

While I agree with the benefits of RAW in terms of starting with 12-14 but colour depth vs 8 of JPEG, and the ability to save things if you screw up the shot, they do not outweig the time for me at least,

As for the loss of compression, if you save jpegs at highest quality there is very little compression other than the reduction to 8 bit color.

As for downloading from the camera, I never do this directly. I always pull the SD card and use a reader, saving the files directly to where I want them on my disk. It is the fastest way, and there is one other benefit. I find usually downloading through a camera stores the files with a new date, based upon the time of download, where as copying them from thenchiomleaves them with the original creation date.

compare a 8bit png with a 8bit 'high quality' jpeg.

Where do you think the difference in size comes from?

There is a lot of compression in jpegs. Lossy compression.

[Rondec]

I don't see how JPEG is faster. The only difference it makes is the second it takes to load the raw file. I'd say for not so important photos I might take 5-10 seconds to edit. And being able to reliably sync WB over hundreds of photos saves time too... and unless you fixed the WB in camera you just can't do that to JPEGs.

The reason I think it is faster to shoot jpegs is when I load RAW files into Lightroom they always seem to need more adjustment, while if I do what I am supposed to (bumping shadows, have appropriate sharpening set, etc) then I often do not need to do anything to the jpegs at all. I'm probably just shooting RAW incorrectly, but that's what I find.

The K3 is pretty fail safe when it comes to white balance and I don't find it necessary to adjust it after the fact, although it is pretty easy to do in lightroom either way if necessary.