[cxdoo]

RAW for vacation photos are not more important than a paid photoshoot. That's just silly to debate no matter what angle you try to put it at.

I'll put a very blunt angle to it; I have photos from family history (vacation or not) that are priceless. I'd pay money for every bit of improvement in their quality.
OTOH, 'photoshoot' is just a job.
For example, I am an electronics engineer. I don't think much of devices I designed 15 years ago (even though I was proud of it at the time) but I value each and every personal photo from the same period and wish I had more.


So to debate that job is more important that your personal life is just silly no matter what angle you try to put it at.

[Rondec]

I'll put a very blunt angle to it; I have photos from family history (vacation or not) that are priceless. I'd pay money for every bit of improvement in their quality.
OTOH, 'photoshoot' is just a job.
For example, I am an electronics engineer. I don't think much of devices I designed 15 years ago (even though I was proud of it at the time) but I value each and every personal photo from the same period and wish I had more.


So to debate that job is more important that your personal life is just silly no matter what angle you try to put it at.

I suppose in some sense your right. I do value my time with my family more than my time at work.

However, my wife stresses a lot more about a wedding shoot or portrait session than I do about individual photos of my family. I don't need a million photos of them and if a few don't turn out, so be it -- I take a lot of photos and I certainly am not going to have some segment of their lives missing (barring massive hardware failure).

If you shoot a wedding and you blow some part of it, it's done and your reputation will suffer. You really can't reshoot. If necessary, you can re-do a portrait session, but once again, your reputation will suffer and it often is tough to do with schedules.

[wildman]

I shot just RAW.

Typically I take 40-50 frames a day and when I get home look for the 5 or 10 keepers.
After that I'm willing to lavish a lot of time and work in PP to get them to do what I want them to do.
Not for everyone just my way.

Why RAW? It's just a technical question to me -
- I can't do this with an 8 bit file..... Optimally exposed RAW file for this particular lighting situation straight out of the camera and after PP in Photoshop.

Bottom line - do what gives you the results you want.

[richmondthefish]

I'll put a very blunt angle to it; I have photos from family history (vacation or not) that are priceless. I'd pay money for every bit of improvement in their quality.
OTOH, 'photoshoot' is just a job.
For example, I am an electronics engineer. I don't think much of devices I designed 15 years ago (even though I was proud of it at the time) but I value each and every personal photo from the same period and wish I had more.


So to debate that job is more important that your personal life is just silly no matter what angle you try to put it at.

It's not a family vs job debate. I'm simply saying it's important to have RAW files for paid work in case you really need to tweak files for whatever reason since you are dealing with clients. I'm not saying you shouldn't shoot RAW for vacation photos either, but since its for your personal use you don't have the same professional commitments.

This is going back to the Thread Starters original question in that he is asking what is he missing when shooting in RAW since he was happy with his in camera JPEG output. Really he's not missing anything if he is happy with his file output in JPEG, but it would be a much better idea for him to have a RAW copy as well when dealing with work since it involves other human beings and various workflows...etc.

[cxdoo]

If you shoot a wedding and you blow some part of it, it's done and your reputation will suffer. You really can't reshoot. If necessary, you can re-do a portrait session, but once again, your reputation will suffer and it often is tough to do with schedules.

It's not a family vs job debate. I'm simply saying it's important to have RAW files for paid work in case you really need to tweak files for whatever reason since you are dealing with clients. I'm not saying you shouldn't shoot RAW for vacation photos either, but since its for your personal use you don't have the same professional commitments.

Oh you are absolutely right that one is stressed out more (then they should sometimes, as I am often guilty of) about job than private life, and should consequently be well prepared.
I guess I got overly defensive of the hobbyist side.

[emalvick]

Family vs. Job ends up being an apples vs. oranges discussion. What's important depends on the user's needs and what works for them.

I can understand arguments for and against RAW photography for the hobbyist and the professional. I feel that a professional is more likely to get away without RAW photos just because they are professional. If you have the confidence to do your photoshoots with JPG files and you don't need RAW files, then so be it. Same really goes for a hobbyist. In some ways I think RAW files benefit hobbyists a bit more (or at least those like myself) because I don't shoot everyday and I make mistakes. RAW files give me confidence that I can get a shot that I like even if I screw up. They allow me to be more economical with my shooting. I've learned to spend more time composing my shot and getting it mostly right rather than shooting a lot and struggling to pick out the great shots. This is also the amateur in my skill set.

Case in point is that I preferred avoiding PP as much as possible early on and would often take 10's of shots and hope for 1 good one. The shots, depending on the camera, would invariably be a lot of the same with slight tweaks for exposure, composition, etc. I'd end up with 10 times as many JPGs and then the effort would become the selection of which image was best. Then I ended up with way more photos than I needed and multiple good photos or even occasionally all bad photos.

When I got the dSLR, I reluctantly shifted to RAW files. I hated it. I could see the benefits, but I was taking a lot of time getting over the learning curve with some RAW software, and my shooting habits didn't change. All of a sudden I was working twice as hard (or twice as long), using more disk space, and getting the same amount of keepers with the caveat that the keepers were much better because those were cases where I could get what I wanted out of my software.

Over time, I learned the RAW software, and I learned from shooting too much that I could get keepers out of shots that were not exposed perfectly. I learned more about the art by essentially perfecting the technical side as much as I needed to. Now I shoot much fewer shots and the primary difference when I shoot multiples is a completely different composition (angle, aperture, zoom) rather than perfecting the exposure. Some of this also comes from the better dSLRs, which allow me to get away with mistakes more often (Wildman shows a fantastic example of what you can do). I've also learned that PP and processing RAW photos can be very quick, and that the true savings is having much fewer photos to choose from to begin with. It's much easier to choose between 1 to 3 good photos than 10 mediocre ones that might have a good one tossed in.

There is also the addition that I am getting better and getting exposure correct in the shot, and I'm sure if I shot more often perhaps I could get confident enough to go back to no PP. But then again, I've learned to like PP because it gives me the opportunity to enjoy photography even when I can't get out and take shots. Then again, no one needs RAW files for PP either. I shouldn't imply that, it's just the way my mind thinks sometimes.

[Kath]

But then again, I've learned to like PP because it gives me the opportunity to enjoy photography even when I can't get out and take shots..

Nicely put regarding your evolution as a photographer. Especially can relate to the above quote. Messing around in Lightroom on a rainy day can be great fun, almost like being out taking photographs!

[hjoseph7]

I posted something like this just a few weeks ago. RAW is fine if you only got a handful of images to edit, but if you got 800-2000 pictures to edit such as after shooting a wedding, you are better off with JPEG IHMO. I noticed that I have to hit a bunch of buttons, switches, dials and slide controls just to get each and every image to look like the one on the back LCD, because the RAW image looks dull on my monitor after I down load it ?


With JPEG on the other hand, I set the saturation, contrast, sharpening etc., in-camera just once depending on the lighting conditions and I'm off to the races. I usually don't have to do much tweaking in the Editor when I use JPEG, it saves me a lot of time.


Of course if I need to sell an image, or put an image on display in an exhibit, or blow it up to astronomical levels then I might think about using RAW. The good thing about my K-5 II is that even if I shoot JPEG I can still switch to RAW anytime I want to. So what is the point ?

[PDL]

I too will be blunt.

I shoot for two non-profits as an unpaid volunteer and I only shoot RAW. I started shooting RAW only back in early 2006 and I have visited NZ, Scotland, Washington DC (and surrounding places), San Francisco and Wyoming while shooting within my local area.

Shooting digital images is all about collecting data and RAW provides the largest amount of data available.

The fallacy of stating that it take "special software" to view raw is just wrong. It takes a computer to view a JPEG too, which is software. Space is not a problem either, I have spoken about my workflow since becoming a member here in 2006, I have taken my little 40GB SD card reading hard drive with me along with all of my "long" vacations/photo and I do not edit images while away from my main system. I have plenty of SD cards ranging from 1GB to 32GB so I can capture more images than my portable HD can carry.

When I get back home I copy the images off of the HD onto three (3) systems before I bring them into the post processing SW. If I want too look at the images, I open File Explorer and view away (I could also use Photo Gallery, the Photo App (POJ) or Windows Photo Viewer). I burn DVD's (soon to be BlueRay disks) for archive purposes, just the RAW files -- no adjustments.

The same process I use to view JPEG's - the same number of clicks - etc. etc. etc.

I do not "do" video - the K20D does not either.

If I were to purchase a new camera (and sleep in the garage for a few months - (not really - the boss has asked me several times if I am going to get a new one)), one with greater demands for SD real-estate then my workflow might have to change a bit. (New portable HD, new SD readers etc.). The overall work flow in general will not change.

I am not afraid of large amounts of data, my last job was managing 5PiB of disk containing disaster recovery backups spread across 56 server/SAN's in three geographically spread out data centers in the US. I have always tried to get it right in the camera and I will continue to do that. When I shot film, it was slide film ==> very little latitude to getting the exposure, so do not go off and assume I am trying to "fix" issues in post processing.

For the most part I straighten up the image (I lean to the right pretty consistently), fix the white balance, crop if necessary, clean up noise (I shoot mostly at ISO 800+ at f2.8 -f1.4 - musicians on stage) and sharpen.

Shooting JPEG to me is like throwing away most of the subtle stuff. With RAW I can use all the data, not what the camera decided to throw away.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

PS. PiB = pebibyte = 2 to the 50 bytes = 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes

[emalvick]

I posted something like this just a few weeks ago. RAW is fine if you only got a handful of images to edit, but if you got 800-2000 pictures to edit such as after shooting a wedding, you are better off with JPEG IHMO. I noticed that I have to hit a bunch of buttons, switches, dials and slide controls just to get each and every image to look like the one on the back LCD, because the RAW image looks dull on my monitor after I down load it ?


With JPEG on the other hand, I set the saturation, contrast, sharpening etc., in-camera just once depending on the lighting conditions and I'm off to the races. I usually don't have to do much tweaking in the Editor when I use JPEG, it saves me a lot of time.


Of course if I need to sell an image, or put an image on display in an exhibit, or blow it up to astronomical levels then I might think about using RAW. The good thing about my K-5 II is that even if I shoot JPEG I can still switch to RAW anytime I want to. So what is the point ?

The point is that what you do is what you do. I personally have no problem shooting 800-2000 images and clicking on my preferred preset in my raw processor for all of them ONCE and have 800-2000 jpgs if I need it, and it only cost me a couple of button clicks. Now I'm always good to go. I don't have to adjust settings in camera and I can quickly take the shots I need with the comfort of knowing that if my exposure is slightly off or the white balance is off, I can quickly adjust it back home. I also don't have to worry about coming back home or realizing a bit too late that I would like to have had a RAW file available. And if I really don't need the RAWs, I can delete them once I spit out the jpegs from the step earlier.... So in the end there is no right or wrong way.