Originally posted by hobkyl
I thought there was a clear advantage to using RAW over JPEG thats why I was excited to begin using it once I got a dslr. So the only advantage to it is if you take crap photos or you want to really tweak the image in PP?
How many of you use RAW vs JPEG? I thought RAW was hands down the preferred file format to use amongst professional and aspiring photographers alike.
Lowell is an optimist :-)
By shooting RAW you can use your computer software to change many more settings than the limited set available in the camera, and have a much wider range of adjustment for those settings.
Because nearly every image would benefit from different adjustments, it is pretty difficult to make one camera setting work for them all. Further, making the adjustments based on the 3-inch (or smaller) LCD is iffy at best.
Additionally, the RAW file is never directly altered, so you don't have to worry about messing up the original.
There are lots of existing threads already on the basic questions you asked.