[twokatmew]

I shoot RAW only, except for RAW+ when I use my Canon S90. (S90 only does JPG or RAW+.)

I was shooting JPG or RAW+ until my cat died a couple months ago, and several members helped me with PP'ing the last reasonably good photo I had of him. That introduced me to the benefits of RAW, and I haven't looked back since.

[CWyatt]

Yes, I only shoot RAW. Why buy a camera for great IQ if you aren't going to get the most out of it.

Because IQ is only one consideration (albeit mostly a pretty big one). Jpeg still has some advantages, although like I said I shoot all my own work in RAW because buffer lag/space is mostly a non-issue. When I do motorsport stuff with 8fps Nikons RAW size/buffer lag is a bigger issue.

[Rondec]

I generally shoot RAW. RAW + seems like too much work. ACR (adobe's raw editor) is great -- terribly easy to fix white balance, adjust sharpness and bump vibrance on multiple photos at once. The only exception that I make, is if I am shooting at low iso, with my DA * 16-50 on my K7 I will shoot jpeg. The lens correction feature -- particularly on wide angle shots is pretty special and as far as I know it is useless with RAW, because while it saves the data with the RAW files, none of the programs out there take advantage of that data.

[Tuner571]

When I first started out in photography I was shooting in JPEG as I really did not know much on file types. Once I got the photography part down I realized that I needed to shoot in RAW to get the most out of my photographs. I also do a good deal of editing on photos so RAW became the file type that I shoot in 100% of the time.

[ivoire]

99.9% raw. There is much more flexibility in post processing.

[justtakingpics]

You should shoot in RAW - you will have more flexibility editing your pictures, no matter what you use to post process. Whether iPhoto, Elements, Picassa, Lightroom or Aperture, you can do very quick WB changes, adjust brightness, exposure and contrast, sharpness and noise. It is also non-destrucitive, so you can make multiple changes to one file without having to fiddle around too much. And, since Pentax cameras can shoot in native DNG (which a lot of cameras don't do - they are stuck only with their own respective proprietary RAW format) it is not too bad bringing those files into Adobe stuff.
You will have much larger files, but memory is cheap these days

what do you mean "non-destructive"?

[snostorm]

Hi jtp,

I'm a jpeg shooter. I'm mainly a birder, and camera performance is important to what I like to shoot. I've been shooting Pentax DSLRs for over 5 years, have tried RAW numerous times with 5 different bodies and at least 5 different RAW processors, and haven't found a compelling reason to sacrifice the extra performance I get from shooting jpegs for the marginal increase in IQ that I might gain by shooting RAW for my purposes. Shooting RAW is always slower, and when I need the speed, I want it available without any extra steps or even thinking about it -- even the RAW button convenient as it is, is too slow. I'm not an ultimate performance junkie (I shoot Pentax, after all ), and I've never posted in any of the fora nagging Pentax for more speed, but I'll take what they give me, and I do tend to push the performance of my Pentax DSLRs to their limits frequently.

I'm an amateur/hobbiest and my target output medium is usually prints, mostly 8x10, but most images can be taken to 16x20 with a little extra attention in PP.

RAW will allow more latitude for exposure, color balance, and noise processing, but jpeg processing is not that far behind when the camera image parameters are set up to my preferences and the exposure is within reason. I'm sure that RAW shooters will disagree here, but most arguments for RAW are based largely on theoretical models and pixel peeping that in actual practice doesn't show up in prints, with the possible exception of extreme enlargements that I don't do.

I also shoot a large volume of images per shoot (probably as much as ten times the average on this forum from the shutter actuation counts posted in the threads I've seen), and the cumulative time spent on just viewing these just to choose the shots I want to process and print from RAW images would be prohibitive for me, and I spend a lot of time on photography.

The argument about the tiny in-camera processor for jpeg doesn't fly for me. The processing engine in the camera has one function -- to process images. It's very efficient at what it does, and this gets better with every generation of cameras. Ask yourself why all camera mfgs include jpeg processors in their highest end Pro models, and why they would include more sophisticated image tweaking features in the pro models than the entry level ones when these have no effect on RAW images captured. I'm sure that leaving the jpeg processor out would save them considerable money, and would clean up the menu systems dramatically. I don't expect to ever see a RAW only model at any level. Also consider that the jpeg engine in your camera processes RAW to jpeg faster than any desktop computer/RAW processing program I've ever used, and speed specs ( sustained frame rate, write times, and buffer saturation) always are indicated for either jpeg or RAW, and jpeg is always faster.

I'm not advocating jpeg, and I'm not advising against RAW. If there wasn't a significant case for each, this would not be an ongoing controversy. I suggest that you try both and decide which is right for you and what you like to shoot. I always think that this question needs at least a few posts defending jpegs, since there seems to never be a lack of RAW supporters.

For me, jpegs work (and I even shoot mostly at *** instead of **** which is available in my K-7 and K-20, as I haven't seen any appreciable image degradation or compression artifact difference between the 2 quality settings). As in everything about digital photography, YMMV.

Have fun with your camera, discover incredible stuff it can do, and I'd suggest that you make decisions on procedures based on what you actually can see, not what's theoretically possible -- photography is a visually based thing, not a mathematical model.

Scott

[justtakingpics]

Because IQ is only one consideration (albeit mostly a pretty big one). Jpeg still has some advantages, although like I said I shoot all my own work in RAW because buffer lag/space is mostly a non-issue. When I do motorsport stuff with 8fps Nikons RAW size/buffer lag is a bigger issue.

what do you mean lag? thanks

[blackcloudbrew]

Sorry, the OP asked me what software I use a while back. My answer is - Lightroom is my weapon of choice for my image processing. I can go to PhotoShop if needed from it.

[Ecaterin]

I usually shoot RAW+jpeg because I'm almost always out with my kids. Out-of-camera jpeg photos of my family work just fine for me (the K-x is lovely with skin tones) but I almost always want to PP any art shots myself and if I happen to snag a really good portrait of my kids I'll definitely want the option to polish it. Out-of-camera jpeg can't hold a candle to what Elements & some plugins can do (and I'm still very much a beginner!).

There's no way one size fits all PP from the camera will be satisfactory for all photos in all conditions. I think of the in-camera jpeg as analgous to giving my film to a 1 hour photo place to be processed - I'd be happy with it for family snap shots, really not happy with it for art shots and probably miserable with it for a family shot that had the potential to be a high quality portrait.

Shooting RAW+ means I have all my options open - I'm not stuck PP a zillion family shots that don't need it, and I have what amounts to the photo negative for any shots I want to do really refined PP on

[SpecialK]

I shoot RAW+ instead of just RAW because my XP machine does not display Pentax PEF files. Once that machine dies, I'll be shooting RAW only.

The problem is not with XP. I have that system, and Pentax PhotoBrowser/PhotoLab and Elements work fine (and I'm betting Fastone would, too).

Only RAW, (except when I goof up the dial into unset-up USER mode).

[egordon99]

I shoot RAW only, except for RAW+ when I use my Canon S90. (S90 only does JPG or RAW+.)

I was shooting JPG or RAW+ until my cat died a couple months ago, and several members helped me with PP'ing the last reasonably good photo I had of him. That introduced me to the benefits of RAW, and I haven't looked back since.

My S90 shoots only raw. I only get ONE .cr2 file per image No JPGs for me!

[egordon99]

First off, your camera ONLY shoots RAW. When you select JPG, the camera takes the RAW data and pipes it into its on-board JPG processor to generate the JPG "image" to save to the card.

When you shoot RAW, the RAW "data" goes directly to the card and is not an image.

To generate an image, you use a RAW processor (software on your PC) which turns the data into a viewable image, much like the camera's JPG processor. The difference is that YOU have complete control over the image generation process. You can change the white balance, adjust the contrast/brightness/black point/etc....

So you can leave these decisions up to the camera's little processor (and hope it makes the right decisions since they are irreversible), or save the decisions for later where YOU have complete control over it.

[JeffJS]

The problem is not with XP. I have that system, and Pentax PhotoBrowser/PhotoLab and Elements work fine (and I'm betting Fastone would, too).

Only RAW, (except when I goof up the dial into unset-up USER mode).

So does Adobe Bridge but that isn't what I'm talking about. It is the Windows Explorer, the regular file browser, that does not show the contents of PEF files in XP. The browser in Windows 7 (and I would suspect Vista) Does show them. So Yes, the problem IS with XP.

If I ever make the mistake of installing the Pentax utilities on one of my machines again, somebody please take a gun and shoot me because, I've lost my mind anyway. It has Crashed on every installation I've ever done, with every version, on every platform (OS), and is not even worth taking the disk out of the wrapper.

[Ecaterin]

So does Adobe Bridge but that isn't what I'm talking about. It is the Windows Explorer, the regular file browser, that does not show the contents of PEF files in XP. The browser in Windows 7 (and I would suspect Vista) Does show them. So Yes, the problem IS with XP.

FWIW, Picasa *does* see DNG raw format without conversion. I use Picasa to do a quick sort through my photos initially (so I can just trash the ones not worth editing) and to organize them both physically into folders as well as virtually into collections. It's a really fantastic bit of freeware