[straightshooter]

Amateur and Raw/JPG. Amateur because I have not done any work for pay for about 20-25 years. Occasionally I will shoot Raw but mostly I shoot JPG and I do very little PP other that color balance. Mostly with me, what you see is what I got.

CW

[leadbelly]

Mine depends on the situation:

High volume studio shots = JPEG (no time to process, convert, edit, etc...)

Events = RAW ( Tricky lighting is just that, tricky...)

Everyday shooting = Jpeg

Artsy shots = RAW

[Stratman]

I am a rank amateur, but am trying to shoot raw most of the time now. A bit of a learning curve, but I am slowly getting the hang of it...

[res3567]

Pro. Came from film and shoot raw+ jpeg. JPEG for a quick view. RAW for PP

I am not a pro but you have the same 35mm equipment I have. K1000, ZX-50, and I also have a K10D with old school lenses. Don't have medeum format, but my cousin( who taught me the basics of photography ),has the same Mamiya eqiupment. Way to go, Pro!

[mr.voigtlander]

I'm a pro photographer using film only - but that option wasn't given for the poll. I don't own a digital camera. But looking and waiting, for use for colour work. But 90% I do is B&W, so film is the best for me still.

[PFH]

I´m an amateur and shoot mainly in jpeg because I´m quite satisfied with the quality.
I´m also a former film user.

[MJB DIGITAL]

Dang I forgot about that TIFF on the good ole ist*D

I was going to shoot a wedding in tiff once but then I thought it was too slow.

Can the K20D shoot TIFF?

[MJB DIGITAL]

this thread is amazing. i haven't finished reading yet....

[MJB DIGITAL]

I'm a pro photographer using film only - but that option wasn't given for the poll. I don't own a digital camera. But looking and waiting, for use for colour work. But 90% I do is B&W, so film is the best for me still.

Man I'm really sorry I did that.

Next time I'm sneaking wedding shots onto my N2020 I'll think of you.

..hell, better idea: I'll try to make a film portfolio and make a film package for my wedding business. this is going to be fun.

[roentarre]

I shoot JPG all the way. No need to shoot RAW anymore (Too troublesome for an amateur)

[dylansalt]

Also from the film era.

Started playing with Raw file way back with my Oly and found it way too tiresome for me - I just couldn't see the much vouched for quality improvement.

With the K10D I dabbled with renewed interest and used the Pentax Lab, Capture One, DXO with RAW images and just found (even with pixel peeping) that I still couldn't see the diff between my Raw pp'd image and my Jpeg one.

I am an amateur (but people have paid me for photo's) and shoot jpeg 99%

D

[tubadad]

I shot raw +jpg for a while on my K10D, but the raw actually looked better. Now I am just shooting RAW and using Adobe Camera Raw to work with them. I use DNG so that I have a lossless negative of the shot that is hopefully supported for a long time.

[alohadave]

It's not used much anymore, but I prefer the term Tyro, over amateur.

It has a similar meaning, but implies that you are a learner, rather than novice like amateur suggests.

I'm not too sure about that. Speaking from the commercial prepress POV, if you're a professional who cares about the final print, then you should be shooting RAW, or the closest thing your camera provides to RAW format. Printing presses are very unforgiving to JPG images, and any subtle changes that you decide may need to be made to your image once you've received your proofs for review, can only be done from an image that has retained the maximum amount of original data from the RAW image.

JPGs are mere ghosts of the original image and the stripped-back data is practically useless to work with at a professional post-processing level. There may be professionals out there who are happy with the limited post-processing abilities that JPG provides, but any professional who has an understanding of commercial printing standards will (or should!) always post-process from RAW images.

Then, for best result with commercial printers, provide TIF or EPS conversions. Not JPG.



Well there are two areas at play here: The photographer; and the printing process. It's not about whether professionals make mistakes when taking a shot or not, it's about compensating for camera-to-printer data translation. In other words: Being able to tweak that brilliant shot so it looks just as brilliant when printed.

I also work prepress in a commercial shop and do a ton of full color design. I use jpgs, tifs and psd files for the photos. As soon as I get the jpegs they are opened in Photoshop and saved as tifs. Then all prepress is done to that file and saved. The jpeg is never saved back to itself because of the data loss. The original save is okay just don't save back to itself. Most photographers are not going to press with their stuff however. Most are going to photo output wich has a much higher gamut than any press has. I run 300 line stuff with waterless inks and although it looks good (actually it looks great) it still won't approach the photo quality.
Also, taking a tif into illustrator or any other program then saving as an eps it's still a bitmap image. EPS is vector art such as what illustrator puts out. Tifs can't really be made into vector. It's still bitmap.

[ghelary]

I started JPEG and moved quickly to JPEG + RAW, then I took RAW only, because even with the most basic raw converters, you can export to JPEG quickly and easily.

Memory prices are close to nothing now, so the space that it takes is not a problem. Added value of the RAW format is great, in particular in extreme cndiftions.

Regards,
Guillaume