Originally posted by Canada_Rockies I have not shot jpeg with my k10d, ever. I don't shoot RAW + either. I shoot RAW only. I have used film for a very long time - since 1958 with a Yashica 35mm rangefinder - since 1961 with Pentax SLR - and I will not throw away my digital negative. The jpeg is the equivalent to the print from the drugstore. If you want a larger and more detailed output, you need the original data, be it from Velvia or Sony CCD or Samsung CMOS. Why throw away data? What a waste of your talent. Every time you save a jpeg, it loses more data. Look it up. Every time you save a jpeg, it loses data. Every time. No exceptions. Once you have done post on your jpeg, you cannot go back and undo it.
I am also a RAW shooter, but this isn't completely true as depending on how you use your software, you can go back to the original, and incremental changes don't have to be destructive.
I believe that some programs like Adobe Lightroom allow non-destructive JPEG edits--essentially they take your original, record the changes you make, and when you export from lightroom or view in lightroom, you see the modified image. To my knowledge, it will generally not change the original when used this way. Yes, it is a lossy format, so there is probably some sort of loss involved--but in this case it is a one-time loss, and you
can go back to the original. This of course still doesn't make up for what the camera discarded when it threw away the raw data and only saved as JPEG.
I also don't find the RAW workflow to be nearly the inconvenience I thought it would be when I switched. In practice, I nearly always want to resize the images before uploading to web or e-mail anyway, so there are no additional steps to do this from RAW when compared to JPEG. And if I was going to print, I would most likely make some sort of adjustments first--I just don't normally have much use for a full-rez JPEG. The switch did however encourage me to replace my computer though--the old one was just too slow when processing RAW files even though it handled JPEG pretty well. (I was using ACDSee Pro at the time).