RAW-format vs JPEG

Hello

I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a vissable diffrense.

Some say yes, some say no. I think that it would be in your best interest to run some tests using identical composition and exposure for each format. You might find value in shooting in RAW, you might not. Personally, I found value shooting in RAW - while others have not.

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

There si always ONE vale in shooting raw. That is you can get jpg out of raw any time. But not the other way.
mark

kodiak said:

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

RAW is lossless, JPG is compressed, so obviously RAW is terrific for archiving.

Think to some degree as RAW as your film. When you convert it to TIF or JPG, you can make minor adjustments to saturation, sharpness, contrast and white balance. You can develope each picture or batch develope convert out of camera as RAW applies none of the above in camera. Suggest you take a few shots of different subject matter in RAW, then convert using different settings and see how you feel about the format. I shoot virtually only in RAW. I find what I take shots of often dictate how I "develope".
Les

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

Les said:

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

Dear Tom,

Click to expand...

Please review my earlier posts about this subject where several sample images were included to allow viewers to ake up their own mimds.

Briefly the results of the "poll" showed that it was virtually impossible to differentiate between images originally shot in hi-qual jpg and in raw .

That said however , you may have seen some messages about magenta colorcasts on some images. I have done some test shooting which does confirm that the G1 has a very small magenta bias. This colorcast is, however, very small and you will not really see it unless you have an obvious neutral (gray ) color in your picture.

My test showed that this magenta color cast was not present in an image originally shot in the raw format. Thus one is led to believe the jpg conversion process done by the camera introduces this problem.

BUT, this is avery subtle color aberation and for most non-hypercritical camermen nothing to worry about.( See my post of a few minutes ago under the magenta issue.)

I will continue to shoot in hi-qual jpg and for any significant magenta color cast a simple +10 green correction (in Photoshop or Photoshop LE) will make it go away.

You should be aware of the higly technical interest of many , if not most, of the people posting messages in this forum.

My advise is to " take it all with a grain of salt" and just have fun taking pictures. You will find the G1 to be an excellent camera and really very easy to use.
Don T

Dont trust lengthy postings.
Mark

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

After reading a few of the RAW vs. .jpg thread comments I am a little confused. I understand you a lose some of the quality through compression. However, when you shoot in RAW, I always have to convert to .tiff anyways to see the file via Canon's converte, unless I use the Zoom Browser which is just about to get deleted off my C: drive in the near future.

What is everyone using to edit RAW files? Photoshop? I have Super Paint by Jasc and does not see the RAW files as a stand alone. I have to bring it in as .tiff. Correct me if I am wrong, converting from RAW to TIFF are you not still losing some but not as much as .jpg?

Cliff

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

I, also hated zoombrowser and got Breeze Browser. I like it. It is not expensive, but I can'rt remember price. Go to:

http://www.breezesys.com/BreezeBrowser/

Les

Cliff said:

What is everyone using to edit RAW files? Photoshop? I have Super
Paint by Jasc and does not see the RAW files as a stand alone. I
have to bring it in as .tiff. Correct me if I am wrong, converting
from RAW to TIFF are you not still losing some but not as much as
.jpg?

Cliff

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I went through this 2 months ago, I did a bunch of comparison photos with my G1 and decided:

A) JPG was clearly inferior when compared with the RAW photo using photoshop to highlight the differences and blow them up to 1200%.

B) I could see no difference when viewing both on screen side by side until I zoomed in to a point where I was essentially looking at a poster size with a magnafying glass. I also compared printouts up to 8x10 and only saw differences which I would classify as different, not worse.

Based upon my testing I choose JPG super fine because I can get more pictures on my card, I don't have to convert them to anything else, and the camera is a lot more responsive using JPG (RAW seems to store rather slowly)

Your milage may vary. Enjoy your choice, be glad it is yours to make.
Rick
I also recommend setting exposure comensation to -2/3

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

One infrequently mentioned advantage of RAW format is that since you cannot directly edit a RAW file, that legally a RAW file is the equal of a flim negative... in other words a court could not question if a RAW file had been manipulated in any way, therefore it would have to be considered an accurate representation of the original subject. On the other hand if your "original" was a JPG, TIFF, or other file type, it would not be possible to prove that the image had not been "doctored" in any way.

Tomas Nygren said:

Hello
I'm a new and happy owner of a Canon Powershot G1 (could not afford
a D30 ). I would like to ask if there is any big difference
between RAW format and JPG. I know that you save more of the
pictures information in RAW when changing parameters but is the a
vissable diffrense.

Click to expand...

Don T said:

Please review my earlier posts about this subject where several
sample images were included to allow viewers to ake up their own
mimds.
Briefly the results of the "poll" showed that it was virtually
impossible to differentiate between images originally shot in
hi-qual jpg and in raw .

Click to expand...

Yes, but you also seem to forget that if you set the whitebalance wrong in jpeg, the picture may or may not be screwed. It is easier to fix if you use RAW...

The only bad (guess I shouldn't call it "negative") side of RAW is the fact that they do take more space. A 128MB card gets me 73 hi quality JPEG or 50 RAW...

But hey, I'll take the 50 RAW pictures any day of the week...

memory is cheap.

Geir

David N. said:

One infrequently mentioned advantage of RAW format is that since
you cannot directly edit a RAW file, that legally a RAW file is the
equal of a flim negative... in other words a court could not
question if a RAW file had been manipulated in any way, therefore
it would have to be considered an accurate representation of the
original subject. On the other hand if your "original" was a JPG,
TIFF, or other file type, it would not be possible to prove that
the image had not been "doctored" in any way.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't trust anyone who claimed that a RAW file was not modified... How do you know that they didn't have tools that aren't publicly available ?

Anything digital can be manipulated.

So if you want to get it legally verified, I'm not sure that you could get away with it...

Geir

Cliff said:

What is everyone using to edit RAW files? Photoshop? I have Super
Paint by Jasc and does not see the RAW files as a stand alone. I
have to bring it in as .tiff. Correct me if I am wrong, converting
from RAW to TIFF are you not still losing some but not as much as
.jpg?

Click to expand...

You are right in that you have to bring them in to the application using the canon driver (or other program).

But there is no loss in going from RAW to TIFF (unless you set whitebalance or something wrong and your picture might suck)...

a 2048x1536 TIFF file is 9,442,394 bytes

2048x1536x24bit = 9437184 bytes. Give or take a few bytes in headers and stuff and I belive you get there...

Geir