Anyone tried RAW, then reverted to JPEG only?

I never even think about shooting jpeg anymore. It's just too easy to get a better photo using LR with just a few clicks.

There are some times when I just want quick images that I'm not too picky about and I shoot with my Kodak Z990. I usually shoot it in jpeg mode. Even with that cam, though, I know I can get better results shooting raw. But if I really wanted great results I'd be shooting with my A77 or my Canon 1D4.

The truth is though that I enjoy PPing in Lightroom. So there's no reason to not shoot raw.

Of course I'm excluding the times I use a feature such as sweep panorama. I do use that quite a bit and of course that's jpeg only.

For all those ppl who are lying to themselves that JPEG is close to RAW pls read this article and understand that RAW is essential in photography ! You will never see a photographer shooting JPEG .

I quote : '' — Possibly the biggest advantage of shooting raw is that one has a 16 bit image (post raw conversion) to work with. This means that the file has 65,536 levels to work with. This is opposed to a JPG file's 8 bit space with just 256 brightness levels available. This is important when editing an image, particularly if one is trying to open up shadows or alter brightness in any significant way. ''

Given my limited PP skills, up until recently I shot JPEG only. But, having just discovered the wonderful world of LR, I can see myself shooting a bit more RAW than I had before. I recently shot some promos for a local band in a spot that I wouldn't have chose in a million years. RAW was my really my only option, which kind of forced my hand as far as PP goes. (No, I wasn't payed for the gig..lol) I imagine I won't shoot one or the other exclusively, though. I kind of like fiddling around with all the fun settings in the A57 that are JPEG only.

Cheers!

at any bit from any processing or format as long as I am visually thrilled :-D.

In photography is all about printing in the end. You can have the best capture , but if the content can't be printed on large scale you can't sell it .

"You will never see a photographer shooting JPEG."

You are poorly informed.

"In photography is all about printing in the end. You can have the best capture , but if the content can't be printed on large scale you can't sell it."

And your grand sweeping statement may apply to you, but not apply to someone else. I don't print on a large scale, and I don't sell.

Try this instead: live and let live.

Setter Dog said:

Setter Dog wrote:

When you follow these forums, you realize that we all have different preferences and priorities. There are many cases of DSLR shooters parking those cameras and reverting to bridge cameras or other point and shoots.

Most people on this and other forums seem to shoot RAW. I wonder how many tried RAW, then went back to JPEG. Is anyone willing to admit that?


Personally, I've never even tried RAW but am convinced it's at least worth a try. Knowing my preferences, I suspect it will be a short romance and that I'll be back with JPEG quite soon.


Jack

Click to expand...

Sort of, it depends on the conditions and what I intend to do with the images.

With my A57 I find the DR of the sensor and the jpg quality good enough at ISO 800 and below so that I'm comfortable shooting jpg only. If the lighting is tricky or I need the best possible quality I'll shoot RAW+jpg. At ISO 1600 above in poor light, I'll shoot RAW as I don't think that the A57's jpg engine does a good job with noise under these conditions. In good light I'll also shoot jpg as at ISO 1600 - 3200.

On my older digital cameras that support RAW I'll shoot RAW. My impression is that the latest generation of sensors from Sony (and others) has improved to the point where shooting RAW isn't as important as it used to be.

I wouldn't bother shooting RAW for the sake of it, you need to have a definite purpose in mind to make up for the additional time spent on pp.

Karel

While some like to act like shooting JPEG is only for amateurs, I will give a contrarian view that for me is a brutally honest statement, and that is I am not good enough of a photographer to shoot JPEG exclusively.




Just from an exposure basis only, I can't think of a single photo I have ever taken where I haven't touched at least one of the exposure sliders in Lightroom..

yes

goetz48 said:

goetz48 wrote:

I shoot RAW if shots are important or have tricky WB conditions. For everyday use I shoot JPEG.

Click to expand...

Same here...

Not me. I've been using RAW for several years and especially now I started using Lightroom 4 I never go back again to JPEG.

I do quiet a lot of a landscape so and RAW is generally better for this.

Setter Dog said:

Setter Dog wrote:
Most people on this and other forums seem to shoot RAW. I wonder how many tried RAW, then went back to JPEG. Is anyone willing to admit that?
Jack

Click to expand...

Sure.

I tried RAW+ JPEG for a few months, but it filled up the buffer too quickly on multi-frame action shots. It also took a LOT more space on cards and hard drives.

I went for RAW-only for awhile, but I don't have time to post-process all the photos I take (about 20,000 a year). I just found the process to time consuming, and frankly, too frustrating.


So, about two years ago, I went back to JPEG only. Overall, I'm very happy with the results. I know how to manually set white balance when needed, and the shadow/highlight controls on the camera help keep everything in balance.

Standard caveats apply.

Greg

garykohs said:

garykohs wrote:

I never even think about shooting jpeg anymore. It's just too easy to get a better photo using LR with just a few clicks.

Click to expand...

I agree. That's true whether you're shooting RAW or JPEG. And, if you're going to PP anyway, might as well do it in RAW.

garykohs said:

The truth is though that I enjoy PPing in Lightroom. So there's no reason to not shoot raw.

Click to expand...

I really don't. I'm lazy, and I do only what is necessary. But PP in Lightroom is ridiculously easy -- most of the time, it's simply clicking on one of a few presets I've created. Since it's so easy, there's no reason not to shoot RAW.

Now, when I was using Sony's software, I would rarely shoot RAW. But now that I have Lightroom, I almost always shoot RAW.

garykohs said:

Of course I'm excluding the times I use a feature such as sweep panorama. I do use that quite a bit and of course that's jpeg only.

Click to expand...

All those special camera functions that are not available in RAW are reason to shoot JPEG on a particular occasion. Hand-held HDR is another. The creative modes, if you use them. Etc. Lens correction could be a big reason to shoot JPEG on an A77 -- close, but not quite enough, to convince me.

The #1 poster with nothing to say, and who posts no photos. What a way to go through life, trying to rain on other's parades. Beyond a troll, a wee bothersome idjit.

Me too. I could pretend to know more than the Sony engineers and do Raw only, but normally I shoot 10 or so shots of the same thing, change settings in between, and review them in the Fabulous Wonderful viewfinder, the Electronic one.




Someday the optical guys will get a camera that disperses a fine mist at 10 feet and projects an image onto it in high def so they can get what we have now. I see the video cams are doing just that, running a projector. Very nice.

Short answer is no (except, as others have mentioned, occasional use of sweep pano, etc.). I shot jpg only for many years, always intrigued by the RAW vs JPG debate I decided to shoot RAW+JPG with the a850 during a trip to Yellowstone a couple of years ago, and the results convinced me to go RAW only. With each camera body I've acquired since (a55 & a77) I've shot RAW+JPG for an initial "get acquainted" period and have came to the same conclusion with each. The OOC JPGs are mighty good, but I can always squeeze out at least a bit more goodness by processing the RAW file.

Here is an example of that Yellowstone trip that convinced me -- the best black bear photo op I'd ever encountered, but lighting was very dim and I had to bump up the a850's ISO to 1600, with the 70-400G wide open, to eek out 1/320 shutter speed on a monopod. These are 100% crops; left is OOC jpg, right is RAW processed in ACR:



I was stunned with difference -- having the RAW file allowed me achieve a result that prints beautifully at 16x20" ...

Now, I know, a certain amount of PP is possible with the JPG file as well, but as others have said, if you're gonna PP anyway, why not have the RAW file to work with? To satisfy this question in my own mind, I took that same OOC JPG and PP'd it in ACR to get the best result I could get, and this is the result:

Left is same RAW Processed image (above right); Right is the OOC JPG PP'd in ACR the best I could get...




Close, but the RAW file clearly allowed me to get the better result. I really consider my photography an art form, and enjoy getting the best out of each image, so would PP even if shooting JPG... therefore RAW doesn't increase the workflow time. And for situations where I have dozens or hundreds of images with similar lighting, batch processing makes it a snap (I'll use DxO for processing large batches).

Several people have stated they use RAW to fix mistakes; I don't see it like that at all. There's definitely a learning curve (at least for me it took some time to develop the RAW PP skills, and I'm still learning!) -- and that's something that is not for everyone. But I find it provides fantastic flexibility in challenging light, and more opportunity get even more goodness out of a good shot!

Well, that's my 2 cents worth!

--

- AlanS

As one of the ones who say they use RAW to fix mistakes, my only comment to your analysis (which was well stated btw) is that much of what you did could have been out of camera, but that would have required changing multiple settings like sharpening before you took the shot and other settings that were never an option with film. Then again, you would have spent 10-20 seconds making those changes and the bear would have been long gone by then, and then you might have turned around and spotted a great candid portrait of the person you went there with but now your camera is set to sharpen too much for a portrait.




So, I suppose I should refine my contention that I use RAW to fix mistakes to I use RAW because I can't make changes quick enough to suit my style of shooting which can change by the minute.

In 2006 I got my first DSLR. While I was learning the new tool, I kept the camera set to raw + jpg even though since I used to shoot slide film a lot, I felt that I could handle jpg and get the image I wanted with minimal PP while saving memory space and time.

But I found that when I really like the shot, I ended up PP to also make different versions. I found I had much more flexibility with raw than with jpg only. So while I still try to get the settings correct so I get shot I want w/o much PP, but also save the raw in case I want to do something with it.

About a year a go I bought some HDR software (Photomatix), and I have been revisiting some of my early photos from 2006. By processing 1 raw shot in LR3 by changing the exposure slider and saving 6 tiff copies from +3ev to -3ev, and then processing as an HDR series in Photomatix I have been able to get much greater dynamic range in the image, bringing out details in whited out skies (in the original) and in the deep shadows.

For an experiment I tried the same technique using the companion original jpg and one raw where I did everything possible to increase the dynamic range on the one image, as well as using pixmatic's built in HDR-from-one-shot. In all cases, none came at all close to what I could get using the HDR using 6-files-from-one-raw method.

That showed me the worth of saving the raws from scenes I really like -- in the future we can't predict the PP possibilities that will be developed.

For documentation type shots, I still take raw+jpg, and then usually only save the jpg on disk.




tom

Earlier I said yes.... but let me elaborate. Over the years, I have found that the JPEG's I get with slight tweaking can not be improved enough so that anyone could definitely say this shot is better than that shot... when I say anyone, I mean the people who I allow to view my shots...me, family and friends.. of which none of them pixel peep.... so for me I do have Lightroom 4 and Photoshop but after trying again to shoot RAW.. IM again back to JPEG... it not that I don't have the time...its just not that significant to me. Granted I am not a demanding photographer, and never claimed to be... but I am thrilled to death with every shot I keep and my keeper rate is as high as it has ever been.. Also there are indeed shots that could benefit with having more data in a file, but for me , its one in a thousand. I don't take shots under extremely demanding circumstances.