It's true that press photographers mainly shoot JPEGs. Their incomes depend on sending images back to the office quickly, these days mainly over 3G/4G data, and their work is published on newsprint or as small JPEGs on websites. Other types of professionals, including editorial, fashion, advertising, stck, commercial and domestic (weddings, families) mainly shoot RAW.
A JPEG is analogous to a commercial enprint made from negative film: it's a computer's interpretation of how the scene may have looked. Modern cameras' JPEG engines are better than older ones', but they are still only computers.
To make matters worse, each time a JPEG is opened, edited and saved, it is degraded in quality. Putting a JPEG through PP software is a highly destructive process.
This is true unfortunately.
This degradation is indeed a big disadvantage of shooting jpeg, but when the files does come good out the camera, and there is no need for PP, then there is really no big problem.
When jpegs are copied, moved or anything else than edited, there is no degradation yet.
It's a pity why it isn't possible to let the camera apply (at least) the same basic lens based in-camera corrections such as vignetting, distortion and CA, to NEF's in the same way as it does with jpegs. When this is also possible with NEF's it can save a lot of PP time.
Modern Nikon camera's know which lens is mounted, so why not using this data for the correction of NEF's too?
So far I know AWB setting is applied to both jpegs and NEF's, so why not also with the other settings?
Nikon should make this a setting which can be turned on or off at will to please everyone.
Mark,
I am sure that you are absolutely right about professionals shooting fashion, advertising etc. But, as Ruud says, if there is no need for PP, then there is really no big problem with jpegs.
I am not that interested in camera technology
per se. But when I started shooting my D600 last year, I was absolutely in awe over the jpeg quality, in particular coupled to the automated fixes the D600 now does to the image files. With the D800 and D600, Nikon seemed to have made a big leap. Jpeg was now better than I ever got out of raw files in the past.
This is what I thought:
There is a dividing line between the jpeg image quality of (otherwise very good) Nikon cameras from before 2011 or so, represented by the D3, D3x, D3s, D700 and D300s, and the present generation D800, D600 / D610, D4 and Df.
Unfortunately, all the present Canons fall in the same category as the pre - 2011 Nikons.
What is unique about the jpegs from the D800, D600 / D610 and I believe, to some extent at least, the D4 and Df, is three things. Please regard these three ingredients together, put them in one bowl and think for a second what you get:
1) They combine an extremely clean Expeed 3 processing from very clean sensors, straight out of the camera.
2) Their jpegs are automatically corrected for CA, distortion, vignetting, an adjustable level of
D-Lighting, allows fine tuning of
sharpness, contrast, saturation and hue, noise reduction, amount of
compression - at the same time as the picture is taken.
And, at the same time, add to this one of the topics of this post:
3) You can even use your jpegs to pull up the shadows by two stops or more, if they turned out too black
I wrote about this in a blog a year ago if anyone is interested. This is the second post dealing with jpeg specifically:
http://nikonsystem.blogspot.se/2013_01_11_archive.html
This fourth thing obviously has nothing to do with jpeg or raw, but it was introduced at the same time as the improvements in jpeg processing in the present Nikon FX generation, and it mixes particularly well together with what these jpegs offer:
4) The Auto ISO is exceptionally clever. For myself, I see no point in ever touching ISO manually.
These are my observations.
Now, my point is this:
If I were to buy a new DSLR today, I would not accept one that cannot do all of this.
With excellent cameras such as the D3, D700 or the Canons, the serious shooter will more or less have to shoot raw. The D610 and D800 give you a choice.
For the first time, we have the option to shoot quick and easy, often with state-of-the-art IQ, without even spending 10 seconds at the computer.
The D610 and the D800 do this jpeg magic with great panache, and was curious whether the Df does, too. As it stands, it seems entirely ok as well.
Gabriel
