Whatbird.com

I'd like to hear opinions on the pros and cons of shooting in RAW vs JPEG.

 Thanks in advance.

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Last two photo-lifers: Tundra Swan and Varied Thrush.

Well, there's the obvious one of RAW is big and JPG is small, so more images on your memory cards.

I've never used RAW personally, but if you're planning on post-editing your images, I can see the flexibility you get with RAW being invaluable.  There's also the benefit of increased color depth (12 or 14 bits per channel with some cameras). 

I also read a post on another forum where one person said that all of the RAW images he took several years ago suddenly got better just by processing them again with newer software.  Obviously, this will never happen with .JPG images.

Personally, my goal has been to improve my photography technique and post-edit as little as possible (i.e.: only when I'm printing photos for display), so I don't use RAW myself.

RAW is like your film negative with it you can process it as much as you want it holds all the info that the camera was able to capture and see.

JPEG on the other hand is the image after it is processed if you shot with your camera set on jpg then your camera processes that raw image  the JPG is the what one would call the print from a roll of film.Once it is jpeg that is it you are very limited in what you can do with it and keep in mind every time you save that image you degrade it and I do mean everytime even if yo don't do anything to it

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In loving memory of Nancy my darling wife of 10 years who passed away on Monday November the 16th 2009 after an illness

My photo gallery http://thekiwi.org/photography/index.php

I went kicking and screaming into raw captures.  The extra work seemed to be a waste of time.  Until that is, I learned what I was doing.  You gain so much more control of your final image when shooting in raw.  Here are a few advantages that make it all worth the extra effort.

1) white balance - this is determined at the time of conversion so if it's wrong in the jpeg your stuck with an unattractive color cast.  With raw you can change the white balance later under more controlled conditions

2) exposure - you can be off by as much as + or -  1.5 stops (maybe more but that's pushing it) and fix it in the conversion step.  The metering systems of most cameras are quite good nowadays but rapidly changing conditions or high dynamic range scenes can fool the meter.

3) highlight/shadow recovery - The extended bit depth as mentioned above means that many blown out highlights are in fact not blown out.  In the raw step you may find that there is signficant detail present.

4) flexibility in colors - with a jpeg you are fixed to whatever preset the manufacturer decides Joe average photographer needs.  You may want hyper-saturated velvia style photos for a landscape but more subdued natural colors for birds. You can adjust this to some extent with a jpeg but with drastic changes in an 8 bit image the overall quality will degrade.

 There is a learning curve for sure but the more you process the faster you will become and I'm sure you will like the final output much more.

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-Leroy-

Good answers everyone! Here is a article (that should help) on RAW vs JPEG:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/raw.htm

Ken Rockwell makes some good points for shooting jpegs. Unfortunately they don't hold up well for birding.  Sure, I'd love to get 'everything right in the camera'.  But birds don't cooperate very well. They have the nasty habit of moving in and out of shadows (i.e. rapidly changing white balance), and some even go so far as to be black and white (i.e. - high dynamic range). I'd love to see Ken take a simple picture of a coot in full sun and keep details in the black feathers without over exposing the beak. The solution of course is to bracket exposures - but birds don't sit still for that either.  For bird ID or web dispaly jpegs are more than fine.  He's also right that it takes special software to process and the learning curve is steep.  It used to take me 45 minutes to process a picture with all the tweaking I would do. Now my workflow is better.  I've learned to take better photos to start with so there's less tweaking required and now that I know what I'm doing I can achieve good results rapidly.  It usually only takes a minute or two to achieve the look I want.  This article is a good one to read as well.

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-Leroy-

Ken Rockwell has made statements here which makes me wonder if he even knows what Raw is.

Take this statement for example

If you use Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw, you just might have to buy the newest version of Photoshop, since Adobe doesn't update older versions to read the files from new cameras. Ha Ha! Photoshop is so good I've seen no need to update from CS2, and not shooting raw, I don't have to.

ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) Is free it works as part of photoshop and bridge but it doesn't mean you have to go out and buy the latest version of photoshop simply go to Adobe.com and download the latest camera raw with all the latest models of cameras.

When you buy a new Camera you get software with it that will read all formats that the camera puts out.

Then there is this statement

 Image quality is the same in JPG and raw. See my D200 Image Quality Setting Examples. See also my explanation of File Formats.

Well that is impossible for the 2 to be the same Raw files are the entire uncompressed data of the image whereas jpg is the procressed compressed data of the image and how does it compress the data   ... well that is simple it throws away pixels it is smaller in size as well.

and then there is this one

Raw files are just like raw olives: you need to cook or otherwise process them before you can use them. They also go bad fast if left in the raw state and can keep forever once processed to something like olive oil or JPGs.

I have never heard of a raw file degrading but I sure have heard of and seen jpgs degrade so much they become unuseable.

Open a jpg do absolutely nothing to it then save it you are going to recompress it that means throwing away more pixels do it often enough you will have no pixels left.

some points he makes are valid such as shooting action shots but the rest of the article stating that jpgs are equal in quality to raw is garbage.

That is my take on it

 

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In loving memory of Nancy my darling wife of 10 years who passed away on Monday November the 16th 2009 after an illness

My photo gallery http://thekiwi.org/photography/index.php

I'm right there with you Kiwi. I'm not sure why he even bothers talking about jpegs when he is now claiming that 35mm film scanned cheaply beats digital.  Although at $12 per roll plus the cost of film ($5.80 for fuji velvia at B&H bought in a 20 roll pack) and E6 processing (at $8.25) I'd have to take a second mortgage to afford to take half as many pictures as I can with digital. Let's see I've taken around 30,000 shots with my camera so far.  That's around 830 rolls of film with ends up being over $21,500 worth of 'cheap scanning".  I think I'd rather have a 600mm f/4 before a bunch of scanned films.  Read these two for amusement.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/why-we-love-film.htm

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/real-raw.htm

I used to really respect what Mr. Rockwell had to say but as time goes on I think he's becoming more inflammatory in order to generate publicity for his site.  After all, a controversial web site gets many more hits which may translate to click throughs to his advertisers which means he gets to take another vacation in Hawaii.

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-Leroy-

I switched my Nikon D200 Image Quality to RAW today. The difference between JPEG fine and RAW is 168 images on JPEG fine to 60 images on RAW. The files must be really big with RAW. Leroy, that Nikon 600mm f4 is only about $9000. I bought the Nikon 300mm AF-S 2.8 for $2500 {used} and when I add a 1.4 teleconverter to it, then it becomes a 630mm f4. Just can't afford the 600mm f4.

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Southwestern New Mexico

On my D80 (same sensor as the D200) the raw files are around 8.5-10 MB each.  The good news is that memory cards have gotten fairly cheap.  I use 2GB cards and get about 180 raw files per card.  The raw files are compressed slightly and the camera estimates the largest file size when calculating remaining shots.  In reality you'll get more than 60 images on your card.  That's a nice lens you've got.  I'm using the 300 f/4 with a 1.4 TC attached - I could not convince my wife that I needed spend 5K on a new 2.8 version.  Oh well, there's still the lottery I suppose

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-Leroy-

Leroy

you are correct about the memory cards being cheap I picked up genuine Sandisk brand Extreme III 4 GB for a total of $20 and I picked up a Sandisk SD 2GB for $7.99 so at those rates one can afford to go to raw, unless one is super cheap and wants to use a 512kb card.

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In loving memory of Nancy my darling wife of 10 years who passed away on Monday November the 16th 2009 after an illness

My photo gallery http://thekiwi.org/photography/index.php

Leroy, I had a Nikon 300 f4 that I sold to help fund the 300mm 2.8. I liked the 300 f4, but, when you put a converter behind it, its a pretty slow lens. The used one came along at $600 cheaper than any of the rest that I had seen, so, I went for it. Really, the dog house is not that bad except on the cold nights here in New Mexico. I have been using a SanDisk Ultra 11, 1 GB card, but, I have 5 of them so I should be OK on space. Spent lots of time in Santa Barbara doing horse shows with my daughter.

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Southwestern New Mexico