Raw or JPEG?

[John Gulliver]

Thanks all for your comments. I've decided to take RAW+JPEG Basic. This will give me 235 shots per 2GB card, which should be enough for one day's diving with 3 dives per day. This is important as I want to be able to use a fresh card each day on trips abroad and save the cards as well as downloading the images to a 60 GB Photobank as back-up. That way, I'll still have the images on the cards if the Photobank's hard drive crashes. I'd have preferred RAW+JPEG Fine, of course, but I'll have to make do with Basic as a second-best option to RAW if and when I can't be bothered to process the RAW images.

 

[vladimir]

i notice when i shoot RAW i can't edit the pics, but i can on JPeg

What do you mean, you can't edit the [RAW] pics? Do you not have the RAW converter?

 

[alcina]

I just don't understand why some of you are saying that processing RAWs takes so much more time. I don't mean this in a nasty or condescending way, but have a look around the web for workflow tutorials etc there may be things you find that will really help. I know my own workflow is constantly evolving and not only am I getting faster but I'm getting better results in less time.

I spend far less time working on my RAW files than I ever did with my jpegs and everything is so easy - from images that need just the standard tweaks to images that I want to give more lovin'. No matter which format you use there's stuff to learn to make your images turn out the way you envisioned them.

If you haven't checked out Lightroom, head over to adobe.com and grab yourself the free 30 day trial. It's a very powerful tool that may help your workflow - jpeg or RAW - as well as keep you organized.

My biggest regret when I started shooting digital was not using RAW because I was under various misconceptions (too time consuming, too big, too slow (this one was true on the Oly 5050 but it was still worth it), too hard to learn blah blah blah).

I can't imagine ever willingly throwing away perfectly good data that I might want some day. Storage is cheap, cameras are fast and life only happens once.

Whatever format you choose, get out there, have fun and shoot til your fingers bleed!

@John G - I've routinely shot more than 235 images in a single dive (granted mine aren't 30 minute dives). you might want to consider some bigger cards - they're cheap as chips. It would truly suck to be on a dive and be limited in the number of shots you could take...you just know that would be the dive with whale sharks mating, mantas doing ballet, barracuda line dancing and sharks singing while swimming in formation If you never fill the card fine, but oh the pain to run out!

 

[vladimir]

@John G - I've routinely shot more than 235 images in a single dive (granted mine aren't 30 minute dives). you might want to consider some bigger cards - they're cheap as chips. It would truly suck to be on a dive and be limited in the number of shots you could take...you just know that would be the dive with whale sharks mating, mantas doing ballet, barracuda line dancing and sharks singing while swimming in formation If you never fill the card fine, but oh the pain to run out!

I totally agree. You can get 8 gig cards for ~$50--why load anything smaller? They also give me the flexibility to not open my housing between dives if I'm not changing lenses.

 

[AussieByron]

Agree also I would go straight into a 16gb card. My record for a single dive is 480 shots and that was an hours dive with a black Manta which just followed me around wanting its picture taken ;-)

 

[ptyx]

Raw is great for those 1% shots where the strobes illuminated the subject, but you'd like to lighten the background a bit more - or where you forgot to reset your white balance and you're still shooting Hawaii with San Diego settings. Anything you'd detect immediately in a studio or landscape shot, but might be harder to notice underwater: depending on the camera, histogram can be tiny and not show all the info you'd want. And then even if you notice it the subject might decide it had enough.

You CAN fix those with JPEG, but some information is lost - and the fix won't be as good. It can be argued that a crappy shot is a crappy shot and doctoring it to death won't make it good anyway, but unless your raw workflow is noticeably more painful than JPEG (and it shouldn't), why take chances?

Given the price of a good memory card compared to the rest of the gear, it shouldn't be an issue. We're talking underwater photo gear here - anything below $100 is small change :depressed:

(And yes, not having to open the housing between dives limit the risk of flooding, which is another HUGE argument for larger cards).

 

[Ardy]

Raw is all very well if your copy of PS supports your RAW files mine V6 doesn't. Therefore I am farting around in Olympus Master 2 then finishing off the jpeg in PS. This takes a lifetime.

I am starting to think like John and wonder if I need to have RAW files.

 

[gravity]

I don't know enough about Ken Rockwell to say anything definitive, but I have seen that he is commonly mocked on some hotography forums and there is a vocal segments that thinks you should do the opposite of whatever he recommends.

I agree with everything Alcina said. Lightroom2 will change your workflow and final result in a substantial way. It is really easy to use and totally worth it if you care about your final output and don't always get the exposure and color perfect in your camera.

 

[alcina]

Lightroom, Baby, Lightroom. It's not that expensive in the scheme of things, is super powerful, can be as easy or as tricksy as you like, is fabo for organizing, a dream for exporting different files for different uses so FAST and just basically rocks socks. I heart Lightroom I probably do 95% of my editing in LR, Photoshop comes a distance second. There's a free 30 day trial and educational discounts around if you know someone in school etc. THE best money I've spent on photography.

Shoot whatever makes you happy and don't worry about what anyone else thinks. Just know that RAW files are inherently better because they contain more data and once data is gone you can never get it back. RAW isn't only about fixing any boo boos you may have made in the initial shot, it's about being able to produce the very best quality image possible in the widest variety of outputs. JPEG doesn't suck by any means, it's just a sacrifice I'm not willing to make if I don't have to. I gain absolutely zero benefit from shooting JPEG and I potentially lose information that I might want.

Only you can decide if any "trade offs" are worth it whichever you choose. Understand the differences and realities. Keep an open mind about making changes to your workflow and methods as you evolve in your skills and needs. Make the choice that suits YOU and don't dis on others who choose differently.

BTW GIMP is free. I found a reference to this new (well, to me) FREE application that is like a Jr Lightroom or Lightroom Lite - might be of interest to some. Heck, it's free, can't hurt to try it! RAWTherapee

 

[Warmwater Wank]

I'm with Alcina on using Lightroom. RAW files are large and are not anywhere near as universally read by image editing software as JPEGs. For a lot of folks it probably wouldn't make sense to shoot RAW, especially if they won't be doing much/any post-processing and are happy with what they get out of the camera. If you have a decent camera however and it shoots RAW why wouldn't you use it? With large memory cards getting so cheap (I was buying 16GB SDHC Class 6 cards for $35-40) it's hard to argue "the files are too big". With Lightroom it's hard to argue they are too difficult to handle.

I did do a test very early on w/ my G-10 between a RAW and JPEG file of the same shot. For a well exposed scene not needing any corrections out of the camera, viewed full frame on a monitor or as a smaller print (8x or so) no big difference. RAW does NOT automatically make a photo look better ok? Where it excels however is when you need to do almost anything in editing.

The ability to correct for dark shadows, blown highlights or color casts (especially when a camera like the G-10 does 16bit RAW) is almost spooky. And because there is so much more information retained, the corrections are fast and easy. I would spend large amounts of time trying to correct a jpeg w/ my old Fuji F-30 and still not get them to look much better. Now I'm breezing through RAW files making fast corrections and getting results that "save" a bad exposure or make a good one look even better. Using Lightroom to blitz through a few thousand shots from a dive trip is fun, not a task.

Have to admit though, I'm a Photoshop diehard, too cheap to upgrade from CS (which does not support RAW). No problem. Lighroom will export RAW files and convert them to lossless PSDs or TIFFs, allowing me to work on the images with software I'm more at home with. If you have an older version of PS or other favorite editing software that doesn't support your camera's RAW format it's a great way to go. The OP stated "...the majority of experienced photographers here use Raw but I wonder if this is a conscious choice". Yeah, conscious and smart. The right tools sure do help though! // ww