I want to preface this post with the fact that I am not a professional photographer, nor do I intend to become a professional photographer. If you have been following my blog and looking at my posted images you already know this. ;-) I love photography, but I do it for my pleasure only, and most of my photos are snapshots of our life. So this post is directed to hobby photographers like me.
Now, confession time. After years of taking only RAWs (and feeling special because of this), I now shoot jpgs 99% of the time.
I wanted to list a few reasons
why I made this decision (and please read this article from Ken Rockwell):
1. Jpgs are edited in-camera, so if I set my camera properly many of my images don't need any editing other than a bit of sharpening. Even ones that need some editing usually just need a tweak on the exposure and color. RAWs ALWAYS need to be edited. No one can print or post a RAW file directly, it must be processed in some sort of editing program and then converted to a jpg or other common file to be printed or uploaded.
2. Jpgs can be read anywhere. I like being able to see all of my photos in Window's Photo Viewer and have the ability to open my images in any editing program. I can stick my Canon's memory card in my grandmother's computer and see my photos. I can't do that with RAWs.
3. Jpgs are smaller. RAWs are huge (especially with my new beloved Canon Rebel T2i
). I am uploading all of my photos from 2004 until present with Carbonite and even though I have 4G Wireless it is going to take months to get them all up there, mostly because I have so many RAW files. 4. I value my time and don't want to spend hours editing images. I would rather spend more time taking pictures.
5. Almost all of my photos are posted on the web or printed 4x6 for my personal photo album or no bigger than 11x14 for my wall. I don't need RAWs to get great resolution at those sizes, my jpgs are perfectly adequate. I can't foresee needing billboard-sized images of my dog or muddy kid anytime soon.
6. As a test I have taken jpgs and RAWs at the same time and didn't see any major differences between the two final edited images at the sizes I view on the web or usually print.
Here are some reasons why I would shoot RAWS:
1. If I am doing a photo-shoot for a friend I will capture both RAWs and jpgs and keep the decent jpgs and toss all of the RAWs except for the ones that I plan on editing. White balance is easier to correct in RAWs than jpgs, so I have the RAW "just in case ".
2. If I am shooting with questionable lighting I might shoot RAW (if I remember), again because of white balance.
3. If I am doing a serious photo-shoot of my own family I might shoot RAWs because old habits die hard and I want to have a "negative" of that special shoot.
I use Lightroom 3
for all of my basic photo-editing (and use Photoshop or PSE for any "arty" enhancements). Many people will tell you that LR3 is really only for editing RAWs, but that is not true. The beauty of a properly exposed jpg is it doesn't need much editing, and for any color/contrast correction needed, LR3 works beautifully whether you are editing RAWs or jpgs. However, most presets are written for RAWs (unedited photos) so if you use them on jpgs you might get harsh and sometimes really ugly results, but they can be toned down in many cases. The main reason I started shooting RAWs years ago was because I read somewhere that shooting jpgs instead of RAWs is like having your film negatives printed and throwing the negatives away and keeping the prints. I don't know about you, but I shot film for years, and once I closed down my darkroom my negatives have not seen the light of day and I am perfectly happy to look at my prints.
Shooting RAWs or jpgs is a personal choice, but I personally believe shooting jpgs does not keep you from being a "real" photographer. Don't let the cool kids make you feel guilty. However, I suggest spending the time to learn to use your camera so your images are properly exposed and don't need much post-processing editing. If you take the time to learn how to capture great SOOC (straight-out-of-the-camera) images, then you might get jpgs you can print right off your camera card. You will never be able to do that with a RAW.
I hope this helps some of you out there that feel guilty that you are not shooting RAWs!
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