Raw Vs JPEG

mikedragon32

This may well have been covered before, but having had a look through the threads couldn't see anything:

I was bought a digital SLR for my birthday last week and have been playing about with the settings.

Anyway, what I was wondering was this. One of the settings is RAW, which seems to eat up memory. What are the benefits to using RAW instead of jpeg and what exactly is RAW?

Any advice gratefully accepted.

When I take it out for it's first outing, I'll put the results up, but be gentle! I've never used anything other than a normal digital camera up to now.

davmigil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAW_image_format

Advantages: allows for more processing (e.g. set white balance later), wider exposure latitude
Disadvantage: large size uses up memory and buffer (so possibly if taking rapid succession of shots for say sport, mightn't get same fps as jpg)

JMcL

mikedragon32 wrote:

This may well have been covered before, but having had a look through the threads couldn't see anything:

I was bought a digital SLR for my birthday last week and have been playing about with the settings.

Anyway, what I was wondering was this. One of the settings is RAW, which seems to eat up memory. What are the benefits to using RAW instead of jpeg and what exactly is RAW?

Ah, a great topic for an argument

Put simply, raw images are the digital equivalent of a photographic negative. The camera will always take the image in raw mode, and if you've selected raw mode, it will do nothing other than saving the data straight from the sensor to the card (with some shooting data purely for reference). You then need to use an external tool on the computer to convert the images to JPEG/TIFF, whatever

If you select a JPEG mode on the camera, then the camera will convert the raw image that it's taken to JPEG, adding saturation, contrast, sharpening, and compressing the result (the amount of all these are settable as parameters on the camera), and saving that to the memory card.

Some pros of shooting raw:

• You aren't losing anything from the image. If the camera/lens resolved it, it's in the data
• You have more control when it comes to processing
• Raw images have more data - typically each pixel has 12 or 14 bits of data representing 4096/16384 possible values for a pixel. JPEG has 8 bits/256 levels
• You can change white balance later, you can't do this on JPEG
• Raw processing software improves as time goes on, so the possibility exists that you can go back and rework images at a later point to extract more detail

Cons:

• Raw produces large file which can fill up a memory card quickly
• Shooting raw involves more work in front of the computer, JPEGs can be used straight from the camera.
• If you're shooting bursts for action/wildlife, you'll be able to take less images with raw before the camera slows down to write the images (though newer camera buffers are a decent size these days, so it's not that much of a problem)
• For printing images, JPEG is easily sufficient

There are other pros and cons, about 5 minutes with Google should throw up a few results. At the end of the day, it's a personal preference, if you just want to take photos and use them straight away, JPEG might the way to go. If you plan to edit them and want maximum control over white balance, contrast etc, then raw is the way to go. Hard disk space is cheap these days! I started shooting raw about 2 years ago, and use it 99.9% of the time now

kuroino

JMcL described it all nicely, so I just comment on the negative side of things:

> # Raw produces large file which can fill up a memory card quickly

Not a real disadvantage, as you can always buy twice as much memory if you want It costs so little these days. And actually being a bit limited in memory is somehow a good thing (I wrote about it before).

> Shooting raw involves more work in front of the computer, JPEGs can be
> used straight from the camera.

It depends. Actually if you process your pictures, shooting RAW may mean _less_ work with computer, because RAW workflow is much more straightforward if you using special tools such as C1, for example.

> If you're shooting bursts for action/wildlife, you'll be able to take less images
> with raw before the camera slows down

Here I must agree. It is the real disadvantage resulting from RAW images being larger than JPEGs. But again larger buffers help as you say.

> For printing images, JPEG is easily sufficient

I guess at this point my English broke down Does "easily sufficient" mean "sufficient" or "insufficient"? If I am not mistaken and it means the former rather than the latter, then I completely disagree with your point. Printing pictures presumes processing.

Finally I must say one more thing to mikedragon32: if you are as lame in photography as I am (or worse) then use RAW. Because you will definitely produce some under and over exposed shots and fail with white balance on at least some, possibly frequent occasions. But even if you are a very skilled photographer, one thing you can not really control from your camera is sharpness of the image. Because the amount of sharping required for the shot can only be judged by looking at it. And sharping JPEGs is bad by definition.

digitalage

I used to shoot raw but I found it very time consuming, last couple of months I have been shooting jpegs as I spend a little more time getting the right exposure and wb setup in the camera rather than post processing afterwards.

JMcL

kuroino wrote:

> For printing images, JPEG is easily sufficient

I guess at this point my English broke down Does "easily sufficient" mean "sufficient" or "insufficient"? If I am not mistaken and it means the former rather than the latter, then I completely disagree with your point. Printing pictures presumes processing.

The former is right, though to be a bit clearer what I meant is that the limitations of current printing processes means that there's no real benefit to having more than an 8 bit source image, assuming the picture is properly exposed, white balance is right, and doesn't need major work on contrast and saturation. Sharpening will work just as well on a JPEG straight from the camera.

However I'll add that if you want to print a large size (say A4 or greater - this comes to mind as I've just gotten an A3 from Photobox while typing ), then having a source image where you've managed to pull all the detail you can is defintely a benefit

mikeanywhere

I cant wait to see what Borg is going to write?? :eek:

sionnach

JMcL wrote:

The former is right, though to be a bit clearer what I meant is that the limitations of current printing processes means that there's no real benefit to having more than an 8 bit source image, assuming the picture is properly exposed, white balance is right, and doesn't need major work on contrast and saturation. Sharpening will work just as well on a JPEG straight from the camera.

The inferiority of JPEG for printing is not mostly a result of the lower colour range, it's the horrible artifacts produced by the compression.

B0rG

mikeanywhere wrote:

I cant wait to see what Borg is going to write?? :eek:

I'll keep it short: shoot in RAW.

melekalikimaka

one a side note anything under a d200 in nikon shoots compressed raws(nefs)

digitalbeginner

Here's another good reason to shoot RAW.

Good Digital Cameras have a dynamic range of about 5 stops (about the same as slide film). Adobe have just released a Technical Paper about how the use of Adobe Camera Raw can actually recover detail even in blown hightlights, so extending the 5 stop range a little bit. This technique does not work with Jpegs as this format dumps this detail.

Check it out here: http://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/phscs2ip_hilight.pdf

Fenster

In my book I'd definately shoot at medium resultion jpg for any action (40+ shots in the buffer), but if it's not moving I absolutely prefer to use raw as it gives me far greater control over colours and lighting.

Gwenneh

Think of it in terms of food.

JPEG is a pre-packaged ready meal. It can be good, and certainly is good enough for a lot of things. It's designed to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible. You can dress it up - add more garlic, more pepper...but ultimately, you don't have a lot of control over what's in it and how it's made.

RAW is cooking from scratch. You start with the basic ingredients and combine them to your liking. There's a lot more room for interpretation.

I shoot RAW, because weddings often have situations where preserving as much data as possible is key.

mervifwdc

y'mean my camera can shoot in something other than RAW? :-)

Raw all the time. Buy a few disks. Suck it up.

Merv.

leinsterman

Well ... I shoot a lot of RAW, but I also shoot JPEG ... each has their place ...

RAW is great but you need to consider something else ... RAW needs more work in the post processing phase (on the PC) than JPEG ...

OK ... you can use macros and actions to speed thing up ... but mass producing photos defeats the purpose of shooting RAW in the first place ... you need to develop each photo individually to get the best results from RAW ...

The problem with this is - It can cause a backlog in your workflow ... too much stuff to develop ... so I do not agree fully with the idea of only shooting RAW ... unless of course you have time to devote hours in front of a PC developing photos ...

Food for thought ... RAW is great but you need to be disciplined or you end up with lots of undeveloped pictures ... I generally shoot RAW+JPEG ... and only develop the best pictures from RAW, leaving the rest to the camera in JPEG form ...

Of course if you are using an EOS 5D then there is the option of the shoot style to avoid RAW ... and go straight to JPEG ... but I do not have any experience of this ... though I have used a similar idea to try to re-create Velvia style in jpeg on the 20D...

kuroino

> RAW needs more work in the post processing phase (on the PC) than JPEG ...

I don't understand it at all. Typical RAW file takes me 20-30 seconds to process, typical JPEG takes at least 2 minutes (I don't mean working on fine details, but just wb/exposure/sharpening/cropping if needed). Of course, you may not process anything at all, but again conversion of RAW files to JPEGs can be done not slower than copying them from your CF card. And anyway what's the poiint of shooting digital if you are not processing it at all?

> you can use macros and actions to speed thing up

Forget macros and actions. Just don't use PhotoShop for quick processing. PhotoShop is a heavy tool for serious image editing, not a tool for RAW processing.

> you need to develop each photo individually to get the best results from
> RAW

Of course I meant individual adjusting of wb/exposure/sharpness + cropping, otherwise what's the point - you can do everything from command line spending few seconds of your own time for the whole bunch of 100 images.

> RAW is great but you need to be disciplined or you end up with lots of
> undeveloped pictures

Some procedure must be in place anyway. You still have to at least filter out bad images and remember or mark somehow those "rolls", that you already "processed". Otherwise it is a "digital hole".

mikedragon32

Thanks for the info everyone. The food analogy was great, Gwenneh (I will PM you about the cat, btw, I haven't forgotten).

I'll take the camera out tomorrow and have a play with it in JPEG and Raw and see what I get.

Last (probably silly) questions... If I shoot in raw and make no amendments to the pics, can I bring the chip with Raw images to my local photo shop for printing in that format?

Gwenneh

Local and small labs will probably print from JPEGs only.

mikeanywhere

B0rG wrote:

I'll keep it short: shoot in RAW.

Stunned into silence!!!

Well done mate

Shiny

I also shoot in Raw for the reasons outlined
above, but they are not my main reason.

I shoot in Raw to futureproof my images.
I look back on the images I took only a few
years ago and wish I had them in higher quality.

Now I shoot raw and convert them to Tiff
files.

This way, the maximum quality is ensured.
For Ever.

.....(Smallest Violin in the world.... Plays...)

kuroino

> Now I shoot raw and convert them to Tiff
> files.

I actually do convert to TIFF as well. Not to 16-bit per channel though. 16-bit per channel only makes sense if you do a lot of fine tuning on details after processing to TIFF, that I never really do. And it is always possible to return to original RAW file if I need to do it in the future.

Shrimp

I was once told go raw and u wont wanna go back.. this is totally true. However one lil thing.. if u can set it to shoot raw + jpeg as u may wanna get the snapshots printed at a printing booth and if u don't have them set to jpeg then u can't. also.. even if u just wanna look at the photos on a pc u cant unless u got the raw plug in installed.

Jpeg for snapshots that u know u will only be using for casual purposes.

Raw for photos that may go on to be a sell-able/large print and if u want more editing capabilities.. ALOT more.

paudie

I'll agree with shrimp here. I shoot Raw+jpeg always. Although I only use the lowest quality jpeg. Reason being you can cycle through the jpegs a lot quicker than the raw files and this lets me decide keepers from stinkers. Also some of the magazines I shoot for ask for RAW+low res jpeg probably for the same reason.

5uspect

That makes sense, its like getting your shots developed for easy access/viewing and having the (RAW) negatives if you need them.

digitalbeginner

RAW + Jpeg is the way for me too. On the D70s RAW+Jpeg saves a Jpeg at full resolution, but at maximum compression. Some loss of detail is inevitable, but fine for PC Screens and even printing at 6x4. But for me the piece de resistance is the ability to quickly email the Basic Jpeg (about 600k) during a shoot without having to waste precious time processing in Photoshop.

mikeanywhere

You would probably answer the question yourself depending on what memory you have as this will depend on the size of the image to save to file.