Tiffinbox

Inspiring Photographers

Raw v. JPEG

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Back here I got the ball rolling on the debate between shooting RAW or shooting in the compressed lossy JPEG format. Ken Rockwell says JPEG is sufficient. Harikrishna Katragadda thinks that's heresy. Well, I sent Rockwell a link to the post and here is his response:

It's sad people think there is a debate; there isn't. Use of RAW or JPG is an easy choice for any experienced photo pro knowing what's being shot. Actually even JPG BASIC is fine for many uses.

The debate comes from people not realizing each is optimized for one or another use. The argument comes from people trying to convince others that one or the other applies to all possible uses, which they don't. Feel free to post that if you like.

Read more about Rockwell's theories about JPG vs Raw vs TIFF. There appears to be two very distinct schools of thought. The first says capture everything as RAW and then tweak them down to however the images will be used. The second school of thought is to capture images according to how they will be used in the end, JPEGs if that's all will be needed.

I understand Harikrishna's take on this; to have in hand what is widely considered a digital negative is a boon. It allows one to go from there to just about anything one would want to create. But I also see Ken's point of view that it makes little sense to subject yourself or your equipment to the processing power or time to capture everything in RAW when JPEGs in some situations will more than suffice.

I am pricing some Sandisk 2GB cards for my imminent D70s purchase. With a 6.1 megapixel camera how many RAW images can I capture? How many JPEG (fine) images will I have in a full card? What file sizes are we talking about here? And, at the end of the day, how much computer work will we be committing to if we shot everything in RAW v. JPEG? If I am a wedding photographer [and I am], should I be shooting everything as RAW or would JPEG [in fine mode] be sufficient?

Seshu | Editor & Publisher

Seshu | Editor & Publisher

Seshu is an Avon, Connecticut based headshot photographer and family portrait photographer. He edits and publishes Tiffinbox and produces Tiffincast for photographers like you!