Raw Vs Jpeg

[mrbillf]

Hi All,

Over the weekend I took a few shots of generally anything I could see in the paddock, like trees, horses, sheds and more trees. Anyway, I set my D70 to Raw to see how much of a difference it makes. The question I pose is "Is Raw better then Jpeg or Tiff?"

The only issue I find using Raw is a lot of applications can't open them (or am I doing something wrong?). I've found that a .nef file looks great but limited when it comes to printing them. The Nikon Capture v4 is great to view, crop and do all sorts of things. But, I'm not 100% sure when it comes to printing. I normally use Adobe Photoshop CS to do all my edits but either I've done something wrong here but I can't seem to view them in Photoshop CS.

Any ideas on other applications that might be better? Love to here from you. Bill

[Nnnnsic]

You're looking at it from the wrong point of view.

You shoot in Raw (Nef) and then go from that to your preferred printing format... whether it be jpeg, tiff, png, psd... what have you.

Raw has more versatility in regards as to the higher quality it shoots in as well as the amount of light and exposure settings you get with it.

[Glen]

Bill, there is also a plug in for photoshop to read RAW, download it from their site (adobe). As Leigh says, NEF or RAW is a negative, turn it into what you want to output it

[gstark]

Bill,

The question is more one of do you want to trash all of the data that comprises the images that you shoot as soon as you make them, or would you like to perhaps retain that data in case you goofed up on one of the camera's settings, and you subsequently need to rectify that problem?

Speaking more seriously, shooting raw permits you the ultimate flexibility in how you can later deal with image - wb, exposure, colour, and curve adjustments are just a small part of what you can play with along the way.

jpg should only be used as a means of storing your finished product: if you're comfortable that every image you shoot will be a winner, right out of the box, and will only require minimal PP, then go ahead and shoot jpg, knowig that you're restricting your options further down the track.

[Nnnnsic]

You can bring this down to a film mentality actually.

Which would you prefer to shoot on: film or Polaroid?

[Manta]

You can bring this down to a film mentality actually.

Which would you prefer to shoot on: film or Polaroid?

That's a good analogy Leigh.

Previously, I reserved RAW for the "definitely can't shoot this one ever again" type moments and left JPEG for the 'less important' images. One may of course argue that every image is important if you bother to point your lens at it and press the shutter release but there are certainly some shots that you can come back later and shoot again. I've also been limited with card size in the past but I've since remedied that.

Yes RAW does take a bit more time to deal with in terms of processing but, in my experience, it was just a question of getting used to the workflow and things generally happen a lot faster now than when I first started in RAW.

[mrbillf]

Excellent, Thanks to everyone who replied. I now understand what the Raw setting does and I think I'll use it more. I did notice when in Nikon Capture v4 that you can save an image in what ever you want.

Thanks again guys and happy snapping.

Regards,
Bill

[ozimax]

Bill, just my 2bob's worth here. I was using raw earlier in the year, but now I only use JPEG. I am printing (and selling) 30"x20" prints from JPEGs. I can't see any great end difference. I usually save the original file into PSD format, process and re-save final product as a TIFF.

The reason I use JPEG is that my PC (and iBook) take so much longer to open and process the files that it was driving me crazy. Maybe if I ever upgrade the PC to something more powerful I will go back to shooting RAW+JPEG.

Cheers,

Max