I know this will open a can of worms but......

neil_r wrote in post #13603973
The only person you really need to satisfy is yourself so basically do whatever you please. That, of course, also applies to everyone else so it is really a case of each to his own and we will all be happy

^^^This^^^.

Even though I'm in the RAW camp, no where does it say you must shoot RAW. If you're satisfied with jpeg, then it is all that matters.

OP, sorry but it sounds like you really should have just bought a decent bridge camera.

Like others have said, just batch process the entire lot in DPP using whatever picture style your camera was set-up for. The resulting images will be JPEGs as expected. Then delete the RAWs that you don't want to keep. The big difference is that now you can go back to the one or four you really really like and tweak white balance and do more noise reduction and/or sharpening.

Best of both worlds. Remember, all cameras essentially shoot RAW, it's just who or what does the processing that make a difference.

1Tanker wrote in post #13603866
Shoot RAW + jpeg..that`s what i do. If you have a bunch that you don`t feel, need any editing.. fine. If there are some which need work.. your chances of salvaging those shots is MUCH higher with RAW.

First comment that's made sense.

neil_r wrote in post #13603973
The only person you really need to satisfy is yourself so basically do whatever you please. That, of course, also applies to everyone else so it is really a case of each to his own and we will all be happy

Second comment that's made sense.

For me, RAW+JPG. Best of both worlds. About 80% of the time the JPG is fine, for the other 20%, having the RAW around as "insurance" has made a difference. Point is, you don't have to choose, you can do both. But most importantly, as Neil says, do what works with YOUR workflow and who cares what anyone else thinks!

Rad

kendon wrote in post #13603948
and using DPP as batch processor should yield the very same images as the jpgs ooc. so why not do just that as a first step?

^^^This

neil_r wrote in post #13603973
The only person you really need to satisfy is yourself so basically do whatever you please. That, of course, also applies to everyone else so it is really a case of each to his own and we will all be happy

and ^^^^ This…


/thread

My first thought was also to just batch process them in DPP. As mentioned, try choosing a picture style you like and shoot raw. It should be quick and simple to batch process them in DPP - just let it run.

I get what you're saying though, and sometimes it makes sense to shoot jpeg, like if you've got people you want to give photos to on the spot.

However, there are advantages to shooting raw and it may be worth it. You never know when you're going to capture something great and you wish it would have been shot raw.

When my sister was about to get married, my wife and I took hundreds of photos of her and her fiance, as well as "Save the Date" photos of her wedding decorations, the ring, etc. We both shot everything in jpeg. Fortunately, most of mine came out good enough, but there were a few that I wish would have been in raw.

But my wife made a mistake. We had one quick "shoot" in the front yard shooting some "country" decorations (boots, sticks, old wooden box, the ring, etc.). She probably shot 100+ photos - all jpeg, and all with the white balance set to tungsten from the night before. So, all of those photos have a blue tint to them. If they would have been raw, we could have fixed them all with just a few clicks.

Jason

Amongst other things I shoot High School Prom photos that are printed immediately at 9 x 6 in ona Dye-Sub printer. I use a 5DMk2.

When doing proms target is to have a photo available to take away within 2 minutes. My workflow is geared towards this with on criteria being that I want small file sizes (I shoot with wireless tether). I also make sure that I get it right in camera which is not difficult as everything is lit with Studio Flash so I have complete control over the environment.

For a 300dpi print I need 2700 x 1800 px image. The 5DMk2 small jpg is 2784 x 1856 px (or 309 dpi at 9 x 6 in) therefore in this situation I shoot SMALL JPG because this gives me exactly what I want.

Yes, you read correctly - I shoot commercially at what may be the biggest night of your son / daughters life to date using SMALL JPG.

I do ZERO post processing on these images so why would I want to shoot RAW as this would only :

a) slow down the file transfer from Camera to PC
b) increase the amount of time and effort to print a file

Those of you who say everything should be RAW are talking garbage without realizing it.

OK so you are enthusiasts and want to spend hours working on snapshots - good for you. Personally I make my living doing this and time is money. If I double the amount of time it takes to turn a sale around I either have to accept that I will be able to deliver less prints per hour (income goes down or prices have to go up) or I have to increase my staffing / hardware make up for the loss in throughput (prices have to go up or I have to eat the increase in cost).

Please don't misunderstand me, I use RAW when and where it will be an advantage to me. I use JPG similarly when it is advantageous to do so.

Thankfully my kids have higher expectations of themselves than that.

Whatever works best for each person is what is best for them.

For me though, I am in the same camp as Richard in that since I made the quantum leap to a DSLR and fairly expensive lenses I have also grown to ONLY shoot in RAW because it is probably one of the best things about DSLRs. For WB alone it is worth the extra time.

Now I do see the other side. I am very ADHD and I hate PP and generally "just do enough" to make it look good. But with RAW, 3 years from now I could be really good at PP and make some of my better pics from today really awesome. I also had the opposite experience at my parents with my kids for Christmas. Most of my shots were too yellowish from being inside and sigma lenses warm tendency. 15 minutes in RAW with a little WB adjustment, some sharpening, a crop here and there and saturation dicking around and now they are why I got a DSLR in the first place. As an amateur RAW lets me focus on aperture/shutter speed/ISO and exposure and that is plenty for me in the heat of the moment, I can deal with a photo being to warm or cool or not saturated enough or too much later.

There's nothing wrong with jpegs if you can always get the shot. But there are two things that keep me from doing that. See the examples on page 2, post #58, that illustrate easily seen information loss in a web jpeg derived from a RAW file & one shot in the camera. Those differences will look even bigger in a hi-res print.

And there are penalties to shooting jpgs. Just one of them is you can't get back the information you threw away when you went to jpg. Instead of a 12-bit camera non-compressed raw file you get a 8 bit compressed jpg file.
Take identical shots, one RAW & then one max jpeg. Convert the RAW file to jpeg. Look at the two file sizes.
A max jpg from my 20D is 2,754 KB. The exact same shot with the jpg extracted from RAW is 4,315 KB which is 1.57X larger.
Why throw those extra bits away?

And this discussion will just keep on... & on... &...

Lowner wrote in post #13603767
I would not shoot jpeg for anything. I am an amateur and supposedly enjoy this hobby. So I see no reason for not wanting the best quality I can get from my images.

Thats just as true of family group shots around the Christmas tree as anything else. If I thought it important enough to pick up the camera, then its important enough to shoot in RAW and put some effort into the post processing.

+1.

But that's a personal thing. I place no value judgement on jpeg or raw. The two people I know with DSLRs shoot jpeg and see raw as a hassle. I don't, one of the reasons I like to shoot with raw is that I have to take a good look at every picture I want others to see. That process in itself helps me develop my skills more.

Also, there's nothing that says you have to process EVERY photo. You don't have to spend hours processing 400 photos. You can convert them almost automatically to jpeg in DPP if you want. Or, just look through them and only convert the keepers. And you've still got the raw files just in case a particularly great shot needs additional processing.

It's a personal choice. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. I just think that in most cases, the scale tips in favor of shooting raw - for me.

Jason

The jpeg format has advantages that add up to convenience from the smaller file size and a bit less processing, and, if you need high-speed performance when shooting, say, sports, well yeah.

And yeah, there are types of photography when shooting Raw won't benefit you much if any.

When it matters, though...when you have a photo or a shoot and you say "I really want to enhance this photo/these photos to bring out the best from it/them", then all of a sudden the advantages of Raw can matter, and sometimes jpegs just won't "cut it".

For me, when I go out to "practice photography" I want to make the fullest use of my cameras and the light and color I'm capturing, so I shoot Raw all the time. I don't have a problem, though, if someone hands me a P&S camera to take a jpeg snapshot -- sure, why not? But when I bring out my camera, I don't bother to stop and say "Hmm, should I switch to jpegs and just take snapshots?"...sure, I could do that, and just say the photos don't mean that much to me, but that's just not my style and mindset. Even in casual settings, I'd love to get some shots that could be processed, printed and such, and I don't think "They don't really matter to me"!

My take:

Jpeg is for those that don't want to extensively mess with their photos in post or just don't want the huge files that come with raw.

RAW is for those that like having all the data to get every last drop of creativity out of their shots in post and don't mind the huge files.

Both have their place. Neither is going to be perfect for everyone. Shoot using the one you want and tell everyone that tells you you're wrong for using which ever you choose to blow it out their.....well you get the point

Funny how it's only the JPEG shooters that seem to have a chip on their shoulder about NOT shooting RAW...

cagenuts wrote in post #13605743
Funny how it's only the JPEG shooters that seem to have a chip on their shoulder about NOT shooting RAW...

Likewise...
Funny how it's only the RAW shooters that seem to have a chip on their shoulder about NOT shooting JPEG..