Even Ken Marcus prefers JPEG over RAW!!

Interesting read.

He makes some good points, but I'll still shoot in RAW.

The only point I see is 'don't let somebody else convert your Raws.'

Nice read indeed. And good arguments to never deliver an unfinished product.

For my work, I prefer raw as well, for the reasons he states

Very interesting and great post from a different POV.

wow.. nice read thanks..
im a hobbyist.. was doing .jpg and raw.. but deleted the raws without processing
i was at my neighbors and took some pics in the house.. the kitchen was dark and a lot of people over.. the cabinets looked way off.. i attempted an edit on the raw and it looked way better.
i converted over to raw only to force me to edit raw and learn...
but just recently i have figured im going back to raw +jpg and only edit what needs to be..

im a hobbyist and want the memories for my kids...

I can see his point since he has full control of the lighting and subject. He has the luxury of being able to shoot for hours without any surprises. And he can make the in-camera settings work in partnership with studio control to put out quality jpegs.

I never know what I might point my camera at next. He even admits that if he shot in conditions where the lighting changes constantly that he'd probably shoot RAW too (although he does seem to have plenty of RAW in his jpegs )

Seem's like he's dismissing RAW because it requires post processing? That shouldn't be a new or foreign concept, at this point... RAW when you want to process, JPG when you want SOOC.

His basic complain is how some people manipulate RAW files, why he is against RAW again?? I mean RAW is superior form a postprocessing point of view but of course, it will depend on who does this postprocessing. RAW is not automatically better. If today's digital cameras give you the option of shooting both (RAW/JEPG) it makes perfect sense to shoot with both. For a quick pic without too much post work I go JPEG, for serious post I go RAW.

Brain Mechanic wrote in post #14551124
For a quick pic without too much post work I go JPEG, for serious post I go RAW.

This is what I try to do but it sucks when I forget to go back to RAW and realize that I just took a number "serious" images, that were taken in JPEG....

Like he said, the majority of his work is in the studio where he has control over all the aspects of lighting/exposure. Plenty of photogs have expressed a similar preference. And, he acknowledges that for other types of photography he'd shoot Raw. However, I wouldn't look to him as an expert/teacher on the subject!

Ken Marcus says,
"I was asked to shoot RAW files and send those to their editors. I wasn’t too pleased at the prospect, but did as my client asked.
"When the results were published, I was horrified. The printed images were flat, low-contrast, unsaturated, dull and very unexciting—not what I intended at all.
"So, for my next assignment, I decided to provide them with some finalized high-quality JPGs that were corrected, retouched and contrast controlled in addition to the RAW files they requested. These were images that I felt were up to my standards and reflected the quality that the magazine used to (and still should have) exhibit."

What he fails to appreciate is that the problem is merely

• the magazine's art director told the guy who did the RAW conversion what they wanted, or
  
• the idiot doing RAW conversion did not follow the necessary technique to extract output with better contrast and color saturation,

Wilt wrote in post #14551920
Ken Marcus says,
"I was asked to shoot RAW files and send those to their editors. I wasn’t too pleased at the prospect, but did as my client asked.
"When the results were published, I was horrified. The printed images were flat, low-contrast, unsaturated, dull and very unexciting—not what I intended at all.
"So, for my next assignment, I decided to provide them with some finalized high-quality JPGs that were corrected, retouched and contrast controlled in addition to the RAW files they requested. These were images that I felt were up to my standards and reflected the quality that the magazine used to (and still should have) exhibit."

What he fails to appreciate is that the problem is merely

• the magazine's art director told the guy who did the RAW conversion what they wanted, or
  
• the idiot doing RAW conversion did not follow the necessary technique to extract output with better contrast and color saturation,

...not the way Ken would have preferred his images to come out.
The replies to that post exhibit far better insight than Ken does!

The other real point is that Ken was essentially forced to deliver the digital equivalent of 'raw exposed, unprocessed film' to his client. In the film days, it was like being the 'low cost hired shutter release' who drops rolls of exposed film the client's hands and walks away. So if the final prints look like a POS, it is solely because the photographer relinquished all quality control after pushing the shutter button, and left it to the mercy of the client.
No film shooting professional in his right might would do that; most likely the veteran pro would NOT even turn over processed negatives and leave it to the unknown of the print maker (it could be Walgreen's, fergawdsake) for the final product, the print. So the fact that he gave the client 'raw film (RAW files)' rather than 'digital prints (JPG)' is what he should have criticized himself for doing.

Aces!

Ken's entire premises is flawed. Instead of relinquishing quality control to others (who apparently don't understand quality), he should have taken the time to maintain and deliver quality himself. Ken is lazy. He took the lazy man's way out.

I find it entirely incredible that a professional would give Raws to anybody - unless he had a clause in his contract that forbid their conversion and use. Or another clause forbidding the use of his name in the photo credit.

His article could have been one sentence long: "I prefer JPEG because the scenes I shoot do not require raw and, in my situation, raw adds unnecessary work."

He gets into trouble when he deviates from this line of reasoning. The fact that he does not use raw is evident in his opinions about it.

Kirk

No matter how close I meter the scene I appreciate the extra flexibility that raw gives me. I guess this guy is supposed to be a pro, but he sounds like an idiot to me.