RAW or JPEG?

Which do you prefer for shooting sports, RAW, JPEG, or both?

My sports photography is for my own personal use most of the time, and just the occasional paid gig otherwise. I shoot RAW format exclusively.

Here is the main reason I shoot RAW. This is true for sports, but also for everything else I shoot. My collection of RAW image files dating back over the nine years I've been serious about photography sit on my drive and backup like a giant box of negatives. Every time I want to make a new 'print', whether that is a physical print or a web image, I can blow off a new JPEG that is sized and sharpened for the intended output. Then I delete the JPEG.

The coolest thing is that over the years, Adobe has continually updated and imrproved the NR and RAW=>JPEG engine in their software. So I can make better, cleaner prints today than I could nine years ago from the exact same image file. My old shots are thus improved by better developing.

Some guys shoot higher volume and have difficult demands on time submission because they are shooting for publication. Those guys usually shoot JPEG, but since I don't have their submission time and rules problem, I don't shoot JPEG like they do.

RAW

JPG 90% of the time for me. I usually reserve RAW for special shots that I plan on doing special editing for (HDRs, composites, etc.). For me, that's usually wide angle/atmosphere shots that are to be sold by my athletic department or shots that are to be blown up for advertising or wall graphics.

Otherwise, I don't need the hassle of slower transfer speeds, more needed storage space, smaller buffers, slower culling & editing, etc for the majority of my sports photography. The JPG files coming out of the top bodies these days are incredible anyway in terms of pulling shadows/dropping highlights.

In the end, it depends on why you're shooting, who you're shooting for, how your shots are being used, your equipment, and your priorities/end goal.

I shoot both, but try to get the in-camera JPGs as good as I can so that I rarely have to go back to the raw files. Right now I am only shooting one NBA D-League team for the office marketing and local newspapers. I run raw to one card and JPG to the SD card.

However, I am not a professional sport shooter, so others may have other suggestions.

RAW! Many reasons that Jeffery mentioned. Also if I'm on a paid gig that has a tight time line, I'm tagging the pictures in camera that I want to use. Makes it easy to ingest. Tag and bag,

RAW, always.

"Which do you prefer for shooting sports, RAW, JPEG, or both?"

For sports, almost exclusively JPEG.
Important: Normally all of my shooting is in daytime. The light levels may get low late in afternoon (Winter)

I want to get 1000 edited photos onto my website asap.
I can do that quickly with JPEG - I can not do that quickly with RAW
(noise reduction - crop - levels - shadows & highlights - brightness & contrast - sharpen)

If I can't get an post worthy photo within a minute, it gets deleted and I move on.

Works for me ... YMMV

Downside - if I take the shot of the century and its poorly exposed, I won't be able to get as good a final image compared to what I would have got shooting RAW. I may not even get a usable shot - so be it.
Given the time I save editing JPEGs, that is OK for me.

RAW. Always. If I can take the following RAW image SOOC after import into Lightroom:

IMAGE LINK: http://s137.photobucke​t.com …ia/2012/PZIV213​2.jpg.html

IMAGE LINK: http://s137.photobucke​t.com …IV2132-Edit-Edit.jpg.html

JeffreyG wrote in post #17835554
Some guys shoot higher volume and have difficult demands on time submission because they are shooting for publication. Those guys usually shoot JPEG [...]

I was a RAW shooter but migrated primarily to JPG after upgrading to the Canon 1D X. With over 100,000 photos taken per year, it became a time and space issue.

I still shoot RAW for images I know will require extra processing and/or when dealing with cycling lights.

RAW

That really is more a portrait than sports though. When you are shooting hundreds of shots across a couple hours of a game, that is a bit different than portraiture or street shots. When the is an external need for photos literally hours after the shoot, you are not going to have time to go through 400-500 shots in raw format.

If I shoot an individual player with a fan or some cheerleader poses I have the raw just in case, but the rest of the shots I try to nail as perfectly as I can in camera as jpg.

Just a different way to look at the situation. When somebody shoots sports, there are many different levels to it. Casual shooter or family, shooting for a later publication, or shooting to get shots quickly to an agency, for example...

I shoot raw as well.

My preference is RAW. However, I'm not doing anything time critical. When it is time critical, it's jpeg.

I've shot basketball and soccer. These are for me, so turn-around time is irrelevant. In contrast, last August I was a chaperone for our high school band camp. I was also one of the photographers. The daily routine for 5 days was shoot, process, and upload for the parents back home to see. The chaperone duties were primary, so photography was a distant second on time. No matter, I arranged my time accordingly. Shooting in jpeg meant I didn't need to do a lot to process photos. It also meant the photos wouldn't be fully polished, but "done" is better than "perfect".

Band Camp, shot originally in jpeg

I shoot only in RAW. It does not seem to me like it adds much time to the process. I'm going to download, review and crop anyway and LR lets me upload the photos to my web site without me really thinking about the conversion to jpeg. My RAW files download to my computer faster than I can go through them.