RAW or JPEG?

Raw. Helps for lower light and high ISO.

When I'm shooting sports, I'm usually shooting for the SID of a local university and I'm shooting RAW + JPEG. I shoot with a 7DII and the raw goes on the CF card and the jpeg goes to the SD card. I give the photos on the SD card to the SID for his use and I use the RAW on the CF cards for my own use.

Works for my situation..

Edit: Now if I'm shooting something for me only, I'm shooting raw.

Doc

I see in-camera JPEGs as essentially an easy form of 'Batch Processing' ..... ie they are good for situations when you will shoot a high number of images in similar lighting and conditions, and would present them in a series. Certainly when used like this they can cut down on processing time, perhaps leaving just cropping and small brightness & contrast tweaks to be adjusted.

This assumes of course that the custom image settings have been well set on the camera. Not much point if you don't get things looking right on the camera, in particular white balance, saturation, contrast, shadow / highlight corrections, lens corrections. All of these will be burned in to the jpeg at capture, arguably in an optimised manner by the camera processor. If you don't get them right on the camera before shooting, then the further work and 're-editing' needed on the computer would defeat the point of shooting jpeg in the first place, I feel.

If i can expand on this thread a bit without being rude - The majority seem to favor RAW. What type of RAW - M Raw or S RAW or normal RAW. What is the difference ??

Normal RAW. MRAW and SRAW are just lower res RAW images. No point in buying a decent DSLR and then shooting in a lower res than it is capable of.

I shoot RAW.
Storage space isn't an issue for me as it is so cheap.
Processing time isn't an issue as I developed a preset for my sports images that Lightroom automatically applies during import. All I need to do then is rate the images, then straighten/crop the ones that are top rated and export them.
If there are any problem images that need actual processing (for whatever reason) I have the flexibility to do that as they are RAW.

100% RAW, with a JPG backup on the second card (5DIII).

I shoot RAW.
Easier to process when you're in low light and you get better results.

JPEGs for me. I lost my way a bit a while back and tried raw. Was fiddling too much in the pp work (because I was learning new programs, like Rawtherapee, and LR etc) and got bored.

I too shoot about 100,000 per year - last year was lower due to ill health but I'm back in the groove for this year. There's a lot able to be done with JPEGs with GIMP and layer masking if one fancies fiddling. I tend to shoot so many that the settings have become automatic nowadays. The camera screen gives me a true image with JPEGs and I cannot process (nor can my PC) a couple thousand JPEGs as quick as my camera.

A while back I got into event work where we printed onsite directly from the camera. That's a good experience and not for the faint hearted either. When you've queues of folks awaiting their images at the printer the most fastest and immediate medium is all that can cope.

There's ways and means of getting the images in JPEGs but, this is the important bit, you have to 'think' like a JPEG shooter. There has to be that acceptance that you have to work harder sometimes when lighting gets tough and varying the position to use the light better - I look up the sun position ahead of the event and plan if it's on the highway where to put myself. Cyclo-X organisers often have the finish going North and at 2pm that's a heavy shadow over the riders face and body frontal so a lap or so before the end we practise fill-flash levels and leave them dialled in for the winner. Raw would mean you just whack up the slider in post to compensate but that's no good when the printer is in the boot of the car and the winner wants his there and then.

Everyone to their own...

I have shot JPG on the last 8 games, and have had to go back to the raw files (I shoot raw + jpg just in case) probably about 10 times out of 250+ shots per game. I have made sure I dialed in the camera's settings so that I can work with the JPG results afterwards and get good results. For something that you shoot consistently week after week, this kind of workflow makes things much easier.

I shoot JPEG only, but I am not a pro, or get paid. I shoot soccer and basketball, sometimes 100s of shots per week, if the team coach, booster club president, etc., ask me to be the team photographer. My JPEGs get 10-15 seconds post processing time max, per image. I don't have the time to spend longer per image.

Sibil wrote in post #17897834
My JPEGs get 10-15 seconds post processing time max, per image. I don't have the time to spend longer per image.

Most of my RAW images take the same amount of time. Preset is applied automatically on import so all I do is crop and straighten.

95% of the time I shoot raw

RAW - I am an amateur enthusiast, not a high volume shooter. To me post is 50% of the image. Again to me, if its not worth spending time processing, its not worth shooting.

YMMV

Raw here too, I'm shooting ice hockey and the lighting at the rink is far from ideal, raw allows me to compensate easier than trying to edit jpg.