Shooting in the RAW

I am very new, this is a hobby for me right now , but am addicted to learning all I can and being very good. I have the Canon EOS 5D and I love it. I am also using Photoshot Elements, so far doing well but just starting out. My question is shooting in raw vs jpeg. What advise can you give? what about jpeg to the tif?
thanks for everything.
Maureen

Hi Maureen, and welcome to POTN! It's friendly place but you will face a lot of temptation to spend money...

Anyway the RAW vs JPEG vs TIFF question has been asked and answered many many times, mostly in the RAW & Post-Processing Forum. I'd suggest learning how to use the forum's search facilities and searching for those terms over there. You'll get access to far more opinions that way than you will by asking the question anew, and it may help you come up with a more focussed question to ask if there are specific aspects of it that interest you.

Good luck!

When shooting RAW you have greater control during postprocessing. TIFF is good to convert your processed RAW image to instead of JPEG. Since Canon uses .CR2 as their RAW type, you have to download plugins to work with them with Photoshop or to view as thumbnails inside your folder with Windows. JPEG is lossy and not that great but if you are just doing this as a hobby and won't be doing huge prints you should be fine. Each time you save a JPEG it looses more detail while TIFF won't be affected.

For me, a RAW file is ~9 MB and a TIFF has been as high as ~40 MB but only ~4 MB as a JPEG for the same image. If you are limited on storage, JPEG can be a big advantage.

For a beginner, shooting in JPEG is likely the best way to go. Down the road you'll appreciate RAW for it's post-processing benefits. You're learning right now, so I wouldn't suggest throwing on the additional "complexities" of RAW post-processing just yet...

With JPEG, you've got your images ready to go right out of the camera. RAW requires a few additional steps which aren't really necessarily difficult - but unless you understand what you're trying to do you might get frustrated, or not know why to make certain adjustments, etc. That having been said, it's worth it to shoot in RAW as you'll end up with a better image, generally.

JPEG - The camera processor makes decisions about colour balance, exposure, contrast, saturation, etc., then discards unnecessary inforrmation captured by the sensor and saves a "ready to print" picture in a compressed format. Most of the time it does a very good job and the compressed format saves memory space and reduces write time.

RAW - The camera records all the data captured by the sensor. The photographer then has to use a computer program to make decisions regarding colour balance, exposure, etc. This allows the photographer to custom fit the processing to the individual image and better correct errors made in camera settings. Whether the photographer does a better job than the camera depends on the skill of the photographer, the computer software used and the nature of the subject. This is more time consuming, but has the potential for better results in many circumstances.

TIFF - is a lossless file format. Each time you save a JPEG file the compression algorithm is run again and a little more data is lost. Many photographers will do some post-processing of JPEG images captured by the camera and do not want to lose any more data each time they open the file, make an adjustment and save. To avoid this they use TIFF for saving their changes. Many RAW shooters also use TIFF for the same reason. Most of us save our original JPEG or RAW shots as well for archival purposes just in case we want to go back and re-do the adjustments when we have improved software or developed more skill.

I,personally, never use TIFF as it takes up way too much space for the imperceptable increase in quality. I shoot RAW and then divide them into rejects, keepers and selects. The keepers are converted to jpg at 1800x1200 at quality 8 (90%), which is fine for viewing and small 4x6 prints but which load quickly and take up only about 500K per shot, easily managed. The "Selects" are converted to jpg highest quality no resizing for later editing in Photoshop Elements 4. The files are about 5-8 MB in size, a huge difference from the 22MB needed for an 8 bit TIFF or 44MB for 16bit tiff. If I then do any major editing in PSE4 using layers (non-destructive) and might want to edit some more later, I'll save it as a Photoshop "PSD" file to retain all the information. THese file sizes are for an 8MP XT.

The ONLY reason I, personnally, would ever use TIFF is if I wanted to use DPP for conversion but needed as much information (lots of bits) as possible to correct some complex color or levels problem in PSE - especially in the midtones and shadows. In that case I'd use 16 bit TIFF. An alternative is to just use Adobe Camera Raw to convert right to 16 bit when loading into PSE.

One generation of JPG editing has never produced any discernable artifacts in the tests I've done.

Hi, welcome to POTN. I like to think that jepg is like shooting slide film ( the exposure has to be spot on ), and RAW is more like shooting negative film, where you have more latitude in exposure. I think that some people that are used to shooting negative film have some problems getting the best jepg because of poor exposure.

I shoot RAW all the time. RAW gives me the most flexibility. It's not that jpeg isn't good enough. It's what has the potential for the best possible quality and flexibility now or in the future. If I was a pro with deadlines I'd shoot mostly in jpeg and only stuff personally important in RAW.

Welcome to the forum.

My advice is to shoot both RAW and jpg for a while. This is based on my personal experience. I started off shooting only jpg because I didn't know enough about RAW to even consider PP in any application. In addition, I was only using the Medium JPG size becase of some other limitations at the time, partly from the dRebel I was using. With the clarity of hindsight, I wish I had some of the early pictures available in RAW files for post processing in Photoshop now. Except for snapshot pictures, I only shoot RAW now.

If you have the memory in both CF cards and computer memory, I'd suggest shooting in both RAW and JPG, maybe only small or medium. That way, you can review your pictures quickly and benefit from the immediate feedback. You won't have to learn post processing as you are learning about your camera. As has already been mentioned, you can keep what you want and discard your learning experiences. The keepers will be availible for future PPing. With th 5D, the only limitation you have is the CF and computer memory. It's easy to discard files you don't want to keep, but you can't go back and get the ones you wish were available in RAW.

Jeff

I shoot jpg for snapshots. When I go into photographer mode I switch to RAW. Or when the light is challenging.

Shooting raw gives you control. If you don't know who to control it, it's useless. So try in squirts and dabs. At the worst, you elongate your workflow converting to jpg. At best you learn to master the digital darkroom.

Enjoy.

When I started I used jpeg for a while to get used to the camera. Then I used jpeg and raw till I got comfortable with the process on the computer for raw. Now I only use raw.

For snapshots and general fun, JPG
For serious stuff, JPG+RAW (both at the same time)

Hello,

The JPEG's out of the 5D are really excellent. If you are consistantly getting the exposure and white ballance right at the time of capture, you'll have a hard time improving on them in RAW.

When you do make the jump to RAW, I encourage you to shoot RAW + Large JPG and compare your RAW processing attempts with the in-camera produced JPGS, just to sanity check and make sure that your conversions are at least as good as what the camera produced.

Welcome to the forum, and hpapy holiday shooting.

Welcome to the forums Maureen - it's a great place to learn and spend money.

I've seen lots of recommendations on shooting raw and jpeg or just jpeg until you want to get serious about the pictures. My problem is that I never know ahead of time which picture I really want to 'get serious' about. Sometimes great shots almost happen and with some post processing capability you can push them up to outstanding. RAW makes that easier so I shoot RAW all the time. Haven't seen anyone mention saving their edited images in psd. That preserves the layers you use for adjustment and isn't any bigger than tiff IMO.

Since you started with a 5D I suspect in camera capacity is not a concern for you and memory cards are cheap these days.

As you can see, opinions around here are like thumbs - most folks have at least two. Shoot pictures, post some, and enjoy.