When to begin shooting in RAW?

I have been shooting in JPG format with my 300D. I have printed a few 20x30 prints with out interpolation or uprez. They came out ok but I am starting to think that if I had shot the photos in RAW they would have come out much better.

Is there a point when anyone has just said "F... it " and begin to shoot in only RAW?

Hi. I recently started shooting in RAW, but I use the RAW+Jpeg setting on my 30D. This saves both a RAW file and a Jpeg file for each picture I take. Your 300D may have a similar setting.

~Dom

Racer23 wrote in post #3486446
I have been shooting in JPG format with my 300D. I have printed a few 20x30 prints with out interpolation or uprez. They came out ok but I am starting to think that if I had shot the photos in RAW they would have come out much better.

Is there a point when anyone has just said "F... it " and begin to shoot in only RAW?

Personally, as soon as I learned about RAW that is where I went. Storage is cheap, it doesn't slow me down much and allows for more latitude in my editing.

As for Raw + Jpeg, the 300d doesn't do it like the newers ones do. There isn't a RAW only option IRC (I have been without mine for over 6 months..).]

I would just stick it on raw and try it out. If it works for you, go for it.

i shot about 500 shots in jpeg before switching to RAW and I haven't looked back. there has never been a time when I thought "man I wish I shot in jpeg"

Racer23 wrote in post #3486446
Is there a point when anyone has just said "F... it " and begin to shoot in only RAW?

I had the same thought when i first started digital photography. After i went RAW, i went back to jpeg. Then back and forth several times because with raw i just couldn't get the end result right, just wasn't convincing enough. However, when i slowly get a hang of RAW (meaning, when i finally learned how to take advantage of raw while post processsing), I have been shooting raw ever since.

Don't feel bad if you need to switch back to jpeg. If the pp from your camera on jpeg is still better than your pp on the raw, then it doesn't make sense to shoot raw solely. Perhaps try raw+jpeg, and practice PP on the raw until you can do a better job than your camera. Just MHO.

I guess that I am having trouble getting the results that I want with JPG. I have printed a couple 20x30 shots and I have been less than pleased. But others have not noticed the dirfference. I want to shoot in RAW to get a bettter image at that print size. But I have a 2gb cf card and now with raw my storage will be significantly decreased.

My first few days with my (at the time) new Xt I shot JPEG.
Fortunately though it was only a day or so after I got the camera that I found POTN, and read many reviews about RAW. On that third day I switched over and have never shot jpeg as often (only when Im shooting a burst that I later turn into a movie).

CF cards are getting cheaper, as is storage , and it gives alot of room for editing without destroying the photo.

Racer23 wrote in post #3487287
I guess that I am having trouble getting the results that I want with JPG. I have printed a couple 20x30 shots and I have been less than pleased. But others have not noticed the dirfference. I want to shoot in RAW to get a bettter image at that print size. But I have a 2gb cf card and now with raw my storage will be significantly decreased.

Have you paid any attention to your DPI before you print? Personally not a huge raw fan, I've found my prints to be the same (minus a slight color shift).....but's that just comparing the images. The only advantage I saw was the color temp adjustment, but now that I have found Lightroom, I really have no use for raw. Waste of time....IMO, every important thing I have shot I used raw+large JPG......shooting the raw "just in case" 99.5% of the time I end up using the JPG anyway. However I believe if your one of those that like to make major changes to a photo then raw is probably good........or if you think your gonna screw it up......LOL

In the end it's what YOU like that is important. Raw is fun, and a good learning tool, something everyone should try, then figure out if it works for you.

Also make sure your ACR is up to date (for others new to raw that might be reading this) or we'll end up with another "Photoshop won't open my raw" post.....LOL

I shot RAW right away since as noted above it allowed me to save some shots from my own mistakes much more easily. I use Bibble because it could get me fairly quickly to a decent image with levels/exposure, crops, lens correction, sharpening, noise taken care of in one program - I leave PS for the few images needing fancy stuff -layers or retouching.

I shot in JPEG for quite a long time. I was always afraid of the learning curve that came with RAW. But then I started Reading further into it and wanted to get the most out of my camera, I loved the amount of flexibility RAW gave me, but I still strive to get the photo right the first time (in the camera). So about two years ago I thought bugger it I'm changing over. That was after about 3 years of using jpeg.

I shot in JPG for awhile only because I did not want the hassle of PP each RAW on a slow PC.

Then I switched to RAW+JPG so I could edit the RAW's of the few worthy shots I had.

Finally I discovered lightroom and now I just shoot in RAW.

The only reason to shoot RAW is if you want to play with it later. A well exposed JPG, when printed, will look as good as a RAW. RAW gives you more latitude to tweak things - for example I often make images a little brighter, but boost the detail in the shadows and reduce the highlights. JPG is more of a challenge, but saves PC time.

When I first went digital I shot in JPEG until I got comfortable with the camera.
Once I got used to getting the WB, exposure, etc correct then I moved to Raw. That way the PP was minimal as I tried to get the setting correct in camera first instead of just snapping away and then trying to put it right on the PC.
Most of my shots need minimal PP'ing these days which is normally a bit of sharpening, etc.

I got my 30D about a year ago, just a couple of days before a trip to Egypt . At first I started in jpeg mode because I was terrified of daring to even try raw, as there seems/seemed to be such a fear of it being far too difficult and needing a masters degree to make sense of it. I didn't want to risk ruining my holiday shots by trying this new and mythical beast. Well it didn't take long for curiosity to get the better of me and within two weeks I had switched to raw and have stayed with it ever since.

Raw is brilliant! If you do know what you're doing, when you fire the shutter, it will give you the best image possible. If you're inexperienced and don't set the camera up as well as you might for exposure and WB, contrast, saturation, sharpness etc. raw will allow you to correct your mistakes (within limits) far better than jpeg will.

When you shoot and edit raw files you preserve all the original image data and you can edit/save a thousand times and still return to the original data. When you shoot in jpeg you throw away subtle tonal information straight away in the camera and you lock in adjustments to the data (white balance, sharpness etc..) that can never be returned to the original captured data. If you edit and resave as a jpeg then you lose further detail as repeated file compression robs you of more data. I know some software, such as Lightroom, allows you to edit jpeg files non-destructively but you've already lost data when the camera saved the file as a jpeg and it is hard to recover blown highlights, for example, from a jpeg file.

I shot at a friend's wedding last year, about three months after I got the 30D and about three days after I got my flash gun. I had no idea what I was doing, regarding camera settings - well I thought I did but I got it wrong big time - and fortunately by shooting in raw I was able to correct a lot of my mistakes and salvage very acceptable images from what would have otherwise been a disaster.

Here is a before and after example of an original photo and the corrected version. This sort of correction would really not have been possible with a jpeg file, while retaining the original image quality. The edits were to boost exposure by +1.0, add some fill light and make a fairly large adjustment to white balance. I dare say it could be improved a little further but this is the photo as it stands today.

Here's a thread I started, follwoing this wedding, which shows more examples of how well a potential disaster, when shot in raw, can be easily corrected - https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=286091

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I also started shooting Jpeg then switched to RAW. Now both. If it is important, i shoot RAW, otherwise Jpeg. With Lightroom I can work a jpeg image and also get very good results. But for serious work, go with RAW.