Hey Sports Shooters!!

AdamLewis wrote in post #8493028
What you can do with a jpg is nowhere even close to what you can do with a raw file.

This is precisely why I make sure I'm shooting correctly in the first place- there are no retakes. Personally, I rarely need the kind of latitude RAW provides. The one exception was when I needed to shoot at iso 3200 and still underexpose my shots by 2 stops in the need for speed. Otherwise, my 40D makes pretty pics at iso 1600.

I shoot JPGs for sports, for everything else RAW.

Always shoot raw just to give me the flexibility in post processing

Raw all the way. Sometimes both if have to post pics right away.
Big PC cuts down on processing times
Dave

jpegs for the kids sports.

For recreation, and just personal use, JPEG for sure fine, but you aren't going to really edit them. If you thinking about going to redit them and/or do it professionally raw is the best....

For culling through images, you have to use adobe bridge, don't bother with photoshop. Period. I go through about 10 pictures with cropping, color correction, etc in about 5 minutes.

AdamLewis wrote in post #8493028
Sure you can... But using that adjustment on an 8bit jpg looks pretty ****ty when compared to making the adjustment on a raw file or a tiff. What you can do with a jpg is nowhere even close to what you can do with a raw file.

Both of them have their pros and cons. I used to exclusively shoot jpg and thought raw was just a waste of time. Of course, that was when I thought you had to open up each raw file individually in photoshop, make the adjustments, export it, save it, and move on to the next one.

Then, I was shown the light by a guy I worked with and I learned about streamlining workflow and started to use lightroom.

For me, I just dont understand why I should shoot jpg if Im going home to work on the pictures anyways. Obviously, if Im having to transmit on site, Ill shoot jpg, but otherwise I just dont see why I should stray from shooting raw.

Ultimately, its up to you.

Ditto what Adam said. Lightroom (or DPP for Canon Users) makes post processing workflow just as fast for working with RAW images as it would (for me anyway) for JPEGS...so then why not get the better quality and full range of processing flexibility I can. I shoot a lot of hockey in dimly lit rinks and lately lots of night baseball, so for me, I need the PP flexibility that RAW provides.

polarbare wrote in post #8492605
I shoot JPGs now for most sports. You can open JPGs in camera raw to adjust white balances, etc so it's a huge time & space saver since there are probably only a couple images I want to do that to.

All of your regular adjustments are there.. Also works in Lightroom 2.

AMEN!!!! I've been saying this here as well. With RAW, you may have a slightly better file to work from but ACR gives you the same controls with RAW or jpegs basically so unless you need RAW, why bother? I've shot both and pretty much stick with jpegs exclusively. The only thing I alter is the contrast setting for the jpegs in camera, otherwise, shoot, tweak in ACR, pull into PS for final.

I also agree with the others on shot count, rarely do I go over 200 for any game and rare that I'd shoot more than two frames on any given play.

I shoot 100% RAW.. even my events with 15,000+ images. Lightroom makes it the same as working with a .jpeg as long as you have the memory.

I may only NEED the RAW on 1% of the images but its there and has been important enough to me to continue with that route.

Bottom line is there is not a "correct" way. Do what works for you and your workflow. To me the size of files and the depth at which you can work with images are the main things to consider.

Sports are ALWAYS shot in JPG with us.. On high, because we made that mistake and changed to large mode so we can print larger. But ALWAYS in Jpg with the amount of shots we take that is what it has to be.

I shoot in RAW and let Bridge read them and convert to DNG. Opening dng from Bridge into CS3 Camera Raw is identical for jpg or dng (raw).

Also, I know a lot of papers will require a raw file. As well as if you get any ethics issues about how much PP was done on it, you have the raw file. See the Patrick Schneider case.

I shoot RAW for everything. Usually Raw+JPG. JPGs for displaying on site, RAWs for producing the finished product.

Last event we shot saw 53,680 images delivered to our booth by three photographers. We kept 75% (or 40,536) for sale. That's about 600GB worth of files.

A couple of TB HDDs per event is cheap. CF cards are cheap (we have a couple of hundred 4GB cards). Our RAW processing workflow is faster and higher quality than JPG alone.

I switched to shooting RAW when I switched from the D1x to the Canon 1D back in 2003. The original Canon 1D out of camera JPGs were bad - heavy shadow tones, a funky green cast. Then I saw the results possible with CaptureOne and RAW files and I was sold.

Since then I have switched to Bibble for it's flexible, user creatable work queues, but I still shoot RAW for everything - landscapes, weddings, portraits and even sports. In my view, if it's worth taking a picture of, it's worth having a file with the most information and flexibility possible.

mhall wrote in post #8505169
= In my view, if it's worth taking a picture of, it's worth having a file with the most information and flexibility possible.

now that's a point that's impossible to argue.

My view exactly...just spoken much better