Wedding Photographers: Do you shoot in RAW or JPG?

RAW

gh patriot wrote in post #11545419
What is this JPEG thing you speak of?

your flickr account is full of them

Peacefield wrote in post #11247156
All I can say is . . . I can't believe we're talking about this . . . again.

Amen to that.

RAW always; my only exception is timelapse scenes.

Why are people saying that the effects in the jpegs are irreversible? You can change everything in a jpeg in the raw editor of photoshop, even white balance so not everything is set in stone.

Shooting wrote in post #12324617
Why are people saying that the effects in the jpegs are irreversible? You can change everything in a jpeg in the raw editor of photoshop, even white balance so not everything is set in stone.

Exactly. You can do a lot with a JPG.

Shooting wrote in post #12324617
Why are people saying that the effects in the jpegs are irreversible? You can change everything in a jpeg in the raw editor of photoshop, even white balance so not everything is set in stone.

I believe all that photoshop is doing at that point is adjusting the overall tint and temperature of the image. But these adjustments are based on what was originally decided by the camera rather than having a blank canvas like you do with RAW.

Geez this topic comes up a lot.

Are there advantages to RAW? Absolutely. Are there potential disadvantages? Yep.

Are there advantages to JPG? Again, absolutely. Just like there are disadvantages to JPG.

Every photographer has to decide which is better for them, their workflow, and why.

I don't find shooting raw really adds any more work to the process, other than saving space and having to carry less CF cards I don't see why you would shoot JPG when Raw gives extra flexibility.

SamuelBurns wrote in post #12337361
I don't find shooting raw really adds any more work to the process, other than saving space and having to carry less CF cards I don't see why you would shoot JPG when Raw gives extra flexibility.

Well, if you can get it looking great as a JPG, it seems like wasted time and space shooting it in RAW, then PP-ing it to look a JPG you could have nearly gotten in camera in the first place.

I don't exclusively use JPG, I use RAW when the situation calls for it. And no, at least for me, every single situation doesn't call for it.

I also take relatively fewer pictures during a wedding, and make an effort to think through my settings- white balance, exposure, composition. I don't like having to "fix things in post" if don't have to.

Jpegs from Camera are saved only in 8bit, so there is less information in the image - even if the jpeg is great exposed with good wb straight out the body you can not get as nice prints as from processed RAW's.

There is a lot already said in RAW vs. JPEG topic:

http://froknowsphoto.c​om …s-ken-rockwell-interview/

True, but at some point you have to convert the RAW file to another file- if you give the files, then you convert them to a jpg anyway.

And it's practically impossible to tell the difference between a print from a JPG and a print from a TIFF, even when you hold them side by side.

Shooting wrote in post #12324617
Why are people saying that the effects in the jpegs are irreversible? You can change everything in a jpeg in the raw editor of photoshop, even white balance so not everything is set in stone.

Well.... depends on how you look at it.

If I take a .JPG and make edits and adjustments and save the changes - do I save the changes to a new file name or overwrite the file I started with? Do every time I edit a file I save it with a new file name?

Change the exposure (up or down) and clip some highlights or shadows and save the file. Then open the saved file and try to recover from your last edit. See?

When working in .jpg files I end up with all sorts of files. I make additions to the file name on each edit pass: Imagenumber_lvl_wb_flt​_usm_newimageXresizeva​lue.jpg

Raw file editors save the difference and leave the .raw file alone. So I can tweak, usm, noise filter and resize all I want. All I have is three files: The .raw file, a editor changes file and the .jpg I exported.

I use RAW no matter what I shoot unless my mom is asking me to shoot some random junk for her (cause she thinks it'll turn out 10 times better with my camera than the G11 that I taught her how to use) and then I shoot JPEG.

If you use the raw editor every time, every time you open the original jpeg you worked on it still has kept the settings (just like a raw file does) of the last edit. I always save my changes overwriting the last file saved. But I use the raw editor on every jpeg file I work on.