Should I be Shooting in JPEG or RAW?

[Hallow's Maiden]

Nikon D80 - What should I be shooting in? JPEG? RAW?

For the histogram i can get on my screen.. I googled it and it said it could be very worthwhile to keep it on the screen... should i? Should the colors be somewhere in the middle?

[Travis]

shooting raw gives you better latitude in post production... however, the latitude is useless to an uninformed user...... raw files are larger and require an eventual conversion to jpg before they can be shared with the public...

my advice would be to start with jpeg and focus on your in camera skills.... then once you have a solid foundation.... start shooting raw and learn how to maximize your imagery.. you can do both at once but the learning curve will be way longer..

in most situations, the histogram will provide useful information regarding the tonality of your image... it certainly doesn't hurt for you to learn and observe it..

[tomorrowstreasures]

Travis. really good insight? (slash) advice for HM!

[AcadieLibre]

I suggest shooting in RAW. I advocate it because it does give you the ability to correct photos afterwards. Honing your skills when shooting also should coincide with your ability to do post-processing work. Yes the files are much larger but the ability to get inexpensive storage seems to nullify that as a reason these days. Even if you just convert them to JPEG and keep the RAW file as a back up for now, when you do get the ability to use the RAW file to its full potential you can go back into your files and work on photos you may have considered lost that are one of a kind that you cannot repeat. I am a strong advocate for shooting in RAW, it has issues, would be nice if they standardized it but you can always go with Adobe DNG. Just because you are learning is not a reason to shoot in RAW. It just one opinion, I think Travis makes some valid points, in the end it is your choice and just giving you another opinion.

[tirediron]

I'm going to side with AcadieLibre on this one. Shoot RAW, convert to .jpg and save the RAW files for later.

[morgan]

my camera has an option to get both raw & jpg. When i made the switch from jpg to raw, i used this setting. i now feel comfortable to shoot in only raw. i wish i would have used the setting to capture both from the start. I love editing my raw images now that i know how to do it. i'll never go back!

[PKMax]

I'd shoot in RAW to begin with, I originally shot in jpg because I hadn't really understood what the point of RAW was, but shooting JPG loses a lot of information in the photo that you can't recover. it's also a lossy compression, so it loses some individual pixel information by merging pixels with neighbouring pixels to make up areas of colour if the pixel colours are similar enough.

the way in which the camera produces the JPG means that whatever settings you had switched on at the time in the camera, like a vivid mode, or sharp mode etc, these actually modify the image to form the JPG, where as if you shoot in RAW these settings are only stored in the RAW file as what the camera was set to, so it's a more versatile image.

I have on occasion gone back to an old JPG file that I've taken to try and process it, and it's a lot harder to play with and I wish I'd shot it in RAW at the time. I also found that some software won't play with JPG and requires RAW for some things, like some HDR software if your trying to do Single Photo HDR etc.

[PKMax]

Regarding the Histogram, I tend not to have it on the screen all the time, because my first check of the photo is, Does it look like what I expected, or like. and the histogram gets in the way.. but I do when I've got the photo I want have a gander at the Histogram to make sure I've got a good range in there and haven't blown out the whites or something. (unless I wanted too.)

[mindforge]

Regarding the Histogram, I tend not to have it on the screen all the time, because my first check of the photo is, Does it look like what I expected, or like. and the histogram gets in the way.. but I do when I've got the photo I want have a gander at the Histogram to make sure I've got a good range in there and haven't blown out the whites or something. (unless I wanted too.)

I usually don't use the histogram when I am shooting... I do use it later in my RAW conversion and in post processing.

[tegan]

I know all the reasons for shooting RAW but someone should mention the caveats and reasons for hesitation.

1. It is easier and faster to preview jpeg than it is to preview RAW.

2. Minor changes can be done faster in jpeg, than working through RAW.

3. Multiple shooting is faster in jpeg than RAW.

4. Some newer cameras are producing better quality jpegs that require less
processing than the RAW versions.

5. Jpegs can be edited in 16 bit which was once only possible with RAW
formats.

6. Could you differentiate between jpeg original and editing, versus RAW
original, editing and conversion to jpeg?

7. If minimal editing is required, then jpeg is faster than working through
RAW format, editing and conversion.

8. RAW versions can be used like negatives but even for pros a negative is
not always necessary and negatively takes up space and needs to be put
into a database of some sort, despite the fact that it may never be
looked at again.

Tegan