Camera Labs

Hello,

I'm pretty new to the whole photography thing, and was wondering, what are the significant differences between shooting in RAW, or Jpeg, I also do not know what either of them are

Thanks!

_________________
Eric D.
Nikon D90 | 18-200 VR
"Less is the new Black"---Chase Jarvis
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25947744@N03/

Hopefully I can help.

RAW vs. Jpeg:

Jpeg and RAW are both image formats that the camera will save the image as when it's captured it.

Jpeg is the average and standard image format used across the world. Jpeg has small files, but still maintains decent quality. The main advantage that .Jpeg images have are that they are fairly small files when compared to other image formats.

RAW has many advantages over Jpeg. First and foremost, RAW is a uncompressed. Unlike Jpeg, all the shooting specifications and details are saved separately instead of compressed together. This of course leads to size issues. RAW files are much larger than Jpeg. For instance, if a Jpeg is 1.8mb, then a RAW will be somewhere around 6-10mb. Depending on your cameras resolution (megapixels).

So what's the advantage of having an uncompressed image format?

When you edit the image, none of the pixels will be damaged from editing. So when you open a RAW image into Camera Raw and begin to edit curves, exposure, shadows, etc', The pixels on the image will not be harmed whereas they can be damaged if the format was compressed.

RAW also has the advantage of perfecting image color and tones. By shooting RAW, you can choose a standard White Balance, and then later go and perfect the White Balance and customize it.

So to briefly sum it up, shooting RAW basically gives a bit more flexibility in images as far as editing and perfecting, and can arguably deliver better quality images. At the same time, if you don't have too much memory, shooting RAW can drastically lower the shot limit on your memory unit.

Opening RAW images is a bit different as well. You can't just open a RAW image in any editing software. You will need to open it first in a RAW conversion program (i.e. Adobe Camera RAW) and then export it as a .TIF (format) image or .Jpeg. But it is through the RAW conversion program where you can make the fine adjustments like White Balance, Tonal Curves, Shadow/Highlights, Sharpening, Lens Correction, and etc'.

I shoot RAW for the majority of my work. If I am serious about the images, I will undoubtedly shoot RAW. If I am just shooting for no reason, and don't really care about what I shoot later, I'll just shoot Jpeg and get it over with.

But things like Portraits and serious shots, I will shoot RAW.

Best,
-Sean.

_________________
-Blog- || -My Flickr-

I agree completely with Sdrummer. I shoot always in RAW, save them to an external HD. Then after PP´ing, another save. There are many programs out there which convert them quickly to JPG-format if you need it for e-mail etc., where large files are unwanted

Also, if you want to change the photo ( I mean pp´ing differently, another look), take the old RAW-file because all the information is retained.
In contrary to JPG-files.

Although RAW-files take much memory, I haven´t been so far that my card was full so that I had to copy the pics to my laptop before continuing. And I take often pics at fps-mode (sports) .

ngc94227