JPEG vs. RAW

Today was the first day back at work after a week of vacation and the Labor Day holiday. We trekked off to one of our favorite lakeside retreats in the Adirondack Mountains and as usual I took a few hundred pictures. In the process I even made a few pleasing images.

I’ve been experimenting with the differences between the various image formats available on my Nikon D50.

The D50 has three JPEG quality levels (Basic, Normal, and Fine), RAW (NEF) sensor format, and a mode that generates two images for each shot; one RAW and one JPEG Basic.

A friend at work who has been shooting for around forty years and joined the digital revolution when a DSLR cost at least $5,000 has been pushing me to shoot RAW. I read Ken Rockwell a lot, and he is a fan of JPEG Normal for all but the shots you think will really need the extra resolution. Ken makes a compelling case that the difference in quality is not visible under normal viewing situations, but my work buddy makes a strong case for the benefits of RAW when it comes to post-processing–having all the data captured by the sensor allows greater flexibility in making adjustments on the computer.

As a consequence I decided to shoot RAW+Basic and carry the laptop so I could offload throughout the week. I have just two SD memory cards of 1 gigabyte each. I use SanDisk Ultra II cards. These are a bit pricey compared to basic cards, but I like the speed and the fact that these cards can “break” in half and slide into a USB port without a cable or adapter of any kind.

I’ll be adding to my observations about this idea once I wade through all the images and have the time to adjust a few. For now, my first observation is that it is much more convenient to shoot JPEG only. Digital cameras are very smart these days, and mine is generally much smarter than I am–which isn’t at all difficult to believe if you know me, but that’s another topic. Like Ken Rockwell, I find that the vast majority of my shooting is done in Programmed Automatic and the vast majority of the shots I take this way are better than the ones I try to play with manually.

I also agree with David Busch and others who prefer to make a photo “right” in the camera as opposed to relying on post-processing. That said; cropping is often wise. I don’t do much playing with color, however, and I prefer not to mess with exposure compensation or white balance after the fact. Sometimes such techniques can make a throw-away image into something worthwhile, but I find the camera is generally very good at getting it right.

Of course I do shoot a lot during strange times, like night, or in difficult circumstances, like while traveling 85 miles-per-hour on an Amtrak train. Such special situations warrant shutter-preferred shots, and shooting flowers and other close-up or macro work will drive you to aperture-preferred for field-depth control pretty quickly.

Anyway, I shot RAW+Basic and we’ll see whether I will continue. In the past I’ve always used JPEG Fine. I always use large size by the way, there’s no excuse for throwing away bits unless you have a severe memory shortage. I can store over 1000 JPEG Basic images in large size on a one-gig card.