The question of the "right" file format is often discussed with an intensity bordering on the religious. Personally I couldn't care less if someone had a different opinion about it than me, but many people can get really exited really fast when talking about the pros and cons of shooting raw. Here are some of my thoughts about whether to shoot in raw or jpg. Let me know what you think:
JPGs are nothing more than the raw sensor data (which would be the raw file) that has been processed by the camera into an image file. A raw file is not an image file, so you can't open it unless you have special software that can interpret raw data. Even with such a software, the image you see then is only an interpretation done by the software which you have to customize according to your taste. Also, "raw" is not a file format! Every camera brand has it's own raw file format. I shoot Nikon and they call their raw files ".nef".
After shooting jpg-only for the first year, I decided to start shooting both jpgs and raw. There are many different opinions out there and I found it very difficult to get any objective thoughts about this issue. Basically, raw gives you the chance to do the things the camera does when it's processing raws into jpgs internally. As far as I can see, that is both the big advantage and disadvantage of the raw format.
If you have the experience, software and time to process every single image yourself, you may get better results (meaning closer to your idea of the ideal result) with raw.
I looked at all the images I've taken during the last year and decided that, with the amount of post-processing I do on them, shooting raw is the way to go for me.
On the other hand, if you tend to do only minor post-processing (some contrast, crop, a little sharpness) you probably won't get that much more out of your photos with shooting raw. In fact, you might have to struggle to get even the same quality jpgs from raw files that your camera delivers automatically. One thing you might like with RAWs is the ability to fix exposure later. Getting good exposure can be tricky and some photos I ruined in my early tries by overexposing (my old D40 had a tendency to overexpose) could have been saved had I shot a raw file.
If you have the experience, software and time to process every single image yourself, you may get better results (meaning closer to your idea of the ideal result) with raw.
I looked at all the images I've taken during the last year and decided that, with the amount of post-processing I do on them, shooting raw is the way to go for me.
On the other hand, if you tend to do only minor post-processing (some contrast, crop, a little sharpness) you probably won't get that much more out of your photos with shooting raw. In fact, you might have to struggle to get even the same quality jpgs from raw files that your camera delivers automatically. One thing you might like with RAWs is the ability to fix exposure later. Getting good exposure can be tricky and some photos I ruined in my early tries by overexposing (my old D40 had a tendency to overexpose) could have been saved had I shot a raw file.
But remember: You do have to get quite comfortable with raw processing to get better results than your camera! When first opening my raw files (I use DxO Optics Pro), I get a low contrast, low saturation image that I have to work with quite a bit just to match the quality of the out-of-camera jpg. Once I spent some time optimizing it, the processed image does comes closer to my desired result than the out of camera jpg, but I have to work with it to get there! If you don't like spending that time (or if you are not someone with as much time on his hands as I am) you probably will be happier with sticking to jpgs.
What I do: If you do have really a lot of disk space available -and I mean A LOT-, shoot raw + jpgs (if your camera allows) and keep the option of working on the raw files for images you really care about! But beware, you will get silly amounts of data that you might never use! (With my D90, I can get some 900+ jpgs on a 2GB card, while I can barely get 120 RAW+JPG files on it!)
Another drawback of shooting raw files is the loss of speed when saving your images on the memory cards during continuous shooting. My D90 can shoot 4.5 frames per second for as long as I like when firing jpgs, while with raw files, the buffer fills up after about 10 shots and frame rate starts to drop rapidly! (I use SD extreme III cards)
What I do: If you do have really a lot of disk space available -and I mean A LOT-, shoot raw + jpgs (if your camera allows) and keep the option of working on the raw files for images you really care about! But beware, you will get silly amounts of data that you might never use! (With my D90, I can get some 900+ jpgs on a 2GB card, while I can barely get 120 RAW+JPG files on it!)
Another drawback of shooting raw files is the loss of speed when saving your images on the memory cards during continuous shooting. My D90 can shoot 4.5 frames per second for as long as I like when firing jpgs, while with raw files, the buffer fills up after about 10 shots and frame rate starts to drop rapidly! (I use SD extreme III cards)
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