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JPEG Vs Raw


Stick

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Stick,

Welcome aboard!  We all hope you enjoy the comradeship in these parts.

I shoot only RAW.  Why?  I have more options and more control over the image in post processing.  RAW gives me more of an opportunity to fine tune my images for printmaking.  That is the main reason.

About the only benefit of shooting in JPEG that I know of is that you do not have to do much post processing; the camera software does it for you.  That, and JPEG will save you time in post processing. 

Photojournalists are shooting in JPEG more nowadays, as news outlets are of the opinion that it prevents or at least minimizes the possibility that the image has been manipulated in post processing,  therefore changing the content and rendering the image a falsehood from a journalistic and/or editorial perspective.

With JPEG files, you have data loss with each opening of the file, which erodes image quality over time.  JPEG works just fine for some photographers, though.  If you intend to make high quality exhibit prints, I would recommend shooting in RAW. 

If you want to make high quality exhibit prints, shooting in RAW is probably the way to go.  If you are a photojournalist, JPEG may be the best choice.  If you are a casual photographer who doesn't need exact control over your file for print making, JPEG will work well and save you some work and time in post processing.

Last thing:  If you read your camera's manual (I'm guessing you are using a Q2 since you started your thread on the Q2 page), there will (or should) be a page in the camera's menu system where you can turn off either RAW or JPEG image capture so that you do not have two of each file and eat up storage space needlessly on your memory cards and your computer's hard drive.

Hope this will help...

Edited by Herr Barnack
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8 hours ago, Herr Barnack said:

Stick,

Welcome aboard!  We all hope you enjoy the comradeship in these parts.

I shoot only RAW.  Why?  I have more options and more control over the image in post processing.  RAW gives me more of an opportunity to fine tune my images for printmaking.  That is the main reason.

About the only benefit of shooting in JPEG that I know of is that you do not have to do much post processing; the camera software does it for you.  That, and JPEG will save you time in post processing. 

Photojournalists are shooting in JPEG more nowadays, as news outlets are of the opinion that it prevents or at least minimizes the possibility that the image has been manipulated in post processing,  therefore changing the content and rendering the image a falsehood from a journalistic and/or editorial perspective.

With JPEG files, you have data loss with each opening of the file, which erodes image quality over time.  JPEG works just fine for some photographers, though.  If you intend to make high quality exhibit prints, I would recommend shooting in RAW. 

If you want to make high quality exhibit prints, shooting in RAW is probably the way to go.  If you are a photojournalist, JPEG may be the best choice.  If you are a casual photographer who doesn't need exact control over your file for print making, JPEG will work well and save you some work and time in post processing.

Last thing:  If you read your camera's manual (I'm guessing you are using a Q2 since you started your thread on the Q2 page), there will (or should) be a page in the camera's menu system where you can turn off either RAW or JPEG image capture so that you do not have two of each file and eat up storage space needlessly on your memory cards and your computer's hard drive.

Hope this will help...

Super informative answer Herr Barnack. This would be excellent to add to a FAQ thread. 

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RAW only for me too. Whenever I shot RAW plus JPG at the same time (I did that a few years ago) it turned out to be a nightmare to evaluate wether the RAW or the JPG was the better base to start working on . Even though I always knew that RAWs contained much more data that JPGs I still wanted to know which one was better. Subsequently I came to the conclusion that only in very rare cases the initial JPG was the better source. But just to find that out took me such a long time. Finally I stopped taking JPGs at all. For a few years now I take RAWs only. And it is so easy to work with RAW files. This implies though to accept to work with a software system as Adobe Lightroom or others. 

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There are a few situations where one would want to shoot JPG and RAW together.  If, for example, you have a client looking over your shoulder in a studio, or if you are a wedding photographer and want to show your client a digital contact sheet so they can pick the images they like (with little or no editing), then having JPG’s is really convenient and will speed up your workflow without sacrificing the flexibility you get from a RAW file.  Under these circumstances, shoot both.  Faster time to get photos out (JPG) while leaving you full 16 bit files for later.

Why shoot RAW?  Simply put, you can do more with the files without degrading image quality.  You’ve got more bits per pixel, you can choose your white balance based on how it looks in post, you can choose your sharpening amount based on whether you are making a large print or just sharing on Instagram.  The source data is simply better in a RAW file than in a JPG.  For maximum image quality, RAW is the way to go.  The down side is that virtually every picture will require at least some editing before you can share it.  At a minimum, you will need to convert it to JPG or TIFF before you send it, post it, or print it (unless you are printing at home).  For many, that’s a minor price to pay in order to maintain the highest possible image quality and the greatest flexibility in post processing.

If you want the easiest possible workflow and are a fan of the “get it right in capture” school of photography, then just shooting JPG’s might be right for you.  You aren’t really giving up much image quality if your only edits are cropping and maybe minor exposure tweaks.  They are still full resolution files that can be used as-is for even museum quality prints.  They just can’t handle as much adjustment as a RAW file before they start to break down and show noise and artifacts and limitations in colors.  If your edits are always simple and minor as is the case for photojournalists who mustn’t make major changes to a picture as part of the editorial policy), then JPG’s are great.  They are universally understood.  They save on drive space.  Nothing wrong with JPG’s if you don’t tend to do much post processing.  

I shoot exclusively in RAW.  95% of the time I could have shot a JPG instead and it would have been absolutely fine.  I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.  The problem is the 5%.  The pictures of mine that get the most attention and the most post processing are the best one.  I make adjustments to white balance.  I adjust shadows and highlights.  I apply curves.  I make localized corrections using masks.  I might throw in some focus stacking.  Occasionally, even some HDR if it’s not overdone.  I choose the sharpening that I think is best for the particular output format.  The 5% are the images I care about.  And for those, I want RAW.  One other thing I find as, primarily, a landscape photographer... My best images are generally made under, shall we say, “challenging” lighting conditions.  Periods around dawn and dusk and even well into twilight.  That often means pushing the camera’s capabilities in terms of dynamic range and color depth in particular.  When you shoot JPG’s, the camera is deciding how to compress the 12 bits or so of usable dynamic range into an 8 bit file.  There is no turning back from that decision.  By shooting RAW, I can figure out in the computer at my leisure how I want to allocate those bits.  For me, RAW is really the only good choice.  If I were a sports photographer worried about getting four or five hundred images over to my editor in the next 15 minutes and weren’t thinking about post I would make a completely different decision.

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I shoot RAW only.  If I need a JPEG, I can get it from the RAW file (there is a "JPEG" image attached as a "sidecar")

The attached JPEG uses the JPEG parameters that you set on the Q.  I often have monochrome JPEGs contained in my RAW files.

Using Lightroom, you get the benefits of both file types...

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Looking at some recent files, the Q2 DNG raw files are about 88MB, and the jpegs are usually around 15MB though I have several in the 22-24MB range. So raw+jpeg is over 100MB per photo, or fewer than 10 photos per gigabyte. 

In my normal work life in photography I shoot entirely raw, no exceptions. I prefer to have the extra room to fix any issues in post production (not that I would ever have any issues, no sir buddy.) At work I shoot Fujifilm GF-X medium format and X series APS-C cameras depending on the assignment. 

When I got the Q2 (as a gift from a generous benefactor), I used it with raw files to cover an assignment, and noticed that it slowed down dramatically when shooting raw files quickly. The buffer couldn't keep up. So I switched to jpeg-only and the end results were fine. Even at very high ISO values (up to 6400) the images were excellent, and I had a fair amount of room to edit them in post. 

(Here's a link to that project. It was a collaborative dance performance with a university facilities management team and a dance company that choreographs these dances. It was, honestly, wonderful. I spent four nights shooting it then went back with my family to watch a performance (and shoot from the p.o.v. of the crowd, of course.) Almost all the wide angle shots are with the Leica Q2, and every one of them is an in-camera jpeg, tweaked in Lightroom.)

I'm using the Q2 as a personal everyday carry camera, documenting whatever I find, and for that the jpegs are great, too. It really depends on what you need as an end result. 

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Pretty much the only reason I shoot RAW and JPG these days is that I use an older piece of software (Nikon Image Transfer) to move files from cameras to my hard drive. I keep using it because I am used to the structure it imposes and it more or less works for me. But it is no longer supported by Nikon and so does not recognize more modern RAW file formats but of course will recognize JPG images and after I move them using the Nikon software which also sets up the folder  structure etc, I then manually move the RAW files to the same folder. Needless to say this is not an issue with DNG files as they are pretty much universally recognised. Which means I can get away with just saving files as DNG when shooting any Leica camera. But not so for my (say) Sony camera. Also I did shoot in dual formats for a time when shooting black and white in camera (which requires a JPG file to be saved). But I seldom do this now preferring to shoot in RAW and convert in post. 

If for some reason you still wish to shoot in both DNG and JPG format whay not tell the camera to only save JPGs at the highest compression (smallest files size).

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I recently began shooting in RAW+JPEG, capturing the JPEG in B&W.  In the Q2 that means actually visualizing in B&W via the EVF, which has forced me to pay more attention to composition and the geometries within the frame.  The jury is still out whether I will continue with this strategy, but for now I quite like both the process and the effect since I immediately have two very different renderings of each image once I upload to LR.  BTW, when I first started shooting in RAW+JPEG I captured both in color and universally preferred the RAW versions over the JPEG, which prompted me to switch the JPEG to B&W.

I have also recently resurrected my M3 and began shooting B&W film again, so visualizing in B&W when using my Q2 has helped me 'think in B&W' when I switch over to my M3 and M10 rangefinders.

Good luck and have fun finding your own 'groove'!!

- Scott

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If you have an iPad and you shoot RAW +JPEGs, you can import the JPEGs using the SD card adapter onto the iPad and tweak them with Photo, Snapseed or other simple app and send them out  quickly using email or social media apps. You can keep the shots on the SD card so that if you need any in better quality you can process the RAW later on your PC.

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My experience is similar to @M10 for me. Managing the RAW+JPG got to be too much of a burden and once I got used to processing RAW I started not even looking at the JPGs. 

When I was using Fuji I decided to give JPG another look. Fuji's JPGs look great and the film simulations are a lot of fun, but I quickly discovered that I didn't have the latitude to manage the highlights and shadows that I need. 

Of course, the problem with RAW-only is managing the ever increasing disk usage. Not so much of a problem for the local storage but certainly a concern for cloud storage and the backups (local and remote).

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I was very late switching to digital after years of shooting kodachrome slides.

Jpeg only for me as it allows me to carry as near as possible to how i always operated before.

There are some fair minded and balanced articles about the pros  and cons of raw v jpeg online to help with this subject.

Something i have noticed in recent years are lots of massively over edited images that look more like cartoons than photographs to my eyes.

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  • 5 months later...
On 10/17/2019 at 9:12 PM, KenBennett said:

Looking at some recent files, the Q2 DNG raw files are about 88MB, and the jpegs are usually around 15MB though I have several in the 22-24MB range. So raw+jpeg is over 100MB per photo, or fewer than 10 photos per gigabyte. 

In my normal work life in photography I shoot entirely raw, no exceptions. I prefer to have the extra room to fix any issues in post production (not that I would ever have any issues, no sir buddy.) At work I shoot Fujifilm GF-X medium format and X series APS-C cameras depending on the assignment. 

When I got the Q2 (as a gift from a generous benefactor), I used it with raw files to cover an assignment, and noticed that it slowed down dramatically when shooting raw files quickly. The buffer couldn't keep up. So I switched to jpeg-only and the end results were fine. Even at very high ISO values (up to 6400) the images were excellent, and I had a fair amount of room to edit them in post. 

(Here's a link to that project. It was a collaborative dance performance with a university facilities management team and a dance company that choreographs these dances. It was, honestly, wonderful. I spent four nights shooting it then went back with my family to watch a performance (and shoot from the p.o.v. of the crowd, of course.) Almost all the wide angle shots are with the Leica Q2, and every one of them is an in-camera jpeg, tweaked in Lightroom.)

I'm using the Q2 as a personal everyday carry camera, documenting whatever I find, and for that the jpegs are great, too. It really depends on what you need as an end result. 

Great photos Ken!!

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/18/2019 at 3:49 PM, Philip Freedman said:

If you have an iPad and you shoot RAW +JPEGs, you can import the JPEGs using the SD card adapter onto the iPad and tweak them with Photo, Snapseed or other simple app and send them out  quickly using email or social media apps. You can keep the shots on the SD card so that if you need any in better quality you can process the RAW later on your PC.

hello, that’s exactly the way I want to use my Q2 with iPad Pro / Photos but still want to keep the DNG in my NAS with structured folders by years/month/event 

 

BUT when importing with SD card reader on USB C, photos import BOTH DNG and JPEG.. then display a small R - for raw - or J - for jpeg - no the top left of the thumb.

if you edit on iPhone, the jpeg is edited, on iPad / Mac OS, the raw / DNG is edited.

the only way to split is to :

- export original + jpeg with photo on Mac OS, save the orignal on my NAS and import back the jpeg in photos which is awful cause you have to deal with iCloud storage (DNG and huge) and time consuming to do export.

- more recently I found that with Files app on iPad, I can open the SD Card like an USB key and with split view with photos on the right simply select drap and drop on photos the jpeg only, keep the DNG on the SD and when back home transfer the DNG on my NAS - or, mount the server on the Files app and store straight from the iPad the DNG in the NAS.

 

—-> do you have another trick to split from the photos iPad app importing process the DNG and the jpeg and only import jpeg in Photos library ??

 

sorry for thé long post but want to be precise and give details for some other people reading.

julien 

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7 hours ago, W3SH said:

hello, that’s exactly the way I want to use my Q2 with iPad Pro / Photos but still want to keep the DNG in my NAS with structured folders by years/month/event 

 

BUT when importing with SD card reader on USB C, photos import BOTH DNG and JPEG.. then display a small R - for raw - or J - for jpeg - no the top left of the thumb.

if you edit on iPhone, the jpeg is edited, on iPad / Mac OS, the raw / DNG is edited.

 

 

sorry for thé long post but want to be precise and give details for some other people reading.

julien 

that is incorrect.

If you import a jpg or DNG into an iPad or iPhone both get imported.

Depending on the processor you use (my favorite it RAW POWER- the developer is the former  lead engineer for Aperture from Apple) you will edit (non-destructive edit w/RAW POWER and export as a jpg or  tiff.  Even Apple's Photos will edit the raw file.

There are macOS versions and iOS versions available for purchase (not subscription) on the app stores.

 

 

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On 4/28/2020 at 6:14 PM, BenSh said:

I use Jpeg when i take Pictures with a Phone. When i use a  real Camera meant to use for Photography, i use RAW.

 

 

Is it not photography when you take pictures with your phone?

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