How To Decide To Shoot JPEG or RAW

How To Decide To Shoot JPEG or RAW

by William Lulow

Note: This article was published last year, but I have updated it a bit :

A few years ago, I came across an ad for the Mamiya Leaf Aptus II digital back for medium format cameras. It boasted an 80MP CCD sensor and sold for only $31,000! I’m sure there are photographers out there who would swear by this piece of equipment. One would need 20 days of shooting at $1,500 per day just to pay for it. I doubt that anyone currently using a  22MP or even a 30MP DSLR could be able to discern the difference in original images from such a sensor. You would have to start working on them to begin to see the difference.

I used to use the medium format Hasselblad for most of my work before 2000 and there really was a difference between 120 roll film and 35mm film. The actual material was different. And, I greatly preferred the larger film. It simply had better resolution and finer grain.

However,  I’ve been making beautiful 11×14, 16×20 and 20×24 prints that don’t lack a thing when it comes to detail, from my ordinary DSLRs. And, I’ve been shooting mostly JPEG files! Most photographers swear by RAW because they are far more capable of being edited and preserve all original information without compression. However, I normally don’t like to spend excessive amounts of time at the computer. And, even though Adobe Lightroom has greatly simplified my workflow, I’m not sure I really need to shoot RAW. There are times when a client has asked for images to be shot in RAW, but then they’re paying for it and usually doing the editing. I certainly realize the benefits of having the maximum amount of digital information to work with, but don’t forget if you are going to send them to a client for direct upload to a website, for example, you would have to convert them back to JPEGs anyway. Since I made the switch to digital back in 2001, I can almost count on my fingers the number of times I have been asked to provide RAW images to a client.

Here’s an example of a straight JPEG shot with my Canon 60D and an 85mm prime lens. Exposure was f/10 at 1/125 of a second with an ISO of 100. It was processed to an image with 400 dpi resolution. This file made a flawless 20×24” print.

Do you think you need more detail or sharpness?

I would say probably not. So, again, in today’s digital world, it really all depends on how the images will be used. I’ve been able to make great 11x14s on my Epson printer from files that were only around 30 megabytes or so. It’s true that larger files are always easier to work from, but how often do you really need to make a really big enlargement? As a matter of fact, I made an image of The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia back in the 1970s. The shot was made on Kodak Tri-X film from a 35mm camera. I scanned the negative on my flatbed scanner and was able to make an enlargement to 30 x 40 inches which looked great. It was probably as good an image as I could have gotten from the original negative on my old Omega D2V enlarger.

Here is another comparison:

On the left is the RAW file. On the right, the JPEG. Both were shot with the same settings on my Canon 60D with the 135mm f/2 lens, f/11 @1/200th of a second with ISO set at 100. The RAW file produced a 90MB image which then had to be compressed to a JPEG after I worked on it a bit. Adobe Photoshop has an integrated RAW Conversion program (version 12.1, I believe) that does the conversion to JPEG after you save the image, which is very handy. Before, you had to open the conversion program if you wanted to upload the image. I can see a bit of a difference in both the highlights and shadows. The RAW image on the left has a bit more detail. But, is it enough to warrant shooting everything RAW and going through the extra steps?

So, the decision I guess, comes down to whether you are an artist and want to preserve every possible detail in your images without any compression or whether you are a working professional who knows what he or she is doing and therefore can obtain optimal exposures with the digital process and do not have a lot of extra time to spend on RAW processing and JPEG conversions. It’s not really about making sharper images with more detail (although I have seen RAW images that provide a bit more detail in the shadow areas), it’s probably more about how much time you wish to spend in post processing and editing.

But, it’s also about how fast you like to shoot. As a portrait photographer, I’m often looking for expressions that happen in a split second. If I’m shooting in RAW and the camera takes too long to write the file to the memory card, I could lose important shots. Is the quality better with RAW? Yes. No question about it. But exactly how much better? Is it worth the extra time it might take to shoot a number of images? Or can a JPEG work better? It really depends on your own personal style and how you like to shoot. So, investigate both formats and make an educated decision which suits you best. As with all things digital, the science of looking for more detail and balancing that with the ease of making images is always a concern. But, in the end, it’s an individual’s choice.