How To Decide To Shoot JPEG or RAW

How To Decide To Shoot JPEG or RAW

by William Lulow

Note: In the last blog piece I mentioned shooting JPEG or RAW. Here’s more info:

A few years ago, I came across an ad for the Mamiya Leaf Aptus II digital back for medium format cameras. It boasts an 80MP CCD sensor and sells 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 10MP point-and-shoot camera or even a 22MP DSLR could be able to discern the difference in original images from such a sensor.

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.

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 from 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 Omega enlarger.

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 doesn’t have a lot of extra time to spend on RAW processing and JPEG conversions