magpix Loc: St. Michaels, MD

I used to shoot RAW only until I switched from Nikon to Fuji. Now I shoot RAW and JPG because with Fuji you can easily change camera settings to match the situation and to simulate many different film looks such as Vivid, Provia, etc. Shadows, highlights, film simulations, white balance, sharpening, etc. can be set in camera based on the conditions of the shoot. The resulting JPGs are superb, and I rarely need to process the RAW file. As a photojournalist for national magazines I rarely have to resort to the RAW file. In fact when I go through all the work of processing a RAW file I often find the result to be no better than the original JPG. I now consider my RAW files as backup in case I have a very demanding situation. Many, many Fuji shooters have discovered the same freedom from processing RAW files.

ELNikkor

Maybe because of my film days, I prefer SOOC images with little or no post processing. I shoot 98% .jpegs, usually at 5mb per file. If the scene/subject is awesome and may some day be blown up large, I'll shoot RAW + jpeg fine, saving the RAW on a separate card.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It depends... Raw files can yield more technically excellent images. JPEGs can be used immediately, but aren't nearly as editable.

Think of it this way. Top quality JPEGs require "pre-processing" — a black art that may include some or all of these:

• Controlling scene brightness range with auxiliary lighting, reflectors, scrims, gobos, flags...
• Very accurate metering (+1/3 to -2/3 stop latitude)
• Very accurate white balance
• Using all the camera menu settings to your advantage, via careful testing and review of your test results, plus experience through trial and error.

Top quality JPEGs from post-processed raw files are much easier to achieve, because of the wide latitude of raw exposures. What Chg_Canon (Paul) said is true, though, so if you maximize techniques for capturing raw data, your JPEGs will probably be way overexposed, losing highlight details that cannot be recovered.

It is quite easy to get pro-level results with JPEGs if you know what you are doing, and when you can get away with just JPEG by controlling the variables. It is quite difficult to get pro-level JPEGs consistently under rapidly changing lighting conditions or in very high contrast, high dynamic range daylight scenes.

Raw capture is more likely to result in workable files, but you do have to post-process the files to get the most from them. JPEGs are quicker, but you might not get the results you want if you don't know what to control at the camera to get those results out of the camera.

And, while it is POSSIBLE to post-process JPEGs, there is much less latitude to do so with top quality results.

This is a round-about way of saying your friend is at least partially right, for reasons he/she did not explain.

starlifter Loc: Towson, MD

Right on Longshadow. I like your attitude and perspective.

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

There is nothing wrong with that, although when using high frame rates it will affect the buffer and reduce the number of images on a card.

KenProspero

I shoot both JPEG and RAW.

With my workflow -- I find that the processing that is done by the camera for JPEG helps me go through the pictures more quickly and determine which can be deleted, and which are worth working with. (So, JPEG saves me time) After that -- for 'filler' shots (the bulk of what I keep from a vacation to preserve the memory) -- light editing in LR on either the JPEG or RAW shot gives comparable results. For the handful of pictures that I think are GREAT -- I'll spend the time on the RAW shot.

Harry0 Loc: Gardena, Cal

You will get the same results.
A CAVEAT!!!!
A JPG file is one size.
The RAW file is @ twice that size,
Shooting both- your camera is processing three times the data of a single JPG file, thru two writers.
Have patience.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Let's not get carried away simply talking about relative file sizes ...

The byte size of an image file tells you next to ZERO / NADA / NOTHING about the quality. One might make infer that larger / more bytes is 'better' than smaller / less total bytes. But, these are just guesses when ZERO / NADA / NOTHING can be 'known' from simply knowing the byte size.

A digital camera that can capture both 'large / fine' JPEG and full-resolution RAW delivers image files of exactly the same pixel resolution. We'll use the industry default 24MP - an image that is 6000x4000 pixels. That's 24MP whether you shoot in JPEG or RAW. The file sizes in bytes are different, but still again: you are receiving all 24-million pixels from the sensor into either / both file formats, 24MP aka twenty-four mega pixels.

What is 'missing' from the JPEG is the native bit-depth of the sensor for all the color data. Most cameras capture RAW in 12-bit, some Nikon higher-end models offer a 14-bit option. For Canon, you have to inspect the technical specs on whether the particular model is 12-bit or 14-bit, it's not a configurable option.

A “bit” is a computer’s way of storing information as a 1 or 0. A single bit isn’t really good for anything beyond “yes” or “no” because it can only have 2 values. One bit can be all black (0) or all white (1). Combining bits together, we can begin to get shades of gray between all black and all white.

The color data supporting a pixel is the three main RGB colors, RGB - Red, Green, Blue. If you have 8-bits of data per color channel, you have 24-bits total per pixel. JPEGs are 8-bit files by their technical definition. For each color channel, an 8-bit file can create 256-shades of the individual color (2^8 - two to the power of 8, or 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2=256). The 'shades' range from the deepest red (black) to the lightest red (white). The shading of the red is mixed with the shading of the Green, and mixed with the shading of the Blue to give us the color of each pixel and the color shading of the entire 24-million pixel image.

12-bit files just increase the discrete values / shades of each color channel, where the calculation is 2^12=4096 shades of each RGB color channel. 14-bit is even larger, 2^14=16,384 shades per RGB color channel.

When the JPEG is created, whether in the camera or via editing software later, the larger bit-depth colors are mapped to the 8-bit values, either exactly as in Red is Red, or the nearest 8-bit value. The human eye can't even see all the color shading possibilities of an 8-bit file, so your image is not losing anything by being converted to JPEG when used for display purposes.

The JPEG conversion / bit-depth compression does impact your ability to edit those colors to create still more JPEG versions of that image. The extent of that impact (how much / how little) depends on the colors of the image and how much brighter or darker your editing needs to change those colors.

When we were kids, we might have started with 8-color boxes of crayons. We could rub two of those 8-colors together in our coloring book, but we'd never get the same colors as the kid using the 64-color box. Bit-depth is the same concept where more data (more bits) gives more precise shading possibilities, being why you want to capture at the highest bit-depth (aka your camera's RAW format) and you want a software editor that maintains that native bit-depth in all interactions with the file up until you output a JPEG for display purposes only. Those kids that had the 96-color boxes, they were the RAW shooters back then in their coloring books.

We now all have 96-color boxes in the RAW format of our digital cameras. With software that maintains that RAW bit-depth (or maintains 16-bit TIFF for software transitions), we have the tools to maintain the richest color data possible up until our software does the mapping to 8-bit JPEGs in the sRGB colorspace for display purposes only.

Urnst Loc: Brownsville, Texas

Best explanation I've seen so far. Thank you sir.