Capn_Dave

It is a strange thing that people don't read the whole thread before posting. Jerry already posted the reason it looks like two different photos. I think it would save a lot of redundancy

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

Lamiacieae wrote: "Camera JPGs are only great if you make no mistakes."

In the first place, RAW data is very flexible. It tolerates lots of editing before converting to a JPEG file. I find no substitution to something done right in camera, RAW or JPEG. In your case Jerry fill-in flash was in order, I do not believe you got away with lots of noise in your image after opening the shadows, most probably 2 or 3 stops of underexposure. White Balance is something that RAW does better in post but I have been able to save many images I shot as original JPEG files correcting the white balance. Understand that a JPEG is an 8 bit file so, in many cases manipulation can bring about changes in color and not as often as before artifacts. 12 or 14 bits of information is superior for editing. Little to no editing is the best that can happen to a JPEG file.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Clever.

gwilliams6

Raw is better, it has a much greater bit depth than jpeg. Raw gives you a much broader range of tones including in the shadows. Jpeg compression in the camera reduces your tonal dynamic range to reduce the size of your files.

But you still need to properly expose your shots raw or jpeg, and not seriously underexpose and then expect miraculously to be able to recover all tones and details out of the shadows.

Cheers

brentrh Loc: Deltona, FL

We seem to be beating a dead horse with this is subject. RAW gives the best results possible but does not give you instant results. Lot of post processing was done with film to achieve high quality results. Post processing with RAW is another step to produce outstanding results not every photographer is willing to take this step.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Yes. It does not give instant results like you get with a jpg straight from the camera. Some people are not willing to take the extra step needed to use the raw data. In my opinion they're missing a lot but I'm not the boss and if they're happy there's nothing more to be said.

Film required postprocessing just to get an image from a latent image. The initial postprocessing in camera to produce a jpg satisfies many since it's a lot quicker and easier than waiting for the film to be developed.

I see a lot of people who just take pictures and let them pile up. They may remember taking a shot but finding it is another matter. I did that initially but found Lightroom to organize my images and since everything now goes into LR, it doesn't cost me any time to let LR extract a usable image from the raw data. It takes the same amount of time to use a raw file as it does to use a jpg. So for me there's no cost to shooting raw.