Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

If you decide to process RAW in the future, you have the RAW files from the older images...

marty wild Loc: England

👍🏻

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

For me, it's simpler to shoot raw and postprocess. At my advanced age, I depend on the Lightroom DAM to keep track of images. If I shoot in jpg, I might be tempted to use the jpg directly if it's good. Since I shoot in raw only everything goes into LR as a matter of course. That puts it in the catalog. I'm still able to use the jpg preview if I want to but it's easier to do minimal processing to get the jpg and have the processing steps recorded in LR.

When I say it's simpler, that's the long view. It takes a bit more work to process an image but I more than save that work time when I search in LR for an image.

The only times I don't shoot in raw are (1) when using my camera in live view silent high frame rate because my camera will not produce a raw file in that mode; and (2) when I'm shooting a white frame to look for dust on my sensor. I don't use (1) very often, but it happens.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Your iPhone? symbol looks like a faint smudge on my screen.

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

👍 here’s one from my iPhone just to see what it looks like.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Same thing. UHH symbols are brighter and clearer.

DJphoto Loc: SF Bay Area

I moved from a Canon SX 40 HS a little over two years ago to my first DSLR, a Canon 80D. I initially shot only JPEG because I was very happy with the improved images from my 80D and I didn't think I had the time to learn and then do post-processing. I shoot a LOT of photos, especially when I'm at the road races (2 or 3 times a year typically); I shot ~11,000 JPEGs in two days last August at the Rolex Historics at Laguna Seca. It's amazing how many images you can take at 7FPS trying to capture the action. However, I started shooting RAW+JPEG last March, largely in preparation for our first cruise in July. I switched back to JPEG only for the August races due to volume and the fact that I doubted I would have the time to post-process many of the images. I only started learning and doing post-processing (using Lightroom) about 3 months ago. I spent a half day at the Indycar test at Laguna Seca last Friday and shot RAW+JPEG to see how it went (it would have been a whole day, but it started raining and they stopped running). I took about 3,200 photos and deleted almost half on my first cull. I used the JPEGs to decide what to delete and what were worthy of my time to post-process. I am still keeping the ~1,700, but culled those down to 198 that I'm about 25% through post-processing. At some point, I may go through and select a few more for post-processing.

I'm seriously considering only shooting RAW from now on, as the post-processed files (as JPEGs) are the only ones I share now. There are a couple of issues when I'm shooting high volume: SD card space (I currently have 8 32GB fast cards, which won't be enough for a 3 day weekend at the track, and the camera buffer. My 80D buffer fills up at about 20 RAW or RAW+JPEGs vs about 100 JPEGs, so you have to be a bit more selective when "spraying and praying" from both perspectives of SD card space and the buffer. For most other photo shoots, it's not an issue. Also, I back up all of my photos to Dropbox and the highest capacity they offer for a personal (non-business) account is 2 TB and I'm already at about 1.2 TB. Hard drive space is inexpensive enough that it's not an issue (I currently have a 6 TB internal drive and an 8 TB external backup, plus a few 2 TB externals). To get a Dropbox business account with unlimited storage is about $600/year (with 3 users) vs the $200/year I currently pay for a 2 TB personal account. I'm hoping that the 2 TB limit will go up by the time I need more space.

My advice is to shoot RAW+JPEG until you decide which way works best for you. You can never create RAW files from JPEGs, but you can delete RAW files if you decide you don't need them.