CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

JPEGs are no better today than they've ever been. But, they have more pixels, and more pixels are always better.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

40-50% is definitely not lossless, and the loss comes with the detail in the highlights and shadows that gets tossed out in the jpeg. There’s a big difference in a 14 bit raw file and an 8 bit jpeg. As Gene stated, you can get excellent results with average scenes, but high contrast scenes are a different story. With a 14 bit raw file I can pull in detail from the highlights and shadows that will be gone with a jpeg.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

I shoot both raw and jpeg.
When I shoot jpeg it is jpeg plus, or jpeg super, or any camera setting to give me the highest quality jpeg.
My experience is that if I know I have the exposure correct going in, I can get very similar results in post. I shoot wildlife in Florida wetlands and have yearly photo shows. I commonly enlarge to 20X30. My raw and jpeg images sit side by side and sell well.
I am not a techie, I am a photographer.
In jpeg I get more frames per second and that is important to me.
Lots of folks here only shoot in raw and nothing else, and that works for them. I shoot both, and it works for me. But again, I am on top of my exposures and I can get away shooting jpeg. I also shoot Manual and Aperture Priority, again, I shoot what is good for the particular situation I am facing. I am not pigeon holed into only one way of shooting. It has worked for me. Below is a jpeg image that has won a lot of awards.

sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

The image processors have gotten much better over the years. With my Canon cameras I generally only do a little cropping of the image and often nothing else.

Tomfl101 Loc: Mount Airy, MD

What I want is the option for Raw files to render in PP software programs exactly as they would show SOOC as jpegs with every slider showing what the camera manufacturer felt was optimum for a particular scene. From there I can adjust parameters to my liking, but for me jpegs are usually excellent and need no adjustment as long as they were shot correctly in the first place.

WessoJPEG Loc: Cincinnati, Ohio

👍👍👍

camerapapi Loc: Miami, Fl.

When Ken Rockwell said that he only shoots JPEG people laughed at him and that was a few years ago. He even offered a technical explanation of why he was shooting JPEG and it seemed reasonable to me. As I said, that was a few years ago.

Technology has changed since the introduction of digital cameras and the new cameras are very capable and loaded with pixels. New processing engines are far superior to what they were a few years ago. In a majority of cases it is very difficult to tell the difference between RAW data and a JPEG. I know very well how flexible a RAW data is but it is the expertise of the operator what brings back all of the goodness in the data. Computer engineers keep continuously improving the JPEG files and today it is not that easy to see the artifacts we used to see years ago. Unquestionably, at least for me those files are better than ever.

I was very disappointed in the quality of JPEG files till I began to use Olympus cameras. I could shoot reasonably good JPEG but I felt that something was missing and I could not say what it was. Olympus has changed all that and I dare to say that the JPEG engine in Olympus cameras if it is not the best it has to be pretty close. Olympus began to get away with using very thin AA filters and all because of the JPEG. Their engineers have found a way to get away with moiré, distortions and pseudo colors to enhance the resolution of JPEG files. In my opinion they have been very successful. They found a way to control sharpness counteracting the effect of refraction, a way to improve sharpness with lenses that were less sharp, improving details at the pixel level and improving on the effect of coma. These are not camera settings, these are parameters built into the software. I have done my own research on this and among other things I have been able to prove that the colors of their JPEG images are true if the files are shot in the sRGB color space. I reserve Adobe RGB to edit their RAW data. They are using what they call a Large Superfine compression and indeed the images are beautiful and enlarge as well.

I shoot both RAW and JPEG and when I use Olympus cameras I am 100% confident that my JPEG images are going to be of excellent quality. Yes, JPEG has come a long way.

pithydoug Loc: Catskill Mountains, NY

Jpg is fine for social media especially Facebook. FB compresses and all around removes much of the quality. I'm not familiar with IGram and if it's compressed. I don't save both as it's a waste of space even if space is relatively cheap. I load the raw into LR and if I feel it would look fine with little no editing for social media, just export the file as jpg.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

No argument from me, but raw will give very good results under poor exposure conditions.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

A RAW file is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be a camera.

donphotog

You raise a very interesting question. I have no experience with the Nikon D-850 except it's sterling reputation. Back around 2013, I switched to the Fuji mirrorless platform from a Canon 5DII (and later the III). Always shot RAW in the Canons and post processed in Lightroom. The Fujis are another matter. I started with the Fuji X100S and progressed to the X-T2 and X-T30; still using those three. In my humble opinion, based on 70 years experience in photography, the Fuji JPEGs are superlative out of the camera, although I do process them in Lightroom 6.1. I attribute this to the processor the Fuji engineers have designed plus the excellent APS-C sensors. Add to this the excellent Fuji film simulations and you have very high quality JPEGs. My Fujinon zoom lenses are OIS (optical image stabilization) but the primes are not; either way produces excellent results for me, primarliy landscapes though also portraits of great grandchildren. Fuji Velvia is the world standard in color slide film and is well replicated in the Fuji mirrorless cameras. Thus, I shoot JPEGs exclusively in my Fuji cameras.

Xpatch Loc: New York, Antigua, GT.

If you use Fuji’s Raw processor you can convert apply Fiji’s in camera settings to you photos. Sort of best of both world.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

Which camera gives a better burst rate with jpeg? Most cameras I’ve seen it’s a wash. With the raw you’re writing a larger file but with jpeg processing means it still takes the same amount of time.

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

Amen

ELNikkor

After processing RAW in Lightroom, the output is jpeg that looks like my SOOC jpeg, so seldom process RAW, just store for possible future manipulation.