Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

Thanks.

It's not like this is anything new. It's been this way from the early years of digital photo. The camera makers have been in a constant struggle to improve their camera's output images and the constraint has always been the threat that the user will press and hold down the shutter release. Twenty years ago the camera output images were pretty damn sorry (there I'll call them camera output images and maybe that'll help). The engineers at Nikon, Canon, Fuji, etc. deserve a huge round of applause for what they've accomplished; camera output images have gotten so much better and are often now used commercially SOOC. I have a acquaintance who shoots pro-sports. SOOC JPEGs are required period. He does a fantastic job creating them. That's all great. His clients are happy with the images and he gets paid.
Shooting pro-sports he often has to raise the ISO. He shoots FX Nikon and he get's noisy output images. He has no choice as the camera forces that on him. The photos still sell and shooting SOOC JPEG is required in his job. I remember a couple years ago when he got told his clients required his camera be wifi live to their desk while he worked. They were publishing his photos by half-time -- JPEGs required.
So:
1. Camera output images have improved a huge amount.
2. They are used commercially SOOC.
3. My friend shooting pro-sports makes $$$$ with SOOC JPEGs.
But all that combined does not mean the IQ of those camera output images is equivalent to a hand/computer processed raw => output image. They can be very close and especially under ideal conditions the camera SOOC output image can certainly be at least competitive. But superior IQ (NOTE I DIDN'T SAY A SUPERIOR PHOTO) is typically going to result from hand/computer processing of raw data. It's useful for us to understand why! And as I've shown in multiple circumstances here it can be as simple as different tools producing a different IQ output that is out of the control of the photographer. I can't do a bleep bleep thing about the demosaicing algorithm that my two Fuji cameras use. My only option is to take it or leave it. Well that's going to impact IQ in my output images -- worth my paying attention to? Yep.

A couple things worth watching for the future:

1. The adoption of mirrorless cameras ups the ante on burst mode speeds and that returns pressure back on the engineers to design the image processing software to keep pace. It just got harder for the camera engineers to close the gap.

2. Fuji's experiment back in 2020 was really intriguing and portentous. They added picture control functions into their cameras that they knew couldn't keep pace with the camera's burst mode. Someone at Fuji asked the question; "don't we have intelligent users who can discriminate between features that are worth the cost of slowing down the camera when warranted and still understand that if they need burst mode they'll have to give those up? Let's try it?" They got a lot of flack for it. I saw plenty of complaints along the line of, "what's wrong with my new camera?" In the past no other camera maker would attempt that. Wouldn't it be nice if Nikon's camera noise processing menu added a new option for "extended quality*" *slows the camera & disables burst mode. We'll see since Fuji opened the can and I'm sure the others all took note.

Grahame Loc: Fiji

Perhaps rather than showing your ignorance and producing such absolute rubbish suggesting that I'm insulting others you need to learn to not only read but also understand what you have read.

I'm not in any way, nor have I suggested in any comment that there are not advantages to capturing a RAW file. But, those advantages in many cases are not needed, or necessary, to a photographer in certain scenarios.

That is your own misguided interpretation of what I have written. Should you have not been so eager to push your own agenda you would have possibly understood that there are those that know exactly what they are doing when shooting jpeg. They may have shot the same scenario, over and over again, are experts at it, know exactly what results they will get and know exactly that those results are perfectly adequate for the intended purpose of the images.

Try thinking outside the box, you will not need correcting then.

srt101fan

Yes, pretty obvious....so obvious that you have to accuse him of dishonesty?

By the way, there was only one question, not two. I guess you missed that....

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

I responded to this:

"I would suggest there are many experienced amateurs and pros that know before the capture that they do not need to shoot RAW, because they know exactly what they are doing."

I don't know how else to interpret that statement other than the way I did. Until now you didn't say "there are those that know exactly what they are doing when shooting jpeg." Had you said that, I would have agreed with you.



Of course. I agree with you. You work with raw files yourself, if I am not mistaken, and do some beautiful work.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

I directly quoted the OP. Yes, there were two questions.

"If there is no intention of altering an image after taking it, is there any advantage in shooting RAW vs. JPG, such as greater sharpness, etc.?"

"I wanted to know which was superior/inferior to the other and why."

Those are not the same.

btbg

Now you have lost it. I am not stupid nor am I pushing my tool past its limits.

I regularly shoot at iso up to 12,800 for work. My Z9 is made to do exactly that. However if I shoot jpeg rather than raw it will be very noisy.

Thats why my tool offers me the option to shoot raw instead of jpeg, so I can get the most out of my equipment.

You choose not to shoot in low light because you don't know how since you persist in saying jpeg is as good as raw. If you did what Y challenged you to do you would see that you are wrong.

petrochemist Loc: UK

They are not the same, but the first provides the condition in which the second is to be reviewed. IF no after shot processing is done then both will be the same. The imbedded jpg using the same setting as the in camera one.

The RAW file has advantages only when processing is carried out, where it can on occasion make much better results, but they only come about on doing the post processing.

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

I (mostly) stand behind my original statement.
I am an experienced amateur with around 65 years of photography experience. I don't claim to be the most knowledgeable photographer but I feel I know what I'm doing and I understand what can go wrong even when everything is set up right.

The problems I try to avoid are all with exposure and focus. Composition and subject matter are not something that postprocessing can mitigate for the most part although cropping can sometimes help. I do not set up shots for the most part. I will admit that my original statement was a generalization based on my experience, but I don't beleieve it was pointless. My photos are primarily events. Family events or local events or events dealing with organizations I work for. Burkphoto has described a commercial portrait operation where the lighting, background, and subject matter are tightly controlled. In that operation jpg output is perfectly fine. In my photos, very little is controlled, so things happen. By shooting raw I have more latitude to correct those things after the exposure. In random events, I do not have the time to diddle with my camera's settings to produce the best jpg I can. So my camera settings depend on the camera's automation and settings are pretty much generic. I would say that I could use a jpg directly from my camera most of the time, but not all the time. And even the acceptable shots could be made better in post. Most of the time I could get by running postprocessing on a jpg but since I never know what will go wrong, I choose to shoot raw all the time. Then I don't have to decide which format to use before pushing the button.

Shooting raw doesn't cost me anything significant. In particular, it doesn't cost me any time in postprocessing. Since ALL my shots go into Lightroom, it doesn't matter whether a shot is raw or jpg. I can postprocess either with the same procedures. The raw is usually easier because the data are all there, but I could process the jpg with the same sliders. Since the raw is more flexible, I choose that for my primary input.

Every photographer takes different pictures. Every photographer uses a different method of taking pictures. My original statement was a generalization based on my experience. In retrospect I probably should have written 'The reason I shoot raw is that I never know before the exposure whether or not the picture needs editing.'

And my reply 'Hubris' was also a generalization that was probably not appropriate. To me, that word describes a person who thinks he/she knows enough to predict or even control the future (in terms of how an image is going to turn out). In addition, it implies that the person has too high an opinion of his/her abilities. So it was a pointless insult to unspecified people who I don't know anything about so I have to apologize to them.

But I still believe that raw is the best format to use for general photography (outside of tightly controlled set up shots, which I believe constitute only a small fraction of photography). But everyone has to decide for themselves what is best for them.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

The raw file provides the condition in which the JPEG is to be reviewed? Not sure what you mean.

Bitmaps are produced in various ways by the camera and by image editing software for different purposes. They are not necessarily JPEGs, and none of them are the same as the raw file. When you a raw file in a parametric editor you are seeing a bitmap generated by the program from the raw data. You are not looking at an embedded JPEG.
Processing is always carried out on raw files to get a bitmap, the question is where and how the pressing is done. No bitmap, no image. Working with raw files can always make much better results.

Camera produced JPEGs are more than adequate for many jobs, of course. I carried around a little point and shoot when I worked on the farm to document various things. Nobody cared about image quality so long as the images were exposed well, in focus, and adequately captured the subject.

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

Lightroom will show you the embedded jpg briefly, then replace it with the edited version using the default (or preset) edit settings. The amount of time it takes to replace the embedded jpg will depend on how fast your computer can generate the edited version. It could be 0.1 second or it could be 5 seconds. Once you have the edited version on the screen you will see the effect of moving the edit sliders.

I'm not really familiar with other parametric editors.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

Interesting.

Miker999

Fujifilm cameras create a small jpeg for you to view a raw image on the camera screen. This is not the same file if you view an image shot as a jpeg. That sure was confusing at first.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

Yes, a bitmap needs to be generated in order to "see" the raw data.

Here is a question. If you are using live view the image on the screen could be - probably is - constantly changing. Surely the camera is not generating thousands of JPEGs instantaneously, is it? So what are you viewing?

Miker999

Now I have a headache 🤔🤪

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

Why would you think it has to generate thousands of jpgs instantaneously? A mere 10/second is probably enough to show changes in the scene, even if it's slower than the normal video rate (which is certainly not thousands/second).