Samuraiz Loc: Central Florida

A question like Is raw necessary on an open forum with photographers from the entire spectrum will always provide strong mixed reviews. It's up to the individual to determine if the juice is worth the squeeze. If one takes a lot of landscapes, and are willing to put the time into learning raw editing then they will clearly see an improvement in their end results. Heck just the using the highlight slider in Lightroom can restore what initially appeared to be a blown out sky. YMMV

TonyP Loc: New Zealand

Interesting comment.
I find processing raw files quicker than tweaking jpeg files individually, I think.
I usually batch process them in Photoshop elements using the ACR Plugin. All the sliders are on the one screen, save as a jpeg file and then if I have a 'standout' file I can play with the jpeg file or even go back to ACR to do it there.

BlackRipleyDog

My God, are we beating this dead horse again? If you are shooting for publication, prints, clients and anything other than posting to social media; then yes, shoot raw. If you don't see a need to recover detail from the shadows, if you don't have the curiosity or the vision to see it improved or if you view post processing as a waste of time; then no, shoot only jpeg. Nikon and Canon went to the trouble to design these cameras and write the code to give you this gift. Why would you leave that capability on the shelf collecting dust?

kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

+1

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

Raw in itself is not an instant 'fix'. It is not intended to 'undo' any mistakes made in camera. It is simply a broader spectrum of data available and Raw processing can make finer and more subtle changes than most basic Jpg only programmes.

The whole Post Processing argument is based upon a person's ability to 'see the difference'. The same argument can be used for different camera's, lenses, filters etc. Some people 'get it' and others don't....

Photography is about YOU getting what you want. There is a whole industry set up for you to achieve your goal. Advice is only good advice if it works for you.

'The Best Choice' is a sales gimmick and has nothing to do with YOUR choice.

Have fun in whatever you do.

JuxtaposePictures Loc: San Diego

BlackRipleyDog

A film negative is to raw what a Polaroid instant print is to jpeg.

JuxtaposePictures Loc: San Diego

Kind of yeah. And yet Polaroids are professional too.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/seven-famous-photographers-who-used-polaroids-97986365/

BlackRipleyDog

Yeah and some photographers made hay with pinhole cameras. But the point is that there is no post with a Polaroid. It is WYSIWYG to the max. And certain celebrities got a pass from the curators because they were celebrities and people bought into the hype.

JuxtaposePictures Loc: San Diego

They are for most people but there is post for Polaroids. My point is that all methods can have their advantages and disadvantages and to say (not that you did) something like "professionals should only shoot in RAW" or a similar attitude is missing the bigger picture. Check out number 4 on the list for an example of a photographer that did "post work" on Polaroids or just Google "polaroid manipulation" for a ton of examples.

The thing with RAW is a lot of photographers may hear they need to shoot in RAW but they really aren't at the skill level necessary to be able do so just as not all photographers who shot film developed and printed their own film. There are different skills involved in the capturing of the image versus the manipulation of that data on a computer.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Maybe not. Jpeg is fast and easy until you have to adjust it. White balance, color balance, tonal adjustments, highlight and shadow recovery is often more limited compared to what you can do with a raw file. The hardest part to understand is how with raw you can make different exposure decisions in high contrast situations, which would ordinarily result in an awful jpeg, yet has all the information required to produce a really good conversion from raw. If you shoot average contrast subjects, or shoot in a studio where you control the light, you are likely to not see much of a difference. But raw files have considerably more "pushability" than jpegs, which start to fall apart when you make even modest adjustments. To see a difference you'd have to take an image that is tone and dynamic range (and color) challenging.

First image is an unedited jpeg of what the camera recorded. I biased the exposure to protect the highlights in the water. You can already see nasty stuff in the shadows, and I didn't do any editing yet.

Second image is an attempt to open up the shadows (most of the image, actually) in the jpeg, and you can see "mud" instead of detail in most of the darker areas, posterization, and just a crappy image.

The last is a jpeg of the raw file as I converted it, and made some minor adjustments - contrast, saturation, some removal, etc. I created a 16 bit psd file, then opened it in photoshop, then saved it as a jpeg for posting.

This is the kind of subjects I shoot, so I have absolutely no use for a workflow that starts with a jpeg. I shoot weddings, sports events, birds in flight and perched, night photography, landscape, cityscape, street, etc - and so far I have not ever thought that jpegs out of the camera could touch what I can do when I use a raw workflow.

I used Lightroom and Photoshop for these. But I also regularly use ON1 Raw, DXO Optics Pro, and have used Capture One in the past.

I just finished a shoot I did yesterday of shelter cats and dogs - giving back to the community. Even though I had some control over lighting, there was some variation. and I shot everything from black dogs and cats to white ones. Dialing in a custom camera profile for the speedlight shots for all the images I took with them was a piece of cake. Making the tonal adjustments, applying sharpening, etc also very fast. I went through 300 images, culled about 50, selected 120, and was done with all the processing in an hour. Raw editing is super fast, not complicated, and far easier to learn than trying to mess with jpegs, which I would have had to adjust individually.

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Jim Bob

Because not all reasonable people accept your obviously biased assumptions. Thank God.

mrpentaxk5ii

People belive that if you shoot a JPEG file that, #1 you don't have to futher process it, and #2 it will fall apart if you do that is also wrong. The more often that you open a JPEG file, work on it and close it it will over time break down. I shoot JPEG for every thing I photograph, it works for me, I set white balance for every chang of lighting that happens as I go from shooting indoors to out doors. I understand that a raw file has more info and all of that but I can make the touch ups to my files as JPegs. I will post a sample of the things I have photographed as I work from pre sunrise to after sunset.

BlackRipleyDog

I'm sorry Jim, what does your response even mean? Are you saying that some reasonable people believe my "obviously biased assumptions"? Then that would by definition, make them unreasonable by your reasoning. Bias? Hardly. Reality borne out of experience.
I can take the original raws I shot 8 years ago and rework them with today's post processing software and salvage detail and produce an killer image that wasn't possible when I took it. If I just took it as a jpeg, that door is closed to me. It would still be crap today as it was back then.
If you insist that jpeg's are the only way to go, I don't agree but just go ahead and knock yourself out. Different strokes and all. But I hardly think it is an issue to thank a Deity over. The stench of group-think here is getting a little stifling.

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

I believe that shooting raw is not always necessary, but it is sometimes necessary.
The problem is that you never know which it's going to be, so I shoot raw all the time.