Just returned to U.S. from Costa Rica bird shoot via LAX for connecting flight to Hawaii and was very surprised to have my bags singled out from the scanner by a TSA agent calling out "photography equipment"! I had 3 Nikon bodies and 4 lenses in my camera back pack and they took the pack to an inspection table and took all bodies and lenses out examining each one in detail. Even had to remove caps from both ends of the lenses so they could "see if they can see light through them". My question to traveling Hogs is has anyone else traveling recently through U.S. airports been subjected to this time consuming and detailed exam? Is it part of the new "getting tougher on security" policy announced late last year or have I just been lucky before not to have encountered such a probing inspection?

A 1st time poster on UHH although I have been subscribed for nearly a year now. I started photography with my first job in 1963 where I received training using a Linhoff Technica 5” x 4”, developing and printing Ilford FP4 & HP4 etc etc. (some Kodak varieties but can’t remember their names … ! ) Although not exactly a “Professional” photographer, photography has been part of my work with every job I’ve ever had. I have taken probably the best part of 500K shots in nearly 50 years of work. I moved over to digital in the early 2000’s with Fujifilm & Pentax progressing to Olympus and lately Nikon & Sony cameras. Digital cameras coupled with the internet were wonderful for me enabling me to embed photos directly into my reports for me to email to clients often on the same day the work was completed. Reports in the days of film sometimes took a month or more before the client saw them ! Anyway that’s my background …

I have been reading with interest recent posts “discussing” JPEGS versus RAW and noted many stating that JPEGS discard data that is retained in RAW files. I felt from day 1 this is wrong ! JPEGS are compressed RAW files – nothing is discarded.

To prove this I have taken exactly the same shot for each file size setting on a Nikon D5300. Set on a tripod with manual settings :– ISO 900, ¼ sec, F7.1, focal length 18mm. Shots taken = JPEG Fine, RAW, RAW + JPEG Basic & JPEG Normal & JPEG Fine.

I then did a little basic editing in Faststone – exactly the same for each shot both NEF and JPEG. I levelled each and adjusted each for colour then saved at best 100% quality. Resulting file sizes are tabulated below.

File sizes

File Camera setting Jpg Raw Edited Jpg Edited Raw
353 Jpg Fine 11849 19455
354 Raw 21900 17815
355 Raw +Jpg Basic 2978 21999 17769 17706
356 Raw + Jpg Normal 6329 21801 19003 17753
357 Raw + Jpg Fine 11786 21792 19439 17801

Hmmm !! Who would have thought !!! Even the JPEG Basic file when edited comes out as large as the edited RAW files. Where did all that data come from I wonder – data obviously is not discarded when the camera saves the JPEG to the SD card. This confirms for me that I can get the same results editing a JPEG as I could editing a RAW file – all the shadow and highlight details etc. must be still in the JPEG given the resulting file sizes after editing. Editing can alter the data, can delete (crop) the data but I cannot see anyway it could add data.

Maybe some super high tech wizard can explain all this but I still think using RAW gives no benefit whatsoever. I certainly cannot see any difference between any of the shots whether RAW or JPEG whatever. For interest I view on a 5K Retina iMac

Cheers JohnR