This topic never grows old. Every digital photographer regardless of mastery has one point or another asked themselves this question, should I shoot in RAW or JPEG? Here’s my take on it…
I used to shoot primarily in JPEGs when I first got into digital photography. Not out of choice when I first fiddled with my compact Casio S100; it was the only storage format for pictures taken on that device. It does help since SD cards I used back only had 256MB worth of storage each. It’s unimaginable when compared to the average 32GB cards I use today. That camera was so thin, slimmer than a stack of playing cards. I could easily slide it into the pockets of my jeans and forget all about it. It was that convenient… Of course, the widest aperture was only f/4 and I wasn’t able to replicate those creamy shallow depth of field shots I see in abundance on Flickr back in 2005. As I read up more on photography, I yearned to own a camera that enabled me to fiddle around with every aspect of the exposure, not just the exposure compensation.
Switching over from compacts to DSLR was greatly liberating… The joy of manually determining your exposure, overriding the camera’s suggested setting for a scene and selecting your desired focus point (anything off centre to the extreme edges), is unmatched. Well the first thing I did when I got my first DSLR was to figure out how to set the file format to RAW. As a newbie, I followed the advice of other photography forum experts and bloggers to shoot in RAW. Some of the reasons given were that RAW enabled the best recovery (if you screwed up your exposure) or that it contains the more details. It didn’t matter that much if I shot RAW or JPEG back then. I was editing photos out of freaking iPhoto! The only extensive edit I did was when I removed blemishes from my pimply self-portraits.
I fiddled shortly with RAW when I gave Aperture 2 a go, but switched back to shooting with JPEGs as I didn’t feel I had much advantage with shooting RAW. I liked the convenience of having the camera process the image for me into a more storage-friendly file size, JPEGs were more ideal for me. I was just a student on a limited budget. I have no extra cash for dedicated picture storage. Hell to big hard-drive burning photos! I’ll do fine with my tiny JPEGS, thank you very much. Those were simpler times, when I was just a budding enthusiast and still majorly apprehensive about using Photoshop.
When I upgraded from the Nikon D90 to the D800, I stuck with my guts and continued shooting in JPEGs. Again, I figured I didn’t want to burn through storage space since RAW files on the D800 are ginormous. I also didn’t really see the need for having RAWs. Do I need to do extensive post-processing tweaks with the exposure? I mostly nailed my exposure and if I didn’t I would take it as a lesson to guesstimate better in my next shot. Get it right in-camera was my primary maxim in photography. And if need be, instantaneous playback (or less glamorously “chimping”) before moving on to my next shot was a more economical strategy than shooting duplicate copies in RAWs. That’s what I thought until I embarked on a tricky project… I was tasked to document the exhumation process of my great-grandparents’ remains from Choa Chu Kang Cemetery and reinterment at Kong Meng San Monastery’s columbarium. The prayers, rituals were all done close to noon. Imagine the harsh noon sun beaming full force on treeless-hills lined with semicircular concrete tombs. My cameras were heating up fast as I covered the ground. Exposure was tricky to nail under that sort of scenario. Expose for the faces, you can’t expose for the skies. Expose for the skies, you can’t exposure for the faces. I might have saved myself some heartache if I had brought along circular polarizers for my cameras. Hell, I should’ve just plainly shot in RAW, or better still RAW and JPEGs. Best of both worlds. No surprise I documented the first portion of the project in JPEGs. But I quickly rebounded and shot the second portion in RAW and JPEGs.
In my opinion, the Nikon’s D800 really shines when you edit the RAW images it produces. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I’ve not dropped Nikon and go solo with Fujifilm. The RAWs are packed with data that you could use to your benefit to enhance or salvage an extremely under/overexposed photo. You can safely push or pull 5 stops of highlights and shadows to your desire without affecting the overall image quality. That’s pretty much a wide berth to play with.
A hastily taken picture that was destined for the trash folder, but some work in Photoshop help salvaged the shot. Not perfect but beats the original. Picture taken with the Nikon D800.
Before: Overexposed mess of a shot I took of my Mum at Gardens by the Bay. After: Salvaged what I could from the blown highlights, fixed white balance and light retouching and removal of distracting elements in Photoshop. This extensive edit couldn’t have been possible if I had shot the image in JPEG.
Now there is so much talk in recent years about how Fujifilm’s X-Trans technology renders high quality JPEGs, making the need to shoot RAW obsolete. Friends and colleagues using Fuji X cameras attest to that. Heck, that’s how I felt too when I first switched over to the X-Pro1. I think the success of Fuji’s JPEGS over those produced by its competitors might be caked in its collection of film simulations. Fujifilm, as the company’s name suggests, was a big player in films back in the analog era. I like the rich saturation Velvia renders, though personally I never got to play with it. Lean budget and mediocre photography skills as a kid, I was only trusted with disposable box cameras. I got consistently better results with Kodak’s consumer films, so I prefer dabbling with Kodak’s disposable range over Fuji’s.
The view from a badly scratched up airplane window above the South China Sea. Picture taken with the X-Pro1.
Before: JPEG with Velvia simulation, cropped slightly. Note how colors are punchy and bright, with slight magenta-ish tint. After: Edited RAW image looks sedated in comparison, but has more realistic colors. I could live with the JPEG version but it’s interesting to observe how much “steroids” the Velvia simulation is on. This is far beyond the saturation in Nikon’s Vivid picture setting. *The slight rainbow effect under the wing was introduced by the Zeiss circular polarizer. No polarizer filter I’ve used prior had that effect. I wasn’t even rotating the filter much! It’s a good filter, cuts down reflections effectively, but adds noise to the picture when it creates rainbows out of nowhere.
But anyway the talk is more about how Fuji’s film simulations are better than the JPEGs churned from regular big name cameras. One thing, Fuji’s got a great marketing team that understands what consumers want. Why are enthusiasts snapping up editing plug-ins like VSCO, Nik Color Efex, etc? Not only is this due to the nostalgia of generating images as close to what photographers used to get back when shooting on film, I think what they crave is that “realism” in skin tones, and the slight imperfections that comes with it. So far I’ve steered clear from VSCO. I used to go crazy with the cross-processing effect on Nik Color Efex years ago. But years working as a wire agency picture editor has tamed my appetite for over the top edits, though I continue to push my camera’s performance with my penchant for extreme exposure combinations. Ultimately I prefer to keep my pictures looking simple and natural, rather than baked.
Driftwood sculpture of a dragon by artist James Doran-Webb spotted inside the Flower Dome of Gardens by the Bay. Picture taken with the X-T1.
Before: JPEG straight out of camera, rendered from Pro Neg Hi simulation. After: Image processed from RAW with white balance adjusted. Edited RAW image looks more vibrant and warmer, JPEG version seemed less saturated and has stronger contrast.
When I first started shooting with the X-Pro1, I was excited with the JPEG results taken in Velvia setting. Every shot looked so vibrant… But I found Velvia too saturated for skin tones, so I toned down the reds in post-processing. I subsequently use Provia when shooting portraits, and that produced pretty sweet frames, with the exception of what I feel is an overdose of softness. I increased the sharpness setting but it kind of didn’t reflect in the areas I wanted sharp. The more I shot with the X-Pro1, the more I felt limited by the JPEGs. The contrast can be pretty harsh for my tastes. Furthermore JPEGs being JPEGs, there was little room to tweak around if you got one of exposure settings awfully wrong. Yup, sometimes you seriously muck things up that you wished you had duplicates in RAW to save your ass. RAW files are smaller on the Fujis so it felt less of a pain to shoot RAW + JPEGs. Anyway eventually I settled with using the Pro Neg Hi film setting, which supposed simulates a punchier version of the Fujicolor Pro 160NS. I don’t think I’ll ever try the actual film since it doesn’t come in 35mm format. I’m lucky that Aperture still works because it processes the best out of Fuji’s RAWs. It renders a neutral palette from the RAWs that enable me to make finite or large tweaks in the exposure, contrast and saturation to produce the colors I envision. I tried editing Fuji’s RAWs out of Lightroom and Capture One Pro but didn’t like both programs’ RAW conversion. I understand this is probably down to personal preference, and the fact that Aperture has been discontinued meant the time is ticking to find a replacement DAM and RAW converter for my pictures. But until then… I’m taking the risk to continue with Aperture.
So what do I suggest? Shoot JPEGs or RAW? If you know what you’re doing in post-processing or shooting for a paid gig, RAW is a good deal and your best insurance. Though it’s important to note there is a limit on salvaging serious muck-ups, and you can’t sharpen an out-of-focus shot! JPEGs only for the metering maestros who get everything spot-on in camera or casual enthusiasts who aren’t keen on storage woes and aren’t sweating it if they don’t get their shots all perfect. It’s important to note, shooting RAW is not the thing all “pros” do. There are veterans in the field who shoot JPEGs only, and their works still grace publications large and small worldwide. The best deal for me is to shoot RAW + JPEGs. I’m a stickler for image quality so I’ll be going with both whenever I can. It’s not a must, but if you can afford to, why not?