Railfan Technology > RAW vs JPEG Question

For years I have been shooting RAW images because I have had many published and that was the rule to use RAW. Now, having talked to some fellow photographers and seeing publications like Trains and Railpace accepting High res JPEG's I am wondering if it is still necessary. JPEG's certainly take up less space on the card. Your thoughts?

Posted from iPhone

RDG630 Wrote:
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> For years I have been shooting RAW images because
> I have had many published and that was the rule to
> use RAW. Now, having talked to some fellow
> photographers and seeing publications like Trains
> and Railpace accepting High res JPEG's I am
> wondering if it is still necessary. JPEG's
> certainly take up less space on the card. Your
> thoughts?
>
> Posted from iPhone

The issue is not what the magazine accepts but what you have to work with in your editing process.  Magazine wise I haven't sent in RAW for many years. I think they realize the JPG is fine and assuming they are dealing with people who know their processing it saves them a bunch of time.

I shoot a lot of nights and snow so shooting RAW is a must for me.  Most of my processing is on the RAW image with a few tweaks afterward. 
However, if you are not editing in RAW or your skill set is such that little editing is required then I guess JPG is fine.  However, the RAW file can save an errant image.

Bob 

RAW has more information than JPEG. I would stick to RAW; you can always make a JPEG later. As for card space, just buy a larger (and more expensive) card. Compared to film you're still way ahead.

One more thing, while I'm here. Not everyone sets their camera's clock accurately, especially with DST and time zones. And camera clocks without GPS can drift. So I suggest every year or so taking a photo of a web page which shows correct (atomic) time, such as https://time.gov. That will allow some rivet-counter looking through your collection in the future to determine the actual time that each photograph was taken.

I shoot large images and save them. I copy them to another file then I reduce the size to a managable size. I realise it take up space withthe 2 files but this way I have the original untouched. Just the way I do it.

Stanley Jackowski
Valrico, FL

Personally I don't have time for lots of RAW jiggery-pokery. I have my slr set to record jpegs at the highest quality and I am very happy with that. I've had several images published in magazines and even the one I once had as a front cover i.e. 'blown right up', looked amazing. I'm not saying it isn't of use in some circumstances but I honestly think that RAW is largely unnecessary. 

The biggest benefit is still the depth of editing RAW allows compared to JPEG. That being said, it’s still a personal preference, some people are quite content never caring about a RAW file.
As for file size and storage space, the cost of hard drives and SD cards has dropped so much, it’s not even an issue to me, but, still could be for some.

Posted from iPhone

The original reason for not using a JPEG was the compression technique causes a degradation in the image itself, the sharpness and color for example degrades a little bit everytime it's opened. It had been recommended to store a completed image as a TIFF to prevent the compression issue. sometimes a pdf would be used, for electronic transfer to a client for example.

A RAW file has a great deal of info and flexibility, many serious photographers archive their RAWs for later use. Memory devices are very cheap right now, the newer cameras will be challenging that though with larger files and r/w speed requirements.

Some JPEG info, note the 1980's expectations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Photographic_Experts_Group

exhaustED Wrote:
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> but I honestly think that RAW is largely
> unnecessary. 

That would be like telling a graphic artist that Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator are largely unnecessary, MS Paint is just fine.

jst3751 Wrote:
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> exhaustED Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > but I honestly think that RAW is largely
> > unnecessary. 
>
> That would be like telling a graphic artist that
> Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator are largely
> unnecessary, MS Paint is just fine.

No it wouldn't. A graphic artist is a professional. Very, very few people taking photos of trains on this forum are professional photographers. For them, and myself included (and as I've said, I've had photos published in magazines), RAW is very likely unnecessary.
If someone asks the question, 'do I need to shoot in RAW', they almost certainly do not need to shoot in RAW. Otherwise something would be telling them that their images are not appropriate in JPEG or similar format.
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/19 20:22 by exhaustED.

Since RAW is taken directly from the sensor, it is not subject to the vagaries of internal processing the camera itself might impose.  Aside and apart from the compression factor, many settings the user might have set are discarded.  This helps the "oops" factor, and may save a shot that can never be repeated. 

norm1153 Wrote:
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> Since RAW is taken directly from the sensor, it is
> not subject to the vagaries of internal processing
> the camera itself might impose.  Aside and apart
> from the compression factor, many settings the
> user might have set are discarded.  This helps
> the "oops" factor, and may save a shot that can
> never be repeated. 

I suppose you could be right depending on the type of photography you're doing. However, I've been photographing trains digitally for nearly 20 years and that situation has never befallen me. Individuals must decide whether raw is appropriate for them, but I suspect the OP has realised it's not absolutely necessary.

Posted from Android

The resampling each time you open then close a jpg image is not exactly true. If you open a jpg then do not make any changes the photo you opened is exactly the same photo when you close it. If you open a jpeg then edit even one pixel or crop a line of the image the whole image will be resampled before it is saved. Two or three edits can really change the image during the multiple resamples.

I find I can do more than 90% of my edits while in RAW in Photoshop.

For me, it's always RAW in the field.  Then if I miss the exposure by a bit, or need to tweak something, there's the dynamic range in the data to do it effectively.   If I know I'll be in a hurry to send off images afterwards, I'll do RAW+JPEG and then can fire off the images in a hurry if I absolutely nail it.  But that's rare that I'm in that much of a hurry (or absolutely nail the shot).  Disks just keep getting bigger and cheaper.  I have every RAW I've shot back to the beginning of the digital photography age (which, for me, was about 2000), which amounts to about 5-6TB worth of data.

As a note, because I see the confusion repeated often - JPEGs only degrade when you save them, as that's the only time the data is recompressed and overwritten.  You can open one a billion times to no harm at all.  A modern JPEG with low amounts of compression is nearly indistinguishable from an uncompressed TIFF.  The problem is when you use it as a working format, where you're opening, modifying, saving, and then opening that same one again, modifying a bit more, and saving.  Each time you go through that cycle, you lose a little more information and introduce more compression artifacts.  If you're going to be tinkering with an image over and over again, use something lossless (TIFF, PNG, etc.) as a working format.

Of course you can also open a RAW file a million times and save without changing the  original since any changes are only saved in the side cart file. In addition since most of editing is done with sliders it is easy to go back and change.

Noise reduction and white balance are easy in RAW.  Tho you can still open a jpg in the RAW converter, the results are not equal.

As noted above much editing can be done in the RAW converter.  PSD format is an alternative to TIFF while you are working with a file internally.

Bob

When I first started with digitial (Nikon D2x), it was only JPEG's due to the learning curve in the post processing end.
As that improved, I started doing both (RAW / JPEG). Still do.

When I use my D700, it rocks out at 8 FPS, so it hits the buffer's end pretty fast.
I compare the two on the computer and decide which is better (for me at least).
Being a slide shooter for so many years, a RAW to me is like having a slide of the image.

BTW, digital storage is so cheap these days, I still think both is the way to go.

A friend here in the UK is a freelance professional photographer, specialising in transport. He has had roadside billboards produced for railway companies from high res jpegs, and he abandoned RAW totally.,Chris uk

Years ago, I did a test between RAW and JPEG images to see if it was really necessary. And the first thing that I noted was, even with my rudimentary image processing skills, I could consistently get better quality JPEGs if I worked them up myself from a RAW image than I got if I let the camera do the heavy lifting. I’ve been shooting strictly in RAW ever since, and working on improving my processing ability. That said, there’s no “correct” answer. The tools to work up a RAW image have improved greatly over the past decade, and the ability of cameras to create decent JPEGs on their own has as well. In the end, the right answer for you is probably going to depend on two factors: 1) how much work do you want to do to get the best out of your image, and 2) do you regularly to the kind of shooting (backlighting or less direct sunlight, darkly lit or night shooting, etc.) that challenges the one-size-fits-all in-camera JPEG algorithms.

What is the advantage of JPEG over RAW?  Just file size, right?  If file size is the only reason, the simple answer is to get a bigger card and shoot RAW.  It seems to me that just because a magazine might accept high-quality JPEGs doesn't mean they're just as good in terms of quality, and shooting in RAW might allow you to "rescue" a shot for a magazine that otherwise wouldn't make it.  

Heymon Wrote:
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> What is the advantage of JPEG over RAW?  Just
> file size, right?  If file size is the only
> reason, the simple answer is to get a bigger card
> and shoot RAW.  It seems to me that just because
> a magazine might accept high-quality JPEGs doesn't
> mean they're just as good in terms of quality, and
> shooting in RAW might allow you to "rescue" a shot
> for a magazine that otherwise wouldn't make
> it.  

No, not just file size, time required to get the image also.

exhaustED Wrote:
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> No, not just file size, time required to get the
> image also.

I'm not sure what you mean, get the image from where?  I suppose if you have older equipment (computer or camera) it might take a bit longer to transfer the file or open it, is that what you mean? I could be missing something, but the time to transfer RAW vs JPG is nowhere near the time it takes to go somewhere and take the photo in the first place.  And if I am going to go that effort, I am going to grab all the image data I can while I am there.  Anything less is cutting corners unnecessarily in my mind.