Today’s Question: Something I’ve been thinking about for a long while is shooting raw vs JPEG as it pertains to the art of photography. I don’t understand the push for raw shooting other than being able to have more post processing manipulation options. To my mind shooting raw means it doesn’t matter how you set exposure if you get close because you can “fix it” in post. What are your thoughts?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Raw capture is not a license to ignore exposure, though accurate exposure and color are more critical for JPEG captures. But the bigger issue with JPEG capture is that image quality will always be degraded for every image you capture.
More Detail: Raw capture does provide more latitude when it comes to exposure, but it is still best to get the exposure optimized in-camera. If you completely blow out highlights or block up shadows with a raw capture, for example, that lost information can’t be recovered just because it was a raw capture.
JPEG captures are less forgiving when it comes to exposure, in large part because they are captured at 8-bits per channel compared to 12-, 14-, or 16-bits for raw captures. JPEGs are also less forgiving when it comes to the white balance setting, because JPEG images are rendered in-camera while raw captures are rendered during the raw processing phase of your workflow.
Perhaps even more significant is that JPEG captures will always suffer from a degradation in image quality due to the lossy compression that is applied to each image. Among other things affecting image fidelity, JPEG captures will have a visible grid pattern based on the compression artifacts. This can sometimes be relatively easy to see in an image that was captured as a JPEG, depending on the level of detail in the image and the extent to which the image was enlarged.
In my view using raw capture represents a choice to prioritize image quality and adjustment flexibility. JPEG, by contrast, to me represents choosing convenience over image quality. There’s no question that you can get excellent images when capturing in JPEG, but you can achieve greater image quality by always choosing to use raw capture.
