Thursday, November 15, 2007

JPEG or RAW - One of the Three Religious Arguments in the Digital World

Of course the other two are Canon vs. Nikon and MAC vs. PC, but back to religious argument #1 - JPEG vs. RAW. OK, OK, I'm coming out of the closet. I'm a JPEG shooter. Please no emails. It's fast post production on my 3000- 4000 wedding images, takes up much less hard drive real estate, and gets the job done. I routinely print 24x36 images, often even larger and all the daily image postings were shot JPEG - 'nuf said.

But who else is a JPEG shooter? You might be a bit surprised. My good buddy and great commercial photographer, Will Crocket, over at ShootSmarter.com is a JPEG shooter. By the way, he has a very cool site - go check it out right here. Another JPEG shooter is our buddy, world renowned wedding photographer, Gary Fong. You can read his bio right here. Another former JPEG shooter was David Hobby over at the Strobist. He was featured in an interview over at That's My Monkey right here. He confided in the interview that when he was shooting a lot of images in a day, he shot JPEG but has switched to RAW since. In any event, why does it have to be a "religious argument". Hey, it's what works best for your situation - JPEG vs RAW; Good vs Evil; Right vs. Wrong - hey just joking :~) By the way, here is a great article on the subject over at the KenRockwell.com right here - it goes covers the discussion very thoroughly and is a good read.

4 comments:

  1. Hey David! Bruce here, from That's My Monkey. Thanks for the link from a fellow jpegger.

    By the way, I remember seeing you years ago in Kansas City where you shared the stage with Denis Reggie! I was the handsome guy toward the back.

    -Bruce

    http://www.thatsmymonkey.com

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  2. David - you're also in the top 1% of all photographers and consistently nail and know how to nail your exposures. The recoverability that others need with RAW is something you don't need.

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  3. what about RAW + JPG shooters? sometimes is handy to have immediately JPG files, ready to be given/uploaded as preview, and later RAW files for post-production.

    :-)

    Giovanni
    www.gantico.com

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  4. You forgot the other big digital world argument: vi -vs- emacs.

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