@ebiggs1 wrote:
"... you're a wedding photographer and want to have a slideshow of the ceremony available at the reception."
A simple task for Lightroom. RAW or not. But Bob from Boston has the important fact, there is no reason anymore to shoot in ipg. Editing software anymore makes the job seemless.
Shooting jpg with a new DSLR is like buying a new Corvette and pulling out four of it's spark plugs. You are simply trashing a ton of data your DSLR is capturing. Canon even makes this software free with each camera.
I wouldn't say there is no reason... but the list is fairly short.
I've done some traveling without my laptop ... and only have my iPad with me. The iPad can import JPEGs off the memory card, but doesn't know how to read RAW files. It seems to be smart enough to know that they are RAW files and most RAW files actually have an embedded JPEG thumbnail which, surprisingly, it ALSO knows how to preview. It just can't open the full image. Of course this is just a matter of software (there's no hardware limiting reason why the device wouldn't be able to read RAW if I found software that knew how to handle it... but even Adobe's software on the iPad doesn't know how to deal with them the last time I checked.) So that's ONE situation where I'll tell the camera to save in RAW+JPEG and then transfer the JPEGs to my iPad (and I still had my RAWs when I got home from the trip.)
The one other area I can think of where JPEG has an advantage is in action photography. If you're shooting sports and you see some action you need to catch, your camera is in "continuous" shooting mode and you hold down the shutter... you hear the camera going "click" "click" "click" "click"...... "click".................."click"................."click". That dramatic drop in shooting speed happens because the internal memory buffer filled and the camera can't take another shot until it's done saving a previous shot to the memory card to make more room in the buffer for the next shot.
When you shoot RAW, each frame takes a lot of space so the memory buffer may not hold very many before you loose your continous shooting speed. But when you shoot JPEG, each frame is small and you can shoot many more frames before this happens.
On my 5D III (which is a bit of an exception, most cameras can't do this), the buffer is so large and the transfer speed is fast enough... that my "continuous" shooting limit in JPEG is actually unlimited. The camera can transfer the JPEGs as fast as I can take them to the point that it's not possible to fill the buffer. That means I can hold the shutter button down and keep capturing photos until the battery eventually runs out of power. Most cameras will eventually run into a buffer limit ... even on JPEG ... but you'll get MANY more JPEG frames capture as compared to RAW frames in this particular shooting situation.
For the overhwelming majority of shooting situations, RAW is going to capture more detail, offer more dynamic range, and offer vastly superior adjustment latitude.
RAW workflow tools like Lightroom or Aperture will auto-apply the sorts of adjustments that a JPEG would have done in-camera... so you don't even have to know how to do basic stuff. BUT... since the RAW workflow tools can be thought of as over-laying the adjustments without actually editing the data in the real image, if you don't happen to like the decision the RAW workflow tool made, you can change it. When you shoot JPEG... those decisions were made for you and if you don't like what the camera did... it's too late -- the original data is gone.
Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da
