JPEG Advice needed

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MrRobbie

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I've been following the current discussions in this forum about Raw v JPEG, but would like your advice specifically on JPEG.

I've set my camera setting to shoot JPEG, Large, Fine. But I'm unsure as to whether this is the best setting for me. I've also read Ken Rockwell's excellent guide to the Nikon D90, although I'm sure that he recommends shooting JPEG, Normal, Basic.

What would you recommend? I'm basically trying to re-learn my photography technique and I'm shooting mainly landscapes, wildlife, buildings, with very occasional portrait shots.

I'm also learning to use use Lightroom 2 for post-processing - so that's another factor. So should I just be shooting raw, and forget JPEG althogether?

Totally confused now .... :bang:
 
I'd stick with jpeg for now. That way you can learn what the camera can do without having to think about post-processing at the same time. Then when you're comfortable with that give raw a try and you'll be able to compare the results.

One of the things I really like about the D90 is the amount of control you have over the jpegs.
 
If you are using Lightroom then you should be shooting RAW imo. This way you have total control over what your end image looks like. Lightroom makes the process of editting your RAW images very simple.
 
I would say that shooting jpeg would force you to stop & think about the scene first ( in respect to white ballance ) & thats no bad thing in my book. If i shoot jpeg i shoot large as i don't always know what size print i may want. :shrug: :thumbs:
 
I agree with corbystock. Raw will give you better image quality but it'll also encourage a mentality of 'I can fix that later'. Shooting jpeg first forces you to think about what you're doing more.
 
But then again, 'Ican fix that later' is quite true, so why not worry about all the other aspects of the shot knowing that :shrug:
 
Maybe stopping to think about WB will make you stop & think about comp, depth, light etc. But when you get to the point when these things come naturally then shoot which ever suits your needs. The OP mentioned re-learning so being forced to stop & think should be advantageous.

I understand that being able to sort certain thing out in PP can allow you to think about everything else but trying to get everything as close as possible in camera is a good discipline to achieve.

Well thats my 2p & worth every penny :thumbs:
 
corbystock said:
Maybe stopping to think about WB will make you stop & think about comp, depth, light etc. But when you get to the point when these things come naturally then shoot which ever suits your needs. The OP mentioned re-learning so being forced to stop & think should be advantageous.

I understand that being able to sort certain thing out in PP can allow you to think about everything else but trying to get everything as close as possible in camera is a good discipline to achieve.

Well thats my 2p & worth every penny :thumbs:
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Thanks all, for some great advice. I agree with corbystock, that because I'm trying to re-learn a lot of what i've forgotten, I should really stick with my current JPEG settings for now and try to get things as right as I can when taking the shot.
 
With regards to the D90, have you adjusted the sharpening in camera (in the picture control menu)? I found that jpegs were a little soft however adjusting the sharpening to +2/+3 made all the difference.
 
sdb123 said:
With regards to the D90, have you adjusted the sharpening in camera (in the picture control menu)? I found that jpegs were a little soft however adjusting the sharpening to +2/+3 made all the difference.
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No, I didn't know that. But thanks, I'll change it as you suggest. :clap:
 
Some strange advice going on here...

Shooting Jpeg is like tying one hand behind your back.
It puts all the decisions in the hands of the technicians who made your camera, who would probably have set something different if they had actually been in the situation you were when you took the photograph.
The one of the worst things about Jpeg is that it throws away more than half the information captured when you fired the shutter. Worse still it sharpens the picture in an irredeemable way, so that you can not adjust it later in a way suitable for the size of output.

Finally, If you start by shooting Jpegs you end up with a large set of crippled files that have lost so much data, that you can not go back later and do anything about it, when you eventually learn the benefits of raw.

The reverse is also true, If you start by taking raw and keep the file, your first efforts at raw conversion might not be brilliant, but you can always go back and revisit your bests shots when you have learnt more.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
Shooting Jpeg is like tying one hand behind your back.
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In the same way that boxers sometimes train with one arm behind their back so they learn to use the other arm to the best of their ability. No one is saying don't ever shoot raw. It's just a good way to learn what your camera can do without the added complication of being able to do it a different way in processing. If you mess up a shot while shooting in JPEG and can't recover it then that's a pretty good learning experience. If you rescue a raw file, maybe you'd be less worried about repeating your mistake.
 
If raw is the digital equivalent to a negative, surely JPEGs are the digital equivalent to transparencies?
Personally. I would shoot in JPEG, Large, Fine. JPEG because life's too short to spend too much time in PP (my photos are for me and if I cock a shot up so it's unuseable as a JPEG, it's just me that's affected!), Large because you can always shrink a large pic but it's hard to stretch a small one and Fine because that throws away less information than the other options (in JPEG). I also have the option to shoot TIFFs so I may experiment if I can be bothered. A quick look at a sample of each shows exactly the same areas of highlight blowing in all 3 file formats.
 
RAW gives you more control over the final image. Using it is a good way to learn PP.

Paul
 
MrRobbie said:
I've set my camera setting to shoot JPEG, Large, Fine. But I'm unsure as to whether this is the best setting for me. I've also read Ken Rockwell's excellent guide to the Nikon D90, although I'm sure that he recommends shooting JPEG, Normal, Basic.
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If your shooting JPEG, I would set your camera to the best / highest possible setting to reduce the loss. :thumbs:
 
Hmm curious this thread seems pro Jpeg
where as the poll seems anti
 
I'm anti-jpeg.

I don't see the point in letting the camera decide over a number of factors (compression, contrast, sharpness etc.) when you can have full control in post-production.

RAW isn't an excuse not to get things right in-camera.
 
I would always shoot in RAW, that said, if I were to shoot Jpegs it would be at the highest quality level available. You never know when you may want to print out large, and memory concerns aside, better to have the highest quality coming out of the camera.

I'd also experiment with the settings you may have in camera to customise the Jpeg. If you always find you are boosting the colours in the computer, boost them a touch in camera. Some cameras have 'standard', 'neutral' and 'vivid' settings which again, may be worth experimenting with. You can also sometimes adjust White Balance settings, (depending on the camera) to make the preset WB setting warmer or cooler if they are not the most accurate straight out of the box.

Sharpening is a difficult one to do in camera, too much and you may compromise any subsequent editing, too little, and you may have to sharpen every image. And if you have to edit every image you may as well shoot RAW. ;) :lol:

So again, experiment to see what the best in camera sharpening level.

You can follow someone's camera settings, but they may be taking a different type of image in a different part of the world. Their settings may be a good starting point, but best to alter them to suit you.


As for Ken Rockwell, take whatever he says with a large pinch of salt, and get corroboration from other sources. As with whatever anyone says on the internet actually. ;) But more so with him. :lol:
 
If you are teaching yourself post processing I would suggest that RAW is possibly the best option.

The RAW file contains loads more information about the image than a JPEG does. It would be a shame that in the future that images you've taken today may be limited by the constraints of the JPEG format.

If at the end of the day you decide that you want to go down the JPEG route then you can convert all your RAW images to JPEG's. You can't go the other route.

If you want to get some more information on RAW nip over to the Luminous Landscape web site

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

Also type in RAW into the search box for information there if you want it.

Hope this helps some
 
Unless you have a specific need to shoot JPEG, maybe you're a sports shooter who's wired to the picture desk, for example.. I really don't see why you wouldn't use raw.

As said, things like sharpening in camera aren't necessarily going to be right for you final output. Plus, it throws away heaps of data.

People arguing for JPEG making you think more while you shoot: I don't see that as a point at all. Surely it's down to the photographer? I shoot raw, and have done from the first day I picked up a DSLR, that doesn't mean I don't think about my shots.

Too much time in post-production? I processed 133 raw files last night, took me less than 10 minutes and I guarantee the files are better than they would've been if I'd shot in JPEG.

If you really want to, you could shoot raw and small JPEG. Then you have a decent file that will be useable for whatever you want.. and you have the JPEG that shows what you had the camera set at.

Or you could just use DPP (whatever the Nikon equivalent is) and apply the camera settings to the RAW file. It will show you were you went wrong, and allow you to correct so you know for next time what it should have been.
 
Lazlo Woodbine said:
In the same way that boxers sometimes train with one arm behind their back so they learn to use the other arm to the best of their ability. No one is saying don't ever shoot raw. It's just a good way to learn what your camera can do without the added complication of being able to do it a different way in processing. If you mess up a shot while shooting in JPEG and can't recover it then that's a pretty good learning experience. If you rescue a raw file, maybe you'd be less worried about repeating your mistake.
Click to expand...

The problem with that theory is that jpegs can only at best give you one of the inbuilt choices available in your particular firmware.

I very often expose in a way that I know would give me a poor Jpeg.. because I know I can get a better result by saving the maximum raw detail by exposing differently. I then have the possibility to do two developments from raw and combine the result in Tufuse. This is not the same as HDR but it does control the available highlight and shadow data.

Using raw, gives similar but finer control, as developing a film negative and then printing on multigrade.
You may just learn something about exposure from using jpeg but nothing about the control of tonal values.

Processing raw is infinitely quicker than wet processing the same number of shots.
 
Thanks to everyone for so much advice. I was initally very wary of trying raw, but from the advice you've given me here, I'm going to give this a try.

It seems a shame not to get the best out of my camera, and I didn't realise that so much file info was lost when shooting JPEG. It'll also give me more to work with when learning Lightroom as well.
 
I am in the situation where I want to change over to RAW - however just found I need a newer addition of Photoshop!

Once this is sorted I am going to try RAW and use the advice from here - cheers guys.
 
I shoot all my weddings and portraits in jpeg format. Can't see any point in changing that; I have actions for changing WB if I get that wrong, but a quick test shot as I move from location to location is all I need to get that right. Sure I don't always get exposure bang on, but with chimping and experience it's easy enough to get it pretty damn close.

Raw seems like another hurdle in the processing to me, loads of memory wastage too.

Whenever I've shot raw - usually personal work just messing about - I end up with gig's of pictures that I can't be bothered to process to jpeg.

I can see the advantages of raw, and if I felt sufficiently worried about being in tricky circumstances I might flick over to raw + jpeg for safety (once in a blue moon) but I get along just fine with jpegs :)

Different strokes for different folks.
 
I shoot raw, don't see why I'd want a compressed image with a possible loss of image quality unless I was shooting a long burst.

Do people really shoot raw with a "I'll fix in in post" attitude? I know I don't, otherwise I'd be sat in front of the computer all the time.

Case in pint is the event photographer at our trackday on Monday. He shot around 1200 images and put the lot up on the web, as shot - no cropping, etc, but then he sells a CD with all your car images on for £20. No point then in sitting for hours editting.
 
Byker28i said:
I shoot raw, don't see why I'd want a compressed image with a possible loss of image quality unless I was shooting a long burst.

Do people really shoot raw with a "I'll fix in in post" attitude? I know I don't, otherwise I'd be sat in front of the computer all the time.

Case in pint is the event photographer at our trackday on Monday. He shot around 1200 images and put the lot up on the web, as shot - no cropping, etc, but then he sells a CD with all your car images on for £20. No point then in sitting for hours editting.
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I would have thought that was a "vote" in favour of Jpeg TBH
A lot of the tweaks ( sharpening for (a good) one) can be set up in camera
and then "no sitting around for hours processing" :shrug:
 
Here s my simple rule for raw or jpeg.

If shooting outdoors in changing lighting conditions, raw is best. With raw you can edit your images far better than jpegs. Same applies if shooting interiors using ambient.

If shooting in constant lighting ie studio flash then jpeg is ok. Providing your setup is ok and acurate there should be hardly any editing to your images. For jpeg shooting I would always use the highest setting to give the best quality file.

On camera flash is slightly different and does require a sound understanding of the camera/flash combo and how they work.
 
Byker28i said:
I shoot raw, don't see why I'd want a compressed image with a possible loss of image quality unless I was shooting a long burst.

Do people really shoot raw with a "I'll fix in in post" attitude? I know I don't, otherwise I'd be sat in front of the computer all the time.

Case in pint is the event photographer at our trackday on Monday. He shot around 1200 images and put the lot up on the web, as shot - no cropping, etc, but then he sells a CD with all your car images on for £20. No point then in sitting for hours editting.
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Horses for courses really. Event photographers will mainly use jpeg as its a high turnover low cost. Plus due to the volume time will also be a factor.
Now for the wedding photographer this would be a different story.
 
I'd stick with jpeg for now... when you're comfortable with that give raw a try....
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What's to get comfortable with? It's a file format, that's it. It's only the software you use to edit the image that needs to be gotten used to.

If you don't know how to use your camera then your shots will be pants, be they in raw or JPEG. Just concentrate on getting exposure right for the time being, understanding what it is you need to know about your camera that will make it second nature, an extension of your arm.
 
I always shoot RAW unless I'm burst shooting at a motorsport event or whatever. If I plan to take 500+ pictures I shoot in JPEG. Most of my shooting is just a shot here or there, so I'll shoot in RAW so I have much more control over the image later.
 
I find jpeg, fine and large to be fine, in fact I've never needed to shoot RAW. Just not for me.
 
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