Raw vs Jpeg

This is an argument I have seen played out on many occasions between photographers, most recently on social media and in particular on my favourite new fix: YouTube, where there is no shortage of advice and opinions.

Two high profile ‘educators’ or vloggers, (not sure if they are working photographers or just YouTubers) publicly slugged it out via their video channels, each arguing the case for either format.  None of their arguments made much sense but that’s probably just as well. However, the fundamental point of which is better, completely missed the point.

Just like the cameras and lenses photographers choose to use for a specific job, so too can be said of which format a photographer should use be it RAW or Jpeg.  I would go further and to be fair, this point was made…sort of, a beginner would do well to learn as much as they can before shooting in RAW, for no other reason than there is a certain amount of post processing required to extrapolate what they have shot in-camera before they can use the image.

It stands to reason therefore, that a person just starting out in photography will have little if no experience on how to process a RAW file and would be better served shooting Jpegs until such time that they have gained the required level of skill to extract all the detail from a RAW file.

And to be honest, this is an area that I have yet to fully exploit as my skill level in post is pretty basic as I have never needed to use photoshop other than the basic tweaks and for captioning.

To this end, the only time anyone would readily choose to shoot Jpegs would be those working as a press photographer, where the single most critical aspect when on a job -apart from the obvious – is speed.  They do not have the luxury of trawling through hundreds of images converting RAW files into Jpegs before transmitting them to their respective publication or agency.

Of course speed is all relative. When I was working on assignments back in the day of film, speed could be a matter of hours or in some cases days. Naturally, this was before the age of the internet and lead times were much longer. You had time to return to your publication, pop into the darkroom, place your rolls into the drop tanks of developer and so on…

If further afield, you had the option of handing your undeveloped rolls of film to a courier who would then either jump onto a bike or in extreme cases if abroad, onto a flight back to base. 

Then we had portable scanners and wire transmitting equipment and things became a lot faster until we finally reached the point of rolling news and the internet and speed was down to a matter of minutes.

Today, everyone from fashion to landscape to wedding photographers and most probably everything in between, should be shooting in RAW to maximize the full potential of the image they have captured.  And despite what anyone says or tells you, maximize they will and do.