Recently a friend of mine got me thinking of the difference between JPEG and RAW photos. I heard about RAW shooting before and heard that most professional photographers shoot in raw but I never tried it because I didn’t have a program to view/edit raw photos in and decited JPEG was good enough for me at the time. As I was reading in a magazine today (during a boring school meeting haha) it listed the benefits of JPEG & RAW. Here they are:

JPEG
~ there’s no time-consuming postshoot processing
~ compact file sizes mean more pictures on your memory card and don’t take up so much hard disk space
~ acceptable output quality if the camera has been properly set up for that particular scene
~ easily read format; files will be accessible on anyone’s computer

RAW
~ maximum control of all aspects of the image, without having to make setting and sizing decisions out in the field
~ an archived RAW file can be revisited over the years as RAW processing software evolves, to get even more out of that basic binary data
~ option to work in 16-bit, opening the possibility of performing extensive post-processing enhancement without degrading the image
~ output is generally better quality when examined

After reading this information I started thinking what I use my camera for and how JPEG or RAW could be a benefit for me. When I do photoshoots I will use RAW from now on and when going on fieldtrips with school, I might shoot in both or jpeg only since I’ll need more memory and I would not be printing these photos.

Hope this information helps :)

p.s. the magazine I was reading where I learned this and much more is ‘Digital Camera’
Its my fav magazine for photography, we ordered it when we were in Romania so it was ALOT cheaper from there.. from here (USA) its $120 for 13 magazines! But it includes ALOT~! (even a photoshop cd tutorial)

http://www.photoradar.com/photography-magazines/digital-camera