DanaJ Offline Upload & Sell: Off
|
I admit JPEG has it's issues, but Photoshop level 7 JPEG is about equal to Canon's level 3 in-camera compression (both are close to the IJG level 83). The standard in-camera Canon JPEG setting, "8" is more like Photoshop's level 10 or 11 (but with chroma subsampling). There are lots of reasons to prefer RAW to JPEG in the camera, but these artifacts aren't one of them.
With our 1Ds, we use RAW in the studio, but JPEG for a lot of other things. For indoor gymnastics, the camera is a dog already -- it'd be nigh useless shooting RAW. This is really a problem of using the wrong tool for the job, though we get some pretty good results knowing the limitations. We already fill up 5GB in two hours with a single camera and level 7 JPEG, and usually spend some time waiting for the camera to flush its buffer. In other venues like autocross photos there isn't a speed issue but RAW is far more work than is justified by the return (to me at least). The real issue as Tim mentioned is that with JPEG you have to get everything very close to right when you capture the shots.
Rob brought up the point of high res + high compression vs. low res + low compression. A good point for what you're doing. If you're in control of the process, I've found better results with the opposite given identical file sizes, assuming Photoshop level 7 is the low end of compression. An example is, given large normal vs. small fine as two options for JPEG capture on a Canon camera, both producing equal sizes, the former produces superior results in most cases.
|