David Baldwin
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Upload & Sell: On
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 p.1 #20 · New article - Why shoot RAW - The real answer | |
Well, what galerielux says in his article is true, basically. Of course he appears to underplay the more positive reason for using RAW, that it makes the best use of the tones coming off the sensor, so if you nail exposure perfectly you will have the richest possible print.
Bluntly, in the real world for 90% of photographers the biggest advantage of RAW is that it will tolerate more post processing before falling apart as the article suggests. For example heavy Levels work in Photoshop will probably cause a jpeg to reveal its limited colour budget, just a matter of whether the practical degradation of the image actually shows on your prints.
I agree that the big drawback of RAW is that handing lots of files is a big problem, particularly for social photographers like Bainiac who need to shoot alot, perhaps with other photographers/assistants for all I know, I just hope that the bandwidth (or whatever you call it) in the next generation of computers improves to make up some of the deficit so that RAW can be processed and saved out faster. Perhaps both Apple and PC manufacturers could concentrate on this aspect of computing, something that would make a real difference to lots of us.
Speaking personally I shoot alot of night work, and getting exposure perfect is not straightforward, for example during a 5 minute shot clouds could unexpectedly cover the moon and I must estimate a time correction. In those circumstances using jpeg would be madness, less wriggle room later. But if I am using studio flash and can nail exposure absolutely perfectly, then the RAW vs jpeg advantage might shift towards jpeg as no post is envisaged and the smaller files are easier to deal with.
One day computing will speed up enough to allow us to process RAW as fast as we currently process jpeg, then this argument will end. RAW will rule.
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) ... which is probably why I shoot RAW + med jpgs. 