RAW vs. JPEG + RAW

[r00onmac]

so i got my XTi yesterday and ive been shooting all over Florence Italy (study abroad for my last 6 college credits, i actually graduated April 30th)

I figured id post this here vs on a Canon or XTi/400D discussion board because i trust RC...

do most of you shoot just raw or raw + JPEG or just JPEG? i shot all JPG yesterday... and today i shot raw+jpeg and im really glad because one or two shots were "saved" from underexposure/bad white balance by the raw file...

ive got a 4 gig card, so im not too worried about filling up in 1 day... actually im more worried about space on my hard drive - i see a new external and a collection of DVD+Rs in my near future...

 

[Blazer88]

I always shoot in RAW + jpeg. I don't have a way to get a thumbnail preview of a RAW file in windows explorer, so I keep the jpegs around to make it easier to browse the pictures and quickly check them without having to go into my RAW editor. I know RAW take up a ton of space, but keeping all of my .psd photoshop files takes up even more. I just built a new editing computer and got 750 GB worth of storage, we'll see how long that'll last

 

[Ebn]

I shoot RAW exclusively (I also have aRGB mapped on a custom vs. sRGB and will use that depending on what I shoot). There's a plugin for Windows that will allow you to preview RAW images.

For Nikon, I just use Nikon Preview to preview.

 

[r00onmac]

Im an apple user... no problems with previewing here... they show up in iPhoto no problem,,, and if i continue on using RAW ill move to aperture...

i think im gonna shoot just RAW tomorrow...

ill see if i can link you to a small taste of the pics ive taken yesterday and today that i put up on facebook.com

 

[r00onmac]

try this...

http://fiu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061006&l=ad1e8&id=18700996

 

[r00onmac]

the ones from yesterday are jpgs... the ones from today are literally raw files converted to jpg... i havent gotten around to learning how to edit too much... the one with the guy in focus but the girl and guy in hat out of focus by a window was the only raw i edited because it was seriously underexposed...

 

[gregr]

i see a new external and a collection of DVD+Rs in my near future...

Save yourself a lot of headaches and just do hard drives. Hard drives are far more reliable and faster, and they're getting cheaper every day. I just shoot RAW nowadays but if you think you'll be in a hurry to share a photo then jpeg or jpeg plus RAW is the way to go.

 

[r00onmac]

well i cant exactly do hard drives on my laptop... but maybe when i get a desktop ill max out the hard drive space...

for now, its externals...

 

[gregr]

Doesn't your laptop have usb2 or firewire ports? I've got a Macbook Pro and I use external hds with it no problemo.

 

[BlueCorn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9961942#post9961942 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by gregr
Doesn't your laptop have usb2 or firewire ports? I've got a Macbook Pro and I use external hds with it no problemo.

Yup. I have two external drives that I use with my Mac. One travels with me and one stays on my desk at work. Sure I end up with 3 copies of all of my pictures that way but I'm protected against failure.

Whether RAW+jpg makes sense depends greatly upon your work flow. I use Aperture for all of my cataloging. It generates previews of my RAW files on the fly so there's no need for that type of duplication. You might want to take a look at Adobe Lightroom if you're on Winders.