RAW or JPG Fine

Traveller

The arguments abound, I know, and the plus points for shooting RAW are well documented, but with a 24mp camera is there really any downside to shooting JPG Fine? As I understand it one would get the benefit of the on-board picture controls which in turn might help reduce or even negate the need for much post processing.

Thanks.

bruto

When you view a Raw file in View NX2 or other viewers, what you'll see is a JPG rendition of it. In other words the Raw file with the various camera controls activated, converted to JPG. If you don't want to change anything, then when you save it as JPG for viewing anywhere else, it will be substantially the same as the JPG fine file (some viewers, such as Lightroom, may not read a Raw file the same). Exactly what camera controls are carried over and how well the job is done can vary. As I understand it, Lightroom does not apply the JPG noise reduction by default, and some programs may not interpret Active D-lighting correctly. So if you don't want to edit, JPG is fine, but when you open a Raw file in one of the Nikon editors, what you are seeing is, essentially, the JPG rendition with all the camera controls.

However, any editing you do on a JPG file involves a re-saving of the JPG with compression occurring again. One area where this becomes most apparent is in cropping. If you crop a Raw file, it's a good bit cleaner than the same crop on the equivalent JPG.

These days, with memory so large and cheap, I see little reason not to shoot Raw files to start with. If you like them, you can bulk re-save them as JPG with very little effort, and this leaves you with the uncorrupted originals.

If you want to be able to change exposure, picture control, or white balance, etc., then Raw is better because it allows such changes to be done without re-saving the file, and you can revert without resaving it again.

Traveller

Thank you. That was useful.

GrahamW58

Thanks. I think that's a point well made about the size and price of memory no longer being a defining factor.