Raw vs Jpeg

This is a discussion that has already seemed to have been going on forever. If anyone isn’t sure or wants to read the pros and cons, this is probably as good a collection of thoughts as any.

http://photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/00SCmq

here is part of the post which starts the discussion:

I’ve found as far as my workflow and ease of editing, working with JPEG has been much easier (not to mention the amount of pics I can fit on one compact flash). I worked with RAW for awhile but found it to be a bigger pain in the butt than I was wanting to take on. For one, I do all my cropping, sorting, and burning through Picasa…which doesn’t support RAW files. So, I moved over to Adobe bridge, but that got rid of my ability to quickly crop, quickly sharpen, and move on to PS quickly.

For what it is worth I shoot in RAW plus jpeg. I always post process in either Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop 4 which both use Adobes’ RAW software. To my mind working in jpeg is a bit like driving a Ferrari and never getting out of second gear.

The only time I’d rethink would be if I was working in burst mode and needed to get off as many shots per second as possible. I don’t shoot sports as a rule so this doesn’t tend to be an issue.

RAW files are much larger but storage is now so cheap that cost isn’t an issue and files can be downloaded in the background so there is no real time penalty.

The Photo.net link above opens a long discussion with some excellent examples of the greater flexibility when manipulating RAW files.

To those that say it  is unprofessional to rely on any post proccessing I would argue that it is unprofessional to eschew a safety net that comes without cost. I know of no photographer that hasn’t forgotten to reset white balance at some time or another. The  Photo.net discussion covers all of this in great depth and much more.