I’ve been advised to shoot Raw + JPEG on my camera, and was wondering what are the benefits of doing so?
BRIAN SAYS… Capturing an image and saving in two different formats is a surprisingly common decision, but rarely is it necessary in my view. If you need to be able to deliver images right at an event or even transmit them direct from the camera or a mobile device, then JPGS makes sense. It’s also a great option if you don’t want to spend more time on a computer to process your images after you have taken them, or learn the additional editing skills to do so. Choosing to shoot JPG does mean you need to be more careful with camera settings for white balance, Picture Style (see left), and noise reduction as these are baked in to the camera JPG. Many news, sports and events photographers only shoot JPG images since their primary need is speed of sending photos.
Shooting Raw is a good choice if you enjoy the post processing part of digital photography and want to extract the maximum from a photo, or have the most flexibility for post processing.
If you decide to shoot both types, then it fills up memory cards much more quickly and you may find that the number of images you can capture in a continuous burst is reduced as both files have to pass through the camera buffer before being written to a card.
For a camera with two card slots, you can write Raw on one card, JPG on the other, but it then makes organizing photos and deciding which image to process more challenging. Some work from the JPGS and find the corresponding Raw if needed, though it is more awkward.
One exception is when tethering, I shoot Raw and a smaller JPG since EOS Utility can transfer just the JPG for speed and provide a preview of the photo on a larger computer screen. After the photo shoot I then just delete the redundant JPGS.