why shoot in both raw and jpeg?

[BillDrew]

Originally Posted by TCav

I'd say that for snapshots and travel photos, RAW is a waste. You're likely to take hundreds, if not thousands of photos, and you're not going to want to spend the next few weeks after your return processing all those RAW files.

RAW is great when you only have one chance to get it right. For everything else, shoot JPEG.

I think the travel/snapshots are exactly when you want to use RAW (+JPEG): the main advantage of shooting RAW is to be better able to correct exposure problems. Exposure problems are most likely when shooting without time (or inclination) to get things set exactly right - such as when traveling or shooting the kids catching a butterfly.

[TCav]

Originally Posted by BillDrew

... Exposure problems are most likely when shooting without time (or inclination) to get things set exactly right - such as when traveling or shooting the kids catching a butterfly.

That's when you use AUTO, not RAW.

[peripatetic]

The point about RAW is that it is, as the Adobe RAW standard suggests, a "digital negative".

A JPG is a digital print.

There are a couple of downsides to RAW, but essentially all come down to needing more computing power.

When I first started shooting with my Canon 20D I decided I would only shoot RAW. As it happens I am very pleased with that decision, as each generation of RAW converter now produces better images from those old RAW files of 5 years ago. I find I can revisit them and get sharper less noisy images from the digital negative if I reprocess them.

All of which would have been impossible with JPG files.

I never shoot anything which is "just a snapshot" all my pictures, including those of travel and family are precious to me and potentially good. I have occasionally used JPG over the years and always regretted it later when I took a really nice shot that I wanted to work on for printing.

I mean really, when do you go out thinking: "I'm now going to take a bunch of rubbish pictures, so I might as well use JPG."?

So my answer is ALWAYS use RAW, and use RAW + JPG if you are a journalist or professional photographer who needs to deliver results to your customers/employer FAST.

[maggo85]

After all I read in this thread (thanks @ all for the great comments!) I think I'm going to shoot always in RAW+JPEG - if I'm happy with the pic as it comes out of the camera, I don't have to do PP and take the JPEG as it is. But if I want to, I have the opinion to work with the RAW-file.

As long as memory size is no problem, I'll shoot like this

[RobertDavis]

Having the JPEG there lets me quickly preview the image on my computer. My machine is quite slow at loading thumbnails for RAW files.