RAW usage up massively, JPEG bites the dust.
There are tons of reasons for using RAW instead of JPG when you’re taking photographs. Your photos will be sharper, you will be able to unlock your camera’s full dynamic range, and you have a better flexibility over things like white balance.
It seems as if people are cottoning on in a big way, too – I ran a poll about 2 years ago about whether people were shooting in JPEG or RAW… And I re-ran the same poll earlier this month.
The changes are staggering…
2 years ago
Early 2007, 36% used Raw mostly or exclusively. 55% used JPEG mostly or exclusively:
Today
Today, a whopping 66% of you use Raw mostly or exclusively, and only 26% still prefer to shoot in JPEG:
Why’d this happen?
Hey, I think if you read the three articles linked at the top of this blog post, it’s pretty clear why I stopped taking photos in JPEG… But I’d love to hear about your reasons in the comments…
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Insights, suggestions and comments
I read those articles, but I was already moving from JPEG to RAW… I guess you sped the process up. ;D
As always, thanks for all the (really useful) tips ;)
There is a famous funny story in Russian, which can be interpreted like this: “As per the results of a poll taken at WWW******* in Russia 100% of people havу access to Internet and use it on a regular basis”
The point it, as a heavily technical website for enthusiast photographers, you’ve got now more people than before and now more of them are subject-oriented, ie read your site not because of general photo-related stuff, but because of quite understandable specialized themes, diy and the stuff like this. So, the poll reflects that now you have more enthusiastic people among your readers, not because they shoot raw more ;)
UncleSam:
Though I do partly agree with your point, it’s a fact that more and more digital cameras are capable of shooting pictures in raw. And besides that, dSLR sales are through the roof. So although you are probably partly right with your observation, these facts also have their impact on the result and will also be noticeable in other polls.
Software like Aperture and Lightroom are now more common. They make working with RAW a lot easier — even easier than working with jpeg. Since I started using Lightroom, I haven’t looked back.
I’d say a big reason is the incredible drop in the cost of memory. I remember when the Nikon D1 and the Canon 1D came out, flash cards cost about $1 per megabyte. So a 512mb card cost $500. You could save a few dollars by using microdrives, but you had to handle them more carefully than anthrax. Now, a 4gb card costs about $35.
I have been shooting exclusively raw for about three years, but I sometimes had to shoot conservatively when I gave up on jpegs…the latitude I had to work with on the back end was well worth it. But now my card space is never a consideration.
I agree with UncleSam. More readers means that the results are going to change. If you had surveyed only the people who had voted in the previous poll, then the results might be a little more telling.
My vote stayed the same though, I shoot only JPEG. If I shot more model photography I’d probably end up shooting in RAW more often. But when I go out on a photowalk, or to shoot a sports game, I end up with way too many photos to go through and edit and convert all the good ones from RAW to JPEG. A good example of this is when I first got my Nikon D80. I shot only in RAW at some hockey games, and it would take me a week to get my 200 photos edited and online. But when I switched to JPEG for one night, not only did it take me less time to get the photos online ( a day or two ), I was also able to get a lot more good photos ( less space taken up on my memory card ) — which meant even more good photos to choose from.
I use a mixture of both.
Use Raw for studio work or tricky conditions like Sunset where I may want to fine tune later.
For a lot of other situations, especially where I’m taking a lot of photos (e.g. event coverage) I will still use jpeg – mostly because A. File sizes, B. Time to process, C. Accuracy isn’t quite as important as it would be in the studio etc.
Another interesting poll to do would be colour space.
Althogh RAW can output anything, I mostly work in sRGB as I hardly ever print anything.
Know a lot of people use AdobeRGB, have 1 or 2 friends that edit in ProPhoto!
I was unaware of RAW until about three years ago when a photographer friend of mine noticed I was shooting in JPEG. I was fairly new to the DSLR arena back then, and he raved about how great RAW was and how much post control you could have over an image. When he showed me the “combing” that happens with data in a JPEG when you make adjustments to it in Photoshop, I was sold. RAW is the way to go, and the improvements Photoshop has made to the plug-in just keep getting better.
I agree RAw gibes much greater flexibility, but if you want to use photos in electronic photo frames, web etc you need to convert them. Most DSLR these days have the ability to shoot to both JPEG and RAW at the same time, yes it uses more memory but you get the best of both worlds.
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I have hundreds of JPEGs shot on a Canon EOS20D up to 2 years ago. How I wish I could turn back the clock and reprocess them from RAW files to process them to their full potential. I am now a great fan of RAW. I’ve improved my batch processing imeasurably and now find that processing the RAW files quickly in ACR is second nature to me.
i convert from raw to jpeg after i’m sure i’ve doe all the post processing i need to do – other wise i’d be backing up into next year!
I started shooting solely in RAW at the beginning of summer, and am super happy. Always thought JPEG was just as good. No longer though.
I have always shot in RAW .. but now with dual-core CPUs, bigger CF Cards and Hard Drives I am able to go even further and use better workspaces ( I also use ProPhoto )
Adobe has better marketing? Honestly, I think that the use of RAW has increased, but has the quality of the pictures? No one ever asks those kinds of questions. Could be…that people who worry about such things don’t really care about the quality of their pictures beyond pixels?
“reprocess them from RAW files to process them to their full potential.” Comments like this drive me mad. I heard that Adobe is organizing a workshop with to convert the Mona Lisa to DNG so they can correct the white balance and remove a fingerprint in a lossless fashion.
I mainly shoot jpgs for weddings. RAW I use in studios.
I shoot in raw because the cost of flash memory has dropped to the point that I probably have about 30 2 gig cards. My last set of ten cards cost me $130.00, I will probably get more
Short Reply:
I only shot RAW for:
- perfect WB (imposible to get perfect at location)
- color space (sRGB for web, AdobeRGB – or ProPhoto if the print device know it – for prints)
- more dynamic range – the digital cameras are very limited when dealing with everyday light differences
Detailed Reply (more notes):
- I use lightroom and it’s very friendly with RAWs, although yes, a little bit slow on a P4 2.8GHZ 1GB RAM. Interesting, a good WB can be after-set with JPEGs also. But I think colors are not that vivid.
- with today’s HDDs memory is no more a problem
- wasted pics percentage is much more with JPEGs than with RAW
- you can act much faster at location; don’t have to set the WB, you can take different exposure types, usually all faster than “the perfect exposure”: “to the right exposure”, exp. for the high lights, exposure for the skin and so on…
- I don’t agree with those who say they cannot process too many RAW files. Batch processing can be done when one takes a shower, or is eating.
In conclusion, I think JPEG is more automated, used by lazy photographers or snapshooters. RAW gives you more creativity and flexibility. If I had a studio, I might shot JPEG, not RAW, if the lightning condition are the same all the time.
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