RAW vs. JPEG

Just to toss in a contrary opinion ... here's a little heretical thought.
Every week people are posting that Raw is best .. don't shoot jpg etc
On forums everyone wants the "best" of everything but sometimes good enough is good enough.
The Phantom's jpg files aren't too bad and for most people, jpg is all you'll ever need.
Shooting jpg is a lot faster and you don't have to go to all the trouble of the post-processing.
I shoot jpg because Raw takes too long for the shooting I do and I have no complaints about the quality.
This looks tiny here so look at it full screen on a big monitor and see what you think: Shipping - Above & Beyond Photography

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Just to toss in a contrary opinion ... here's a little heretical thought.

Opinions are good. And its not a heretical thought at all. Sometimes good enough IS good enough. It totally depends on how careful you are at input and what your output requirements are as to whether jpeg will suit or DNG is a better option. If all you are going to do is snap a photo and shove it on facebook, then good enough is just that.

I am an advocate of trying to get it right in camera as much as possible. However, due to the remote nature of this particular beast, sometimes its not that easy. And there are times you just gotta shoot from the hip. That is where DNG shines. It allows you to shoot from the hip and fix your aim later.

I hate AWB. Most cameras do a piss poor job of it. I set my P3 to shoot custom WB at 5000k. Because I shoot raw, WB is a post thing, not an in-camera thing for me. Its one less flight time worry. One of the last times I shot anything with AWB was at one of my granddaughter's elementary school volley ball games (she's now almost 18 so that should give you a time frame). The gym was THE lighting hell. It has milk glass windows facing south with natural afternoon light coming through. Then between those window panels they had strips of cool white florescent lights and behind the stands on my side were more florescent strips. Above they had 3-phase mercury lights typical in a gyms. At one end they had halogen lights because that end had a stage for plays. I swear I shot almost 3k photos during that tournament and I don't recall any two having the same white balance out of the camera. Pink. Green. Blue. Red. Orange. Good God it was a nightmare. But I was fortunate to have shot in RAW. Thank goodness her team's uniforms has white lettering to sample! It took ages to fix them all but I did. And they all looked like they were shot under one light source.

If you shoot jpeg you will want to look hard at the settings in the P3. I feel its WAY over sharpened. And once you add sharpening, its nearly impossible to remove in post. I also feel the camera in the P3 is a bit over saturated too. Again, once set in the jpeg, its not easy to correct without quality loss. The final image size may allow that quality loss. If you are taking the 4k x 3k down to 800x600 to post on FB, well, ok, then, you don't need super input quality. In that case you can tolerate quite a bit of quality loss because your end product is going to dictate the necessity of the processing down.

Also, once a jpeg is produced from the sensor data, your options are very limited as to what you can do to fix or adjust anything. Again, many times this does not matter. However, a DNG that was over/under exposed or shot with the wrong white balance can be easily and quickly corrected with little to no quality loss. The same is not true of a jpeg.

As I said, shoot RAW+Jpeg. Then choose which you will use later. Hard to go wrong with that.
 
Just to toss in a contrary opinion ... here's a little heretical thought.
Every week people are posting that Raw is best .. don't shoot jpg etc
On forums everyone wants the "best" of everything but sometimes good enough is good enough.
The Phantom's jpg files aren't too bad and for most people, jpg is all you'll ever need.
Shooting jpg is a lot faster and you don't have to go to all the trouble of the post-processing.
I shoot jpg because Raw takes too long for the shooting I do and I have no complaints about the quality.

I have always been a proponent of RAW since I started shooting digital - quite a few years ago. I completely agree with all the "advantages" posted in this thread. There is tremendous upside and flexibility shooting RAW and I always shoot RAW with my DSLRs.

That said, I also agree completely with the above.

Ultimately, you are not "looking" at the raw file. You are manually processing the RAW file and saving out to another format (ironically, that will be jpeg for most people).

Many professional sports photographers shoot jpeg. File size and need to post-process makes RAW less advantageous for many applications. I only point that out to show that with the right equipment, settings AND person pressing the shutter button, excellent results are achievable with RAW.

The difference comes down to letting the camera process your file or creating the need for you to process that file yourself. If your camera produces acceptable results and you don't want to spend the time playing with settings, jpeg is a good alternative.

Jpeg also has the big advantage of compatibility. It is also likely to be a more future proof format.

As long as you don't tend to run out of room on you SD card, the suggestion of shooting RAW+jpeg is best. You have the "no hassle" jpeg which you can share with friends and open in virtually any graphics software. You also have a file you can play around with.

Learning the basics of shot composition, white balance, exposure setting, etc. will make for better photography, no matter which format you shoot. RAW won't usually let you turn a horrible shot into gold, but it can let you make a good shot better. (How much better usually depends on the in-camera processing algorithm).

Final use is also a factor. For use as a screen background or viewing on a phone or small sized digital screen, there isn't going to be a quality difference between a camera produced jpeg or one you produce from a RAW file (even after you make adjustments or add effects). The real differences become more apparent when you get into higher resolution applications such as print.

Of course, with storage space cost being so low, there are few situations where shooting RAW+jpeg poses any disadvantage.
 
I have shot a broad spectrum of styles.

From Political commentary to Social commentary
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From Adult portraits to Kid Portraits
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From Food to Drink
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From Surreal to Real
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From High speed to Low Speed
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From Totally Staged to Real Life
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From Earthly Bodies to Heavenly Bodies
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Architecture to Landscape
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In all of that, RAW has been my go to format. Because of its ability to be manipulated after the shot. Because it provides quality in and delivers quality out. There have been times where I was glad I shot in RAW. For example, I printed this photo that I took at my granddaughter's first communion:
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The church wanted it for their hall so it was printed VERY big. Here is a photo of me with the print:
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Will you be printing your photos that big? Who knows. I hadn't planned on printing it that big when I shot it. But, it was shot in RAW and that allowed me to produce such a large quality print from it. Sometimes you never know what will be needed when you press the shutter release. You think its just going in a digital frame and thats the end of it. Life is full of surprises.

Another example of how things can go completely different than you anticipated. Take a look at this shot (yes, I know its above):
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That photo spans over 10 years! Yes. Really. Its a totally staged photo. The girls are not outside. They are inside in front of hot lights and were actually sweating. The background was a shot from my driveway over 10 years before. The snow in the foreground is fake.

Here is how it all came together:
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I almost never throw away photos that seem like junk at the time. I keep them. This is a circumstance where a junk shot of my driveway became useful 10 years and 2 cameras later. Thank God for RAW.

RAW may not be useful to you NOW. What about next month? Next year? Or next decade? Good enough NOW may not be good enough later. That too is a possibility.
 
I have no problem processing DNG on my iMac.


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I'll start shooting in both. It couldn't hurt to see what it has to offer.

Good attitude!

Its not like you are likely to fill up your SD card with stills (maybe if its small). So you don't use the DNGs now. You might wish you had them later. And if you don't, well what did you loose? A bit of hard drive space. Whoopee.
 

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