Raw or JPG?

Are you confused about the difference between raw format and JPGs? If so this short video by Canadian wildlife photographer Simon d’Entremont will provide a lot of answers.

“IS RAW BETTER? You may be surprised!

Basically one of the main issues between the two formats is with raw format you must edit your raw file to as Simon says “make it prettier”. With JPG format the edits are done for you in your camera and while you can make adjustments to the edits to suit the sort of image you’re shooting (such as portraits or landscapes or weddings or wildlife) you’re still pretty much stuck with the image set as the camera shot it.

So why doesn’t everyone shoot JPGS?

The raw format allows you a great deal more latitude when it comes to making changes to the image. If you understand your raw editing program (like Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One, Affinity, DXO and many others) the resulting edited image can be significantly better looking than the JPG. The raw format will allow for much more manipulation of the image without significant deterioration of the end look.

But why do some people only shoot JPGs?

First of all there’s no editing needed. Learning some of the complicated raw editing software can be a daunting task. In JPG format you can still make minor corrections of cropping and making the overall image a little brighter or change contrast a bit but if shot correctly the JPG image is going to look pretty good right out of camera.

A lot of sports photography and news images are shot as JPG as this file format results in much smaller files than raw files and can easily be displayed immediately without editing (as I did a few years ago after shooting hundreds of images all day at a town baseball tournament I projected my JPG images immediately without editing on a screen during the awards dinner).

So with JPGs you don’t need to learn a complicated raw editing program and your vacation images will still look great on social media or in a photo book (even a smartphone can shoot images good enough).

But once you’re shooting once-in-a-lifetime images on expensive DSLR or mirrorless cameras while on photo shoots to exotic locations most enthusiast level photographers will want to shoot in raw format and take the time at home to produce first-class professional looking JPGs from their raw format images. Be forewarned editing 20,000 raw files (as I did after a photo trip to shoot birds in Costa Rica) can take a significant amount of time at your computer desk.

There’s lots more to consider so watch the video and as Simon says you might be surprised!