RAW vs JPEG.... a Pro's opinion...

I know we have spoke about the image pro's and con's of shooting RAW vs JPEG.
But I would like to relate a recent experience of mine.

Firstly I'm not the Pro, I'm a locksmith, but I got to spend a day with a Pro wedding and portrait photographer and he shoots only in JPEG, doesn't ever use RAW. His argument was that he gets it right in camera and doesn't need RAW. This guy shoots 3 weddings most weeks and is booked solid for nearly 12 months. He says it also speeds up the editing process.
Watching him work, he was just a class above anything that I could even imagine. The way he checked, adjusted, reshot, was incredible. It was fluid, precise, in fact it was professional.
I only shoot in RAW and it really showed me the difference between a guy with a good camera and a couple of lenses and a PRO.
This guy also showed me some post production work and he is very experienced with Photoshop and that certainly gives him some room to edit with his images.
I shot about 700 images this past long weekend, I have edited about a dozen so far.

I'm just wondering about the Pro's on this site and those guys that are making money from their images, what format are you using and does that depend on the number of shots taken and how much editing you are doing. The Pro that I met edits and hands over about 200 photos a week to 10 days later to each bride, usually 3 brides a week, plus whatever studio work he picks up. This guy also pays somebody to do some of his editing.
Is it only hobbyists and keen amateurs and landscape photographers that have the time to use RAW?

Steve

It wasn't Missy MWAC was it. She has a series on shooting weddings now.

About a year ago I started focusing on taking less pictures, and trying to get it exactly right in the camera. It is so easy to spray out a bunch of photos then most go to waste because you never get time to edit them. This guy sounds like he knows his equipment and knows what he wants to do. Since he is making a product to sell, time is money and you can certainly see his point. I would be curious as well what pro's that make there living producing pictures do as well.

He's not the only pro that shoots that way. Most will even kick it to black and white when the lighting gets bad. I'd say the people in the middle need raw the most. Once you've done it long enough, you know what your gonna get and set yourself up for success. They get paid to take pictures and not so much to edit them. I suck and love options. Those are two good reasons to use RAW.

I've seen the same thing. I was at a reunion with a Pro I respect in October and he shot the entire night with jpgs. And, checking his EXIF data, mostly at 1/60, f/4 to f/5.6 and ISO 400...letting the flash do the work on exposure. Shots looked great to me.

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

he is making a product to sell, time is money and you can certainly see his point.

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Quick guess but combine the above statement with their skill level and their knowledge of the standard they need to acheive to keep their clients happy and I can see why jpeg is used. But, change any one of those three factors, and I suspect RAW would be used. For example, if a Pro was shooting a shot for an exhibition, contest or to be viewed by his peers, I suspect it might be in RAW.

Another factor could be that for Pros that grew up on film, shooting jpeg is very similar to shooting film in that you get it right in the camera and only make minor tweaks "in the darkroom."

Thinking on this a little more Steve, I would be curious what format he uses. Like Neutral, Standard or such. Maybe possibly he uses a custom format, which would be most likely and from years of experience he knows exactly which one to use to get the results he wants.

Of course it is obvious he would be doing his own white balance. I wonder what other settings he goes with as well.

Was it Jerry Ghionis :-) I get paid for my images and I shoot in RAW. I also work very hard at getting "correct" exposure in camera. Since I am a portrait photographer that means exposing for the face. RAW offers more latitude though and sometimes exposing for the face leaves blocked up shadows or blown highlights. Frankly they are often times less important to me but RAW gives me the ability to recover some of them if I want to. Jerry Ghionis once said that his clients don't care whether or not he shot in RAW or JPEG, an they also can't tell the difference. I work in Lightroom and the workflow is the same for both RAW as JPEG. I don't feel it slows me down. I know a few wedding photographers who prefer JPEG. I guess it's personal. I do firmly believe that "Spray & Pray" is no way to shoot anything though.

You are definitely on the right track, he does set up some custom functions that allow him to swap to a particular style that he knows will process well for the clients, adjusting contrast and sharpness. This guy always has a second shooter with him, on a different angle, in case someone like me stands up and gets in his way. Which doesn't happen very often as his contract calls for him to be the sole shooter and most brides, go to lengths to ensure that happens.

He relies on AWB in the appropriate setting, takes a series of test shots, checks for clipped highlights and sets exposures and adjust ISO a lot more than I thought, continually reviews to make sure he's getting the shots he wants. He also is known for a particular style and brides often request, the jumping shot and so on.

I think quantity of shots plays a big role in the decision.

Just read your post Mark, I was hoping you would contribute. No this is a local Aussie guy.
I don't use Lightroom and probably should learn to use it. Spray and Pray is something that happens for me, but I'm working on cutting it down. A lot of it is confidence and technical ability, something else to work on.

Based on what I've seen lately I think you've got some pretty good chops Steve :-) I think it's only natural to shoot a lot at first. I know I once did. I try to view the world as if it was through a view finder and I wait for moments to happen before I click. Even now the most hated part of my work flow is culling. Portrait sessions aren't too bad but weddings are brutal! For an 8 hour wedding I'll usually shoot around 600-800 images and hand off 250-350 of them.

I really liked the images you posted from the wedding you recently shot.

Thank you Mark, to give you an idea of where I am at, I shot about 650 at the wedding that I did and ended up with about 130, that I passed on to the bride. She was happy with that, I found that I had shots that were OK in quality, but there were too many the same. Viewing the world as a viewfinder and having that creative compositional knowledge is what would get me a lot closer to the 200-250 mark from 650 shots.
We are blessed to have guys like you and Sean and all the rest, as regular contributors here.

Just a little over a year ago I was a jpeg shooter. I am a part time pro and have been doing it for a number of years. Most of my shots are well exposed and therefore the raw image does not give me a lot over the jpeg. I now like to have the option to use the raw. I now shoot only in raw. I batch process all images to jpeg. While reviewing the jpeg I may go back to a few raw images and convert myself. This gives me the best of both worlds.
Mark

I'm blushing :-) I feel as if I have a million miles to go but am enjoying the journey as I keep learning and trying to improve. By far composition is what I struggle with the most.

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Originally Posted by Kayaker72

Another factor could be that for Pros that grew up on film, shooting jpeg is very similar to shooting film in that you get it right in the camera and only make minor tweaks "in the darkroom."

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Steve - is he a former film shooter? This could be the answer.

I'm certainly no pro, but I've been shooting in RAW+JPEG quite a bit lately as a new workflow experiment. I import all the JPEGs first, delete the garbage, and then import the matching RAW pairs for the shots I like and need to edit. I find the difference between the JPEG right out of the camera and the RAW image to be substantial in many cases - especially at ISO 1600 or greater. I can't imagine being stuck with just the JPEGs, but then again the chasm between my skill and experience and a pro is pretty big too!

Mark/clemmb- that sounds a very good work flow method and it would capture the best of both worlds.

Kingb- a similar workflow to Mark and yes the Pro is certainly a former film shooter. He uses a 5D and a 70-200 2.8, a 16-35mm, a 50/1.4 and a lensbaby(and some 580's). I am not sure what the second shooter uses. The big difference that I could see, was that he knew what he was doing, knew his equipment and communicated well to the clients. I was expecting an 85mm 1.2 or something more exotic. His gear was adequate and very well used, his Photoshop CS4 knowledge was very impressive and his experience was extensive.

It was a good day and I'm an enthusiastic sponge for this sort of information.

I'm a rank amateur and I shoot RAW only. I use Bridge to review my images, then ACR and PS for processing. My goal for this year is to "get it right" in camera more often to reduce the post processing workload. We were in Vegas, Death Valley, and Valley of Fire last month and I came back with hundreds of images. I processed all the Vegas and Death Valley images and then ran out of steam halfway through the Valley of Fire images. I still have 50 or more to go.

Which leads me to another question along the post-processing lines; do most of you seriously cull your work to just a few of your best shots? I tend to not toss anything unless it's really unusable, but as I mentioned above, I end up with way too many pictures. But deciding which and how many to keep for my portfolio is tough.

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Originally Posted by M_Six

Which leads me to another question along the post-processing lines; do most of you seriously cull your work to just a few of your best shots? I tend to not toss anything unless it's really unusable, but as I mentioned above, I end up with way too many pictures. But deciding which and how many to keep for my portfolio is tough.

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I've started tossing more and more as my library has grown larger and larger.

I don't remember which book I took this from, but I think about my image library in terms of (1) photographs and (2) documentation of some person or event - which of course is a bunch of photos too, but they don't tend to be all that interesting. Tier 1 photos get a 3 to 5 star rating in Aperture, and they are the ones that I care about most. But tier 2 photos provide context, fond memories, etc, so they are worth keeping too so long as they are properly exposed and sufficiently sharp.

Then, I put only the best shots on my smugmug site. That forces me to think critically about the massive number of shots that I accumulate!

I shoot RAW only. It's a hobby for me, I have time to edit and convert. Still, I'm pretty brutal when I cull images, both for technical and compositional reasons. For each event/occurrence, I try to reduce it to the one shot that represents what I want to convey. The only time I keep a set of similar shots is when the sequence itself tells a story - daughter blowing out birthday candles, smiling, then shoving her hands in the cake and putting handfuls in her mouth, for example.

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Originally Posted by thekingb

I import all the JPEGs first, delete the garbage, and then import the matching RAW pairs for the shots I like and need to edit.

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What do you do with the RAW files of images that you like and need no editing? Hopefully, you save those RAWs, too. I can almost gaurantee that someday you'll want to go back and improve one of those images, for a specific purpose or with some great technique you pick up later - and you'll kick yourself if you only saved the JPG.

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Originally Posted by neuroanatomist

What do you do with the RAW files of images that you like and need no editing? Hopefully, you save those RAWs, too. I can almost gaurantee that someday you'll want to go back and improve one of those images, for a specific purpose or with some great technique you pick up later - and you'll kick yourself if you only saved the JPG.

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This. I find myself going back to redo images quite often. Along with my photo skills, my Photoshop skills improve steadily. I went back through some images of Germany and Austria from our visit 2 years ago and made some serious improvements to some of those images, especially some noisy night shots.

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Originally Posted by neuroanatomist

What do you do with the RAW files of images that you like and need no editing?.

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Oops. I wasn't clear. I keep all the matching RAW files for any photo that I choose not to delete.

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Originally Posted by neuroanatomist

What do you do with the RAW files of images that you like and need no editing? Hopefully, you save those RAWs, too. I can almost gaurantee that someday you'll want to go back and improve one of those images, for a specific purpose or with some great technique you pick up later - and you'll kick yourself if you only saved the JPG.

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I archive the raw files. The only jpg I archive are the ones the customer ordered so I have a record of what they ordered.

I was a film shooter before I went digital. I found digital to be a learning curve. Digital is not as forgiving as film. I found I was not as good as I thought at capturing the images.
Mark