My Take on the Raw vs. Jpeg Debate

By

Stephen Dantzig, Psy. D.

 I am a self-acknowledged control freak when it comes to lighting. I absolutely drive my poor friends who help me in the studio bonkers because if I want a light to be f 8 and 6/10 then we will tweak it until I get f 8 and 6/10 from that light. Am I being overly controlling? I don't think so--in fact, I believe that I have to be that precise because I shoot transparency film [well I used to!] and digital capture. The term "no room for error" fits both of those mediums. I also shot fine jpegs for many years with, as my good friend Will states, absolutely beautiful results. I have 20"X24" prints in my office that are stunning. So, why change...and why make a blanket statement that I won't ever shoot "just" jpeg again?

I think it is important to first look at what I have heard are some drawbacks to RAW and address one of these critiques with a very important caveat. One comment that I have heard is that RAW takes up too much space. My response, from only my perspective, is that space is not an issue because I can get DVDs inexpensively and archive the images [or use whatever back-up system you have.] Another, perhaps more salient issue is the workflow and time issue. At this point I need to bring in the caveat: In no way am I promoting the use of RAW to compensate for sloppy exposures. My exposures for the vast majority of my images are dead on. For me, the RAW conversion process is usually as simple as opening the ACR dialog box from Bridge and hitting "open." That's it. It does not noticeably slow my workflow.

But, here is my problem: I am a perfectionist who is not always perfect [trust me...that is a BAD combination!] I also shoot a lot of fashion--my subjects move around a lot. Now, one of the things that I love about photography and photographers is the never ending thirst for knowledge and willingness to share information. Chris Grey wrote a phenomenal article about the depth of light. I might not be sharing the next two images if I had seen that article before this shoot [yep, thankfully I'm still learning too!] Riesey was busy moving around the set as I was snapping away. Believe me I was even more critical with my metering because of her white shirt. But...she moved closer to the light and the increased exposure on her shirt was beyond what I could capture.

The whites in her shirt are gone...but I had shot the image in RAW so I opened the dialog box and reprocessed the image and 'underexposed' it. I created a composite image and used layer masks to paint back in some detail in her shirt. I am not sure that I could have done this with a jpeg.

Personally I find that creative options that are available to me after the fact with RAW are too great for *me* to shoot jpeg alone. Mind you, I certainly CAN shoot jpeg and get great results 90 to 95% of the time, but after seeing the power of RAW, I choose not to.

Once again with respect to all opinions,

Steve