Raw versus JPEG now this is one of those decisions that every one of you photographers is going to face in your photographic careers. And while I'm here to tell you in this video that there's not one file format that's definitively better than the other. Both of these actually have their strengths and weaknesses, and I want to talk about them in this video. And kind of well, the merits of each. Now first with JPEG JPG is most likely going to be the default file format for those that are buying a new camera. And there's a very good reason for this.

Manufacturers assume that when you buy a new camera, most people that are new to photography, they don't want to jump into wealth, more specifically, the post production side of photography, and so they come defaulted to jpg. Why because, well a JPG file is finished right from the camera. That's right. Why would you hit the capture button we talked about before how the file goes into the buffer and it gets processed inside the buffer and comes out a JPEG. Now when that comes out, it's ready to print. It's ready to do whatever you like upload it to your Facebook as your new profile picture because we all love new profile pictures.

Now the thing is here is that with a JPEG file is processed in camera. And that means that you don't have the leeway to basically do additional processing or Well, you do have additional processing, but you can't remove things that are added by the camera. For example, if the camera makes the image to contrast, if there's too much blacks, if there's too much saturation, it's more difficult to remove these things and sometimes impossible in post production than it is to add them if you need to. But there's also other advantages JPEGs. So one of them we know is basically the JPEG file format is finished coming out of the camera, we don't have to do any additional post production work. But also the JPEG file format is much smaller.

In fact, it could be one third or one quarter of the size of a raw file. So it saves space on your memory card. But more importantly, it actually allows you to shoot more images at one time because it fills the buffer less quickly. So if you're shooting action and you find that you're in raw and the cameras constantly stopping and choking this trying to transfer all these files over the memory card. Well that's a situation where shooting JPEG can help with that. It'll allow you to capture more frames before the camera has to stop and transfer those images to a memory card.

In addition, a faster memory card will help with that as well. Now that concludes the benefits to the JPEG file format. So what about a raw file? Well, when shooting in raw, what we're telling the camera is we want to capture all of the information that that sensor in the camera is can possibly capture. So we're getting everything that can possibly be captured. And basically we're getting it in unfinished format.

The raw file format is proprietary to each camera maker. That means that every camera maker they have their own system. For example, on a Nikon, they refer to their raw files as dot MDF files on a Canon they are CR two files, regardless of the brand or the make. These files are proprietary so they are specific to the manufacturer. Now once you get those files, if you load them up onto the computer, you're going to find that you can't really use them for anything until they've been processed. We can't use them for Facebook, we can't print them, we can't do anything.

And if you look at those raw files, they're going to look flat and they're going to look kind of boring, they'll lack contrast and they look rather unfinished. Essentially a raw file is like having all the ingredients to a cake but not having the actual cake you just have everything laid out in front of you For you to decide how you want to bake that cake. And that's what makes the raw format so powerful is that later on and post processing, we can choose to do whatever we want with that cake. Or, in our case, the image file, you can process RAW files with a whole host of applications, each manufacturer most likely will give you their own raw processing application when you buy the camera. So for example, Nikon, they refer to theirs as u nx. But you can also use third party applications as well, such as Adobe Lightroom, which is what we use most frequently use.

Also, Photoshop has a built in Adobe Camera Raw, you have a whole host of these applications that can process RAW files. Now, you may notice that when you're in Lightroom, or these third party processing applications, it'll frequently ask you to update them. That's because as new cameras come out, those proprietary raw formats are not yet supported. So they have to build that support into Lightroom into Camera Raw into aperture. And that's why we need to constantly update them. But when it comes to getting the most out of our images, raw is always going to be the better format.

It's going to give you higher quality. It's going to give you more details. Gonna give you more fun flexibility in post production, we can change the white balance to whatever we want. We can add contrast, remove contrast, we can add sharpness, we can do anything with a raw file, whereas with a JPEG file, well, we're going to be limited to basically whatever the camera gives us, we can add on top of that, but we can't remove from what the cameras given us. So when it comes to getting the best image out of your camera, we always recommend shooting in raw. But if you're not intending to process those images, well, JPG might be the better option.

So here's a rule of thumb for me, when I'm shooting for the family when I'm around my family, shooting barbecues and just fun events where I want to have images just to put online as soon as I can, I don't want to have to process these images. I'm not trying to get the craziest dynamic range and out of these images, well, I'll just shoot them in JPEG. But when I'm out in scenes like this where I want to capture the maximum amount of dynamic range of my shot, then I'm going to shoot Rob because I want to get that out of the camera. Alright, so let's go ahead and look at this scene here. Now what I'm going to demonstrate to you is the amount of additional dynamic range that we have and flexibility that we have in post production with a raw file versus a JPG file.

So let me show you what I mean about that. dynamic range. First, I'm going to go ahead I have my Canon Rebel here on my me photo tripod, we just have the standard 18 to 55 lens on, and I'm gonna bring up the live view. Alright, so check this out. So at one 100 of a second, we can see all the details that are in the shadows, we see the rocks and all the kind of sand in the rocks and everything. But we don't see anything in the sky, the water is blown out the sky is blown out everything up there in that bright area is completely out of the range.

And that's the dynamic range we're referring to. So if I go up here, and I bring this up to say, one 250, again, we see more of the water appearing, we have to keep going up at around one 500. We see again, more of the sky more of the water, but again, the rocks started dark enough too much. Again, going up to one 1,000th of a second does the same thing up to one 2000. Now we can see all of the sky we see all the detail in the water, but now our rocks are basically pitch black. This is where rock can really help us out because we can shoot somewhere in between as we taught you and using the histogram to maximize the tonal range and then we can use the raw file format to basically bring that out in post production.

Now I'm going to go ahead and shoot this shot on my Nikon and there's a couple of reasons for that. We talked about this a little bit earlier, but the Nikon D 3200 has a sensor that can capture two additional stops of dynamic range naturally over the rebel. So we're going to get basically more detail in the highlights more detail in the shadows and get a better image and this is really a better camera when it comes to landscape photography, when compared to this Canon Rebel if you're shooting a lot of landscape images. This is one area that Nikon currently holds the lead on because they have amazing dynamic range in their cameras up to basically 14 stops which most canon is around 11 to say 12 and a half. Alright, so let's go ahead and switch this camera out right here. It's always awkward doing this have to put it near my arm and everything and hold it Where do I put it?

Let's see. Just go right there for a second. Okay, it's time that up. Let's go ahead and get the kind of composition now what I'm going for here is I'm going to frame kind of the, the horizon line at the one third line and we're going to go for mostly sky here so it's going to be mostly sky with the tide pools at the Bottom. Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and switch to live 11 pull up this little viewfinder so you guys can see it a little bit better. Okay, let's go ahead and switch in the live view.

And what we're going to do is just kind of approximate where we need to be. And then we're going to check our histogram in the playback. Alright, so it looks like it's fairly exposed correctly, we're at one 1,000th of a second f 7.1, ISO 100. I'm going to take a quick shot here. And let's see where our histogram gives us. So it's looks like it's almost spot on actually, which is awesome.

It kind of came over from our last. Let's go up. So again, I'm hitting up on the D pad, there's our histogram, you can see that the shadows are all the way to the left side, but we haven't clipped them, the highlights are always the right side where we have the sun at that brightest point. And that's perfect. we maximize the total range in the shot and we've got almost everything in this one single shot. Now I captured this in RAW plus JPEG.

So now I can show you the difference between the raw file versus the JPEG file when processed and there is a massive difference there. Hopefully from this example, you see how much more information and how much more flexibility we have in The raw file format over JPEG. So once again, here's my rule of thumb when I'm looking to get the best out of the camera when I'm trying to get the best image possible, or the most flexibility in post production, I'll shoot in the raw format. When I'm looking for flexibility and being able to use the images right away, be able to post them online, share them and print them, I'm going to shoot JPEG or if I need to save on space, when I'm in situations where I need both, and that does happen if I want to basically have a raw file to use later on to get the most out of my image, but something immediate to use right now I'm going to shoot RAW plus JPEG.

And that'll give me both files for every single shot that I take. But keep in mind this will fill the buffer in your memory card very, very quickly. But I have a little assignment for you all I want you to shoot any scene you can pick anything that you want, preferably a high dynamic range scene, and what I want you to do is shoot it with a RAW plus JPEG function. Take both those files into your favorite post processing editor of choice and basically play with both files. See how the raw file gives you more flexibility. It gives you more range, it gives you more options that you can use and check out how the JPEG looks better initially.

But it gives you less flexibility on what you can do, what you can add and what you can remove. That's it for this video. That's it for the differences in raw versus JPEG and let's head on to the next video now.