Shot Jpeg and RAW. Spent a while mucking about with CS Camera RAW and I
was pretty impressed with what I saw. The ability to pull back the
highlight detail on the plant was definitely an improvement on the Jpeg,
but that's what folk round here have been saying for a while :-)
However, the Jpeg wasn't far behind. So my conclusion is that for serious
landscapes, portraits, macros, all 'considered' and studious pieces, I
will use RAW.
My personal dividing line is whether or not *any* editing will be
done on the file. If you do anything with levels, curves, contrast,
brightness, sharpening, or saturation (other than a simple desaturation),
the JPEG will have artifacts. Whether or not you can visibly see them in
the resulting photo will depend on the degree of adjustment and the
discernment of the eye. I don't trust my own eye so I look at tools like
the histogram. Just about *any* adjustment on a JPEG will produce a
posterized histogram.
So, for anything other than a snapshot (say, of a work-in-progress
photographic record of maintenance work I'm doing on my airplane), it's
RAW. The information you lose when you accept the camera's impromptu
"developing" is just too much (for me at least).
-Cory
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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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