We all have been there at some point in our photographic journeys: Our cameras, set to AUTO, pointing and clicking, saving JPEG images that we perhaps edit a little and put in an album to archive. Maybe we throw on an Instagram filter to fancy it up for social media. Then we forget about these images for a while.
The ultimate skill of the photographer -- of the artist -- is to create the aesthetics of the scene in front of them "in the moment". The Natural Landscape Photo Award is perhaps the epitome of this with minimal image manipulation allowed, while the World Press Photo has a Code of Ethics. So straight-out-of-camera (SOOC) has got to be the pinnacle of ability, hasn't it? Or is there more to the notion of what an image is and where the skill lies in producing it?
Moment, most well known for its accessories for iPhone, has published a detailed 32-minute video where the image quality differences between shooting JPEG and ProRAW are compared on the new iPhone 12 Pro Max.
In running my photography channel, I get a lot of questions about RAW files vs. JPEG, and some people not fully grasping exactly what RAW files really are. So, I figured a box of cereal may simplify things. Read on.
Here's an eye-opening example that shows the power of shooting RAW. Photographer Dan Plucinski captured a beautiful photo of the solar eclipse yesterday, and this is the before-and-after comparison showing the straight-out-of-camera image (on left) compared to the edited one (on right).
I hear a lot of photographers slamming others for not shooting RAW. So I decided to go against that for a month and shoot JPEG only using Fujifilm's ACROS Film Simulation and share my results. Interestingly, I've found that I'm actually enjoying taking photographs more.
I’ve pretty much shot RAW all my life. There are so many benefits of shooting RAW in terms of how much flexibility you have with the files, as well as the raw data in the files. However, as time goes on, I’m starting to lean more towards shooting JPEG and realize the benefits of doing so.