RAW or JPEG for a wedding?

I am a new photographer (professionally trained). I was just asked to do...

(gulp)...a wedding. Should I shoot in RAW? or JPEG? I use a Fuji S3 Pro, and my

back up is a SONY DSCF828. Any help would be great!

Frederick Hopper

Unless you can control every aspect of the light , my advice is to shoot in your camera's raw

format.

Never used an S3 but I changed to shooting RAW with my D70 for my wedding portraits because I tested for myself and found that I got a bit more room for adjustment due to a bit more dynanmic range. There is a bit of detail that is recoverable in the higlights just the difference between an empty white and one with some detail. I could not shoot RAW with my old PC (433mhz celeron) because it was far to slow but with a 3ghz P4 it is really fast so now I can enjoy RAW. ALso I like being able to set the white balance in post processing. I still use film when I shoot the ceremony because I find it easier and usualy we just put 6x4 inch prints from the ceremony into an album. I don't shoot many ceremonies here in Finland and film does the job for me just fine.

We use Fuji S2 and only shoot RAW.

 

Edit using Photoshop Bridge and it is a breeze to work in RAW

If you have the Gigs then shoot RAW

shoot JPG if you know EXACTLY what you're doing and not going to change a lot in post processing

I shoot with S3's. I bought the camera because of the great reviews for out of camera Jpegs. It boasted little post processing time, because the jpegs were great. I started shooting in jpeg. That is ture if your exposure and white balance are perfect. Then I discovered RAW. With CS2 bridge, it is faster than ever to post process. I can post process my raw files faster than my jpegs. Plus, now I have the added leverage of being able to corect my exposure some. I'll never go back!

I use an S3. The slow RAW writes will KILL you. In wedding work everything moves fast fast fast and there are shots you simply cannot afford to miss.

 

So I shoot jpeg. I haven't made up my mind if I should be shooting in F1 mode or regular with a d-range of 400. The latter should help prevent blow-outs and underexposures, but you'll still have to run it through PhotoShop to give it enough contrast.

 

One good thing about the Fuji: as long as you're exposure is correct you can shoot safely at ISO 800. There are times when that's a life-saver. But if you are underexposed 800 will leave you little but noise.

 

So yes, you can and I do shoot entirely jpeg, but that is due solely to the S3's slow writes.

 

Next year Fuji is coming out with the S5, which is the S3's chip on a D200 body. That sould fix any issues with it.

While RAW is great for its flexibility and control... have you ever shot in RAW and processed

RAW files before? If not, you (and your computer) may not be prepared to handle the extra

processing power that RAW requires. There are plenty of JPEG wedding shooters who get

along just fine (and are very successful!!) Likewise, if you usually shoot in RAW, it's not the

time to start shooting JPEG just to save space on memory cards. Ultimately, it comes down to

working with the tools that you understand the most in order to focus on getting the shots.

Your first wedding is not the time to experiment with something new, but rather the time to

take what you already know and apply it to a once-in-a-lifetime event. Good luck!

Ask the folks that are doing your printing. In most cases JPEG is nearly impossible to expose and print accurately.

i shoot both. my main body and lens combo cost about $4000. i'm not going to use an inferior image-capture format -- especially for a wedding.

 

but, i simultaneously shoot jpg, because it's easier for quickly reviewing images.

 

part of it is my style -- sometimes i radically crop an image; often i shoot at ISO 1600 or 3200. so, i need all the information in the original file that i can get.

 

(ironically, however, there are rare occasions when i like the skin tones that are automatically applied to the jpg better than any i can manually achieve with the RAW file.)

btw, Adorama's lab requires jpg. and, they do a great job, imo.

Not entirely true Steve.

 

Jpgs are the preferred file form for many digital printing labs.

 

Shooting jpgs and printing jpgs are two different things.

 

If one shoots RAW then the maximum amount of data possible is being captured. Once

adjusted and processed, RAW files can be converted very quickly using the Image

Processor in PSCS. Once burned to a "read only" CD or DVD, they will preserve all the data

remaining after one jpg compression cycle.

 

Because RAW processing has advanced so fast and so far, it is very rare to need open them

in Photoshop itself at the proofing stage.

 

If you decide to shoot jpgs, I'd suggest looking at Adobe Lightbox as your processing

engine. It allows more easy adjustments to jpgs than does Photoshop.

 

The notion that you will need more computing power when using RAW verses jpgs is

somewhat true ... mostly having to do with storage space which these days is very

inexpensive. The fact is, whether processing RAW or jpgs, browsers like Adobe Bridge are

memory hogs and will require a certain amount of HD and RAM power the second you

open them to work with.

"In most cases JPEG is nearly impossible to expose and print accurately."

 

Personal frustration? If you can't expose, it doesn't matter if you shoot JPEG or RAW. RAW has a bit more headroom for *correcting* bad exposures, but if you can't expose correctly then you need to learn how to expose for digital, not put it down all the time..RAW has other advantages over JPEG - this isn't one of them.

 

Bogdan

I never shoot a picture from a digital camera in JPEG i always use RAW and postrocesing.

 

For wedding Raw is ideal beacouse you can better control WB and colors.

For some special pictures you can push it to 6400ISO with great results.

In conversion you can control also sharpnes and so .....

Thanks for all the help on this. The info is great!. I have decided, that I will use both! What else is digital...to me it is having the freedom to change up settings on the fly right?? I'll use RAW for posed shots, and jpeg for some candids...and a mix in between, and the nice feature of my Sony DSCf828, is in RAW setting it also captures JPEG ;)

Fred

 

KISS (Keep it Simple S-----)

 

In the commotion and chaos of a wedding shoot, things will get confused. Decide on ONE mode and leave it alone. The problem is if you forget to change it back, then you are shooting in a mode you may not want to be in. Think "Murphy's Law."

 

If you do switch modes, write a process to follow on a file card and remember to look at the file card, so you do the mode change.

Gary i agree with you. Never use both mode.

What Marc said. I also like to keep three copies of the image. One is RAW, one is TIFF (adjusted) and the last is Jpeg from the adjusted TIFF. What you don't want to do is shoot Jpg's and then adjust them. Information is not there in the first place and adjusting the Jpg loses more.

 

Just my xperience.

My local lab manager complains to me all the time about the JPEG shooters. This is all I know about it. I shoot film, and I see little reason to go digital.

Fred,

 

Weddings are very dynamic...shoot RAW. I also disagree with Steve...most 'Printers' use JPG/10

 

Dave

<i> I shoot film, and I see little reason to go digital.</i><p>

 

yes you've mentioned that once or twice.

RAW

 

Michael

I'd shoot raw for the formals and jpeg fine for the snaps of everything else.

 

Convert the jpg's into psd's before you do anything else to them.

 

If you use fill flash you'll have fewer problems afterward.

Don't plan on shooting a wedding in RAW with you S3. They're too slow for shooting RAW at

a live event. You'll have to go JPEG with it.

 

JT