Better Available Light Digital Photography : How to Make the Most of Your Night and Low-light Shots

188 Better Available Light Digital Photography

How’s a photographer to know whether to set the camera to a

JPEG or RAW capture setting? It depends on several factors:

your expertise and comfort level in photography itself, the

subject, the way you’ll photograph the subject, the fi nal fi nished

product or outcome. The majority of Barry’s colleagues in the

wedding and corporate photography worlds shoot in RAW mode

all the time. His colleagues in the editorial world, including the

coauthor of this book, normally prefer JPEG. Some of their

editors want the best of both worlds and so they require the

JPEG/RAW combination. This allows them to edit through the

JPEGs quickly, and still have the higher-quality RAW fi le for

publication. This method requires the use of large-capacity

compact fl ash cards. Barry prefers to work in both JPEG or

RAW, but never combined on the same project.

Pros and cons

Here’s a comparison between the two formats, together with

advantages and disadvantages:

JPEG advantages

1. Smaller fi le size.


2. More images per memory card.


3. Faster writing to memory cards.


4. Immediate access to photographs, no postproduction soft-
   ware needed.

JPEG disadvantages

1. Camera software compresses each fi le.


2. Data is lost with this compression.


3. Less ability to make postproduction adjustments.


4. Less room for operator error with exposure, proper White
   Balance.

While on assignment for an auto-
mobile magazine, Joe was told by
the photo editor to shoot mostly
JPEG fi les, but Joe was also told
that he should shoot RAW fi les for
any images that he thought would
run over two pages. Exposure was
1/500 sec at f/10 and ISO 200.
He didn’t think this particular
JPEG image would fi t that bill,
but that’s exactly what happened;
it ran as a double-truck spread. Go
fi gure.