What does shooting RAW mean? It is the camera's native way of storing the pictures, it is uncompressed, and maintains the most amount of data. The alternative is shooting .jpeg which is where the camera is going to process that picture for you (read edit it for you) which means you are going to lose detail.
Unedited: We tried to dial in our settings in camera as best we could and overall this is a great photo. You will see that her fur is a little over exposed losing some detail because we were exposing for her eyes and other features.
So what is the downside to shooting RAW? It can lead to large file sizes meaning more SD cards etc to store the photos. A general rule is for every pixel in your camera that can equate to 1MB so if you have a 24 pixel camera most pictures will be around 24MB per image. We really try to get our setting dialed in as perfectly as we can in the camera settings so that what actually comes out of the camera is as close to our finished edited product as it can be. This also helps reduce editing time on the backend :). Even with trying to get your settings as perfectly as you can in the camera, you will typically still need to make edits such as adjusting the white balance, adding or taking away exposure, etc. Shooting RAW captures all the data of the image and allows for better edits of those various areas without losing picture quality. One other that we do not consider a downside but some might would be, shooting RAW almost forces you to edit a photo. The RAW image right out of the camera will not have the contrasts etc so even if you get your setting really dialed in, you most likely will still want to edit the photo to really make it a great photo! One last thing to mention is our editing style is very minimal editing as you can see in the example above. If your style is more heavily edited, shooting RAW will give you more to work with!
Edited photo: you will see our style is very minimal edits but when exposing for her eyes, it did over expose her fur a bit. Shooting in RAW allowed us to recover the details of her face better especially around her forehead and nose. Also this is our new pup, Georgia! Isn’t she a cutie?!
So when would you shoot .jpeg? We truly do not anymore and I would encourage all to try to shoot in RAW as often as possible. If you were low on storage space, this would be one instance when shooting .jpeg would be beneficial. If you are looking to post photos as quickly as possible without having to edit them, shooting .jpeg will allow you to reduce the time from taking a photo to delivering. What you would need to remember is that you will need to have your settings as dialed in as you possibly can because your editing ability post processing will be reduced.
Overall we think that SD cards are relatively cheap these days and if purchasing some extra SD cards (and compact flashes if you shoot with a dual card Canon like I do) allows you to have the most versatility and flexibility with your photos then that will allow you to deliver the best possible pictures to your clients!
Happy Shootin’!
-Meg