I usually take photos in RAW format to keep the ability to adjust exposure in post-processing. Having the large RAW files is particularly important for recovering over-exposed highlights.
However, having just completed a two-day photoshoot of a rowing regatta and two soccer games, I can definitely see the advantages of shooting JPEGs. I shot the rowing photos in RAW and the soccer ones as JPEGs as an experiment. Here are some advantaged of the JPEGs over RAW:
- Obviously, the JPEGs take up much less disk space. This is particularly important in the case of sports photography, where I typically use a high-speed drive mode of the camera. My Canon EOS-1D X
can shoot at 12 frames per second, which adds up to a couple of thousands of images per soccer game with my style of shooting (and I am trying to be selective and not to keep the shutter button pressed all the time!)
- I can give some of the photos to the communication officer at the halftime without having to record two copies of the images (RAW+JPEG) or to switch file formats during the shoot.
- Perhaps most importantly, large previews are generated much faster in Lightroom
, which saves time during culling (selecting the images for publishing) and post-processing.
- Finally, the JPEGs produced by modern DSLRs are very good. The noise is reasonably controlled while preserving sharpness, and the exposure is easy to monitor during shooting (by checking the histogram on the camera LCD screen) to make sure no excessive corrections would be needed in post-processing.
