[Leica] WAS: Color(u)r or B&W? NOW: RAW vs JPEG?

[abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge)]

Ted,

I didn't see your message until, well, now. BUT...while I understand
your frustration I'm going to say that RAW is entirely the way you
will want to shoot IF POSSIBLE given the constraints of situation and
your camera's capture performance.

When people talk about RAW as the digital negative they essentially
mean that everything the camera captured is there to be worked with.
Need to correct color? You can because the information about what the
camera THOUGHT it saw is recorded but you can over-ride it.

But the biggest factor is so big that it over-rides the others, as far
as I'm concerned: dynamic range.

There is a LOT more bit information saved in the RAW files. If you
open one in Photoshop, and then save as 16 bit image,  you will have a
great dynamic range saved than if you had recorded just the JPEG
image. Why? because those JPEGs are limited to 256 luminance values
per color. But the RAW files can be, and often are, greater. So when
you adjust the color and end up adding a little blue to the red
channel you won't have to suddenly have a washed out image - instead
you'll have a lot more data saved.

So - IF you can live with the time it takes the camera to save a RAW
image (maybe you can improve that with a faster memory card) and if
you can live with the added workflow (made a LOT easier with CS2) then
it's a no brainer: shot in RAW all the time.

Honest. It matters.

Adam