It’s the equivalent of a presidential Twitter feud, but for the photography world. Everyone’s favorite Anderson Cooper lookalike Tony Northrup released a video on November 4 about the benefits and downsides to shooting raw files versus JPG files, and in this video dispensed some advice on when to shoot raw files and when to shoot JPG files (and when to shoot both). Naturally, this elicited a strong response from everyone’s favorite (only?) Fro, Jared Polin of “Fro Knows Photo” fame, who is known for his shirts indicating to the world that he does indeed shoot raw. All the time.
Northrup fired back, talking a little bit about the behind-the-scenes between him and Polin leading up to Fro’s fiery response. He also took on each of Polin’s points. Let’s take a look at what some of those are:
Speed and Buffering
Polin makes the argument that you should always shoot raw files because most cameras will get 20 raw files or more to a burst anyway; a point which Northrup demonstrates using a Canon Rebel that can’t muster more than six shots to a burst. Polin’s point just isn’t true with most popular consumer cameras. It sounds like a case of someone shooting a D5 all day and forgetting how the rest of us live.
Northrup and Polin also disagree on what to do when shooting raw plus JPG. Northrup suggesting one format to each card, and Polin suggesting both to both cards, a recipe for long write times and slower overall performance, for sure. I understand the point of having all formats on all cards for backup purposes, but when shooting weddings or sports, I do one format for each card, Northrup-style. That way I have a way to send off files to couples or editors quickly (the card with the JPG files on them) and files with more information to edit and create a more polished gallery later with (the raw files). As Northrup mentions, importing raw plus JPG files takes a long time, and so when my editors need my files yesterday, working from the JPG files means a faster edit across the board.
Storage Space
Northrup talks about how $100 for storage is a lot to swallow for people on fixed budgets, and this is a point where no one wins here. At the end of the day, finances are a personal situation, and so while Polin’s right about storage being cheap, cheap is relative.
There is a key point in Northrup’s video though that the cheapskates among us should heed: there is no free lunch, and storing photos in free services such as Google Photos is only asking for trouble when those companies start charging for services they roped you into for free.
Important Photos
Aside from sports and weddings, where I’m shooting raw plus JPG, I’m shooting raw files all the time. There’s one quote from Polin that sums up my argument for always shooting raw files, no matter what: “If you’re shooting unimportant images, then why shoot them at all?”
What’s your strategy for shooting? Are you a Northrup or a Polin? A raw or JPG shooter? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
I'm with Polin...I can turn a RAW into a JPG...not the other way around. ;)
Thank you.
Personally I would shoot both just to have the Raw files. And yes the JPEGs for their needs will be fine.
I still would shoot both myself.
When I used to have my photos published in a magazine,the editors all insisted on JPEGs straight out of the camera.So specifically no RAW and no Photoshopped JPEGs.
It was about ten years ago and was low circulation (about 10,000 ish),but that request came from a couple of different editors that I can remember.I was always on a VERY tight deadline (i.e. less than a day) and there could be 300 or more images for them to get through,so maybe just the time factor to convert from RAW? But they were also specific about JPEGs out of the camera without any sort of post processing.
I'm inclined to side with the guy who has more than 20 years of experience in the photo business and has written many books on the subject...also he has a real portfolio with quality images.
Many so-called "social Media Influencers" talk a big game but their actual photo work rarely measures up.
I can see why you might be so inclined, but I know plenty of people with decades of experience in this industry and produce wonderful work who have no freaking idea what they're talking about when it comes to stuff like this.
This is not a topic of subject matter, lighting or composition. It's completely a technical matter so it really doesn't matter how much experience each person has or what their portfolio looks like so long as both people have a firm grasp of the actual technical merits of their arguments.
Hi, I actually have 23 years of experience and you can see my work in many places. Jaredpolin.com has some and I have a ton I haven’t shared or posted.
Sorry, but Jared's portfolio has far more 'quality images' in it than Northrup's
Agree! He has his own style and he does own it, Northrup more common.
Well you know, they both are "media influencers" and they both have a big presence on Youtube and other social media sites. And they both are very experienced in what they do, but I do agree with Jared's points. I mean, why spend all that money for a camera with the capabilities it has and then limit yourself to shooting Jpeg? If anything, as suggested, shoot both RAW and Jpeg.
Even if you don't agree with Jared, you can't deny that he knows how to get good photos. I've been following his work for a while now and the guy can flat out shoot! He has a signature style to his photos as well. He probably shares just as much if not more of his work when reviewing a camera or lens than most other reviewers. He's legit.
Is Tony Northrup actually a working photographer or just an educator? I feel like this is some kinda turf war between those who teach over selling tutorials to beginners.
I was just sharing my opinion on his statements and he was sharing his on mine.
Youtuber.
I shot the first 4 years of my wedding career in JPEG and actually preferred the look I got out of my camera compared to trying to get my raw files to look similar to those same jpeg files. I only started shooting raw files once I outsourced my edits. Unless I'm shooting for a client or I feel like the photo could be printed for the wall, I usually like shooting jpeg.
Shooting film back in the day was sort of like shooting jpeg as well. You'd pick either daylight or tungsten film and burn that white balance into your images. As long as you expose property with digital, you can pull a ton of detail out of today's camera's jpeg files.
I used to develop people’s wedding photos in the darkroom and it went well beyond just selecting film type. It look at a negative as if it’s a raw file. I wouldn’t print a 4x6 and whenever I needed to make a change try and print from that. The negatives needed some much work, dodging, burning and color corrections. Without negatives they would have been even worse. So I see the point about we selected film for a look and agree. But I also know how much work was needed in post.
Usually RAW+JPEG mirrored on both cards. Very few reasons not to and those reason tend to be pretty specialized situations. If I know for sure that I will not need the JPEG's, then I'll just use the RAW files, but I generally like to have the JPEG's on hand for previewing.
Buffering is not an issue for me since I don't shoot sports or find myself in situations where I am burst shooting for that long. Frankly, I don't imagine that the average low-end Canon Rebel user is doing that either (I haven't seen Tony's video demonstrating it hitting the buffer after 6 shots, but I would like to know if he was using the fastest cards that the camera can use when he did that). Chances are also fairly high that someone with a low end camera that will run into buffering issues quickly like that is also exactly the type of person that would benefit way more from the latitude given by RAW files over JPEG's than from being able to capture more images in a series that they are probably not nailing the exposure on in the first place. If for some reason, you are hitting the buffer regularly on your camera, I would say that maybe your first course of action should be to adjust your shooting habits to match the capability of your gear or to invest in gear that more suits your shooting rather than gimping your files. We're not talking about the difference between shooting 12-bit or 14-bit or the difference between shooting sRGB or Adobe RGB (something that most consumers would never notice since their images never leave the screen). The difference between a RAW files and a JPEG is huge.
For certain things such as sports or journalism where you might have to quickly send off JPEG's, I guess I can understand shooting RAW to one card and JPEG's to another, but part of being a professional is also ensuring that you can deliver the files so what happens when something happens to the card with the JPEG files? Are you going to send a bunch of RAW files to your editor to slow them down? What happens if something happens to the card with the RAW files? You're just stuck with your card full of JPEG's that you can't edit properly? That doesn't really seem professional to me either. In this situation, I suppose it's a bit of a risk/reward trade-off. Out of curiosity, though, if you're shooting sports professionally, aren't you generally tethered view wireless or ethernet anyway? You could shoot RAW+JPEG and just set your camera to push only the JPEG's in real time through your tether.
Another very important consideration is the fact that JPEG is a lossy format that is being processed in-camera (out of your control) whereas RAW is essentially lossless. I don't know too many professionals that are keen on ceding their control over processing to their camera's built-in software with no chance of doing any edits themselves in the future (without losing data). I also don't know a whole lot of professionals that even incorporate ANY lossy format into their workflow except as a final conversion.
Frankly speaking, I can't think of a single reason to ever shoot JPEG only in this day and age except maybe if you don't ever edit your photos or know how to process a RAW file.
The storage argument is really weak because if that's an issue, then shoot RAW, edit your files, convert them to JPEG's for storage after making the edits you want and delete the original RAW files. You get the best of both worlds—the flexibility of RAW with the storage advantages of JPEG file sizes. You can do the conversion from RAW to JPEG, but you can't go the other way (at least not really).
P.S. I don't care how slow Lightroom is... I call BS on it taking 24 hours to import a shoot—especially given that I am sure he, of all people, has access to an up-to-date computer. What the hell was he importing that it took that long?
I'm not sure if it was a rhetorical question or directed at me specifically, I shoot at the college sports level for several different universities/sports, so I'm not at the level such as wire services where they are tethered and sending files immediately. The JPG to one card allows me to get the files to communications/athletics people during halftime and after the game, and the raw files are for my portfolio to really tweak later. I have enough of a relationship at this point with communications people at the universities I shoot for that if a JPG card failed, I could get a couple of extra minutes to process a few raw files to send out. I generally mark my photos in my camera during down moments to speed my editing workflow.
It was just a question in general because the few people that I've known who have had such jobs had worked wirelessly tethered so I figured that was the standard until I read about handing off an SD card full of JPEG's. It confused me a bit, I'll admit.
LR taking a full day to download files must have been more a figure of speech rather than true ... or, as you hinted too, the guy who said it must have had a lot of files and a very slow computer, which i have experienced with an old laptop too ... :-)
there are at least a couple of reasons why i don't shoot JPG normally and do RAW for my serious work ONLY ...
1. i can always convert RAW files to JPG while retaining at least 50% of the image quality as well ... while we all know the other way around is simply IMPOSSIBLE!
2. a couple of times i did change my camera's setting to lowest 1* quality JPG-only for some unimportant jobs ... and guess what: i forgot to change the setting back to RAW-only later and well, the rest is of course history!
yes, i used to shoot in JPG-only for sometime although i was already aware of the fact that RAW is better ... but when i did also run some tests shooting the same subjects in both RAW as well as JPG and saw how the former is better, MUCH better in fact, then i started shooting RAW+JPG for quite sometime as well, mainly because my old WinXP laptop at the time could not show RAW (Pentax PEF) files by default and i wasn't quite into running Bridge or similar programs either since my computer was too slow for that kind of software anyway ...
so, eventually, to save both storage space as well as time deleting the unwanted JPG files later, i have been doing RAW-only for a long time now ... and quite comfortable with it too! :-)
client wants JPG-only at the end of a shoot and without editing? fine! i'll either 'force' them to change their mind and let me convert all RAW files to JPG and deliver the finals, or, i'd shoot RAW+JPG, hand them over the cards and let them delete the RAWs themselves! how `bout that? ;-)
As for the Fro quote, do you take snapshots on your phone to remind you of memories? Those are not super important photos and I you aren't shooting raw on your phone....so why are you taking photos at all? That quote doesn't make sense to me.
I think Fro was basically pointing out that Tony's statement about using JPEG's for pictures that aren't really serious doesn't make any sense because:
A) Going into a shoot with a mentality that you are not going to be taking a photo worth taking in RAW is already defeatist from the start and if that's your mentality to begin with, why are you bothering?
B) Photography being what it is, you have no way of knowing how significant or insignificant something is going to be until after the fact so if RAW is what you use for your "serious work", it doesn't make sense to switch away from that since the next shot can always be the most important of your career and it's not like you're going to recognize it and then go into your menu to switch your file format before you take it.
C) Unlike the cellphones we carry around everyday that we can pull out for a quick snapshot, using a dedicated camera is a very deliberate act and should be approached as such. There's a disconnect between going through the trouble to carry around hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment and then saying that you're not looking to shoot anything worthwhile or meaningful by virtue of the settings you apply before you even press the shutter.
I think he could have expressed it better, but that's the general gist I got out of it. In general, I get why Northrup says some of the things that he does, but there doesn't really seem to be much consistency to his beliefs. It seems like a bunch of separate arguments that sound sensible in isolation, but sound bad when you mash them together because they seem to contradict each other in spirit. In this regard, Fro seems to have a much more solid and consistent overall "world view" on the matter than Northrup.
I agree. Thanks for taking an honest look.
I actually am shooting raw on my phone (ProCam)! But whenever I can, I try not to shoot on the phone unless I'm caught without my camera. With a 3-year-old, it's hard to get anything useful of him with my phone because he's moving so much, so I shy away from that.
Is that the quote I used? I’m not really sure at this moment but that doesn’t sound like what I was saying.
i shoot raw to one card and jpeg to the other. best of both. i might be lazy but i don't wanna process a huge batch of family or friends photos. besides "i have a nice camera so it must take great pics". i don't let anyone tell me the "right way" to save them. both have good and bad points.
For me, the story here is the fact that both of these guys are in the business of educating people and they clearly have wildly differing opinions on something that really shouldn't be a cause for much disagreement.
On the issue of uncompressed vs. lossless compressed RAW, I've always been curious about something. I assume that the act of compressing the RAW file (even in a lossless way) will require processing from the camera, which will slow down the rate at which the files can be written to your card. My question is whether any slowdown from the compression processing plus the time saved on writing the smaller file size will be less, more, or equal to the extra time it would take to write the larger, uncompressed file without that extra processing.
I’ve heard that as well because now the computer needs to process and unpack the file.
It all depends on how optimized the processor in your camera and computer is.
Read and write access to disk is often more important than in memory processing as that is or should be lightning fast. So in theory a smaller file would end up faster in memory and written back to disk but again it all depends on how optimized the code and your processor is.
So having the right (read + write speed!) sd card in your camera is key.
I've seen a few videos on Tony Northrup's YouTube channel and I have to say he seems like he's almost always talking to people who have no idea what they're doing with a camera. I understand the need for very basic and dumbed down instruction but most of the time he's just wrong. In his video on CPL's he said that its best not to use them because you can get the same look in post and that they make photo's worse which isn't an objective fact.
The RAW v JPEG debate is one that I thought was dead. Why on earth would you limit yourself when you have safety net of being able to adjust WB and have more information in the highlights and shadows? If file size is really a problem then why are you shooting on a DSLR anyways? I can understand that if you're at an event and know that you'll need to turn the photos over right away and will be shooting nonstop JPEG just makes sense for time and space. But if most photographers had a choice without worrying about time and space I'd think they'd go with RAW
The reason I made the video in the first place had to do more with a beginner happening upon information on what to shoot that I didn’t agree with. I am very opinionated and yes a big proponent of shooting raw and i think it’s improtabt to educate beginners and not flat out dumb it down because that could cause an issue for a newcomer who could have shot raw but shot jpeg small by accident or had the wrong picture style settings. What if they shot it all in mono chrome in jpeg?
RAW also offers a lot of learning situations about how light temp works and how curves adjustments can enhance an image. I also love the point someone earlier mentioned saying that you can turn a RAW into a JPEG but you cant go the other way.
I’d like to clear up the thing about me not knowing what it’s like to shoot something other than a d5. I don’t own a d5 so I can shoot 188 raw files in a row. I use it because of it’s low light capability, build quality and quick bursts when I require them.
The first canera I ever shot sports with was a Fuji discovery 1000 point and shoot film camera. I had to anticipate the action and capture it in one shot. My first slr was a canon eos Elan 2 or whatever it was called and I shape sports at 3 frames a second because that’s what it did.
I don’t need to shoot 188 shots in a row, I don’t need to shoot 20 in a row I at most take a quick burst of 2-4 shots and then the action is over.
When I teach begginees to shoot sports I suggest they try one frame at a time and not motor drive at all. I want people to start to anticipate the peak action and capture it without relying on spraying and praying.
I get the canon t6 shoots 6 frames before the buffer fills but what’s it shoot, something like 3 frames a second? I don’t know what situation calls for mashing the button for two straight seconds. That’s the point I was making, take a quick burst and by the time you’re ready for the next shots the buffer has already cleared.
I personally shoot everything raw, that’s my choice and suggestion for everyone from a begginner to a pro. It’s just a suggestion, I don’t care what someone shoots as long as they are shooting. I do advocate that beginners shoot raw plus JPEG so one day when they learn how to edit they can go back to those Raws.
I’ve also said to some beginners before that If they don’t shoot raw that’s fine, just get out and shoot, have fun and learn.
All our words in our videos can be broken down and ripped apart. We both share our opinions and hopefully can start conversations. But what people need to understand is these are our opinions, neither of us are right and neither of us are wrong regardless of which side of the ball you’re on. There’s no need to call us names or tell us we suck or anything just because we share our opinions.
Thanks for engaging in the conversation. Jared Polin aka the Fro
I first shot sports on a Pentax K1000; manual focus, manual exposure, manual advance. I was taught to shoot sports by anticipating the peak of the action, (and knowing your camera's shutter lag time), and I became very good at nailing the winning shot.
I also learned tricks like slow shutter shooting at the peak of jumps or right after a turn, so the star is frozen and sharp, while the other players are blurred, adding depth and motion to a shot. Most “Pros” I know, shoot at high shutter speeds with f/2.8 glass to freeze every action, and, while there is nothing wrong with that, I sometimes wish they would consider not sticking to the 1/2000s Tv priority mode spray & pray, and getting back to basics.
Well, when I saw Tony's video, I was puzzled as well. I'm not sure why would you recommend for beginners to use RAW. When I started out, RAW was difficult for me to understand how to utilize its potential so majority of me beginner days are on JPEG. It took some time and research how I can fully utilize RAW files.
And since then, I only use JPEG on my phone, because shooting RAW on it defeats the purpose of a "point-and-shoot" ease of use.
It doesn't matter who's in the industry longer or who has written more books and tutorials. They both share information, but always keep in mind that both of them has their own quirks and "personal" approach to photography.
Good points.
Tony Northrup is just a dazed and confused personality looking for any reason to draw eyes on his channel. This is the same guy who introduced the ridiculous notion of "equivalent aperture" when comparing 35mm lenses with lenses from smaller formats. Clueless. Just clueless.
Avoid him and his commentary at all costs.
Thanks for calling out this latest BS, Jared Polin.
People dont watch Tony and Jared for advice about how to shoot with a T6 unless they own a T6. Its for people who want to become professionals. If you are using a Rebel then odds are no one cares about what your pics look like except you anyway so shoot however you like. Your camera is severely handicapped in so many ways that you arent going to want to shoot in a high fps anyway and if it locks up or bogs down...you got what you paid for. Tony made a video about how to shoot with terrible cameras and failed to mention that. The video should have been called JPG or RAW with a T6 or Nikon D3400.
By the way my 1st camera was a Canon Digital Rebel. I wish I would have shot in RAW instead of JPG. Most people with a T6 dont even know how to open a RAW file anyway. But dont speak to the masses about RAW or JPG then use a T6 as your reason to handicap anyone's shooting who owns a better camera. I wasnt worried about a buffer bc when you have a terrible camera you should probably only be shooting 1 pic at a time anyway. Had i sprayed and prayed with my rebel this pic most likely would look extra horrible.
RAW vs JPG. Which do you think is the RAW? I changed batteries in my flash and forgot that it had reset my settings. Knocked my shutter speed down from 1/640 to 1/250 bc HHS was deactivated. Both pics edited with same settings.
-3 EV
-40 Highlight
-30 White
-40 black
RAW saved the picture. Just think if this had happened on a truly important picture. You never know when you may take the best picture of your life. SHOOT RAW.
Kill the background music!
Shut up & create (not only capture) great pictures.
Always shoot RAW, occasionally will shoot both if I want to upload quickly to social media but even then often find I don't like the in camera jpg so end up doing a fast edit on laptop and uploading my conversion
The RAW v JPG is quite irrelevant and up to each person how they want to shoot. But I don’t like people who misrepresent others and provide obvious misinformation.
The title of this post hits it straight on. Why is this even a debate? Let people shoot whatever they prefer. I shoot RAW, my girlfriend shoots JPEG. And nobody cares.