Wedding Photography...JPG/RAW

One of my family members has asked me to shoot photos at their wedding. I was wondering if anyone on here shoots weddings in JPG Fine instead of RAW. I have never had any issues with being able to fully edit my JPG Fine images in CS5..so I figured Id ask. Just thinking about memory capacity and how much to bring. This is basically just for experience purposes for me..but it would be great to show them that I did as well as their hired photographer.

Do it in raw so you have more room for recovery when you'll need it, and trust me, you'll need it in that white dress.

Your always safe with raw,

The wedding should be no different than any other case you can think of. Why shoot JPEG at all unless you're working a paid job which is entirely dependant on quantity not quality?

The question you should ask yourself is, I have $3000 worth of gear, why won't I spend $40 on an additional memory card if I'm always out of space?

Barry wrote: Do it in raw so you have more room for recovery when you'll need it, and trust me, you'll need it in that white dress.

Do photographers have a hard time exposing for the dress? Anyone have any tips they care to share for getting the correct exposure?

There are some significant benefits to working with raw... basically you have a lot more control over a raw image simply because it has 100% of the image and data involved in taking the picture.

What JPEG essentially is, a lossy compression method. basically JPEG takes parts of the image it feels is unnecessary and throws it away. You usually have multiple JPEG settings that range from Low Quality to at least High Quality... sometimes even Fine or UItra Fine depending on the camera manufacturer. Basically the only difference between a Low, and Fine image, is the amount of image data that is thrown away by the camera when its created/compressed from the sensor.

That said... the Fine/Ultra Fine settings are usually pretty close in quality to raw, as very little image data has been thrown away. The key difference is that the camera, when creating the image has applied things like white balance, saturation, based on an algorithm and settings, and once that has been done, and compressed, you can never really truly go back and change it based on the original raw data.


Ill try to use it as another example... RAW is like a PSD file in photoshop. You can save the PSD and go back, work on different layers, pretty much go back and change whatever you want whenever you want. However once you export it to jpg, png, or whatever, the layers are flattened, etc, and you will never be able to go back and modify it like you could with the PSD file. If you say want to change text, in a PSD file you can just go back and change the text layer... however if its jpeg, you can really only paint over it, and make a new text layer on top so to speak.

So... RAW is great... but if you plan on doing very little editing then you probably wont see a big difference between the fine jpeg with camera defaults, and the fine jpeg with the raw file processing software defaults. lol

LL Jazz wrote: The wedding should be no different than any other case you can think of. Why shoot JPEG at all unless you're working a paid job which is entirely dependant on quantity not quality?

The question you should ask yourself is, I have $3000 worth of gear, why won't I spend $40 on an additional memory card if I'm always out of space?

You are right. I should just buy myself a bigger card/another one in general. I guess maybe I'll shoot raw. If I start to fill up on all my cards, I can always switch back to jpeg just to save some space.

How many wedding photos does a photographer usually shoot in a full day wedding?

Tam wrote:

LL Jazz wrote: The wedding should be no different than any other case you can think of. Why shoot JPEG at all unless you're working a paid job which is entirely dependant on quantity not quality?

The question you should ask yourself is, I have $3000 worth of gear, why won't I spend $40 on an additional memory card if I'm always out of space?

You are right. I should just buy myself a bigger card/another one in general. I guess maybe I'll shoot raw. If I start to fill up on all my cards, I can always switch back to jpeg just to save some space.

How many wedding photos does a photographer usually shoot in a full day wedding?

How many shots depends on the photographer and how big the wedding is. I would way a min of 400 photos.

The original post says you get good results with jpeg, but makes no mention of your experience with raw processing. If you are experienced with raw processing then you know the advantages of raw, and whether you need/want to take advantage of those. Many pros successfully shoot only jpeg. I don't think a wedding is an appropriate situation to suddenly switch techniques, gear, workflow, etc.... Stick with what you know works for you. So if you are not used to shooting and processing raw at least shoot raw+jpeg. Or get in plenty of practice with raw before the wedding.

All you need to know to handle the groom in black and the bride in white is an understanding of the fundamentals of exposure and the dynamic range limitations of your gear. It's no different than shooting any other white or black object. Dress exposure problems are usually caused by the photographer not understanding how the meter works, and it's limitations when running in any sort of auto mode. If you want to practice shoot white and black towels in similar light as you are going to encounter at the wedding. You are trying to retain a significant amount of detail.

You mention a hired photographer, and it sounds like you intend to fully cover the wedding. Is the family member who asked you the same one who hired the pro? Is the pro aware that other photographers are being asked to cover the wedding? Are you involved with the planning? These are important things to get straight before the day of the wedding.

geoffellis wrote: There are some significant benefits to working with raw... basically you have a lot more control over a raw image simply because it has 100% of the image and data involved in taking the picture.

What JPEG essentially is, a lossy compression method. basically JPEG takes parts of the image it feels is unnecessary and throws it away. You usually have multiple JPEG settings that range from Low Quality to at least High Quality... sometimes even Fine or UItra Fine depending on the camera manufacturer. Basically the only difference between a Low, and Fine image, is the amount of image data that is thrown away by the camera when its created/compressed from the sensor.

That said... the Fine/Ultra Fine settings are usually pretty close in quality to raw, as very little image data has been thrown away. The key difference is that the camera, when creating the image has applied things like white balance, saturation, based on an algorithm and settings, and once that has been done, and compressed, you can never really truly go back and change it based on the original raw data.


Ill try to use it as another example... RAW is like a PSD file in photoshop. You can save the PSD and go back, work on different layers, pretty much go back and change whatever you want whenever you want. However once you export it to jpg, png, or whatever, the layers are flattened, etc, and you will never be able to go back and modify it like you could with the PSD file. If you say want to change text, in a PSD file you can just go back and change the text layer... however if its jpeg, you can really only paint over it, and make a new text layer on top so to speak.

So... RAW is great... but if you plan on doing very little editing then you probably wont see a big difference between the fine jpeg with camera defaults, and the fine jpeg with the raw file processing software defaults. lol

Thank you for going so indepth with your answer. Honestly I have no idea how much editing I will be doing. I normally shoot portraits, so I have the knowledge of portraits, I just never photograph a wedding before. I shoot all my portraits in jpeg and never have a problem with editing.

Henry Peach wrote: The original post says you get good results with jpeg, but makes no mention of your experience with raw processing. If you are experienced with raw processing then you know the advantages of raw, and whether you need/want to take advantage of those. Many pros successfully shoot only jpeg. I don't think a wedding is an appropriate situation to suddenly switch techniques, gear, workflow, etc.... Stick with what you know works for you. So if you are not used to shooting and processing raw at least shoot raw+jpeg. Or get in plenty of practice with raw before the wedding.

All you need to know to handle the groom in black and the bride in white is an understanding of the fundamentals of exposure and the dynamic range limitations of your gear. It's no different than shooting any other white or black object. Dress exposure problems are usually caused by the photographer not understanding how the meter works, and it's limitations when running in any sort of auto mode. If you want to practice shoot white and black towels in similar light as you are going to encounter at the wedding. You are trying to retain a significant amount of detail.

You mention a hired photographer, and it sounds like you intend to fully cover the wedding. Is the family member who asked you the same one who hired the pro? Is the pro aware that other photographers are being asked to cover the wedding? Are you involved with the planning? These are important things to get straight before the day of the wedding.

Thank you Henry. I do not shoot in raw. I only shoot in jpeg. The only reason I even thought about raw is because it's a wedding, however I usually get good results shooting my portraits in jpeg. The bride/groom hired the photographer. The mother of the bride ask me to take pictures of the wedding. I have no idea who the hired photographer is and what he/she may or may not know. I guess I should get some answers. Thanks.

As a side note... both my cameras allow me to shoot with RAW+Jpeg Fine - I love this because quite frankly personally I know very little about editing. (a bit ironic considering i understand the technology behind camera sensors/pixels, etc... im very techie)

I do however assume that one day ill get around to learning more about raw processing, so I just toss the RAW files in a separate directory... and maybe one day ill go back and find an okay shot and turn it into something stunning LOL

And memory cards now a days.... SOOOO cheap. even brand names. like 16GB high speed sd cards cards go for ~50$ now in Canada. 32GB are less than 90$. I remember when i paid like 170$ for a 4GB SDHC card or something haha

I'd never, ever EVER shoot an event in jpeg (unless it was a live sporting event or something where I had to upload the pictures quickly to a server or something... then I'd shoot RAW+jpeg most likely and send the jpegs and keep the RAW files for later editing).

Too many things can go wrong (white balance etc.) and you can't shoot it again.

Just buy a few more cards and be more selective with your shots.

I have done several weddings and I shoot JPEG Fine. I am not familiar with the way I can edit raw to use all the space. I do have mistakes that would be nice to fix in PS (mostly a blown out detail) since I didnt change a setting right away when going in or out of a church. But I look frequently at the screen just as a guideline. I try to use the JPEG like I did film and shoot correctly and I ususally dont have much problems that I cant fix in PS..

Thats just the way I do it...and I shot around 800 photos of an all day wedding but edit it down to about 300that i show the client.

mklinejr wrote: I have done several weddings and I shoot JPEG Fine. I am not familiar with the way I can edit raw to use all the space. I do have mistakes that would be nice to fix in PS (mostly a blown out detail) since I didnt change a setting right away when going in or out of a church. But I look frequently at the screen just as a guideline. I try to use the JPEG like I did film and shoot correctly and I ususally dont have much problems that I cant fix in PS..

Thats just the way I do it...and I shot around 800 photos of an all day wedding but edit it down to about 300that i show the client.

I have 6 words for you man.

"Buy Lightroom.
Learn to use it."

It'll really help you with your workflow, especially for events. You can skip through and make picks (P) and then just work on those picks. Editing and organizing RAW in LR is really simple too.

Do this and you'll never shoot jpeg again.