why I sometimes like jpeg

Approximately six or so years ago, I revived my interest in photography with my first "good" digital camera. It was one of those Canon super zoom things with just enough manual controls to give the illusion of full control without really allowing it. Today, I use a blend of gear - an Olympus E-3 dslr which is showing some wear but generates lovely results, and a Fuji X-10 compact for taking everywhere.

It was, and is, fun

Today, though, I do things a little differently than I did when I started working with digital cameras. My technique is better, my understanding of how to expose and compose a picture is better, and I have developed a work flow that serves my purposes very well.

For example, I always shoot raw and expose to the right. At first, I had no choice and shot jpegs but when I have a choice, I shoot raw.

If you are interested in photography, you know about the raw vs jpeg debate. If you don't it goes something like this: raw = more flexibility, more depth, better highlight recovery, better shadow detail, a higher level of detail because there is no data loss, etc etc etc while jpeg = faster, more convenient, nail it in camera and don't need pp, etc etc etc.

Funny thing is, both sides of the debate are right. And both are wrong.

In reading about the X-10 that I use as my take anywhere camera, it would be easy to come away with the idea that the raw functionality of the camera is not needed since the jpegs out of the camera are somehow sprinkled in magic pixie dust or something which makes them better than any other camera's output under the sun.

Part of this has to do with fanboyism I am sure. And part of this has to do with lousy raw format support by Adobe and Apple (through no fault of their own - does Fuji give over how to process the EXR sensor raws? I am not sure) and rather lousy software from Fuji to process raws. And a large part of this has to do with the truly excellent jpeg engine that Fuji has in their cameras.

The trick, by the way, when shooting raw with the Fuji is to shoot raw and jpeg at the same time, select size medium and fine output, set the DR to 400%, and use LR4 to convert the half size generated raws into DNG upon import. This gives nice and chunky low res raws with huge dynamic range which are very flexible and somehow the aberrations that people have reported from EXR raws seem to be gone. I don't know why, but I do know I get my best results this way.

However, for those who like to just shoot and who are not into a lot of pp work, jpegs are much much easier.

Which brings me to why I sometimes like jpegs.

Every one of these pictures is a straight from the camera jpeg from the Fuji X-10.  All I did was crop the picture a bit, and in the case of the motorcycle, remove the number plate data. For shooting in black and white, the jpeg engine in the camera produces exactly the results I like with no messing around at all and does so consistently and well. All I have to do is remember to tweak the exposure compensation dial on top of the camera and focus on composition. The camera does the rest.

For colour, and for my Olympus gear, it is raw all the way. But when I feel like shooting black and white, it is, in my opinion, hard to top what I am getting out of my Fuji.

Incidentally, for those who use this camera, the settings I used for the above pictures are as follows: Medium Size, Fine, DR at Auto, Sharpness -1, Highlight Tone +1, Shadow Tone -1, Noise Reduction -2.