Shoot RAW and JPEG
We’ve all shot in JPEG, whether you’re a pro, beginner, or a person on the streets. Our phones shoot JPEG by default, although some provide advanced modes such as shooting in RAW, most if not all phones still default to JPEG.
When I upgraded my camera to a DSLR, I took the upgrade path too seriously in that I just shoot all my shots in RAW. They said RAW is good if you’re shooting with a DSLR. So that’s how I shot for a couple of years. So why switch to RAW and JPEG?
My main reasons are for archival/online backup purposes. Most of the photography I’ve done are travel photography, where memories of the places I’ve been to and people I was with are a lot more important than the photographic quality of the photo themselves. I’ve shot a lot of RAW-only travel photos, but since they are too big to upload (at least 25MB per photo), they’re a waste of storage space. Also, some photo sites either don’t support them or don’t allow sharing of RAW files. So I ended up with a lot of RAW files on my disk that I couldn’t really share or backup until I’ve processed them manually.
With RAW and JPEG, I can backup and upload the JPEGs to an album in Google Photos straightaway and share them, and still have a copy of the RAW files in case I would want to spend more time and edit them and make the photos pop.
