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joshwa
RAW vs JPEG
509 (716)Took the Olympus E-1 out today, with the Industar 50/2 (50mm, f/3.5) lens with me today, I chose that lens because it made the camera fit neatly into a smaller bag. I also took another old m42 lens with me, but didn't use it in the end. The light was pleasing, but harsh, and I was expecting better results from the JPEGs, but I guess we've come a long way since 2003!, and shooting both RAW and JPEG has it's advantages!
Some of the things I've done to this image include asjusting the levels / highlights to retain as much detail as possible in the face, without over-exposing any of it. The amount of detail lost in the JPEG is quite shocking - note the lack of freckles! (these are 100% crops from the images) Then when you have the image in Photoshop you can continue to adjust the image, increase sharpness or continue adjusting.
With this, the subject was pretty much a siloeute, so I've adjusted the exposure (around +1.5), and because of this noise has appeared and with the RAW file I'm able to fine tune how much noise reduction is applied. With the image above, because the subject was correctly exposed, I haven't had to perform any noise reduction.
Another cool thing about shooting in RAW, is that you can take advantage of the latest RAW software as it continues to be developed.
Comments
True 
Other benefits include:
- Correcting White Balance / Colour Temperature
- Depending on the camera, you could get better noise reduction, particularly useful when using high ISO
Negatives:
- File size (although large memory cards are much cheaper than they used to be)
- Processing time
Can you think of any more?
Quote: Other benefits include:
- Correcting White Balance / Colour Temperature
But Lightroom allows this for jpeg.
In fact all of the features in LR work on jpeg & tiff file formats.
The biggest positive for raw is that the camera has not added its own " processing" to the image, unlike jpeg which will therefore have less scope for subsequent adjustments, like sharpening for example.
The biggest negative for raw is that the initial image when viewed is not particular good and needs an experienced eye to see it's potential after some processing.
So much easier to immediately judge a transparency on a light box 
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