RAW images

So far I've had the setting on the camera at fine...shoud I be using RAW or RAW & JPEG?

What differences am I likely to see?

If you use RAW you can decide how you wish your work to appear as the camera will take and preserve exactly what you see/take, any error you make in amending can be ditched and you can go back to the RAW image and start again. With jpeg or tiff the camera will have already made some decisions for you before it has saved the image to the card so there is no way you can retrieve the original material.

Sure one of the pro's or experienced photographers will explain it better but I always think of RAW as a negative that can be worked on in the dark room and jpeg or tiff as the print you get back from the processor where you have had no input into the finished article.

You can of course amend the finished article but not retrieve something the camera discarded at the time of saving the image to the card.

Yep - with RAW you are able to make more changes with a photo editing suite.

However, most of the time the editing suite will only take the 'raw' /flat picture and you have to work from that, yet if you shot in jpeg the camera does a lot of work to make your picture look prety good (ie the stuff you'd be doing to the raw file!).

I shoot in the highest jpeg quality setting.

Think of RAW as several layers of clear plastic, looking thru the whole lot produces the picture. However you can remove one layer of plastic sheeting to make adjustments then slide it back into position. that would alter a part but not the whole. That is what you can do if shooting in RAW

With Jpeg and the same clear plastic, in this case you can add/remove/alter parts as on the surface but not in between.

Therefore you have greater control of the picture editing in RAW against Jpeg.

For the time being I am happy in shooting with Jpeg fine

Hope this makes things clearer

Bazza

Thanks - things are beginning to fall into place

A very helpful thread this is

I think it should be added to the list of helpful threads for newbies:
http://www.yophotographer.com/page.php?t=54