Is the jpg format produced in camera by Canon DSLR as good as computer converting raw to jpg?

Question

Going on extended holiday and can't drag computer. Have 32 GB worth of sdhc available (about 600 frames raw + jpg, about 4800 jpg alone). I am willing to settle for the "best" jpg. Does the camera do as well as I can do using, say Irfanview, to convert the raw to jpg?

Answer 1

With the raw format, you have much more latitude to do contrast adjustments and white balance in post processing before converting to 8-bits/color. I'm guessing that your camera will do a much better job converting the image to JPEG than Irfanview, or any other cheesy image editor, since your camera has some pretty advanced processing to automatically adjust contrast curves.

If you aren't going to adjust every image in a decent image editor, like Photoshop, stick to good quality JPEG format. For those shots where the lighting is difficult you may want to take those images in raw format so you have a better chance at recovering the dark areas in post processing.

Learn to use the EV compensation and white balance features on your camera. It can be helpful when you have difficult lighting situations.

Answer 2

It's exactly the same file type, so the quality is just as good.  Keep shooting in raw though if you put your pictures through any editing software like photoshop as you'll have more control to manipulate the image later on. But if you don't edit them after or space on memory cards is at a premium then i'd just stick to cameras own jpg.

Answer 3

Usually best quality jpg is just as good as raw.

I find your question a bit odd actually. Most people who shoot raw have a good reason to do so - it does chew up hard disks like crazy, particularly if you save your files as tiff or Photoshop psd. Raw is just an intermediate file format. If all you do is convert raw to jpg on auto-pilot, you might as well shoot in jpg to begin with.

Before you start shooting jpg, check that your options for sharpness, saturation, etc. are set to neutral to avoid unwanted in-camera processing. And with jpg, it does become more important to get the exposure and white balance right - there is less latitude for corrections in post processing.

Or you could simply continue to shoot in raw and visit a camera shop when you run low on memory - they can always copy 4GB worth of photographs to dvd for a few bucks a pop.