Kaaya: 1, 2, 3

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Back here I got the ball rolling on the debate between shooting RAW or shooting in the compressed lossy JPEG format. Ken Rockwell says JPEG is sufficient. Harikrishna Katragadda thinks that's heresy. Well, I sent Rockwell a link to the post and here is his response:

It's sad people think there is a debate; there isn't. Use of RAW or JPG is an easy choice for any experienced photo pro knowing what's being shot. Actually even JPG BASIC is fine for many uses.

The debate comes from people not realizing each is optimized for one or another use. The argument comes from people trying to convince others that one or the other applies to all possible uses, which they don't. Feel free to post that if you like.

Read more about Rockwell's theories about JPG vs Raw vs TIFF. There appears to be two very distinct schools of thought. The first says capture everything as RAW and then tweak them down to however the images will be used. The second school of thought is to capture images according to how they will be used in the end, JPEGs if that's all will be needed.

I understand Harikrishna's take on this; to have in hand what is widely considered a digital negative is a boon. It allows one to go from there to just about anything one would want to create. But I also see Ken's point of view that it makes little sense to subject yourself or your equipment to the processing power or time to capture everything in RAW when JPEGs in some situations will more than suffice.

I am pricing some Sandisk 2GB cards for my imminent D70s purchase. With a 6.1 megapixel camera how many RAW images can I capture? How many JPEG (fine) images will I have in a full card? What file sizes are we talking about here? And, at the end of the day, how much computer work will we be committing to if we shot everything in RAW v. JPEG? If I am a wedding photographer [and I am], should I be shooting everything as RAW or would JPEG [in fine mode] be sufficient?

South Asian photographers face an uphill battle if they want to have their work published and eventually recognized here in the West.

Some try their hand at photography contests, some others cold call magazine photo editors and float their project ideas. My friend Abir Abdullah who has consistently proven himself as a serious photojournalist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh asked me again to sponsor his submission to the annual Gordon Parks International Photo Competition. Just the other day, Mahesh Bhat, also a friend and photographer based in Bangalore, India wrote in asking to spread the word about his project: Heroes Of India.

Producing great images doesn't come easy and it definitely doesn't come cheap. Photojournalists often place themselves in some very precarious situations to capture moments that are historic, evocative, inspirational and wholly necessary for our understanding of the world.

I am asking for your financial support. I am asking for your help to create a revolving account of at least a US$1000 to be used ONLY to support credible photojournalists or documentary photographers in their contest entries or their photography projects. If the corpus balloons to something larger, great, but the very minimum we wish to raise is $1000 before disbursing it.

Please look to the top right of this page to see how you can use PayPal to donate $10, $20, $50, $100 or the entire $1000.

Please Note:

We will be held fully accountable for all disbursements. They will be made at the sole discretion of a small panel of judges from the photography world. All decisions are final.

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Kaaya: 1, 2

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