It's a July 4th tradition in my neighborhood for the firemen at the local station to use the ladder on their truck to suspend themselves over a crowd of eager kids and toss handfuls of peanuts and candy down below. Thanks to the light clouds and overcast, I didn't have to worry about overexposing the background or underexposing their black uniforms.
Yes, I know. No photographer worthy of the name shoots JPEGs these days. RAW is superior, it’s the only way to go, blah, blah, blah. All that aside, let’s suppose someone did want to shoot JPEGs for whatever reason—say, for example, because JPEGs take up so much less space on an already overcrowded hard drive, because your camera’s RAW format is so new your favorite raw converter doesn’t support it yet, or maybe just because you simply want to shoot without having to later spend time in front of a computer monitor, tweaking file after file. It might even be that you like shooting video with your DSLR, in which case there is no RAW option; the camera applies whatever JPEG rendering style you've set your camera to. If you fall into this iconoclastic group, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of this valid and often necessary file format.
Pay attention.
When you shoot JPEGs, what you see is pretty much what you’re going to get. Exposure, white balance, contrast, and sharpening are baked into the file. Anything other than minor tweaks can therefore cause the image to degrade noticeably. That means you need to make sure the settings you’re using are the ones you really want and appropriate to the light source. The upside to applying this much care and attention up-front is that you won’t have to do it later.
Shoot at maximum quality.
You’re saving so much file space by shooting JPEGs that there’s no point going overboard. Shoot at maximum resolution and minimum compression. If need be, you can always reduce the pixel dimensions and/or increase the compression later, and you won’t need sophisticated or expensive software to do it.
Get the white balance right.
This is a follow-up to my first tip. You really have to have a feel for how well your camera’s white balance settings handle various lighting conditions. When you’re shooting under tungsten lights is the tungsten setting too warm? If the lights are fluorescents is the fluorescent setting too green, magenta, or blue? Are the “cloudy” or “shade” settings too warm? Do you know how to perform a custom white balance to correct for this? The minute of extra effort you put into getting the white balance right from the start can save you hours of regret later.
This was shot with the JPEG sharpening in my camera set to minimum. Given the amount of detail that's still evident, some subjects might prefer that I could set it even lower.
Avoid over-sharpening.
In contrast to RAW files, which allow you to adjust the sharpening in post-production according to your preference, JPEG sharpening is applied in-camera and can’t be reduced if it’s too high. How can you can tell if it’s too high? Look for a halo effect between high-contrast edges when you view the file at 100%. If it’s obvious it’s too high. Turn it down. If it’s barely noticeable you’re probably okay. If in doubt, set it to the minimum.
Reduce the contrast setting in high-contrast situations.
The default for most JPEG renderings is for “snappy” contrast because that’s what most people like—that is, until they notice that most of the photos they shoot on bright sunny days have bleached highlights and blocked shadows. If you notice your camera doing this and it’s set to Standard, Vivid, Bright, or something similar, try either reducing the contrast setting for your rendering of choice or switching to a lower-contrast rendering such as “neutral” or “faithful.” A couple of clicks is usually all it takes to tone things down a bit.
Although the clouds and water in this photo technically have clipped highlights, it's a more visually accurate rendering of the scene than the photo below, where none of the highlights are clipped.
Develop a tolerance for slight over-exposure.
There’s no getting around the fact that JPEG is an 8-bit file format. That means it simply can’t record as wide a dynamic range of tones as a 14-bit RAW file. If you shoot a scene that has a brightness range that exceeds what the JPEG format can record then something has to give, either the shadows or the highlights. If I’m shooting a scene that has bright but small highlights with not much useful image detail then I let them clip. As you can see from the accompanying photo example, the alternative is a photograph that looks underexposed.
So there you have it. I think I’ve covered all the most useful tips but if you’ve got anything of value to contribute please feel free. And if you feel obliged to preface your suggestion with “I never shoot JPEGs myself, but…” trust me, I will understand.
It's nice to know that I am not the only person that realizes the amount of care required to shoot jpegs. Of course there was a time when a camera was basic and required attention to lighting, f/stops and everything modern photographers take for granted.
Such care is becoming a lost art.
Posted by: Michael | July 09, 2011 at 02:37 PM
I've been forced to shoot a lot more jpegs lately because my 2 year-old has absconded with most of my memory cards! I had to shoot an entire 4th of July parade last Monday on one 2GB SD card, so RAW was simply out of the question.
The K7 does a pretty nice job with jpegs out of the box, though. I've had little problem making decent 8x10s out of the files.
Posted by: Lou Doench | July 10, 2011 at 11:54 AM
Useful and sensible info, Thanks
Posted by: Jose Luis | July 11, 2011 at 05:20 PM
"I don't always shoot JPEG... but when I do, I prefer Shutterfinger's tips. Stay thirsty (for great pictures) my friends."
Posted by: Jorje Castillo | July 12, 2011 at 01:22 PM
For the benefit of those who may not know what Jorge's quote is alluding to, it's a series of commercials for a Mexican beer called Dos Equis (Two Xs), wherein "the most interesting man in the world" declares that he doesn't always drink beer, but when he does, it's Dos Equis. And now, since that explanation just made me thirsty, I bid you hasta luego.
Posted by: Gordon Lewis | July 12, 2011 at 02:10 PM
Good advice!
Add to the list of things to NOT do when using jogs: do not work on originals and do not save over an original file. Each time you save a jpg, it compresses the file a bit and loses some detail. Most programs like iPhoto manage that for you. I have not been able to track down real info, but it seems like jpgs are much better than 10 years ago.Certainly cameras and photo editing programs are much better as they can squeeze a lot more from a jpg than before.
I just had a 30x40" print made from a 12 mp jpg an it looks great. Of course a lot of technology went into that print...
Posted by: Jim | July 15, 2011 at 11:13 PM
I never use RAW, except when I shoot with the Leica M8.2 or M9, as those cameras deliver a crappy JPG (worse than it was 10 years ago, to quote Jim). Therefore I find your advice very useful for everybody taking real-life photographs as a hobby, a job, a form of art, whatever.
In my experience JPG shooting turns out to be tricky sometimes. You already went over the white balance matter. Yet I would like to go back to the overall exposure issue.
Given the narrow dynamics delivered by the digital capture (more on the side of a transparency than a negative film), my experience tells me that the expose-to-the-right rule is essential. Which forces us to use the live histogram intensively. If available, of course. Or to thoroughly review the histogram of the first shot and then manual expose accordingly until lighting conditions change. This procedure still further simplifies the post-processing job in front of the computer, as we will bring home a series of files with consistent exposure values.
Posted by: Gianni Galassi | July 17, 2011 at 01:46 PM