Bill Hilton wrote:
ML Photo writes ...

Is there a difference in image quality from shooting RAW and making a
jpg from that vs. shooting jpg directly?

Well, technically you are ALWAYS shooting RAW but if you have the
camera set to output jpegs then it takes the RAW file and processes it
according to your settings for white balance, sharpening, exposure,
contrast etc and spits out a jpeg, discarding the RAW info. So the
real question is 'can you do a better job of making a jpeg by adjusting
white balance etc with the converter than the camera does with fixed
settings'?

If you got everything right at exposure time (especially white balance
and exposure) then the in-camera jpeg will be fine, but if not then
it's better to make the corrections on the RAW file and convert than to
make the corrections on the jpeg.

Bill

If the scene is a pretty typical one then the camera will normally do
a fine job of making the jpeg. If the scene has some extremes in it
then raw can do wonders. There is a lot of talk about what color space
to shoot in, if you shoot in raw you can reduce the saturation until
all the colors fit. Raw will also give you a bit more dynamic range
then what you would get from the jpeg straight from the camera. There
is also some pretty odd processing that goes on in some cameras before
they output the jpeg file, with my Sony it does a lot of filtering to
try and reduce noise, unfortunately it also removes detail in some
cases. The worst case is water with waves, the Sony seems to see this
as a blue sky with noise and so removes the waves. Shooting raw gives
me the waves back. I see far fewer problems with the camera jpeg using
the 20D.

The best thing to do is shoot both for a while and get a feel for what
you are able to do with the raw and see if it is worth it to you. Try
shooting some bright reds both ways, this often give the camera jpeg a
hard time. When converting the raw to jpeg play with the saturation
control.

Scott