Lady Gaga almost sang Raw Raw, Raw Raw Raw, and the way some photographers talk, you're not a real photographer unless you shoot Raw. Is that really true? Well let’s look at the pros and cons and figure it out. Are there times when shooting Raw isn’t strictly the best option, but you probably should shoot it anyway?
The great thing about Raw is the ability to make complete changes to the file. Two things stand out especially. The first is White Balance. Being able to change this after the shot is exposed is a blessing. And then there’s highlight recovery. With Raw files you have the ability to pull back up to two stops of overexposure! Your JPEG file would just be a grey mess if you tried doing that.
There’s no downside surely? Well, Raw files are a lot bigger than the same dimension JPEG, even lossless compressed files. Under most circumstances, this is not an issue. I can fit almost 3000 lossless compressed 40MP photos on a 128GB card, going on to a 24TB drive, so space isn’t the issue. Speed on the other hand can be.
High-action events like sports, concerts, or fashion shows require a lot of photos to be taken in very short spurts of time. These also tend to have a consistent base white balance and light level (though less so without door sports). If you’re nailing your color and your exposure, you’re removing two of the big advantages of Raw. You gain more photos on the card - even on a 64GB card it’s over 9999.
I shoot a TV show which is a singing contest, so it’s essentially a recorded concert. The main light remains a consistent color and is the same level from song to song. Even without looking at a file, I know it’s about 4800K white balance and 1/160s, f/2.8 @ ISO2000 consistently. I’m comfortable shooting these in JPEG. I’m shooting 2-3000 images each day. JPEG makes this faster, and gives more burst room.
The studio I bring to the location? This is always shot in Raw. There are fewer photos, and more retouching being done. I could shoot the main show in Raw, and for the standard ‘first three songs, no flash’ situation I still shoot Raw. But for a different reason. These shows are less predictable, and often need huge ISO. Lightroom Classic’s Denoise feature is a Godsend here and it currently only works on Raw. So for this you really should shoot Raw.
