Tony Northrup's CONFUSING RAW VS JPEG Video: My Thoughts

A lot of people asked me what my opinion was of a recent video that Tony Northrup made with the title "jpg vs raw, Why i started shooting jpg more". Here's my take on some of the confusing statements that were made.

I decided I would take a bunch of quotes form the video and give my take on them.

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[froknowsphoto]

Such a strange bunch of contradicting statements in his video, do you agree?

[deedeeXcee]

Because “I shoot jpeg” on a t-shirt would look stupid...

[sdhfgujk]

Jpeg is for people taking pictures with their DSLRs for fun but RAW is for people really trying to make the best photographs possible. Thats how it is in my mind

[llerradish]

Give Tony a break, he's still using Windows Vista

[claybutler]

Tony's video was a really long way of saying "shoot RAW unless you have a very specific reason not to". That's the whole video.

[TomaszTracz]

In my opinion Tony shows advantages and disadvantages of both formats in easy to understand way.

[brycewalburn]

"Beginners have no clue what they're doing with RAW files."


Me, a beginner: "Yup."

[DanielBust]

Take a breath, relax, then watch the video again. You’ve taken this out of context. I think you’ll find you’re both trying to say the same thing.

[rjlindner]

Thank you Jared for telling beginners to shoot in raw/jpeg because if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have had those raw files to fall back on once I had more knowledge on raw files.

[koolkoalalova]

this guy seems personally attacked by jpg's existence

[closmasmas]

Who cares what other people think? Why does it matter to you if Tony shoots JPG?

[strongandco]

I took the time to watch Tony's video and there doesn't appear to be anything ambiguous in there. He opens by saying that sometimes you should shoot jpeg and sometimes you shoud shoot raw then goes on to explain why and the advantages and disadvantage of each file type. Are you sure that this video isn't just a knee jerk response because you are butt hurt that someone is challenging your opinion and that you have unconciously taken certain points out of context.

[drcover]

7k dislike? This has got to be your most disliked video ever.

[PhotoBob]

Dude some of this was good but some was ridiculous. Shooting a wedding is important shooting my dog hump his pillow isnt. I shoot the wedding in raw and the humping in jpeg. The fact is jpeg is a little easier. Example: One of my favorite cameras won’t transfer raw to my cell phone. So I can’t quickly transfer (without a card reader) from my camera to my phone then send it to friends or post to social. I do this frequently when I travel. That is a great case for jpeg.
All of my paid work is raw and most of the rest is jpeg

[theboss]

I think Tony Northrup's video was meant for the average amateur photographer. He has a point. I is not always better to shoot "every single shoot" in uncompressed RAW, when an amateur shooter aims to merely produce photos for his own purpose. For example for watching family photos on the tablet. An amateur shooter produces JPEGs in the result and it is OK to skip the development process from RAW to JPEG sometimes, especially in situations Tony Northrup talked about.

An no, you are not right about data storage. It is an issue for the average beginner photographer. Most people use SSDs on their laptops or limited capacities on their smartphones. 128, 256 or 512GB are most common. More than a 512GB SSD is rare and very expensive. Always using external hard drives is less comfortable and has not the same mobility. Clouds backupping is also not cheap; the average price is 10 bucks a month for 1TB.

[EpicNovA]

The ironic thing about this video is that i'm guessing it's Jared's most disliked video but in reality this might be the most valuable video he's ever made in terms of giving us photographers advice.

[HumanCreativity]

how hard was it to stay calm? The Ken Rockwell line was hillarious.

[wtfgadget]

I don't understand why so many dislikes. This man tells truth. First time I had my camera I said "what is this shitty file I cannot open"

[simomonster]

First of all ! That background music doesn’t fit .

[angriestphotographer]

*I only shoot RAW for my naked selfies* ;D