RAW vs JPEG: Which is Better For Sports Photography? 

Thanks for watching this video! If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear from you!

Excellent job at comparing these and why, and better than I have yet heard explained in such detail as you have done.

Finally, a video that actually explains how you should actually process RAW files . The raw to tiff to 3rd party workflow is truly the best way when you have time to deliver. great video!

One more thing Jack, I really appreciate your final comments re using JPG shots after sorting events. I’m right there…. the girls(soccer) are so used to immediate results, that the JPG shots get uploaded to the file sharing right away. I do keep some NEFs, but time is everything, as you do correctly pointed out.

Hi Jack! Great approach! I've seen hundreds of videos, as I have been working my way (hopefully) up into Sports Photography. Pretty average and humble photographer and this is to say that I've earn (at least) the capability of filtering bad content! I'm in no position to critique, but this is definitely a great channel, from someone that knows the business truly. Thank You and, of course, the least that I could do was to subscribe and looking forward for future videos...still a lot to catch up from your library!!! Cheers

I love your content it’s been so helpful

Great video Jack. Would really be interesting to see a deeper comparison between NX Studio and LR, especially with a workflow of exporting from NX to Topaz Denoise and such.

Excellent flog Jack, I was out yesterday with my D6 photographing some cricket, used Jpeg fine, and was so pleased with the files, I'm going to get the Nikon software as it looks pretty good.

Thanks Jack, it does seem I spend a lot of time for little to no gain editing low light raw files.

Thank you for these videos!!

Awesome video. This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much. New subscriber here!

Jack - Another excellent presentation with lots of information AND documentation! You do an superb job - please keep on keeping on.

Great video!

I teach a Sports Photography class in Georgetown Texas-Great Video-Will show this to my class-Thank you

Great video! But when people say wait till the end of the video I skipped it to the end.

Can you please tell me the Picture Control Settings and any adjustments you make when shooting sports on your D5 when shooting SOC in jpg format? Thanks, Bob.

I think it's important to remember many of the "RAW is superior 100%" of the time arguments come from people who came to that conclusion with gear from 15 years ago. In camera JPGs have improved a great deal since then. You also hear people like Peter Read Miller state they only shoot RAW because that's what the team of professional editors he sends his pics to want. Great, but I don't have that team, and again, that team formed up 10+ years ago.

I’m a sports photographer who hates JPEG. But I shoot JPEG. I am aware that it is a 20+ year old file format that is well past its expiration date. But it has become the standard. It is good to see that as mirrorless cameras progress, more are making HEIF and HEIC File formats available. These are compressed and processed but retain dramatically more information, smaller file size and have a broader color range than JPEG’s. This is a great video. Thank you for producing it. Hopefully in a few years this won’t be an issue anymore.

Jack Beasly, thanks for the great video. Can we not apply the same in-camera JPEG NR processing outside the camera to the RAW file on the PC? Is the exact same in-camera jpeg NR not available outside the camera? It takes the camera like a microsecond to apply corections to the image from the sensor to produce a great looking jpeg. I see you fiddling with buttons for a few minutes on your PC to try to make the RAW image look like the jpeg from the camera. Is there not a preset in Nikon's software on the PC that does exactly what the camera does? Apply the preset on the RAW file on your PC with one button and out comes a great looking jpeg, and takes a microsecond to do like how the camera does it?

good vid

Hi Jack I just have a question. I can take about 1000 shots per event on average. I have never used RAW. It takes a long time to get through 1000 shots in JPEG in culling then editing. Does it take longer to edit RAW per image? If so, how much longer? I dont think I can handle longer editing sessions so I just stay with JPEG. I think you should also do a video on photo storage. I have filled my lap top hard drive many times making my editing very sluggish until I can offload a ton of photos to an external hard drive and talking about a good filing or organized naming system might be helpful? Thanks for your helpful videos.

I shoot Canon cameras. If I shoot JPEG with high ISO noise reduction on will that slow down my frame rate?

Jack, I also have the D850. What High ISO NR setting did you use on the JPEG (football shot)? off, low, normal or high?

Wow noise in jpg as well..............Glad I shoot with Sony A9 and A1 with GM glass

Is it just me or did that RAw conversion seem about a stop brighter than the Jpeg which would explain a lot of the noise?

Why don't you mention that you can modify your JPEG profile in the camera in case the generic preset from the factory does not please you?

Fro knows photo swears by raw. I never shoot raw for sports during the day but at night I do sometimes

I don't understand the comparison of applying the same transformations to the NEF and the JPG in parallel. I assume that the reason that the JPG looks "better" out of the gate is that you're using High ISO NR in-camera that has already been applied to the JPG. The RAW image has no NR applied from the start, so it makes perfect sense that the JPG will look "better" when you look at it initially (likely also due to in-camera sharpening being applied). If you want a better comparison, then apply some NR in Lightroom to the RAW image as well as some sharpening in order to apply the same treatment that the JPG got in-camera before you ingested it into Lightroom. As for applying "auto" to the image, "auto" setting normally follow the 80/20 rule. "Auto" algorithms normally work when applied to an "average" image in terms of brightness, contrast and color. When you apply it to an image that is at one extreme or another, the results often go off of the rails. For example, if you apply "auto" to a black cat sitting on a coal pile at night or a snowman in a blizzard, you're going to get funky results because the software is going to "center" the results in terms of brightness, etc.. The same goes for night football where most of the pixels will be overly dark and "auto" will try and make the whole image look like it wasn't taken at night. My personal experience is that high ISO images are where RAW shines when compared to JPGs. Particularly when it comes to recovering shadow details. I shoot tons of ice hockey and am starting to get back into football. With players wearing helmets and players with darker skin tones, you often have to fight some shadows on their faces. The same is true when a player's face is in the shadow of another player. I've found that with RAW images it's generally easier to make the player's faces look brighter and sharper without turning the facial skins details to mush.

Wow, what a nice vid. I had no idea that such flexibility was available.

Auto iso should not be limited to 16000iso! It's better to get the exposer than to try to recover in post. Especially if you accidentally keep your shutterspeed too high, the high iso will save you and you'll get an image. ESPECIALLY EITH THE D5 that camera can get to 36,000 iso and look very clean. Also for autofocus I use 3d tracking and if I hold down front bottoms (top or bottom)with my middle finger it switches to single. Super awesome hot swapping from single point to 3D all the time