The path to perfect JPEGS

Spend less time stuck at your PC and more time out and about by getting JPEGs right when you shoot. Angela Nicholson and two notable JPEG shooters explain how

- Angela Nicholson

Raw files are great when you want to extract lots of detail from the shadows and highlights, or you need make significant colour adjustments, but in-camera JPEGs are fine for most shots – provided you get the settings right. These days, that doesn’t mean you lose all creative control over your images because most modern cameras give you plenty of options.

As well as freeing you up from your computer, a key advantage to thinking about how you want your final images to look and perfecting your images at the shooting stage is that you have the opportunity to make fundamental changes to the exposure and composition that can’t be done at the editing stage. It also makes you engage with your photography more and pushes you to be creative with your camera rather than your computer. So let’s take a look at how to set up your camera to get the results you want.

Image size, format and quality

One of the nice things about shooting JPEGs is that you con’t have to abandon raw files completely, so you can have them as a back-up if you want. Shooting raw and JPEGs simultaneously gives you the best of both worlds, but it means your card will fill up quicker than if you just shoot one file type.