RAW and JPEG, please explain.

[jimcritchley]

As a new comer to picture manipulation I am very confused to the actual pros and cons of shooting in RAW and JPEG. While I understand the RAW to more like the negative and needs more manipualtion, if I shoot in highest quality JPEG with my D70 is any manipulation still needed, assuming I get the all settings correct (I use the bracketing feature which is very handy)? Any straight answers would be a god send, thanks in advance

[castledude]

I've switched to shooting RAW and have found it gets me a few extras.

First those pictures that are just screwed up (either by me, or by the meter locking on the wrong thing, or by a flash not going off at full power) this allows me a few extra bits that now I can recover some of those pictures.

For those pictures that have extreme areas in them (deep shadows, flaring highlights) I can pull additional info out of those areas and make the picture more acceptable. Bracketing helps only if your subject doesn't ever move. RAW gives you the extra bits all in one shot without needing to combine things.

With more bits to work with curves seem a little better to me. I am able to make some curve settings to give a brighter "pop" (think Kodachrome) to the picture.

RAW for me is to correct the missed shot, I seldom do very much to the "good pictures" but it lessens the number of pictures that I have taken that have that perfect expression, or great setting but because of something. It really is more of a digital darkroom feature equivalent to taking the negative to a quality lab for some custom manipulation.