Margaret,
Shooting in jpeg format involves the camera doing al lthe work of converting the raw file to jpeg format, In doing this, the camera makes certain assumptions, takes account of all of the settings you have applied on the camera, makes the conversion, and throws away a lot of information in the process.
Now, if, for example, you had left the camera's white balance setting on tungsten from the last time you used it, and were then shooting in daylight, if you were shooting raw, you could correct this very easily using your raw processing software. If you were shooting in jpeg, you could correct it with a lot of faff in photoshop.
Another scenario is when you've misjudged the exposure and got it pretty badly wrong. If you adjust the raw file, you can generally recover a lot more detail than you would be able to if you applied the same adjustment to a jpeg file in the same situation.
If you shoot raw, you can use the bundled software that came with your camera to very easily turn those files into jpegs, just as though you'd shot them as in-camera jpegs. The difference is, you have the raw file, and even if you're not sure right now how that benefits you, when you've figured it out, you can work on the raw file and get the best out of your pictures. If you shoot in-camera jpeg, you're stuck with what the camera gives you. You can turn a raw file into a jpeg, but you can't go the other way back.
|