Depends what you want to do, If you are interested in looking at images on the computer screen or print the odd image with a modest printer then stick with JPEGs straight off the camera, learn how to use and set up you camera accurately. You’ll have great images and be very happy with results.

You can still use Adobe Camera Raw ( capital R because it is an acronym ) on your JPEGS, just tell Elements or bridge to open the image in ACR. raw isn’t a file type like JPEGs, TIFF, PSD etc, so is written as raw and not RAW/Raw.

Why worry about a raw image in full 16bit resolution when most/some photogs computer screens are 8 bit, maybe 6 bit and unable to resolve a sRGB colour space. Let alone having a fully calibrated and managed workflow. So you won’t be able to see the 16bit Adobe RGB colour space let alone manipulate it.

ACR is able to do many things but can’t and never will be able to recover either a blown out or black pixel/s. It doesn’t matter how elaborate the software is. Think about it, blown out means too much light for the sensor to respond to and puts a value of 255 against that pixel. It is pure white. If you see some recovered information then this is the raw convertor looking at all the color channels and finding information in either the red, green, blue info.

raw doesn’t have a colour space so is unaware of what type of light the image has been captured in, so it doesn’t matter what the camera menu has been set to. Colour space information is attached to the metadata file, not an actual change to the raw information. In fact the raw information in the sensor is grey scale, the Bayer filter colour array information is added to the raw grey scale information and then saved onto the flash card. The white balance is set in the raw convertor and not in the camera. If the image looks blue/yellow whatever, it is because that is how the camera metadata file has been set-up, it just needs to be tweaked, so JPEGs can be partially saved as the white balance can be changed/altered.

The are many pluses to shooting in raw, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing whatever your camera captured is all there on the flash card and then saved onto the computer. Shooting in JPEG, about 80% of the info captured on the sensor is thrown away, the image will be 8bit and this doesn’t have the headroom for later manipulation that a 16bit image has. Hence way JPEGs suffer with jaggies, and the hair comb histograms.

When personal situations change and photogs can move onto a more capable system, the raw image will be still waiting there for you to see the image in its full glory and as raw convertors improve so does the ability of releasing more stored image info. Many photogs I speak with now wish they hadn’t deleted an old raw file, because they didn’t think it was up to scratch but saved similar images are giving up more info.

If you would like to know more about raw especially, I would highly recommend any of the books written by Bruce Fraser, sadly gone now, Bruce knew more about raw and what to do with it than anyone else, in fact Bruce was a key engineer in the development of Lightroom and its raw convertor. Also a founding member of Pixel Genius.

Sorry if this has rambled on a bit, come back if you have any queries, pleased to help, Peter