Why I shoot JPEG when I travel

At home I shoot RAW. The catalog is calibrated, the monitor is calibrated, I know which presets I trust, the import workflow runs without thinking. RAW is the right answer because the cost of working with it is amortized across the year.

On a trip, I shoot JPEG, with a specific film simulation locked in before I leave. I commit, at the point of capture, to the photograph the camera made. The downside is the upside: I cannot rescue a bad exposure later. So I do not take bad exposures, or I throw the frame away. Decisions get made at the moment of the photograph, not three weeks later in a dark room I am not in.

What this is really about

It is not a technical argument. RAW is technically better. The argument is about the size of the editing debt I am willing to carry home.

Editing debt is the thing nobody talks about. Every RAW file is a homework assignment from yourself to yourself, due whenever. The number of photographers I know with thirty thousand un-culled frames from a 2019 trip is approximately all of them.

JPEGs are decisions already made. When I get home, the work is sorting and writing about them, not deciding what they look like.

RAW makes you a colorist. JPEG makes you a photographer. Both are real jobs; pick one for the trip.