I still wouldn't shoot in anything but RAW, because that's like throwing away the negative. Not that this means I would dismiss anything else someone says who d

I still wouldn't shoot in anything but RAW, because that's like throwing away the negative. Not that this means I would dismiss anything else someone says who doesn't shoot in RAW, but that'd be my number #1 tip for them: get a good workflow set up and keep the negatives. Not even a 5D can guess as nicely as you can adjust the sliders. Which is Better: a 10MP camera dialed down to 3MP, or a 3MP camera? Depends on the lens. 10MP vs 3MP is one thing, 10MP vs 1000MP another... at some point you're just blowing up a fixed amount of signal, and with most lenses that point comes much earlier than one would think. But even then, doing things like straightening or color adjustments before scaling it down looks better than doing it afterwards. That's what the camera does when you shoot in JPEG, but once that's done, it's done, no going back. Would you buy CD, transcode it to MP3, and then throw the CD away? Maybe not all photos are that important, but sometimes you only find out where a particular one falls after some time passed.