Shooting RAW is a lot more time consuming, but after you finish it gives you a lot more room to play with as far as your image color goes. In my current film Beyond the Eleventh Dimension I started shooting in all RAW but switched to Jpeg at the end due to time issues. The footage cuts together well enough and I don't think anyone will notice in the final movie, but if you do have a very colorful film and want to get the most out of your images RAW is the way to do that.

(In the trailer I linked a lot of the early shots like the room with the alarm and the war room were shot raw while the oil rig style lair was shot in jepg)

RAW is a lot of work. Because it's uncompressed and has all sorts of information in it, it looks like crap right out of the camera. You have to work it to bring back out the color and contrast that will make your image look good. When doing all sorts of advanced lighting and using really detailed puppets, as the pros do, it's worth it; but for brickfilming, as long as you get your exposure, white balance, etc. right in camera, it's unnecessary, save a few special situations. Editing individual RAW frames in a still image editor would also be really clumsy, so you need a program that can do high end video color grading, like Adobe Premier, FCP, etc. Just shoot jpg, I do and I think my straight image quality is pretty darn good.

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Everyone here has made some great points, especially dyland backyard and sloth, but these are our opinions. Don't let us rule over your decision. I encourage you to find your own personal preference. Try both and see what fits your needs more. Once again, stoked about everyone's input on this topic. I'll shut up now 

This shot in my film is jepg, bit I found a test shot of it taken in RAW and I liked the colors in the sky a lot more, sadly if I did shoothe it in RAW that footage seems to be lost. But once again it is a minor thing that no one will notice and I don't even think about it when I am watching it as a movie.

Thanks everyone for all of your thorough and precise answers. Since most of my work is just going to be uploaded on the web anyway, I'll just use jpeg for those. However, soon I want to begin tests shooting in RAW, and since I am completely new at this I have no idea where to start. I just purchased Dragonframe and so I'm still learning to use that, but if you're someone who shoots RAW could you please share your workflow with me so I can get the best quality results? I also have After Effects and use Final Cut Pro for editing btw, if that's important in this situation.

Essentially, my workflow is that of a complete madman on the verge of making a scientific breakthrough years ahead of his time... aka Nikola Tesla. jk

Honestly, when I edit my films (specifically effects and such) I tend to use photoshop (or the free alternative, GIMP). It allows me to edit frame by frame, and, being a perfectionist, it makes little things such as lighting and gunshots much easier to edit... also, editing frame by frame is necessary for creating lightsabers, and, as I practically started out making some Star Wars brickfilms - that's how I've always edited.

I export, usually, as HUGE .png files. (I'm not talking gigabytes a frame, but, you definitely could go that far, if you had enough of a hard drive to back it all up.) Sure, they're not quite as, um, "impressive" as RAW files, but, as of the present moment, and my somewhat inexperience with working with RAW files before August of this year, I do not know of any other methods of doing such things with what I have... yet.

When I edit, I use Sony Vegas... Movie Studio. Yes, I use a program that has a limit on screen size for finalizing video. I plan on purchasing a version of Sony Vegas Pro sometime soon - but, either way, it really shows how RAW is practically necessary for someone even like me.

The finalized "edited frames" and even final film will be greatly compressed. So, since I'm so restricted, I really have the want to expand and film in RAW, even if it's compressed to 1920x1080 or even 630x360 in the end. - Also, filming in RAW (or a larger ratio than the final product) is always something I'd suggest, as, one of my old recorders, some pixels went out, and, since it was the same size as the final film, those "blank spots" over a character's eye or covering a background were always noticeable. Shooting in RAW, with ruined pixels, is nearly un-noticeable, especially after compressing the heck out of the footage for the final product. (Which, funny enough, is still high - Blu-Ray quality)

I'm still in the process of learning too, epikfilmz11. I hope we'll both learn a thing or two coming out of this all. I love the look of RAW, and, if I had access to IMAX film, would shoot just about anything on that as well. In my experience, I'd love to have too much on my hands, because, then I could compress it down along the way to whatever I really need.

That's why I'd suggest shooting in RAW - You could compress a lot or keep everything as uncompressed as possible, your choice. When you save in .jpg, you can't really go back unless you want to film all over again.

Well put, Sloth.

I've spent practically the past 7 years perfecting my set building, lighting, and animating skills, all while learning and discovering new techniques for editing and other such things. For me, RAW is simply the next step to achieve nearly lifelike images from the films I make.

Any starting brickfilmers should focus a bit more on storytelling and such, rather than make crappy looking 4k films.

I think this sort of conversation started on one of Nathan Wells' "Brickfilming Weekly Discussions" he had earlier this year. The consensus of this forum was that sound editing, visual interests, and storytelling have seemingly been put on the back-burner recently in brickfilming - something that should have never been sacrificed.

Overall, though, if you can shoot in RAW, I'd say do it. Again, there are just too many things you could do with the footage later... Nathan Wells' (again, thanks Nathan) Brickfilm Archives shows just how sad it can be for filmmakers who settled for a lower quality - some great classics are in broken condition, not in their originally filmed aspect ratio. If only they'd saved those frames/recordings in the highest quality.